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      My Chemical Romance’s Prog-Emo Surprise, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by the Smile, Julia Jacklin, black midi 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.My Chemical Romance, ‘The Foundations of Decay’My Chemical Romance — the New Jersey band that fused the momentum of pop-punk, the crunch of hard rock and the opulent productions of glam — announced its breakup in 2013 and released its last new song in 2014. Although the band reunited to tour in 2019, “The Foundations of Decay” is its first new material since then. There’s no punk sarcasm for now; as the music builds from measured dirge to pummeling anthem, the lyrics both recognize and rail against the ravages of time, even on the verge of a new tour. JON PARELESThe Smile, ‘The Opposite’On its debut album, “A Light for Attracting Attention,” the Smile is Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead joined by a different drummer: Tom Skinner from Sons of Kemet. The new band’s ingredients add up largely as expected: a leaner take on Radiohead’s longstanding thoughts of alienation and malaise, pushing rhythm into the foreground. Skinner starts “The Opposite” by himself, with a sputtering, shifty funk beat that’s soon topped by an accumulation of overlapping, stop-start guitar riffs, each one adding a new bit of disorientation. Yorke might be describing the track itself when he sings, “It goes back and forth followed by a question mark.” PARELESblack midi, ‘Welcome to Hell’“Welcome to Hell” announces the third album by black midi, “Hellfire,” due July 15. It’s a jagged, funky, speed-shifting mini-suite, by turns brutal and sardonic, with lyrics about the dehumanization of a soldier. “To die for your country does not win a war/To kill for your country is what wins a war,” Geordie Greep sings. The music is exhilarating; the aftertaste is bleak. PARELESKendrick Lamar, ‘The Heart Part 5’Kendrick Lamar has made a series of songs called “The Heart” to preface his albums. “The Heart Part 5” arrived a few days before his new one, “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.” As always, Lamar’s work is multilayered, self-questioning, thoughtful, rhythmic and bold. The track’s jumpy, insistent conga drums, bass line and backup vocals come from Marvin Gaye’s “I Want You,” a title that Lamar repurposes to address his fans. On the sonic level, Lamar’s fast-talking vocals challenge the congas for syllable-by-syllable momentum. His mission is to “Sacrifice personal gain over everything/Just to see the next generation better than ours.” The song’s video clip uses deep-fake technology to make Lamar look like charged cultural figures including O.J. Simpson, Kanye West and Nipsey Hussle. This is hip-hop working through its own implications, contradictions and repercussions. PARELESFlores, ‘Brown’Flores’s voice has luster, but she can also envelop messages of pain and pride into moments of gentle acuity. On “Brown,” from her debut EP “The Lives They Left,” she meditates on her upbringing on the El Paso-Juárez border: the violence of government agencies like ICE and C.B.P., as well as the small joys of quotidian life, what she calls “brown trust” and “brown love.” A lonely saxophone resounds under the production, as Flores reflects on the resilience of the Indigenous ancestors that preceded her: “When they ask you where you people come from/16,000 years we here/Valleys stained of blood and tears/Mexica let ’em know/ This the land we’ve sown/Laid the seeds that grow.” ISABELIA HERRERARemi Wolf, ‘Michael’“Michael” is a relatively subdued song for an artist as antic and kaleidoscopic as Remi Wolf, but she puts her stamp on it nonetheless. Written with the Porches mastermind Aaron Maine — their first time working together — and Wolf’s touring guitarist Jack DeMeo, the track is a sing-songy depiction of romantic desperation, with Wolf singing from the perspective of someone clinging to an obsessive relationship she knows is doomed. “Michael, hold my hand and spin me round until I’m dizzy,” she begs atop a murky electric guitar progression. “Loosen up my chemicals.” LINDSAY ZOLADZJulia Jacklin, ‘Lydia Wears a Cross’The Australian singer-songwriter Julia Jacklin’s music is a gradual accumulation of small, sharp lyrical details, and “Lydia Wears a Cross,” the first single from her forthcoming album “Pre Pleasure,” is full of them: Two young girls “listening to ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ soundtrack”; a child “singing every single word wrong” on a parade float; a catechism teacher instructing her pupils to pray for Princess Diana. Such snapshots create a larger atmosphere of religious indoctrination and Jacklin’s youthful questioning: “I felt pretty in the shoes and the dress/Confused by the rest, could he hear me?” The arrangement is sparse — drum machine, echoing stabs of piano — to spotlight Jacklin’s storytelling, but a subtle unease creeps in when she gets to the haunting chorus: “I’d be a believer, if it was all just song and dance/I’d be a believer, if I thought we had a chance.” ZOLADZDeath Cab for Cutie, ‘Roman Candles’Ben Gibbard sings about numbness and detachment, claiming “I am learning to let go/of everything I tried to hold,” in “Roman Candles,” the preview of an album due in September. But the music belies any claim to serenity. Drums, bass and guitars all overload and distort, pounding away in a relentless two-minute surge. PARELESThe Black Keys, ‘How Long’There’s usually some angst tucked between the brawny classic-rock riffs on a Black Keys album. The duo’s new one, “Dropout Boogie,” includes “How Long,” a betrayed lover’s confession of desperate devotion. Just two descending chords, a cycle of disappointment, carry most of the song, with layers of guitar piling on like heartaches. “Even in our final hour/See the beauty in the dying flower,” Dan Auerbach sings in the bridge, but the obsession isn’t over; the song ends with the narrator still wondering, “How long?” PARELESJoy Oladokun, ‘Purple Haze’It’s not the Jimi Hendrix song. “You and I know that love is all we need to survive,” Joy Oladokun insists in her own “Purple Haze,” preaching togetherness in the face of dire possibilities. A syncopated acoustic guitar and Oladokun’s determined voice hint at Tracy Chapman as the song begins; more vocals and guitars join her, insisting on optimism even if “maybe we’re running out of time.” PARELESAmbar Lucid, ‘Girl Ur So Pretty’Ambar Lucid may be known for her brassy, arena-sized voice, but on her new single, she ventures into new territory. “Girl Ur So Pretty” glitters