Kehlani (1995- )

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    Eminem and LL Cool J Duel in Speedy Raps, and 9 More New Songs

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    Hear tracks by Sophie featuring Bibi Bourelly, Kim Deal, Tommy Richman and more.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.LL Cool J featuring Eminem, ‘Murdergram Deux’LL Cool J, 56, and Eminem, 51, show off old-school, high-speed, crisply articulated rhyme technique in “Murdergram Deux,” nominally a sequel to “Murdergram” from LL Cool J’s 1990 album “Mama Said Knock You Out.” It’s all boasts, threats, wordplay and similes — “’bout to finish you like polyurethane,” Eminem raps — set to a jaunty, changeable track produced by Eminem and none other than Q-Tip. Eminem has the slightly higher syllable count, while LL Cool J gets the last word, a cheerful callback to his commercial peak. JON PARELESSophie featuring Bibi Bourelly, ‘Exhilarate’The hyperpop visionary Sophie had mapped out a full album before she died in an accident in 2021; “Sophie,” completed by her brother and other collaborators, is due in September. “Exhilarate” takes the conventions of a big-room trance anthem — four chords, sumptuously reverberating synthesizer tones, a stately underlying beat — and warps them from the bottom up. Bibi Bourelly sings euphoric layered harmonies, proclaiming, “Got my foot on the gas/And I won’t stop for no one.” But the drumbeat leaves spaces instead of thumping four on the floor, while bass tones wriggle and melt and the midrange gets zapped with buzzy tones. The track’s entire last minute is a slow-motion collapse into entropy and silence. PARELESKim Deal, ‘Crystal Breath’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gracie Abrams and Taylor Swift’s Duet, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Mavis Staples, Jamie xx featuring Robyn, Rakim and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Gracie Abrams featuring Taylor Swift, ‘Us.’The title of the singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams’s second album, “The Secret of Us,” comes from this feverish duet with her friend and onetime tour mate Taylor Swift. “If history’s clear, someone always ends up in ruins,” Abrams, 24, sings breathily through a thicket of fingerpicked notes, the signature sound of her and Swift’s mutual collaborator Aaron Dessner, who co-produced the track with Jack Antonoff. (Dessner’s band the National gets a shout out toward the end of the song, when Abrams sings of being “mistaken for strangers.”) Midway through, the wise elder Swift swoops in to put Abrams’s youthful heartbreak in perspective. “If history’s clear, the flames always end up in ashes,” she sings. “And what seemed like fate, give it 10 months and you’ll be past it.” LINDSAY ZOLADZJamie xx featuring Robyn, ‘Life’The latest single from Jamie xx’s long-awaited second album “In Waves” pairs playful and effortlessly cool vocals from Robyn with a thumping, skittish beat intercut with lively horn samples. Her personality shines brightest on the bridge, when she throws out some vampy non-sequiturs and dissolves into giggles at one of them: “You’re giving me strong torso.” Whatever you say, Robyn! ZOLADZMavis Staples, ‘Worthy’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kehlani’s Journey of Healing

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      On “Blue Water Road,” the singer infuses confessional lyrics with newfound emotional clarity.There’s a simple but powerful promise in “Little Story,” the orchestral epic that opens Kehlani’s new album, “Blue Water Road” — one that captures what it feels like to spend a lifetime chasing safe, tender intimacy in partnership: “Working on being softer/’Cause you are a dream, to me.”The phrase evokes one of the foundations of Kehlani’s music: a commitment to openness and fearless vulnerability in the face of romantic turmoil. Kehlani, who uses she/they pronouns, has always been confessional, a quality that has resonated with a generation of pop and R&B fans and that can be felt on the singer’s last two albums (and mixtapes). This time around, the insecurities of love and heartbreak are still there, but there’s a newfound awareness — an emotional clarity that illuminates how healing isn’t always linear.All this wisdom didn’t just materialize out of thin air. In the past two years, Kehlani has experienced several life-altering shifts: settling into motherhood; losing two close friends to drug overdoses; enduring a brutal public breakup with the rapper YG; and coming out as a lesbian and as nonbinary. Many of these themes appeared on the 2020 album “It Was Good Until It Wasn’t,” and some of them are reprised here, but that project was cloudy and macabre, driven by sparse, hollow beats and a somber outlook on the prospect of building healthy love.