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    Randall Park on the Kendrick Lamar Track He Loves to Drive to in L.A.

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    The actor isn’t sure he’d make a great F.B.I. agent, though he’s playing one again in the new TV series “The Residence.”When Randall Park was first approached about playing an F.B.I. agent in Netflix’s new murder mystery series, “The Residence,” his first thought was: Another one?“I just didn’t want to do the same thing,” said Park, 50, who has a recurring role as Agent Jimmy Woo in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, appearing in “WandaVision,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp” and its sequel, “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”After he read the script for “The Residence,” which begins streaming on March 20, he reconsidered. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it,” he said. And when he found out that Uzo Aduba would be starring in it, “I was like, ‘Oh gosh, yes, I know I want to do this for sure.’”He’s not sure he’d be a good secret agent in real life, though.“Well, maybe, because I am pretty calm under pressure,” he said. “But then again,” he added, “I’ve never held a real gun.”In a phone conversation from his home in Los Angeles’s Studio City neighborhood, where he lives with his wife, the actress Jae Suh Park, and their 12-year-old daughter, Ruby, Park shared a list of favorites inspired by his native Los Angeles. It includes his go-to Korean place, his favorite running routes and the locally made condiment he puts on absolutely everything. These are edited excerpts.Los AngelesIt’s been on my mind a lot because of the recent fires, and also because I’ve just been traveling a lot and missing home. L.A. gets a bad rap in a lot of ways. People label it as superficial, or too Hollywood, but L.A. is so much more than Hollywood. It’s a big city with different enclaves and different experiences.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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      Drake Postpones 4 Australia and New Zealand Tour Dates

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      Dates for Brisbane, Sydney and Auckland were postponed for a “scheduling conflict,” representatives for the rapper said. The tour coincided with the release of his latest album.Drake, whose new album topped the Billboard 200 chart this week after Kendrick Lamar had made him a punchline at the Super Bowl halftime show, has canceled four tour dates in Australia and New Zealand because of a “scheduling conflict,” representatives for the rapper said on Wednesday.It was not immediately clear what the conflict was, but Drake’s team said it would work to reschedule the dates along with adding additional shows.“We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience,” Drake’s representatives said in a statement. “Drake and the entire team have had an incredible time doing these shows and are excited to return soon. We look forward to sharing the rescheduled dates with you as soon as possible.”The Anita Max Win Tour kicked off this month in Perth, Australia, and was scheduled to have 16 shows across major cities in the country and New Zealand.But Drake canceled a March 4 show in Brisbane, a March 7 show in Sydney and two shows in mid-March in Auckland, New Zealand.The tour coincided with the release of his latest album, “Some Sexy Songs 4 U,” a collaboration with PartyNextDoor, a longtime Drake associate. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 this week.It was the first new album since his much-publicized beef with Lamar, whose diss track “Not Like Us” accused Drake of pedophilia. Drake sued Universal Music Group for defamation for releasing and promoting the song. His lawsuit called the allegations in the song false and accused the label of valuing “corporate greed over the safety and well-being of its artists.”But the song has continued to grow. This month Lamar won five Grammy Awards for the song, including song and record of the year, and performed it to a huge global audience at the Super Bowl halftime show.Joe Coscarelli More

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      5 Comedy Specials to Watch: Josh Johnson, Rosebud Baker and More

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      Stand-up shows from Josh Johnson, Rosebud Baker, Craig Ferguson and others investigate Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show, motherhood and the politics of dumplings.Ian Karmel, ‘Comfort Beyond God’s Foresight’(Stream it on YouTube)In his debut special, Ian Karmel, a veteran comic and writer for late night and award shows, turns his worst joke into one of his best by continually refusing to tell it. It’s a neat trick, characteristic of his unpredictably funny style. Explaining his hesitance, he makes a meal out of the idea that it once killed an audience member who died laughing. It’s one of many distinctive riffs.There’s a long act-out of a guy putting a bumper sticker on a car that is somehow very funny. He makes a CPAP machine hilarious. Part of his gift resides in the subtext. He can get a laugh from just saying “I like books” because it’s clear that he doesn’t mean it. There’s a finesse to his delivery. He speaks deliberately, never straining. He veers in unexpected directions, even on a sentence level. “I was on tour with my podcast,” he said, pivoting, “which is a sentence I sometimes think about saying to someone who fought in World War II.”Karmel is committed to skirting free of cliché, but not in an indulgent, hipster way. There’s nothing ironic about his mustache. His interests (sex, politics, figures of speech) are basic. It’s the way he handles them that stands out. For instance, his take on how worried we should be about our current political moment begins with an observation that many of the countries (Poland, Italy) that make the tastiest dumplings have at one point succumbed to fascism. “So, the question we need to ask ourselves as Americans is,” he says, pausing for a dramatic beat. “Does Hot Pockets count?Rosebud Baker, ‘The Mother Lode’(Stream it on Netflix)Many, if not most, stand-up specials are shot over multiple performances, then edited together to make it seem like one integrated whole. Rosebud Baker’s breakout new hour finds meaning in this benign deception, weaving together a performance from when she’s eight months pregnant and another one after she had the baby. Wearing the same color clothes, she cuts between the two even in the middle of a joke. This mixing is never addressed or commented on, but supports a question hovering over the special: Does having a child change you? Baker says it does, but her shots make a different argument.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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      Drake’s Tentative Comeback, Plus: New Music From the Weeknd and More