like pixie dust: in an airy, gossamer falsetto, the 21-year-old artist serenades her crush over sparkling synths and ’00s girl group handclaps. It’s a welcome spin on the bubble gum pop of a bygone era, and she brings her tongue-in-cheek humor along, too: “Can’t tell if I’m in love or high,” she sings. “I’m not usually into Earth signs.” HERRERAChes Smith, ‘Interpret It Well’There’s a nervy, bated-breath feeling about the music that the drummer and vibraphonist Ches Smith is making with his new quartet featuring Mat Maneri on violin, Craig Taborn on piano and Bill Frisell on guitar. It’s not fully dread, but not simple anticipation either. For an LP led by a drummer, “Interpret It Well” is full of extended passages with no drumming; latent tension hangs where the percussion might have been. On the title track, Smith taps the vibraphone in a pattern of resonant octaves, and the rest of the quartet grows restless behind him. A bluesy aside from Frisell sends the band into silence, and Taborn plays a long cadenza. By the end of the nearly 14-minute track, the four are charging ahead together. This is the peak, but the stench of expectation still lingers, as if something else even louder — or completely peaceful — waits just ahead. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOJacob Garchik, ‘Fanfare’The trombonist and composer Jacob Garchik treated his new album, “Assembly,” as a canvas for some impressive formal experiments, and there’s rarely a dull moment. Its tracks include spontaneous improvisations reframed via overdubs; complex compositions mixing two different tempos; and dissections of pieces of the jazz canon. On the fast-charging “Fanfare,” as Garchik and the soprano saxophonist Sam Newsome harmonize on a series of descending and ascending patterns, the rhythm section’s off-track backing gives the illusion that things are speeding up. Then suddenly a long, cooled-out passage begins, just trombone and piano, with Garchik sounding as buttery as Tricky Sam Nanton over changes borrowed from Duke Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood.” RUSSONELLO More

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      Kendrick Lamar Returns With ‘Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers’

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      Since his 2017 album, “DAMN.,” the California rapper has won seven Grammys and the Pulitzer Prize for music. “Mr. Morale,” his fifth LP, is expected to make a big splash on the charts.The five-year wait for a new album by Kendrick Lamar — the Pulitzer-anointed, voice-of-a-generation rapper — is finally over.“Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,” Lamar’s fifth studio LP and one of the most ardently anticipated new albums in years, was released overnight on digital services, with big hopes from fans and big questions looming about his next career steps.Lamar, 34, is one of the few major figures in the contemporary music scene — where a regular flow of new content is seen as a necessity — who can keep fans waiting for such a long stretch without sacrificing fan loyalty or critical prestige. Even after Lamar’s extended absence, “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers” is expected to make a sizable opening-week splash on the Billboard albums chart.Lamar cemented himself as one of the most ambitious rappers of the millennial generation with his major-label debut, “good kid, m.A.A.d. city” (2012). For his follow-up effort, “To Pimp a Butterfly” (2015), he brought in a host of players from Los Angeles’s fertile jazz scene, including Kamasi Washington and Thundercat. That album, “a work about living under constant racialized surveillance and how that can lead to many types of internal monologues, some empowered, some self-loathing,” as the Times pop music critic Jon Caramanica wrote, includes “Alright,” which became an unofficial Black Lives Matter protest anthem.His 2017 album, “DAMN.,” won five Grammy Awards, though it lost album of the year to Bruno Mars’s “24K Magic.” (The rapper has 14 total Grammy wins.) Lamar, who grew up in Compton, Calif., and has made that area’s culture and struggles a central part of his music, also became the first rapper to receive the Pulitzer Prize for music. “DAMN.” was cited in 2018 as “a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life.” Lamar embraced the accolade, appearing in concert with a “Pulitzer Kenny” banner behind him.Also in 2018, Lamar and the head of his record company, Anthony Tiffith (known as Top Dawg), were the executive producers of a companion album to the film “Black Panther.” A track from the LP, “All the Stars,” by Lamar and SZA, was nominated for an Academy Award for best original song. The visual artist Lina Iris Viktor sued, saying her work was used without permission in the track’s video; the lawsuit was settled in late 2018.Since that eventful year, Lamar has kept a low public profile, making a handful of guest appearances on other artists’ songs and, last year, joining the Las Vegas rapper (and his cousin) Baby Keem for two songs on Keem’s album “The Melodic Blue,” including the Grammy-winning “Family Ties.” In February, Lamar took the stage at the Super Bowl LVI halftime show alongside Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Eminem and Mary J. Blige, which put him in the odd position of being either the only relative youngster in a hip-hop oldies show or — performing songs up to a decade old — perhaps already being a bit of a throwback himself.Last Sunday, Lamar released a new music video, “The Heart Part 5,” as a teaser for “Mr. Morale.” It has a spoken prologue stating “life is perspective” and then shows Lamar’s face melding with those of a series of Black men of varying levels of cultural heroism or controversy: O.J. Simpson, Kanye West, Jussie Smollett, Will Smith, Kobe Bryant, Nipsey Hussle. The deepfake effects were created by Deep Voodoo, a studio from the “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, which is planning further projects with pgLang, a new company founded by Lamar and Dave Free, a longtime collaborator.The lyrics in “The Heart Part 5” have already been scoured for meaning, as has the image that Lamar shared on Wednesday of the album’s cover, photographed by Renell Medrano. It shows Lamar, in a crown of thorns, holding a child while a woman on a bed nurses a baby, like an allegorical religious painting.To some extent, those may also serve as clues for the next stage of Lamar’s career. “Mr. Morale” will be his last album for Top Dawg Entertainment, or TDE, Lamar’s home since the beginning of his career, which has released his music in partnership with Interscope. He has not announced a new label deal, but has instead begun new projects with pgLang, which was announced two years ago as a “multilingual, at service company” that will work on a range of creative and commercial projects, from the video for “The Heart Part 5” to a series of new Converse sneakers. More

