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    The Story Behind Juvenile’s ‘Back That Azz Up’

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    Juvenile’s “Back That Azz Up” was a 1999 hit that brought twerking and New Orleans bounce into the mainstream. Here’s the story of how it became a sensation.Twenty-five hot summers ago, Juvenile threw out a command and booties everywhere have never been the same. That’s when “Back That Azz Up,” the second single from the New Orleans rapper’s album “400 Degreez,” was released and almost instantly became the national anthem of twerking — before the word even entered the American vocabulary.Arguments can be made that the song is misogynistic, endearing or both. But the track — built around Juvenile hypnotically rapping the song’s title instruction, a raunchy verse from its producer, Mannie Fresh, and a syrupy outro from an ascendant, teenage Lil Wayne — has definitely proven to have staying power.From left: Birdman, Turk, Juvenile, Lil Wayne, Mannie Fresh and B.G. attend the 1999 Billboard Music Awards. Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection, via Getty ImagesJuvenile, 49, initially doubted the song would succeed as a single, and it took a last-minute trip to Nashville’s Music Row to finish the recording. Ultimately, the song helped usher bounce music, the New Orleans branch of hip-hop featuring fast beats and call-and-response chants, into the mainstream while strengthening the South as an epicenter of hip-hop. In interviews, the artists and key figures behind the song explained how it all came to be. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.JUVENILE I sung the “Back that Azz Up,” hook, probably half a year, about five, six months knowing that I was working on my album.MANNIE FRESH I heard the lyrics first. I was just like, “You know what? This is already magical.” So the beat got to marry it.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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      Mahogany L. Browne’s Love Letter to Hip-Hop

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      It was a clear black night, a clear white moon. Warren G, “Regulate” (1994)Originally appearing on the soundtrack of the Tupac Shakur film “Above the Rim,” this song is built around a sample of Michael McDonald’s “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near).” I’m looking like a star when you see me make a wish. […] More

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      50 Rappers, 50 Stories: Hear the Remix

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      Ten bonus songs from our hip-hop anniversary project.Azealia Banks in 2012, the year her “212” became a breakout.Erin Baiano for The New York TimesDear listeners,Last week, the Times published a sprawling interactive package called 50 Rappers, 50 Stories, celebrating the upcoming 50th anniversary of hip-hop.* The day it ran, I set aside about 10 minutes to start browsing during lunch; the next thing I knew, more than an hour and a half had passed. It’s one of those kinds of projects.My colleagues spoke with — you guessed it — 50 different rappers about their careers and relationships with hip-hop, and the result is a mosaic of varied voices and narratives that run parallel and intersect in unexpected ways (like the Cash Money poet Lil Wayne and the New York provocateur Azealia Banks both identifying as theater kids). LL Cool J talks about meeting Paul Simon for the first time (“I’m gonna be honest with you, I didn’t even know who Paul Simon was, bro”); 50 Cent takes style inspiration from Juvenile (“Get me some baby oil!”); Cardi B cites the precise moment she traded in Barney the Dinosaur for Missy Elliott. Trust me, it’s all a delight.My fellow pop music critic Jon Caramanica and culture reporter Joe Coscarelli helmed the editorial end of this ambitious project and did many of the interviews themselves. They also created a comprehensive, roughly chronological 50-track playlist featuring all the artists they chatted with, and I can’t recommend that enough.But I thought it would be fun to have them put together a separate one for The Amplifier, featuring some deep cuts and personal favorites. The result is a playlist encompassing a variety of eras and regions, featuring plenty of marquee names (Cam’ron, Outkast) alongside entries from some of the more outré corners of hip-hop (Lil B, Trippie Redd). Consider this the remix.In his introductory essay for the project, Caramanica writes that hip-hop “is far too vast to be contained under one tent, or limited to one narrative. The genre is gargantuan, nonlinear and unruly.”