“Blue Water Road” instead radiates delicate warmth. In a creamy, full-throated voice, Kehlani exudes a tenderness not felt since their 2017 studio album, “SweetSexySavage.” There’s still a reverence for the past: “Up at Night,” featuring Justin Bieber, interpolates Soul II Soul and Rose Windross’s 1989 track “Fairplay,” while “Wish I Never” warps the drums of Slick Rick’s classic “Children’s Story.” But there’s a fresh, imagistic aura to the production on “Blue Water Road,” rendered in part by the executive producer Andrew “Pop” Wansel. Nearly every song includes hushed acoustic guitar textures, or swelling string crescendos that revel in high drama. Echoes of wind, cresting waves and bird calls are sprinkled throughout, sketching an aural landscape that is plush and comforting, like the caress of a lover who’s been gone for too long.This is the ideal backdrop for Kehlani’s diaristic, bleeding-heart lyricism. “Little Story” harnesses a novelistic metaphor to chronicle a romance that never fully bloomed: “I want you to pick up the pen/And write me into your story,” Kehlani sings. The lead single “Altar” is a gorgeous elegy for friends lost to addiction, and the ancestors who have offered Kehlani spiritual grounding. But rather than becoming immersed in sorrow, Kehlani salutes the dearly departed with a small act of service, and reminds us their memories will never really fade: “If I set a flame and I call your name/I’ll fix you a plate, we can go to dinner/We can share a meal your way/And I’ll play the songs that you used to play.”But it’s Kehlani’s candid ruminations on queer desire and estrangement that resonate the deepest here. On the breathy slow burner “Get Me Started,” Kehlani and the R&B artist Syd lament a disconnection that threatens to end a relationship: “You need something else/Well, maybe she can do it better.” On the velvety serenade “Melt,” Kehlani cherishes the small, perfect joy of finding a home in a lover: “Wish I could build me a cute apartment/One bedroom right where your heart is.” It’s sensual but loving, capturing both the devoted affection and the erotic pleasure that make a partnership feel full.Serenity, personal growth and felicity may not be seductive topics for a contemporary R&B record. But other artists might let these motifs land with mawkish sentimentality. For Kehlani, the path to healing isn’t a straightforward journey with a beginning, middle and end, where life can finally begin after reaching some abstract, enlightened state. “Blue Water Road” is a reminder that healing is open, unfinished and everlasting.Kehlani“Blue Water Road”(Atlantic) More

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      Florence + the Machine’s Conflicted Coronation, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Bonnie Raitt, Kehlani, Mahalia 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.Florence + the Machine, ‘King’Career vs. family. Artistic inspiration vs. a stable life. “The world ending and the scale of my ambition.” Florence Welch takes them all on in “King,” which affirms both the risks and rewards of her choices. Like many of the songs Welch writes and sings for Florence + the Machine, “King” moves from confessional to archetypal in a grand, liberating crescendo, while its video elevates her from a tormented partner to something like a saint. JON PARELESBonnie Raitt, ‘Made Up Mind’It’s an old story: the bitter end of a romance. “Made Up Mind,” written and first recorded by a Canadian band called the Bros. Landreth, tells it tersely, often in one-syllable words: “It goes on and on/For way too long.” On the first single from an album due April 22, “Just Like That,” Bonnie Raitt sings it knowingly and tenderly, after a scrape of guitar noise announces how rough the going is about to get. PARELESKehlani, ‘Little Story’Kehlani has long narrated tales of devastating romance, but “Little Story,” the latest single from the forthcoming album “Blue Water Road,” opens a portal to a world of candor. Sounding more self-assured and tender than they have in years, the singer (who uses they/them pronouns) curls the honeyed sways of their voice over the delicate strumming of an electric guitar. “You know I love a story, only when you’re the author,” Kehlani sings, pleading for a lover’s return. Strings crescendo into blooming petals, and Kehlani makes a pledge to embrace tenderness. “Workin’ on bein’ softer,” they sing. “’Cause you are a dream to me.” ISABELIA HERRERACarter Faith, ‘Greener Pasture’A bluesy lite-country simmerer in which the cowboy does not stick around: “I was his Texaco/A stop just along the road/I shoulda known I ain’t his last rodeo.” JON CARAMANICANorah Jones, ‘Come Away With Me (Alternate Version)’With the 20th anniversary of Norah Jones‘s millions-selling debut, “Come Away With Me,” arrives a “Super Deluxe Edition” featuring this previously unreleased alternate take of the title track, with the band work shopping the song. There’s a constant, pendulum-swinging guitar part in this version, matching the songwriter Jesse Harris’s lulling bass figure and pushing the band along. Ultimately you can see why this take didn’t make the cut: The biggest draw is Jones’s matte, desert-rose voice, and it seems most at home when in no hurry, cast in lower contrast to the rest of the band. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOPorridge Radio, ‘Back to the Radio’One electric guitar chord is strummed in what seems to be 4/4 time, repeated, distorted and topped with additional noise for the first full minute of “Back to the Radio.” Then Dana Margolin starts singing, decidedly turning the 4/4 to a waltz as the lyrics push toward a confrontation with someone who matters: “We almost got better/We’re so unprepared for this/Running straight at it.” The song is pure catharsis. PARELESMahalia, ‘Letter to Ur Ex’The threat is both restrained and potent in “Letter to Ur Ex” from the English songwriter Mahalia. She’s singing to someone trying to maintain a connection that has ended: “You can’t do that any more,” she warns. “Yeah, I get it/That don’t mean I’m gonna always be forgiving.” Acoustic guitar chords grow into a programmed beat and strings; her voice is gentle, but its edge is unmistakable. PARELESEsty, ‘Pegao!!!’The Dominican American artist Esty collides genres and aesthetics like a kid scribbling on paper. “Pegao!!!,” from her new “Estyland” EP, mashes up the singer’s breathy, coy raps and sky-high melodies with razor-sharp stabs of synth and a skittish, percussive dembow riddim. She declares her imminent ascent in the music industry, whispering, “They say I’m too late/But I feel like I’m on time.” Her visual choices are part of the plot too: between the anime references, her love for roller skating (which has made her famous on TikTok) and a head full of two-toned braids, Esty’s aesthetic is a kind of punk dembow, her own little slice of chaotic good. HERRERAMura Masa featuring Lil Uzi Vert, PinkPantheress and Shygirl, ‘Bbycakes’Here is how layered things can get in 21st-century pop. The English producer Mura Masa discovered “Babycakes” by the British group 3 of a Kind. He pitched it up and sped it up, keeping the catchy chorus hook. He also connected with Pink Pantheress, Lil Uzi Vert and Shygirl. The new, multitracked song is still both a come-on and a declaration of love, but who did what is a blur. PARELESR3hab featuring Saucy Santana, ‘Put Your Hands On My ____ (Original Phonk Version)’Saucy Santana’s “Material Girl” is the optimal viral hit — easy to shout along with, organized around a catchy phrase, full of performative attitude. For Saucy Santana, onetime makeup artist for the rap duo City Girls turned reality TV star, its emergence as a TikTok phenomenon a couple of months ago (more than a year after the song’s initial release) was a classic case of water finding its level. And now, a future full of promising party-rap club anthems beckons. This easy-as-pie collaboration with the D.J.-producer R3hab is an update of Freak Nasty’s “Da Dip,” one of the seminal songs of Atlanta bass music, and a bona fide mid-1990s pop hit as well. It doesn’t top the original, but it doesn’t have to in order to be an effective shout-along. CARAMANICALil Durk, ‘Ahhh Ha’The first single from the upcoming Lil Durk album, “7220,” is full of exuberant menace. Lil Durk raps crisply and with snappy energy while touching on awful topics, including the killing of his brother DThang and of the rapper King Von, and instigating tension with YoungBoy Never Broke Again. In the middle of chaos, he sounds almost thrilled. CARAMANICAKiko El Crazy, Braulio Fogón and Randy, ‘Comandante’On “Comandante,” two generations of eccentrics — the Dominican dembow newcomers Kiko el Crazy and Braulio Fogón, alongside the Puerto Rican reggaeton titan Randy — join forces for a send-off to a cop who threatens to arrest them for smoking a little weed. Randy drops a deliciously flippant, baby-voiced hook, and Fogón’s offbeat, anti-flow arrives with surprising dexterity. When that timeless fever pitch riddim hits, you’ll want every intergenerational police satire to go this hard. HERRERACharles Goold, ‘Sequence of Events’The drummer Charles Goold and his band are hard-charging on “Sequence of Events,” the opening track to his debut album as a bandleader, “Rhythm in Contrast.” He starts it with a four-on-the-floor drum solo that has as much calypso and rumba in it as it does swing. When the band comes in — the slicing guitar of Andrew Renfroe leading the way, with Steve Nelson’s vibraphone, Taber Gable’s piano and Noah Jackson’s bass close on his heels — that open approach to his rhythmic options remains. Goold graduated from Juilliard, probably the premiere conservatory for traditional-jazz pedagogy, but he’s also toured with hip-hop royalty. All of that’s in evidence here, as he homes in on a sincere update to the midcentury-modern jazz sound. RUSSONELLO More

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      Amorphous D.J.'d His Way Through 2020