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      Rap Takes Over Super Bowl Halftime, Balancing Celebration and Protest

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      Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Mary J. Blige and 50 Cent asserted the power of hip-hop’s oldies generation on pop music’s most-watched stage.Leading up to Sunday’s Super Bowl halftime show, much ado was made over the fact that this would be the first year that hip-hop occupied the center of the concert. It was marketing copy that overlooked the glaring lateness of the achievement — that rap was finally getting the spotlight in perhaps the 20-somethingth year of hip-hop occupying the center of American pop music. Does progress this delayed still count as a breakthrough?After several years of grappling with an assortment of racial controversies, the N.F.L. likely wanted credit for showcasing Black music — especially hip-hop, the lingua franca of American pop culture — this prominently. What would some of rap music’s generational superstars — Dr. Dre, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar — titans with little fear for their reputations, do with this most visible of platforms?The stories told on the SoFi Stadium field Sunday night were multilayered, a dynamic performance sprawling atop a moat of potential political land mines. In the main, there was exuberant entertainment, a medley of hits so central to American pop that it practically warded off dissent.Dr. Dre opened up the performance behind a mock mixing board, a nod to the root of his celebrity: the ability to mastermind sound. For the next 12 minutes, vivid and thumping hits followed, including “The Next Episode,” a wiry collaboration between Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, wearing a blue bandanna-themed sweatsuit; “California Love” (mercifully, delivered without a hologram of Tupac Shakur, as some had rumored); Eminem’s stadium-shaking “Lose Yourself”; Lamar’s pugnacious and proud “Alright”; and a pair of songs from Mary J. Blige, the lone singer on the bill.50 Cent, hanging upside down from the ceiling of the set, was an unannounced guest, performing his breakout hit “In Da Club,” one of Dr. Dre’s seminal productions. (This was almost certainly the most bleeped halftime show ever.)Mary J. Blige, the lone singer on the bill, performed two songs including “No More Drama.”AJ Mast for The New York TimesThe performances were almost uniformly excellent. Lamar was stunning — ecstatically liquid in flow, moving his body with jagged vigor. Snoop Dogg was confident beyond measure, a veteran of high-pressure comfort. Eminem, insular as ever, still emanated robust tension. Blige was commanding, helping to bring the middle segment of the show into slow focus with a joyous “Family Affair” and “No More Drama,” rich with purple pain. And Dr. Dre beamed throughout, a maestro surveying the spoils of the decades he spent reorchestrating the shape and texture of pop.But the true battles of this halftime show were between enthusiasm and cynicism, censorship and protest, the amplification of Black performers on this stage and the stifling of Black voices in various stages of protest against the N.F.L. Just a couple of weeks ago, the N.F.L. was sued by the former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores who said he had faced discriminatory hiring practices.This halftime show, which scanned as an oasis of racial comity if not quite progressivism, was the third orchestrated as part of a partnership between the N.F.L. and Jay-Z’s entertainment and sports company, Roc Nation, that was struck in the wake of the kneeling protests spawned by Colin Kaepernick in 2016.“It’s crazy that it took all of this time for us to be recognized,” Dr. Dre said at the game’s official news conference last week, underscoring that the N.F.L. essentially chose to wait until hip-hop had become oldies music — apart from Lamar, all the artists Sunday had their commercial and creative peaks more than a decade ago — in order to grant it full rein on its biggest stage.The N.F.L. is notoriously protective of its territory, and mishaps at the halftime show — Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction, M.I.A.’s middle finger — have tended to cause outsized public brouhahas. Halftime may well be one of the last stages in this country where hip-hop still feels like outsider music, amplifying the sense that the interests of the league and of the performers might not have been fully aligned.Eminem concluded “Lose Yourself” on one knee.AJ Mast for The New York TimesThis year’s event also took place in Inglewood, just 20 minutes west of Compton, where Dr. Dre was a founder of N.W.A, one of the most important hip-hop groups of all time, godfathers of gangster rap and agit-pop legends. Compton was embedded into the stage setup: the buildings included signs for its various landmarks, including Tam’s Burgers, Dale’s Donuts, and the nightclub Eve After Dark, where Dr. Dre used to perform with his first group, World Class Wreckin’ Cru. The dances, from Crip-walking to krumping, were Los Angeles specific. Three vintage Chevrolet Impalas served as visual nods to lowrider culture. Lamar performed his segment atop a massive aerial photograph of the city.Understand the N.F.L.’s Recent ControversiesCard 1 of 5A wave of scrutiny. More

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      How Hip-Hop Inched Its Way to the Super Bowl Halftime Stage