“So,” he continues, “when trying to catalog hip-hop in full, it’s only reasonable to lean into the cacophony.” Which is how I’d instruct you to listen to this playlist.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Goodie Mob featuring Outkast: “Black Ice (Sky High)” (1998)Later alluded to in Kanye West’s “Touch the Sky,” this moody single about life’s hidden slippery spots from the second Goodie Mob album, “Still Standing,” is a showcase for Big Gipp’s hook writing and worn wisdom, with two acrobatic verses from his Dungeon Family kin — Big Boi and Andre 3000 of Outkast — that previewed the assured flamboyance of their third album, “Aquemini.” (Listen on YouTube) JOE COSCARELLI2. E-40: “Practice Lookin’ Hard” (1993)E-40 has been twisting words for well over three decades, with a dizzying approach to rhyme construction that plays with pitch and pace as much as language. This is a fairly linear storytelling rap, but his approach is frisky and surprising, with lyrics that creep up on you quickly or move at a deliberately slow pace. Also, this is likely the only hip-hop song in history to mention the card game whist. (Listen on YouTube) JON CARAMANICA3. dead prez: “Tallahassee Days” (2003)Recalling the fading of his adolescence in dead-end Florida, stic of the revolutionary-minded duo dead prez paints his artistic and outlaw provenance as one and the same — “kill or be killed” desperation, because “a job is a joke” — on this quick track from “Turn Off the Radio: The Mixtape, Vol. 2: Get Free or Die Tryin’.” “Whoever said life is beautiful lied,” he raps. (Listen on YouTube) COSCARELLI4. Cam’ron featuring UGK, Juelz Santana, Ludacris and Trina: “What Means the World to You (Remix)” (2000)This remix of a classic Cam’ron song has it all: one of the jauntiest beats in hip-hop history, Cam’ron’s dazzling interior rhyme schemes and naughty appearances from two other rappers in this package, Bun B and Trina. (Listen on YouTube) CARAMANICA5. Lil B and Soulja Boy Tell ’Em: “Cooking Dance” (2010)Pairing two early YouTube savants at the height of their anything-goes, post-CD but pre-streaming powers, this 2010 track from the “Pretty Boy Millionaires” mixtape immortalized the Based God’s signature kitchen movements via his free-associative Dada flow, in which Lil B is both “feeling like Fabio” and ad-libbing at will: “Cook! Steak! Chef! Pots! Chef! Pots! Chef! Cook!” (Listen on YouTube) COSCARELLI6. Paul Wall & Chamillionaire: “N Luv Wit My Money” (2002)One of the standout tracks from “Get Ya Mind Correct,” the 2002 collaborative album between the Houston rappers Paul Wall and Chamillionaire, “N Luv Wit My Money” is a lightly comic, utterly serious ode to flashy wealth. Wall was still rapping aggressively here, before he fully found his slow flow: “I love my car like it was my girlfriend: I like to caress the grain/Fondled the wheel and I got aroused/I swung in the ditch and I wrecked the frame.” (Listen on YouTube) CARAMANICA7. Azealia Banks: “Anna Wintour” (2018)As Banks told me, she is often derided for failing to deliver on her early hip-hop promise by pivoting to house music, “‘a.k.a white people music.’ I’m like, honey, no. House music is Black music. Everything I do is in the spirit of hip-hop.” On this 2018 one-off single, a vogue track named for the Vogue editor, Banks threads the two sounds seamlessly. (Listen on YouTube) COSCARELLI8. Trippie Redd featuring 6ix9ine: “Poles1469” (2017)Trippie Redd and 6ix9ine have been at odds for years now, but here’s an early collaboration from simpler times full of the elegiac melodies that have made Trippie Redd the stalwart veteran of the SoundCloud rap movement. This is a sweet, dreamy song about the stuff of nightmares, playful in a way that suggests no consequences lurk around the corner. (Listen on YouTube) CARAMANICA9. Roc Marciano: “Wheat 40’s” (2020)A cascade of sly punchlines, wordplay and unlikely juxtaposition (“I need therapy and a speedboat”), this song from the 2020 album “Mt. Marci” demonstrates Marciano’s economy of language and easy evocation, all while maintaining his character’s Mafioso frigidity: “Ma, I’m just a hooligan/I make this kind of rap cool again/She say I’m way cooler than Max Julian/You ain’t gotta ask who he is, we the loopiest/My character in the movie script is truly at the nucleus.” (Listen on YouTube) COSCARELLI10. Ice Spice: “No Clarity” (2021)It’s been less than two years since the Bronx