Harlow, Jack (Rapper)

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      ‘S.N.L.’ Takes on Herschel Walker, Dr. Oz and Kari Lake

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      Tom Hanks also returned to “Saturday Night Live” for a Halloween episode hosted by Jack Harlow. Any questions?The rising fortunes of some Republican candidates with no previous electoral experience allowed “Saturday Night Live” to try out some new (or newish) political impressions in its opening sketch this weekend.The broadcast, on which the rapper Jack Harlow was both host and musical guest, began with a parody of “PBS NewsHour,” with Heidi Gardner playing the anchor Judy Woodruff. “We’re what your grandma is talking about when she says, ‘I saw this on the news,’” she explained.Introducing three Republicans who are running for office this November, she began with Kenan Thompson, who played Herschel Walker, the Senate candidate from Georgia. “Hello, Judas,” he said. “My name is Herschel Walker, Texas Ranger, and I am running for president of the United Airlines.”Mikey Day played Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, who has been criticized for a lack of familiarity with the state. “My Pennsylvania Phillies are in the World Series and I just had a delicious Philadelphia cheese and steak,” he said. “Yum.”And in her first “S.N.L.” appearance this season, Cecily Strong played Kari Lake, the candidate for governor of Arizona. “Great to be with you, Judy, on your sweet little show full of lies,” she said.Asked how he’d been able to maintain his popularity despite several scandals, Thompson replied, “The whole world is a mystery, ain’t it? For example, a Thermos. It keeps the hot things hot, but also the cold things cold. My question is: How do it decide?”Or perhaps it was because voters thought he was fun, Thompson said: “Look, if you want to get on a Jumbotron at the Packers game, you don’t throw on a cardigan and start making sense. You take your shirt off and shake your belly around. That’s what I’m doing and people love me.”Day said that his candidacy was initially perceived as a long shot. But, he added, “I always told myself, you can win this election if you’re honest, if you’re fair and if your opponent has a debilitating medical emergency. So we’re very lucky.”Strong said her strength with voters was her normalcy.“I’m just a regular hometown gal, constantly in soft focus and lit like a ’90s Cinemax soft-core,” she said. “And frankly, I’ve just clicked with many of the wonderful, terrified elderly people here in Arizona, the Florida of the West. Also, I’m a fighter. In my life, I’ve sent back over 2,000 salads and I’m not afraid to do the same thing with democracy.”Asked if she would implement electoral reforms if she won, Strong answered, “I’ll make it easy. If the people of Arizona elect me, I’ll make sure they never have to vote ever again.” She added, “Look, nothing I say can be incendiary because I say it in TV voice. So jump on into Kari Lake, Arizona, because it’s placid and serene on top, but underneath, it’s a whole lot of giardia.”Obligatory Kanye West Sketch of the WeekIn a run that would come later on Weekend Update, the anchor Colin Jost riffed on the last remaining businesses, including Dippin’ Dots, Scrub Daddy and TCBY, that could still cut ties with Ye (the rapper formerly known as Kanye West) for his antisemitic statements. But “S.N.L.” also made hay from a real-life incident earlier this week in which Ye made an unannounced trip to the headquarters of Skechers and was thrown out of the building.In this fake commercial, Skechers employees can’t quite decide between wondering what it might have been like to work with Ye or embracing the minimal amount of cred they’re finally enjoying for turning him away. While Ye may have been known as a fashion-industry disrupter, “we invented shoes you can wash in a washing machine,” Marcello Hernandez said proudly.12-Step Meeting of the WeekThere were a lot of head fakes in “S.N.L.” this week — like, say, following the monologue with a sketch about a Halloween wedding where the best man has dressed as the Joker. Or take this segment that starts off as what appears to be an Alcoholics Anonymous-style recovery meeting, but which quickly becomes the setting for Harlow’s character to pitch the concept for a Pixar movie about anthropomorphic suitcases that travel the world.And when you think the sketch has peaked with a spontaneous singalong of the would-be movie’s feel-good theme song, who should show up to voice its main character but America’s sweetheart and multiple-time “S.N.L.” host Tom Hanks. (And if you’re wondering whether Hanks’s reappearance on a Halloween episode meant he was going to bring back David S. Pumpkins, yes, he brought back David S. Pumpkins.)Fake Movie Trailer of the WeekIn keeping with the spooky spirit of this episode, “S.N.L.” spun a trailer for an ersatz horror movie that claimed to be a collaboration “from the producers of ‘Smile’ and the twisted minds of ‘Morning Joe.’”As its various characters contemplate all the reasons they would not want to see President Biden run for re-election — they worry he would be too old or vulnerable to easy attack ads — they find themselves just as unenthusiastic about the potential candidates that could replace him, an overly familiar roster that includes Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. The terrifyingly simple title: “2020 Part 2: 2024.” (Coming in 2023.)Weekend Update Jokes of the WeekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter and the emergence of another accuser who said Walker had pressured her to have an abortion.Jost began:This week, Elon Musk officially bought Twitter for $44 billion. Beating out the next highest offer of $0. Musk sent an open letter to advertisers saying that he doesn’t want Twitter to become a free-for-all hellscape. Because that’s his plan for Mars. I honestly don’t understand why people are so worried that Elon is going to ruin Twitter as if it’s this beloved American institution. It’s not like he bought Disneyworld. It’s like he bought the rest of Orlando.Che continued:Herschel Walker denied allegations from a second woman that he pushed her to have an abortion, saying, “I’m done with this foolishness.” Which is also what Walker says when he takes off the condom. The woman claimed that Walker drove her to an abortion clinic, then waited in the parking lot for hours while she had the procedure. Not only that, while he was in the parking lot, he got two more women pregnant. More