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      At Sunday’s game, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar will lead the first-ever halftime performance with rap at its center. The genre has taken a roundabout path to get there.On Sunday at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., the Super Bowl halftime show will feature the local rap heroes Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar, placing hip-hop firmly at the center of the annual spectacle, which is routinely watched by more than 100 million people, for the first time.The show, which is being produced in part by Jay-Z’s entertainment and sports company, Roc Nation, will also star Eminem and Mary J. Blige, but it will not be the first to include rap music. The genre has taken a rocky, roundabout path to headliner status at the Super Bowl, with this year’s event coming at an increasingly fraught moment for the N.F.L. regarding race.That baggage is nothing new: At least since 2016, when the quarterback Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem to protest police killings of Black people, the league has faced questions about its commitment to diversity and social justice, on the field and off. More than 70 percent of the league’s players are Black, but the N.F.L. has no Black owners and, until recently, only one Black head coach. This month, Brian Flores, the Miami Dolphins head coach who was fired last month, sued the league, claiming he and others had been discriminated against in the hiring process.Those debates have trickled into its entertainment business. In 2017, well before his company partnered with the N.F.L., Jay-Z turned down an offer to perform at the Super Bowl, and reportedly urged others to do the same. In subsequent years, with Jay-Z declaring “we’ve moved past kneeling” to some backlash among players and fans, Roc Nation has booked pop extravaganzas featuring the Weeknd, Jennifer Lopez and Shakira.But Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg — while among the most recognizable hip-hop veterans with decades of hits and pop culture cachet between them — represent something different, and that may be the idea. “At one point, Dre was in a group that was banned by popular culture,” said Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, which headlined the show in 2011, referencing the widespread controversies of Dr. Dre’s early gangster rap act N.W.A.That the N.F.L. has now turned to these once-controversial figures with their own checkered pasts may seem far removed from the days of pearl-clutching regarding Janet Jackson’s 2004 wardrobe malfunction, M.I.A.’s middle finger in 2012 and Beyoncé’s nods to the Black Panthers in 2016. But some say it’s also indicative of the league’s long, jagged journey to embrace Black music and culture — especially rap — as well as its need to shore up its community bona fides now.“The N.F.L. is positioning the halftime show as a meaningful occurrence,” Dr. Ketra Armstrong, a professor of sport management at the University Michigan and the director of the Center for Race & Ethnicity in Sport, said in an interview. “But to some, it seems performative for the N.F.L. to feature these artists. It feels like window dressing. You’re using Black talent to entertain the masses, but what are you doing that would honor the essence of hip-hop, like addressing racial injustices in the communities that have bred this labor force of Black talent?”Dive Deeper Into the Super Bowl Optimism and Anxiety: This year, SoFi Stadium in Inglewood will host the Super Bowl. What does the event mean for the city? Home Advantage: The Rams will use their usual facilities and home stadium in the game against the Bengals. Here is how they are getting ready.Cooper Kupp: The Rams receiver managed an All-Pro season, becoming a sure-handed catcher and the driving force behind the team’s success.Joe Burrow: He has led the Bengals to their first Super Bowl appearance in 1989. But he still thinks about that playoff loss in high school.The Super Bowl halftime stage was not always a place for hitmakers. In 1967, with popular music venturing into daring directions, a television audience of about 51 million watched the University of Arizona Symphonic Marching Band perform a selection of tunes including the Dixie anthem “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee.”Other marching bands had the spotlight for years, as did avatars of safe, family-oriented entertainment, like Andy Williams and Carol Channing. No rock performer played the halftime show until 1988, almost seven years into the MTV era, when the oldies act Chubby Checker twisted at Super Bowl XXII. Three year later, New Kids on the Block would become the first contemporary pop group to perform at the event, and the show remained blandly middle-of-the-road until Michael Jackson’s powerhouse performance in 1993.In the years that followed, established greats like Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder dominated, sometimes with more modern acts like Gloria Estefan and Boyz II Men as guests, though the burgeoning hip-hop of the 1990s remained absent. When Queen Latifah joined the Motown tribute in 1998, she performed “Paper,” one of her first songs to not feature any rapping.The next modern M.C. to take the Super Bowl stage was Nelly in 2001, as part of a larger ensemble of pop figures. He returned in 2004 and was joined by P. Diddy, bringing more contemporary rap to the performance than ever before. But that was also the year that changed everything: After a medley of appearances by Diddy, Nelly and Kid Rock, Janet Jackson sang, among other songs, “Rhythm Nation” — an idealistic ode to unity and Black power (“Join voices in protest/To social injustice”) — before finishing the show by duetting with Justin Timberlake on his hit “Rock Your Body.” Just before the commercial break, Timberlake put his hand on Jackson’s costume, pulled at it and exposed her right breast, triggering a national uproar.Missy Elliott, left, joined Katy Perry at halftime in 2015. Will.i.am performed with the Black Eyed Peas in 2011, ushering in a new era of pop on the halftime stage after a period of classic rock acts.From left: Bennett Raglin/Getty Images; Adam Bettcher/Getty ImagesFor years after, the Super Bowl halftime producers retreated to the safety of classic rock: Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen and the Who all performed. It was during that period of careful conservatism that Will.i.am saw an opening.“I flew out to New Jersey, went to the N.F.L. headquarters, and I pitched the Black Eyed Peas,” he said in an interview. “We weren’t, like, ‘Yo, we’re family friendly!’ Or ‘We rated PG, bro.’ My pitch was, ‘You know you need to have pop on the halftime show again.’” It wouldn’t be long, he warned the N.F.L., before they ran out of classic rock bands.In 2011, the Black Eyed Peas got the gig, inching the N.F.L. back toward the modern mainstream. But concerns about putting on a show palatable to all audiences lingered. “There’s a girl in our group,” Will.i.am said, referring to the singer Fergie. “They were nervous about that,” he said, and “checked our wardrobe like we were going through freakin’ security at the airport.”