rapper Ice Spice released this lite-drill revision of Zedd’s EDM anthem “Clarity.” All the elements for success were already there — the patient rapping, the raw emotional content, the as-if kiss-offs. Here, a tragedy in three acts: “You woulda thought that I missed you/But you was a thot, it’s a issue/Your bro was the one that I went to.” (Listen on YouTube) CARAMANICAWhat the world means to me,Lindsay*As Caramanica notes in his essay, “As for the 50th anniversary, well, it is a framing of convenience. The date refers to Aug. 11, 1973, when DJ Kool Herc — in the rec room of the apartment building at 1520 Sedgwick Ave. in the Bronx — reportedly first mixed two copies of the same album into one seamless breakbeat. That is, of course, one way to think about hip-hop’s big-bang moment, but by no means the only one.”The Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“50 Rappers, 50 Stories (Remix)” track listTrack 1: Goodie Mob featuring Outkast, “Black Ice (Sky High)”Track 2: E-40, “Practice Lookin’ Hard”Track 3: dead prez, “Tallahassee Days”Track 4: Cam’ron featuring UGK, Juelz Santana, Ludacris and Trina, “What Means the World to You (Remix)”Track 5: Lil B and Soulja Boy Tell ’Em, “Cooking Dance”Track 6: Paul Wall & Chamillionaire, “N Luv Wit My Money”Track 7: Azealia Banks, “Anna Wintour”Track 8: Trippie Redd featuring 6ix9ine, “Poles1469”Track 9: Roc Marciano, “Wheat 40’s”Track 10: Ice Spice, “No Clarity”Bonus TracksSinead O’Connor forever. “O’Connor was never quiet about her pain,” Amanda Petrusich writes, bracingly, for The New Yorker, “even when it would have been easier to swallow or evade it — in fact, being unapologetic about the crippling weight of certain sorrows was the defining characteristic of her work.”In the aftermath of O’Connor’s death, a number of beautiful tributes have been published considering many different angles of her prismatic legacy. Our own Jon Caramanica wrote about her most infamous and misunderstood act of protest (she “was daring the cameras, and the viewers, to look away; no one did”), while Una Mullally explored O’Connor’s relationship to Ireland and Vanessa Friedman considered the resonant rebellion of O’Connor’s shaved head.If a playlist is what you’re looking for, Jon Pareles has you covered with his reflection on 10 of O’Connor’s most powerful songs. More

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      50 Rappers, 50 Stories: Behind the Scenes

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThis week, The New York Times published 50 Rappers, 50 Stories, a collection of oral histories gathered from hip-hop artists across generations, regions and styles. It includes testimonials from superstars like Lil Wayne, 50 Cent, Cardi B and Eminem; local heroes like Project Pat, Uncle Luke, Bun B and Krayzie Bone; and outlier champions like Trippie Redd, stic, Slug and Boots Riley.Taken together, the interviews show a genre that started local and became global, was cohesive and then fragmented. And yet some common themes echo throughout — a sense of outsider ambition, a restless commitment to innovation, a reverence for craft.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the making of the project, the common threads uniting the subjects’ stories across generations, and the joys of listening to artists rap along to some of their favorite songs from childhood.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterElena Bergeron, an assistant sports editor at The New York Times and a contributor to the 50 Rappers projectKeith Murphy, a music journalist and contributor to the 50 Rappers projectConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Mary J. Blige’s Daily Affirmation, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Grimes, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Kim Petras 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.Mary J. Blige, ‘Good Morning Gorgeous’Once again, Mary J. Blige battles and overcomes self-doubt. “I’m so tired of feeling empty,” she sings in a gritty croon over a slow-rolling, vintage-style soul track, abetted by a moody string arrangement. But she’s got the solution: looking in the mirror every morning with the self-affirmation, “Good morning, gorgeous.” She adds, “I ain’t talking about getting no hair and makeup/I’m talking about soon as I wake up.” The video makes clear she’s waking up in a mansion, toned and bejeweled, a long way from “all the times that I hated myself.” JON PARELESHurray for the Riff Raff, ‘Jupiter’s Dance’“Jupiter’s Dance” is an exercise in tenderness. It