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      What’s Next for Jack Harlow?

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherThe rise of Jack Harlow has been one of hip-hop’s most curious narratives over the past two years. So far in 2022 he’s had a huge pop hit, “First Class,” and released his second major label album, “Come Home the Kids Miss You,” which debuted at No. 3. He is one of hip-hop’s biggest emerging stars, and one whose aims are purely centrist.He is also white, and this is, necessarily, fraught territory; Harlow’s album rollout has not been without hiccups. But more interesting are his aims — not to be a crossover pop star who bypasses the hip-hop mainstream, but to make a version of hip-hop much different than his Black peers, and be accepted for it.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Harlow’s musical decisions, the touch-and-go aspects of his album rollout, and the long history of white rappers and the varying degrees of embrace they’ve achieved.Guests:Hunter Harris, author of the Hung Up newsletterLarisha Paul, who writes about music for Billboard, The Fader and othersPeter Rosenberg, a host on New York’s Hot 97 (WQHT-FM) and a host of the “Juan Ep Is Life” podcastConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Mailbag Madness: Adele, Jack Harlow, the State of Rock’s Return

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherEvery few months, members of The New York Times pop music team gather for the ritual Popcast mailbag.On this week’s episode, we answer questions about the current state of rock music, including recent revivals of emo and hardcore; the status of Adele and Chance the Rapper’s careers; the degree to which critics consider extramusical concerns when assessing work; rising talents including Rina Sawayama and Yeat; and much, much more.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterCaryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorJon Pareles, The New York Times’s chief pop music criticConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Bad Bunny Has the Biggest Week of 2022 on the Chart, for Now

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      Future broke the record last week; Kendrick Lamar is poised to set a new bar next week. Blockbuster season on the Billboard album chart has finally arrived.The blockbuster stage of the year’s music release calendar has arrived, with big numbers for Bad Bunny’s latest album on this week’s Billboard chart, and even bigger sales expected for Kendrick Lamar’s long-awaited, just-released return to next week’s chart.“Un Verano Sin Ti,” the new album by Bad Bunny, the mega-streaming Puerto Rican superstar, opens at No. 1 with the equivalent of 274,000 sales in the United States, according to the tracking service Luminate. That is the biggest opening of any album so far this year — beating the record set last week by the rapper Future — and Bad Bunny’s second time at No. 1.Bad Bunny has been Spotify’s most-streamed artist for the last two years running, so it’s no surprise that “Un Verano Sin Ti” racked up a huge number of clicks: 357 million, more than any release so far this year, and the best streaming week for any Latin album ever.But what counts as a blockbuster these days? The numbers have been steadily declining, and what was once the universally recognized milestone of a megahit — one million sales in a single week — looks increasingly unlikely ever to be reached again.The streaming total for “Un Verano” — which accounted for about 95 percent of its consumption in the United States — was certainly big, but it was less than half that of Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy,” which opened with 744 million last September. As a digital album, “Un Verano” sold only 12,000 copies.Not so long ago, a common chart tactic was to bundle copies of albums, as downloads or CDs, with sales of concert tickets or merchandise. But after an industry uproar that such deals were distorting the picture of fan demand and skewing the charts, Billboard changed its rules two years ago to prevent most such deals from affecting chart positions.Even without the rule change, appetites for albums, purchased whole, have been declining for years. Adele’s latest, “30,” opened last year with 839,000 “equivalent sales units” — a measurement that incorporates both sales and streaming — of which 692,000 were for sales of complete albums; in 2015, her previous album, “25,” opened with 3.4 million. No new album has sold a million copies in a single week since Taylor Swift’s “Reputation” had 1.2 million in 2017.Among other notable new releases on this week’s chart, the rapper Jack Harlow opens at No. 3 with “Come Home the Kids Miss You,” which had the equivalent of 113,000 sales, including 137 million streams, and Arcade Fire’s “We” arrives at No. 6.Future’s “I Never Liked You,” last week’s chart-topper, falls to No. 2, while Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous” is No. 4 and Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour” is No. 5. More