“You’ve got to understand the circumstances, and the walls that were up,” Will.i.am added. “We cracked open the door to get the N.F.L. out of that fear of pop and urban music after a seven-year break of only going legacy. To now have everybody from Bruno to Beyoncé to Dre and Snoop — talk about a total perspective change on the importance of diversity and inclusion,” he said, referring to Bruno Mars, who headlined in 2014 and returned as a guest two years later.Yet even as rap slowly regained its place on the Super Bowl stage — with Nicki Minaj, Missy Elliott, Travis Scott and Big Boi all making cameos in the last decade — questions linger about whether the music and its messages can transcend the 12-minute show now that the genre is taking prominence.“The N.F.L. is trying to look better by celebrating hip-hop, but they need to do better,” said Dr. Armstrong, the professor. “I’m hoping the artists are going to use their own power and influence to get them to do so.”A Brief History of Hip-Hop at HalftimeSuper Bowl XXXII (1998)When in doubt, it’s always safe to program something nostalgic, like a salute to Motown’s 40th anniversary (the label was founded in 1959). The featured acts were the Temptations, Smokey Robinson, and Martha and the Vandellas. To balance the generational appeal, they were joined by the label’s then top current act — the throwback harmony group Boyz II Men — as well as the Motown rapper Queen Latifah, who sang a new-jack-swing-inspired version of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”Super Bowl XXXV (2001)The St. Louis rapper Nelly, who’d released the breakout Top 20 pop hit “E.I.” in 2000, was an afterthought on this bill, which featured the rock band Aerosmith, then in its fourth decade, and the peppy pop phenoms ’N Sync. The two groups alternated songs, then united for the big finale, “Walk This Way,” joined by Britney Spears, Mary J. Blige and Nelly, whose “E.I.”/”Walk This Way” mash-up included only half of his first verse. Total camera time for rap: 18 seconds.Super Bowl XXXVIII (2004)Three years later, Nelly returned and performed his No. 1 hit “Hot in Herre,” which urged listeners to “take off all your clothes.” Combined with Kid Rock and P. Diddy, there was far more rap included than in any previous Super Bowl show. But this infamous halftime show is mostly remembered for the Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake incident, in which her breast was mostly exposed. Not long after, Jawed Karim, a computer science and engineering student, grew frustrated at how difficult it was to find a clip of that moment online, and sensing a market niche for a video-sharing site, soon helped found YouTube.Super Bowl XLV (2011)The N.F.L. disappeared pop music from the halftime show for several years, eager to avoid bad publicity or Congressional criticism. But the supply of widely beloved rock stars was limited, and Ricky Kirshner, in his debut as the show’s producer, brought in the pop-rap group Black Eyed Peas. The group dashed through their many hits while leaping around a set that looked like a “Tron” reboot. And in the Super Bowl’s attempt at broader appeal, Slash of the rock band Guns N’ Roses played guitar while Fergie, of the Black Eyed Peas, sang the band’s ferocious “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”Super Bowl XLVI (2012)Madonna headlined the show in a gladiator’s cingulum — with ample help from the briefly massive party-rap duo LMFAO; the rapper and singer Cee Lo Green; and Nicki Minaj and M.I.A., two inventive rap talents who’d recently recorded “Give Me All Your Luvin’” with Madonna. M.I.A.’s verse had a few expletives, which were bleeped out, and in their stead, she raised her left middle finger to the camera. The F.C.C. reportedly received more than 200 complaints, about one for every 450,000 viewers. The N.F.L. apologized to its audience and filed arbitration claims seeking $16.6 million from M.I.A., whom they said violated a contract requiring her to comply with anti-profanity standards. This prompted M.I.A. to tweet at Madonna, “Can I borrow 16 million?” The conflict was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.Super Bowl XLIX (2015)In the most-watched halftime show ever, with nearly 115 million viewers, the headliner Katy Perry was joined by Lenny Kravitz for a rocking rendition of her hit “I Kissed a Girl,” but the true second banana was Missy Elliott, who performed parts of three of her tracks: “Get Ur Freak On,” “Work It” and “Lose Control.” The pairing of Perry and Elliott seemed more natural than other shotgun marriages, because both are pop surrealists. More than two years later, Elliott tweeted that she’d been in the hospital the night before the Super Bowl, and when her first song started, “I was SO SHOOK. I said Lord I can’t turn back now.”Super Bowl LIII (2019)In solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, a number of Black artists were rumored to have turned down offers to perform in 2019. Instead, Maroon 5 headlined with guest spots from Travis Scott and Big Boi of Outkast. “It’s what it is,” the Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine said after people criticized the band and accused it of violating a boycott. “We’d like to move on from it.”Super Bowl LIV (2020)The N.F.L. knew it had to fix its relationship with hip-hop, and partnered with Jay-Z and Roc Nation to produce the Super Bowl halftime show. Kaepernick “was done wrong,” Jay-Z told The New York Times. “But it was three years ago, and someone needs to say, ‘What do we do now — because people are still dying?’” The headliners were Shakira, a Roc Nation management client, and Jennifer Lopez: two Latina women who have released albums in Spanish as well as English. They were joined by Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican rapper and singer; and J Balvin, a Colombian who brought reggaeton, rap’s younger Spanish-speaking cousin from the Caribbean, to the Super Bowl stage. More