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeLast week saw the release of “Some Sexy Songs 4 U,” the collaborative album from Drake and the Toronto R&B singer and songwriter PartyNextDoor, a longtime collaborator. For the most part, the sound is a vintage one for Drake, feeling something like a retreat to a comfort zone: moody heartbreak soul bathed in self-loathing and suspicion.It’s an album that, from a distance, appears to exist in a space totally parallel to the dominant narrative of his last year, which is the toxic and very popular beef he’s had with Kendrick Lamar, which seemed to culminate this month with Lamar’s five Grammy wins for “Not Like Us,” followed by his performance of the song at the Super Bowl halftime show.But there are a handful of songs on this new album that suggest Drake is already looking at musical pathways forward, or away, from that bumpy stretch.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Drake’s post-Kendrick predicament and the ways he might move on. Plus: a host of promising new albums that have brightened up the beginning of the year from artists like the Weeknd, Central Cee, Oklou, Skaiwater and OsamaSon.Guest:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterConnect 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.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. More

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      Breaking Down Kendrick Lamar’s Drake-centric Super Bowl Halftime Show

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeOn Sunday in New Orleans, Kendrick Lamar became the first solo rapper to headline the Super Bowl halftime show, performing a medley of hits, deep cuts and Drake disses.Writing in The New York Times, the critic Jon Caramanica called it both “curiously low-key” and, in the case of the climactic use “Not Like Us,” complete with a Serena Williams cameo, “quite a spectacle — perhaps the peak of any rap battle, ever.”Immediately after the game, on an emergency episode of Popcast, we discussed the way Lamar’s beef with Drake provided the momentum of the performance; the cameos from SZA, Samuel L. Jackson and Williams; the rest of the set list, including an unreleased, fan-favorite track (and no “Alright”); the surprise leak of the show a few days early; the protester who unveiled a flag for Gaza and Sudan; and whether this is finally the end of the biggest beef in hip-hop history.Connect 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.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. More

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      Kendrick Lamar’s Bell Bottoms Steal the Super Bowl Halftime Show

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      Could it be that the lasting impact of Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show will be … the return of bell bottoms?At halftime of a fairly dull game (unless, well, you’re an Eagles fan), the rapper materialized onstage, flanked by dancers in monotonal outfits of either blue, red or white, dressed in clothes that clearly repped team Lamar.His varsity jacket, custom-made by Martine Rose, a British designer known for her witty and warped sportswear, was coated with patches to please the Lamarologists in the Superdome. The front read “Gloria,” seemingly a reference to the last song on his latest album “GNX.” The back had a “pgLang” insignia, the creative agency Mr. Lamar co-runs with Dave Free.Mr. Lamar’s jacket was made by Martine Rose, a British designer.Emily Kask for The New York TimesThere were other delectable elements to his outfit: a tilted fitted cap with a feather brooch pinned on the side, as well as a conspicuous “a” chain that some online took to be a head nod to the villainous “A Minor” line in Mr. Lamar’s Grammy-gathering “Not Like Us” — a line that the stadium hollered in unison at the appointed time. (Others offered that the “a” could be some sort of nod to pgLang, though it also looked a little like the Amazon logo.)But the pièce de résistance, the item that people started texting me about, oh, two minutes into his performance, were those jeans, which came from the French fashion house Celine. Their official product name is the “flared surf jean in summer dazed wash.” At $1,300 they do not come cheap.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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      Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime Show: The Peak of All Rap Battles?