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      Romeo Santos’s Melodramatic Return, and 13 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Jack Harlow, Flock of Dimes, Tame Impala and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Romeo Santos, ‘Sus Huellas’“Sus Huellas,” the first single from Romeo Santos’s forthcoming fifth solo album, “Formula, Vol. 3,” finds him reprising the bleeding-heart theatrics he’s known for, recalling the kind of cortavenas (roughly, “wrist cutting”) torment of bachata classics. This time, the genre’s white-pants-wearing, antics-obsessed lover boy is trying to recover from the despair of a lost love, and the melodrama is in overdrive: “Come, pull out my veins/Because the plasma inside of me has the poison of her love,” he sings. “And take this lighter, I want you to burn my lips/Eliminate the taste of her tongue, which did me harm.” It’s not all tradition though; Santos drops in an EDM interlude that will have uptown clubs losing it. ISABELIA HERRERAJack Harlow, ‘Nail Tech’Last year Jack Harlow went to No. 1 as the guest on Lil Nas X’s “Industry Baby,” and he’s learned something from that experience. “Nail Tech” has echoes of that song’s horns, and Harlow approaches the beat similarly, with imagistic rapping — “You ain’t one of my dogs, why do you hound us?” — and a confidence that makes this song sound like a victory lap. JON CARAMANICAC. Tangana, Omar Montes, Daviles de Novelda and Canelita, ‘La Culpa’The Spanish singer-rapper C. Tangana gets top billing on “La Culpa” (“The Blame”), a song added to the deluxe version of his 2021 Latin Grammy-winning album “El Madrileño.” But except for a brief, vulnerable bridge, he spends most of the song merged in harmony with three other singers who are more robust and closer to flamenco — Omar Montes, Daviles de Novelda and the especially gutsy Canelita — while rock drums and electric guitars join flamenco handclaps to pace the song. While the lyrics profess guilt and regret, they’re delivered with jolly camaraderie, suggesting that male bonding can easily overcome pangs of conscience. JON PARELESTame Impala, ‘The Boat I Row’Kevin Parker, a.k.a. the one-man studio band Tame Impala, took so long to release his 2020 album, “The Slow Rush,” that of course he had outtakes. “The Boat I Row” is from his collection “The Slow Rush B-Sides and Remixes.” It shares the album’s stately, logy, time-warped sound — psychedelically phased drums playing a hip-hop beat, multitracked vocal harmonies suggesting both the Beatles and ELO — and its thoughts about dogged persistence. “Even if it takes a hundred thousand goes/The way’s in front of me ’cause that’s the one I chose,” Parker sings, at once diffident and determined. PARELESFlock of Dimes, ‘Pure Love’Jenn Wasner, who records as Flock of Dimes, ponders unsatisfied desire — material and emotional — in “Pure Love,” recorded with the producer Nick Sanborn from Sylvan Esso: “I keep dreaming of a better moment,” she sings. She’s surrounded by looped voices and instruments, with ricocheting programmed beats that hit like 1980s drums; she sounds like she’ll persist. PARELESAsa, ‘Ocean’The songwriter Asa has forged a long career in Nigeria, singing about adversity and conflict as well as romance. But “Ocean” is pure affection. Asa is about to release her fifth studio album, “V,” and “Ocean” distills the ways Nigerian Afrobeats exalts Minimalism. The percussion is just a few syncopated taps, the bass lines are only two or three notes and Asa’s breathy voice floats with professions of pure devotion: “Boy, you are the ocean,” she coos, and everything about the song promises bliss. PARELESYeat featuring Young Thug, ‘Outsidë’Two generations of surrealists in one liquid pool of syllables. Yeat is still swooning over abstraction, and Young Thug, several years older, has learned how to form word-like shapes while still seeming to melt in real time. CARAMANICASigurd Hole, ‘The Presentation Dance’Like so many, the