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      Post Malone and the Weeknd’s Emo Synth-Pop, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Jenny Lewis, TNGHT, Dawn Richard 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.Post Malone and the Weeknd, ‘One Right Now’Oh, the fragile male ego. “Don’t call me baby when you did me so wrong” is one of the milder jibes hurled at a straying girlfriend by Post Malone as he trades verses with the Weeknd. She may want to get together, but the guys have already moved on, with “one coming over and one right now.” A very 1980s track — springy synthesizer bass line and hook, programmed beat — carries pure, focused resentment about how much damage she’s done to “my feelings.” JON PARELESCharli XCX featuring Christine and the Queens and Caroline Polachek, ‘New Shapes’“What you want/I ain’t got it,” Charli XCX snarls over a blast of ’80s pop gloss. The British pop provocateur unleashes her ultrapop persona, brooding over cinematic new wave synths. “New Shapes” leverages the kind of vulnerability and insecurity that defines some of Charli’s best work, thanks to pointed verses from her guests (and previous collaborators), the sad girl supergroup of Christine and the Queens and Caroline Polachek. The whole thing doesn’t quite measure up to the irresistible drama of the beloved 2019 anthem “Gone,” but hey, the girls will take it. ISABELIA HERRERATerrace Martin featuring Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, Ty Dolla Sign and James Fauntleroy, ‘Drones’The polymathic musician and producer Terrace Martin is widely known for helping Kendrick Lamar sculpt his jazz-tinted masterpiece, “To Pimp a Butterfly,” but he’d been an asset in Los Angeles studios since the mid-2000s, when he first fell in with Snoop Dogg. The title track from Martin’s new solo album, “Drones,” is something like a reading of his résumé, with features from four resounding names in L.A. hip-hop. The dapper, G-funk beat is a braid of plunky guitar, pulsing electric piano and 808 percussion; the lyrics — sung partly by Lamar, in a sly shrug — describe a booty-call relationship that’s exactly as shallow as it looks to the outside world, and maybe not much more satisfying. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLODawn Richard, ‘Loose Your Mind’Following her eclectic album “The Second Line,” released earlier this year, Dawn Richard’s new track for the Adult Swim Singles series is all bass-heavy, aqueous funk. Her voice shape-shifts throughout “Loose Your Mind,” so at times it almost feels like she’s duetting with different sides of her prismatic personality. “Ain’t really nothing wrong when the feeling is golden,” she spits at the beginning, before a melodic chorus of Dawns responds in agreement: “Solid gold.” LINDSAY ZOLADZTNGHT, ‘Tums’Few songs defined the hypermaximalist sound of the 2010s as succinctly as the electronic duo TNGHT’s “Higher Ground,” that brassy, ever-escalating EDM anthem that was sampled by Kanye West on “Yeezus” and — I will die on this hill — has to be the inspiration behind the “Arby’s: We Have the Meats” jingle, right? After a long hiatus, the producers Hudson Mohawke and Lunice reunited as TNGHT in 2019, and have now released a new track called “Tums,” which Lunice says was created according to the duo’s guiding principles: “Keep it really fun. Dumb. Hard-hitting. Don’t overwork it.” Sampled giggles and slide whistles keep things fizzy on the surface, while the track’s booming low end guides it through a series of roller-coaster drops. “Tums” might not be as innovative as the pair’s earlier work, but maybe that’s because everything else has been sounding like them for years now. ZOLADZSimi, ‘Woman’With “Woman,” the Nigerian singer and songwriter Simi offers a tribute, corrective and update to Fela Anikalupo Kuti, who invented Afrobeat in the 1970s in songs including “Lady,” which scoffed at European feminism. “Woman” mixes current electronic Afrobeats with the funk of Kuti’s 1970s Afrobeat, while quoting Kuti songs between her own assertions about women’s strengths: “She won’t pay attention to the intimidation.” The rhetoric is tricky; the beat is unstoppable. PARELESGregory Porter featuring Cherise, ‘Love Runs Deeper’The standard elements of Gregory Porter’s style run through “Love Runs Deeper”: lyrics that linger on the difficulties — and the bounties — of care and connection; twinkling orchestral strings; a gradual build that allows his burly, baritone voice to unfurl itself with just enough tension and release. But this is more of a direct-delivery power ballad than most of Porter’s tunes: The melody wouldn’t feel out of place on an Adele or Halsey record, and it’s liable to get lodged in your head quickly and stay there. With supporting vocals from the young British singer Cherise, “Love Runs Deeper” serves as the soundtrack to Disney’s annual holiday-season advertisement, which this year is a short film (full of self-referential touches, like a Buzz Lightyear cameo) titled “The Stepdad.” The song is also included on a new Porter compilation, “Still Rising,” which features a mix of his greatest hits, B-sides and new songs. RUSSONELLOJenny Lewis, ‘Puppy and a Truck’“My 40s are kicking my ass, and handing them to me in a margarita glass” — how’s that for an opening line? Something about the gentle country strum and laid-back croon of Jenny Lewis’s new stand-alone single recalls her old band Rilo Kiley’s great 2004 album “More Adventurous,” though her perspective has been updated with the unglamorous realities and hard-won wisdom of middle age. After chronicling the wreckage of a few recent relationships, the eternally witty Lewis arrives at a mantra of tough-talking self-reliance: “If you feel like giving up, shut up — get a puppy and a truck.” ZOLADZChastity Belt, ‘Fear’Lydia Lund spends much of the Washington indie-rock band Chastity Belt’s new song “Fear” hollering until she’s hoarse, “It’s just the fear, it’s just the fear.” Apparently she recorded the vocals while she was staying at her parents’ house, and her commitment to the song was so intense that her mother knocked on the door to make sure she was OK because she “thought I was doing some kind of primal scream therapy,” Lund said. “And I guess in a way I am.” Lund’s impassioned delivery and the song’s soaring guitars turn “Fear” into a cathartic response to overwhelming anxiety, and provide a powerful soundtrack for slaying that dreaded mind killer. ZOLADZRadiohead, ‘Follow Me Around’“Kid A Mnesia,” the new, expansive compilation of Radiohead songs from their paradigm-shifting sessions in 1999-2000, has unearthed studio versions of songs that the band performed but never committed to albums, notably “Follow Me Around,” a guitar-strumming crescendo of paranoia. The video, apparently made with a small but persistent camera drone, nicely multiplies the dread. PARELESLorde, ‘Hold No Grudge’Lorde whisper-sings through the first half of “Hold No Grudge,” a bonus track added to her album “Solar Power.” It’s a memory of an early love that ended without a resolution; later messages went unanswered. Midway through, she’s still bouncing syllables off guitar strums, but the sound of the song comes into focus and Lorde realizes, “We both might have done some growing up.” She’s ready to let the passage of time offer solace. PARELESOmar Apollo featuring Kali Uchis, ‘Bad Life’Omar Apollo is known for combining cool funk grooves, slick charisma and sensual falsettos. But on “Bad