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeMake: BirriaExplore: ‘Bridgerton’ StyleParent: With ImprovRead: Joyce Carol OatesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHis Dreams Came True, Despite the PandemicAfter having a rough start to 2020, Jimir Reece Davis, a D.J. who goes by Amorphous, ended it with a bang.“I’ve been doing mash-ups for a while, they come to my mind when I am bored,” said Jimir Reece Davis, a D.J. who goes by Amorphous. “I do it for fun. I am always listening to music in my head.”Credit…Chase Hall for The New York TimesFeb. 10, 2021Updated 2:00 p.m. ETJimir Reece Davis’s 2020 wasn’t going well even before the pandemic hit. In January, he found himself homeless in Los Angeles after his living situation became untenable. Then his mother, who has epilepsy, had a bad seizure and was hospitalized. So, he decided to pack his bags and return home.Everything that could go wrong seemed to be going wrong for Mr. Davis, a 23-year-old D.J. who goes by Amorphous. Little did he know, his dreams were about to come true in mere months.On Thanksgiving, Mr. Davis filmed a video of himself mixing Rihanna’s “Kiss It Better” with Luther Vandross’s “Never Too Much.” Intertwined, the two tracks sounded familiar and warm, like the kind of song you’d hear a block party on a balmy spring day. In the video, he sports a black T-shirt with an image of Aaliyah’s face on it and he’s grooving to the sound of his mix..@rihanna’s ‘kiss it better’ x luther vandross’s ‘never too much’. 💞 pic.twitter.com/0wNENEDhuO— amorphous (@loneamorphous) November 26, 2020
      “I’ve been doing mash-ups for a while. They come to my mind when I am bored,” Mr. Davis said in an interview. “I do it for fun. I am always listening to music in my head.”The response on social media was immediate: Mr. Davis’s mix had gone viral. To date, the video has been played more than 2.6 million times, over 100,000 people have liked his tweet and it was shared more than 30,000 times. Superstar producers and artists like Missy Elliott, John Legend, Issa Rae and LL Cool J congratulated him on the mix and encouraged him to keep going.Less than a month later, when he tweeted that his laptop had stopped working, Oprah Winfrey sent him a replacement with a note that read: “Thank you for bringing joy to the world your way. ​I hope this helps you continue.”Mr. Davis’s world shifted again when he received a call from Fat Joe, who loved his new mix and wanted to use it for a song.“When I heard it, I was like ‘Yo, this is amazing,’” Fat Joe said in his slack jawed, New York City accent. “We were influenced by him. The kid is a genius, man, he’s done things that nobody has done before.”“Dreams do come true,” Mr. Davis said. “Even with the tragedy of the pandemic, I believe they can.”Credit…Chase Hall for The New York TimesFat Joe used the mix on his latest single, “Sunshine,” which was co-produced by Cool of the production team Cool & Dre. The video, which now has more than eight million views on YouTube, was shot in Miami in December and features Diddy and DJ Khaled in their yacht-life, silk-Versace-button-up best. Amorphous is on the boat, too, behind a D.J. booth, doing what he loves to do: mixing music.Mr. Davis said he was a little intimidated during the video shoot. But he said he tried to be himself because “that’s how all this happened was by me being me.”This wasn’t the first time Mr. Davis, who graduated from Full Sail University in 2018, had gone viral. But the response to this mix has been astronomical. He even managed to get the attention of Rihanna, the subject of a fandom-inspired documentary he made while he was in school. Mr. Davis said Rihanna reached out and watched the documentary.“I know, it’s crazy right?” Mr. Davis said. “From what I’ve heard, she liked it.”In college, Mr. Davis studied film making, but his heart was always in his music. When he was three, he would rap along to Jay-Z songs at home. Later on, he taught himself how to beat box. At 11, he was teaching himself how to use production software like Beaterator to make music.“I was kind of just using different free software,” Mr. Davis said. “I realized that I actually liked producing.”Back in high school, he begged his father to buy him Ableton, a music production suite that at the time cost $1,000. His father did not wince at the price and got it for him; Mr. Davis spent all his free time learning how to use it and was soon producing songs on his own.All of his hard work paid off. In 2016, he began to share his mash-ups online. The Canadian R&B duo Dvsn liked one of his mixes and used it on their album “A Muse in Her Feelings.” The experience gave Mr. Davis a taste of the music production process and soon he set his sights on becoming a producer himself.Things are finally falling into place for Mr. Davis. Now that “Sunshine” has debuted at No. 10 on the Rap Digital Song Billboard chart, he’s gained confidence and is looking forward to possibly collaborating with Chloe Bailey, one half of the R&B group Chloe x Halle, and the singer Kehlani.“Amorphous is not only an incredible ear, visionary young artist, but is the most gracious humble deserving human being,” Kehlani said.Mr. Davis still pinches himself every so often. He often re-shares his old tweets, from the days when he was hoping to have the opportunities he has now.“Dreams do come true,” Mr. Davis said bashfully. “Even with the tragedy of the pandemic, I believe they can.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More