Norwegian bassist Sigurd Hole — a nimble-fingered player and a composer of sonically expansive, thoughtfully paced music — has been overcome with dismay at the fast-worsening climate crisis. Like too few, in the face of it he’s sought out wisdom and theory from non-industrialized societies. “The Presentation Dance” comes from his newest album, “Roraima,” which he made after reading “The Falling Sky,” a book by the Yanomami shaman and mouthpiece Davi Kopenawa. The rain-like pitter-patter of a marimba interacts with a small corps of strings, playing fluid and intertwined melodies that sometimes fall into a pizzicato repartee with the marimba’s mallets. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOEd Sheeran featuring Bring Me the Horizon, ‘Bad Habits’Last week Ed Sheeran released a new version of his song “The Joker and the Queen,” accompanied by Taylor Swift. Pfft. Predictably pretty. Plain. This is more like it. “Bad Habits” is maybe Sheeran’s most anodyne pop hit, and this version, which is theatrically stomped all over by the British metalcore band Bring Me the Horizon, rescues it, recalling the essential and overlooked “Punk Goes Pop” compilation series. CARAMANICAFrontperson, ‘Parade’Frontperson is the indie-rock duo of Kathryn Calder, from the New Pornographers, and Mark Hamilton, from Woodpigeon. Blooping, calliope-like keyboard arpeggios and layers of nonsense-syllable vocals give “Parade” a blithe, circusy tone as Calder and Hamilton sing about anticipation, connection and disconnection, accepting it all: “Sometimes you’re left/Sometimes you leave.” PARELESAmbar Lucid, ‘Dead Leaves’Ambar Lucid’s music bottles youthful longing. The 21-year-old, whose debut album, “Garden of Lucid,” collected stories about escape and radical self-acceptance, seems to know exactly how to stir the soul. “Should I even bother letting anybody know how I feel?” she wonders on “Dead Leaves.” It’s soft winter balladry that contains all the pain and promise of the change of seasons. HERRERAHurray for the Riff Raff, ‘Jupiter’s Dance’“Jupiter’s Dance” is from the newly released “Life on Earth,” the seventh album Alynda Segarra has made as Hurray for the Riff Raff. The new songs contemplate the natural world and humanity’s toll on it. “Jupiter’s Dance” is a quasi-mystical reassurance — “Celestial children coming through/You never know who you’ll become” — with a glimmering bell tones and an undercurrent of Puerto Rican bomba, a brief benediction. PARELESJavon Jackson featuring Nikki Giovanni, ‘Night Song’The poet Nikki Giovanni selected the repertoire for “The Gospel According to Nikki Giovanni,” a new album by the strapping tenor saxophonist Javon Jackson that explores the lineage of Black American spirituals and hymns. But her voice appears on only one track, and it’s the one that’s not a church melody: “Night Song.” Rather that recite her own poetry, Giovanni sings this ode to unbelonging — a favorite of her old friend Nina Simone — with wistful conviction, picking up where Jackson’s gentle treatment of the melody leaves off. Her voice crinkles up on the high notes but loses none of its gravitas or tenderness as she sings: “Music, by the lonely sung/When you can’t help wondering:/Where do I belong?” RUSSONELLOChris Dingman, ‘Silently Beneath the Waves’For the vibraphonist Chris Dingman, solo playing was becoming central to his practice even before the pandemic hit. Since then, it’s been his primary mode, and he’s increasingly sought to use the big, chiming instrument as a vehicle for transcendence. That pursuit has guided him into a close study of a far tinier instrument: the mbira, a thumb piano with spiritual applications across southern Africa. On “Silently Beneath the Waves” — the opener to a new album of solo performances, “Journeys Vol. 1” — you can hear evidence of that research, as he repeats fetching, hypnotizing patterns that pull you into their force field before gradually giving way to a different shape. RUSSONELLO More