Life,” his new single featuring Kali Uchis, the young singer-songwriter peels back the layers and puts his armor aside for a bare-bones exercise in vulnerability. “Bad Life” revels in contempt, burning slow and low alongside a soft-focus electric guitar. Apollo opens the track with a heart-piercer: “You give me nothing/But I still change it to something.” Ouch. The singer’s voice curls into anguished melismas, and when the orchestral strings soar in halfway through, the resentment cuts crystal clear. HERRERAAlt-J, ‘Get Better’Alt-J created a serene and almost unbearably mournful song with “Get Better,” a fingerpicked chronicle about the profundity and mundanity of a loved one’s slow death like Paul Simon’s “Darling Lorraine” and Mount Eerie’s “Real Death.” It’s profoundly self-conscious, citing the similarly acoustic arrangement of Elliott Smith; it offers personal moments, stray events, reminiscences, belongings, thoughts of “front line workers,” admissions that “I still pretend you’re only out of sight in another room/smiling at your phone.” The loss is only personal, but shattering. PARELES More

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      Kendrick Lamar, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg to Share Super Bowl Halftime

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      The N.F.L. announced the three Southern California natives will share billing with Mary J. Blige and Eminem at Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles.The N.F.L. announced Thursday that five performers would share headlining duties at the Super Bowl, with a distinct nod to West Coast hip-hop given the game’s location at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif. Three Southern California natives and rap titans — Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar — will take the stage alongside Mary J. Blige and Eminem during the halftime show scheduled for Feb. 13, 2022. The game will air on NBC.“The opportunity to perform at the Super Bowl Halftime show, and to do it in my own backyard, will be one of the biggest thrills of my career,” Dr. Dre said in a statement.The halftime show for Super Bowl 56 will be the third produced by Roc Nation, the entertainment and sports company started by the music impresario Jay-Z, as the N.F.L. pushes to modernize the show and appeal to a more diverse audience. Jennifer Lopez and Shakira were dual headliners of the 2020 performance in Miami Gardens, Fla. The Canadian pop superstar the Weeknd performed at halftime of February’s Super Bowl in Tampa, Fla., before a crowd limited by coronavirus pandemic restrictions. He reportedly spent $7 million of his own money on the production, in part to ensure that the spectacle would wow TV audiences.Organizers said the expected return of the Super Bowl’s usual capacity crowd at SoFi Stadium, the $5 billion venue near Los Angeles International Airport that opened in 2020, would restore energy to the festivities.“This year we are blowing the roof off the concept of collaboration,” said Adam Harter, the senior vice president of media, sports and entertainment at PepsiCo, which sponsors the show. “Along with the N.F.L. and Roc Nation, we continue to try and push the limits on what fans can expect during the most exciting 12 minutes in music.”The Super Bowl is typically the most watched broadcast of the year, despite ratings declining in five of the past six years, notably among the advertiser-coveted demographic of people aged between 18 and 49. In February, 96 million people watched the Super Bowl between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Kansas City Chiefs, the game’s smallest audience in 15 years, despite the N.F.L.’s biggest star, quarterback Tom Brady, leading Tampa to victory. That decrease was in line with overall drops in viewership for sporting events held amid the pandemic.If advertiser interest is any indication, though, this season’s Super Bowl could mark a resurgence. NBC said earlier this month that it had nearly sold out of Super Bowl advertising spots, which cost a record $6.5 million for 30 seconds.Kevin Draper contributed reporting. More

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      Little Simz’s Big Moment

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      The British rapper’s laser focus has been trained on fame since she was a child. Now, she’s ready to take it to the next level.LONDON — Long before she was famous here as the rapper Little Simz, Simbiatu Abisola Abiola Ajikawo, known as Simbi, made her debut performance at a local youth club showcase. Ten years old and wearing a red Ecko tracksuit, her hair parted in two bunches, she lunged to the edge of the stage, almost collapsing into her classmates in the front row, and rapped: “In 10 years, I want to be a performer that can entertain, and still remain, to do good things in life.”More than a decade has passed, and Little Simz, now 27, is living up to her ambitions. Her fourth album, “Sometimes I Might Be Introvert,” is due on Sept. 3. As an actor, she has starred in British TV shows, including Ronan Bennet’s breakout hit, “Top Boy.” She is an active member of her community in Islington, North London, doing good through charitable acts she “doesn’t feel the need to be loud about,” she said.A master storyteller who raps with wisdom and heart, Little Simz has a narrative style that’s been likened to Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole, both fans of her work. Where she was once just “your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper,” she is becoming a household name here in her own right.In 2019, the grime star Stormzy shouted out Little Simz as an up-and-comer to watch during his headlining set at the Glastonbury Festival. That same year, her third studio LP, “Grey Area,” a grooving and eclectic rumination on her early 20s, was named best British album at the NME Awards.But now, poised to release her latest album, she feels on the cusp of something really big, she said in a recent interview, as she lounged gracefully on a restaurant sofa in King’s Cross, London, as though it were her own. “Everyone has their moment,” she said, “and I think ‘Sometimes I Might Be Introvert’ will be mine.”