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      The first rapper to headline the N.F.L.’s biggest stage solo made his Drake diss “Not Like Us” the centerpiece of his set at the expense of a larger statement.Of course he performed “Not Like Us.”In the lead-up to Kendrick Lamar’s headline performance at the Super Bowl LIX halftime show on Sunday night, most of the chatter focused on whether he would play the song that was effectively the knockout blow in his monthslong battle with Drake last year. The song that became Lamar’s signature hit, and a generational anthem. The song that won both record and song of the year at the Grammys just a week ago. The song that appeared to recalibrate hip-hop’s power rankings, perhaps permanently.So yes, Lamar played the song. Toward the end of the set, of course, building up anticipation with a couple of brief musical nods to it, toying with the audience’s emotions and thirst.Lamar leaned on songs from his most recent album, “GNX,” like “Man at the Garden” and “Peekaboo.”Doug Mills/The New York TimesBut what will always be remembered from this performance is not the musical choices Lamar made, or the aesthetics of his choreography, or the silhouettes of his outfit. What will remain is his grin when he finally began rapping that song. It was wide, persistent, almost cartoonish in shape. The grin of a man having the time of his life at the expense of an enemy.Lamar is perhaps the most sober of all of hip-hop’s contemporary greats, a ferocious storyteller who values tongue-tripping polemics and introspection; he is not exactly a beacon of joy. During the beef, he appeared to take on the dismantling of Drake as necessary homework.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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      How Kendrick Lamar’s Performances Led Him to the Super Bowl Halftime Show

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      Kendrick Lamar performs like someone parceling out a secret. On the 2015 single “King Kunta,” he stage-whispers, “I swore I wouldn’t tell,” and then proceeds to flaunt industry gossip without naming names. Though the Grammy-hoarding, Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper has mastered literary opacity in his music — he’s a generous user of perspective shifts and allusion — in videos and in live performances, Lamar’s expressive stagings strike like visual poetry.Lamar has scaled up those performances, becoming more elaborate as his platforms have grown in the 14 years since his recording debut. Dave Free, his primary creative partner and a collaborator on his visual presentations, has in the past attributed the rapper’s mutability to what he called the roller coaster effect: “You give people some type of variation, they can’t get used to you. They can’t put their finger on you. The more you keep people on their toes, the more interested they stay in you, for a longer period of time.” The zigzagging ride Free described is not unlike the sensory swerve of verse, especially Lamar’s quirky couplets. Ahead of his performance at the Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday, and a planned stadium tour this spring, it’s worth tracing how Lamar has visually explored intimate themes as his ambitions and career have expanded.‘Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe’ video (2013)Layering Comedy and Tragedy“Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe,” the last single from Lamar’s debut album, “good kid, m.A.A.d. city”(2012), is his most straightforward exploration of a visual lament. “I know you had to die in a pitiful vain, tell me a watch and a chain / Is way more believable, give me a feasible gain,” he chants in one verse. The song’s video, directed by Lamar and Free, is set at a funeral, with the rapper joining a procession of mourners wearing white in a hike up a picturesque hill. Their destination? A party with a preacher played by the comic Mike Epps.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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      Is Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’ Too Controversial for the Super Bowl?

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      Kendrick Lamar’s smash “Not Like Us” has been a lot of things since its release less than a year ago: a Drake-slaying diss track, a No. 1 single, a West Coast unity anthem, a Kamala Harris rally singalong, a World Series fight song, a bar mitzvah dance floor party-starter.At the Grammys over the weekend, it swept all five of its nominations, including song and record of the year, becoming only the second rap track ever to win in each category, while also taking home trophies for best rap song, best rap performance and best music video.A week after those victories, “Not Like Us” — with its one billion plays on Spotify and at least hundreds of millions more across radio, YouTube and social media — may reach its ultimate peak: a performance on Sunday for some 100 million people, live from the Super Bowl halftime stage in New Orleans.A casual listener — or Super Bowl viewer — may hear an easily digestible crowd-pleaser. A popular rapper, known for knotty introspection, going playful over a spacious, bouncy beat by the producer Mustard, punctuated with sped-up stabs of strings and an all-purpose, easily co-opted chant of a chorus: “They not like us.”In many senses an inescapable, old-fashioned hit, “Not Like Us” was immediately absorbed into the cultural bloodstream, where it has remained ever since, holding strong in the Billboard Top 40 in its 38th week since release. But while the song’s mega-success can by now be taken for granted, it also happens to be incredibly bizarre.The song’s specifics, and its omnipresence, represent a significant swerve for Lamar, 37, who until recently was known primarily as one of the most revered M.C.s of all time: a Pulitzer Prize winner with a sterling career whose 2015 track “Alright” was adopted as an anthem of the Black Lives Matter movement.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