“I’m still young, innit?” she added. “But I know that’s where I’m heading.”Kadeem Clarke, a frequent collaborator who directs Little Simz’s live performances, said her determination was unshakable. “She has a vision, and we don’t even know where it comes from, or how it’s going to get done, but she does it,” he said. “She will not take her eye off it.”That laser focus has been a hallmark since Little Simz’s North London childhood. Her house was crowded, noisy and alive, she recalled: Her mother played Afrobeats and reggae, her sisters garage and grime, her brothers rap and hip-hop.In her bedroom, Little Simz listened to Busta Rhymes, Nas and Biggie Smalls, and dreamed of being like them, she said: a rap legend who spoke to their listener, not at them. She wrote their lyrics out in notebooks, trying to work out how the artists turned stubborn words into something slick and percussive. The natural and chatty approach of Biggie Smalls, in particular, drew her in: “If you took away his flow and instrumental, he could just be talking to you.”She said that she had “struggled to articulate myself in conversation,” but that her own rapping, which she thought of as a dialogue with herself, helped make sense of her thoughts. “And then, I even question it — like, why do I think that?”In rapping, she said, she found the thing that set her apart from her peers. “Everyone knew me as that girl who rapped,” she explained. “I’m the youngest of four, and my older siblings knew everyone, so I was always, ‘T’s little sister,’ or ‘Fem’s little sister.’ Then other people would find out that I did music, and it’d be another layer, like, ‘Aw, you know T’s sister raps?’”Claire Hough and Little Simz shooting the video for her new song “Introvert.”Tamiym CaderAt 14, Little Simz began making sacrifices for the hobby she was determined to turn into a career: She stayed in when her friends went out together on weekends, saving her pocket money for studio equipment. Her bedroom became a shrine to her musical idols, with posters of Lauryn Hill, Nas and Jay-Z, and a photo of herself placed above them. On a piece of cardboard, she wrote an affirmation in all caps: “Dream big! Family is everything! God is love! Be great!”That same year, she landed an acting role on a BBC children’s adventure show, “Spirit Warriors.” Later, at 17, Little Simz was cast in “Youngers,” a children’s drama depicting a group of London teenagers hoping to make it big in music. Life began to imitate art when she formed a group called Space Age with other young musicians and artists she met at EC1 Music Project, another London community program. The crew became a kind of extended family, Little Simz said, playing instruments, adding vocals and producing visual art for the mixtapes she began recording.Tilla Arcé, a close friend who also rapped in Space Age, said, “Simz always surrounded herself with real people,” but noted she was more inclined to open up in her music than in social settings. “When she’s performing, it’s her space to let go and be immersed in pure emotion and expression,” he said. “Simbi the person is a lot more to herself, but because I’ve known her as a virtuoso, I understand the moments she taps into Little Simz.”Space Age’s members joined in on Little Simz’s debut album “A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons,” which she released when she was 20: Arcé recorded additional vocals, and his brother, Josh, helmed the production on several tracks. The album is a reflection on fame and its effects on the human spirit, with Little Simz adopting new personas on different songs, each one a character at a different stage of their journey to celebrity. How about that as a statement of intent?With the release of “Sometimes I Might Be Introvert,” Little Simz said she was ready to move to the next level: “There’s just something in the air.” Featuring interludes voiced by Emma Corrin, who played Princess Diana in “The Crown,” the 19-track album is an odyssey through Little Simz’s inner conflicts and joys. Bringing together influences including lackadaisical neo-soul and ’80s electro funk, it has the scope and spectacle of a West End production.Little Simz recorded the album in Los Angeles, working with Dean Josiah Cover, 33, who produces under the name InFlo. He is, like the members of Space Age, both a childhood friend and a persistent influence on her music. The two have been collaborating since Little Simz was a dream-driven teen, in 2008.“When I listen to the stuff we made back then, it sounds almost like ‘Sometimes I Might Be Introvert,’” she said. Both artists’ tastes and sound palettes are far-ranging, taking in hip-hop, jazz, R&B, punk and soul. “We literally have a brother-sister relationship,” Little Simz said. “I annoy him, he annoys me. But we make great music together,” she said, describing their creative process as a safe space: “Whatever you feel, it’s between these four walls, and if it goes on the record then it does, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Shout, scream, cry, whatever it is.”With all that space for self-examination, Little Simz’s ambitions didn’t go without self- scrutiny: “Why the desperate need to be remembered? Everybody knowing what you’ve done, how far you’ve come?” Little Simz raps on “Standing Ovation,” one of the new album’s tracks.In the interview, she said she was willing to sacrifice a lot for the big time she saw coming, not least her privacy. “If I didn’t do music, no one would know who I am,” she said. The comfort of invisibility appealed to her introverted side, but she has struck a bargain: “I’m not going to be nameless. I want my music to be known, I want my music to be heard, I want to tell my story.”But fame isn’t the be-all and end-all, Little Simz added. “I’m trying to be my greatest self in all aspects of my life, and not just music,” she said. Echoing the song she performed as a 10-year-old, she reiterated her purpose: “Not only am I trying to be a great artist and performer, I’m trying to be a great sister, friend, daughter, auntie.” More

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      Songs to Accompany a Dreamy Summer Dinner Party

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      John Cale, Sharon Van Etten, Donavon Smallwood and other creative types make suggestions for an eclectic playlist sure to help set a festive mood.When creating a playlist for a dinner party, it can be useful to think ahead and imagine the end of the night — should things conclude with whiskey and delayed goodbyes on the couch or with dancing into the wee hours? Because music, after all, can not only set the tone but also help determine the entire trajectory of an evening. Where to begin, though? Curating the perfect lineup can feel like a daunting task, and even music obsessives can fall into ruts and benefit from others offering up song suggestions. Recently, we asked a range of artists, musicians and other creative types to do just that, and to share a few tips on putting your selections together. More