is a welcome departure for Alynda Segarra, who typically makes warm folk-punk as Hurray for the Riff Raff, here trading grit for cosmic reverie. In a breathy whisper, Segarra coos: “Seven revolutions around the sun/Blessings on our way, it has only begun.” The video juxtaposes celestial NASA images with found footage of people dancing to the Afro-Puerto Rican genres bomba and plena. It is a galactic prayer, a belief in the promise of the future, rooted in the vitality of the past. ISABELIA HERRERAKali Uchis and Ozuna, ‘Another Day in America’Pointedly released on Thanksgiving Day, “Another Day in America” borrows the tune of “America” from “West Side Story,” anticipating the release next week of the Steven Spielberg remake. Over syncopated guitar and a boom-bap beat, Kali Uchis sings and raps in English, keeping her tone cheerful but not mincing words: “Say ‘land of the free’/But the land was always stolen.” Ozuna, from Puerto Rico, sing-raps in Spanish, declaring, “Quisiera tumbar las fronteras de México a Nigeria”: “I would like to bring down the borders from Mexico to Nigeria.” It’s a conversation starter. PARELESAurora, ‘Heathens’The Norwegian songwriter Aurora has announced her next album, due Jan. 21, is titled “The Gods We Can Touch,” and on “Heathens” she sings about Eve, Eden and falling from grace to a life on Mother Earth. It’s a shimmering, wide-screen production, with pealing harp, Aurora’s choir-like harmonies and a seismic beat that comes and goes. It’s also a warning that paradise was lost. “Everything we touch is evil,” Aurora sings. “That is why we live like heathens.” PARELESGrimes, ‘Player of Games’Recently “semi-separated” from the Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, with whom she has a child, Grimes (Claire Boucher) coos club-ready recriminations in “Player of Games,” which she sometimes sings like “play your love games.” Over a brisk house track written and produced with Illangelo, she asks questions like “Baby, will you still love me?” and “How can I compare to the adventure out there?” as the arpeggios repeat and the four-on-the-floor thumps. “If I loved him any less, I’d make him stay,” she asserts, teasing the gossip-industrial complex. PARELESKim Petras, ‘Coconuts’A deliriously comic, sexually playful disco anthem from Kim Petras, advocating for, one could say, one kind of fruit over all the rest: “Strawberry, mango, lime/don’t compare to these.” JON CARAMANICAKerozen, ‘Motivation’Kerozen, from Ivory Coast, praises patient, diligent hard work in “Motivation,” but the song provides instant gratification anyway. A galloping six-beat groove carries exultant close-harmony vocals, punched up by pattering snare drums and bursts of synthesizers and simulated horns — pure positive energy. PARELESJoe Meah, ‘Ahwene Pa Nkasa’The latest find from the indefatigable crate-diggers at Analog Africa is “Essiebon Special 1973-1984: Ghana Power House,” from the archives of the Essiebons and Dix labels. It’s Ghanaian highlife souped up with funk, Afrobeat, synthesizers and psychedelia, like “Ahwene Pa Nkasa,” a groove that materializes out of a funk backbeat, turns into a chattery, competitive stereo dialogue between two synthesizer keyboards and eventually gets around to its call-and-response vocals, fading out before the chorus gets done. PARELESCordae featuring Lil Wayne, ‘Sinister’A casually excellent rhyme workout from Cordae, who reveres the complexity of the 1990s — “Eight months with no phone, dog/we aiming for brilliance” — and Lil Wayne, who at his late 2000s mixtape peak, which he recalls here, turned complexity into extraterrestriality. CARAMANICAEladio Carrión and Luar la L, ‘Socio’A strategically placed beat change is more than a secret weapon: It can turn a standard rap track into delicious deviance. Elado Carrión’s “Socio” opens with a soulful piano intro and snare-driven beat reminiscent of something Drake’s go-to producer Noah “40” Shebib might pull out of his hard drive. But before long, the barbs arrive. A muted echo of Russell Crowe’s infamous “Gladiator” line “Are you not entertained?!” crashes into the production, and a muscular, speaker-knocking beat unravels. The guest rapper Luar la L shoots off punch lines like rounds of silver bullets, his full-throated baritone landing each with serrated precision. HERRERAChayce Beckham and Lindsay Ell, ‘Can’t Do Without Me’A good old-fashioned power country duet, with references to the grim day job, a speeding car and the high-horsepower intensity of a rough-hewed love. CARAMANICAChristian McBride and Inside Straight, ‘Gang Gang’The Village Vanguard is where the bassist Christian McBride first performed, over a decade ago, with Inside Straight, which has become maybe the most distinguished acoustic quintet in jazz. McBride’s latest release with Inside Straight, “Live at the Village Vanguard,” was recorded there years later, in 2014, during another weeklong run. “Gang Gang,” written by the vibraphonist Warren Wolf, is the album’s longest track and its most intense. The group centers itself around the drummer Carl Allen’s heavy, spiraling swing feel, and Wolf takes a solo full of pelted, bluesy notes, painting a cloud of energy in pointillist strokes. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOSara Serpa and Emmanuel Iduma, ‘First Song’The Portuguese vocalist Sara Serpa traces an etched, wordless line while Sofîa Rei and Aubrey Johnson circle her with sung melodies of their own, and ambient street sounds gargle below. Soon Serpa begins singing words from the Nigerian writer Emmanuel Iduma’s book, “A Stranger’s Pose,” about his travels across the African continent: “I can recite distances by heart feet memory/I can tell wanderlust rounded as the eyes,” she sings. Then Iduma’s voice enters, accompanied by the pianist Matt Mitchell, reading a passage on the power of language to create a space “between reality and dream.” “First Song” opens Serpa and Iduma’s impressive new collaborative album, “Intimate Strangers,” a collage of her swimming melodies and his words — many of which describe the experiences of laborers seeking their fate on the road, sometimes heading north to Europe, but in many cases stuck waiting for something to change around them. RUSSONELLO More

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      Nicki Minaj Reunites With Lil Wayne and Drake, and 13 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Olivia Rodrigo, Tony Allen, L’Rain 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.Nicki Minaj with Drake and Lil Wayne, ‘Seeing Green’In honor of Nicki Minaj’s still-incendiary 2009 debut mixtape “Beam Me Up Scotty” finally arriving on streaming services, she’s organized a little YMCMB family reunion. “Seeing Green” is more of a status update than a club banger à la the trio’s classic “Truffle Butter,” but everyone is still in fine form. Wayne, as usual, plays the gonzo court jester, and he seizes the opportunity to unload all of those pandemic-related rhymes he’s been holding onto for the last year (“I put you six feet deep, I’m being socially distant”). Nicki locks back into her standard eviscerate-the-haters flow, and Drake continues to rap with a precision and bite that suggests, as did the recent “Scary Hours 2,” that whenever his promised “Certified Lover Boy” arrives, it might actually be worth the wait. “I played 48 minutes on a torn meniscus,” he boasts, “who’s subbing?” (But maybe see a doctor about that, Drake — it’s serious!) LINDSAY ZOLADZOlivia Rodrigo, ‘Good 4 U’The third single from Olivia Rodrigo’s forthcoming debut album, “Sour,” tells a story that will be familiar to anyone who’s heard her first single, “Driver’s License”: A former flame moves on too quickly after a breakup, leaving Rodrigo alone with all her feelings. But this time the 18-year-old Disney actress refracts it through a different lens and a whole new sonic palette. Though it starts off quiet, by the chorus “Good 4 U” explodes into a kind of “You Oughta Know” for the TikTok era, all righteous anger and pop-punky, primal-scream rage: “Good for you, you’re doing great out there without me — like a damn sociopath!” ZOLADZTorres, ‘Don’t Go Puttin Wishes in My Head’The new song from Mackenzie Scott — who makes brooding, searching indie-rock under the name Torres — might be the most accessible thing she’s ever released. And she knows it: She’s wryly described “Don’t Go Putting Wishes in My Head,” the first single from her forthcoming album “Thirstier,” as “my relentless arena country star moment.” More than anything, though, with its buzzing synths and soaring chorus, “Wishes” recalls the Killers at their most fist-clenchingly anthemic. “Just when I thought that it was over, it was only just beginning,” Scott sings, her voice trembling with intensity. She seems to understand that accepting joy can sometimes be an even more vulnerable act than confessing pain, but by the end of the song she sounds fearless, and ready to move toward the light. ZOLADZTony Allen, ‘Mau Mau’The drummer Tony Allen supplied the rhythmic foundation for Fela Kuti’s Nigerian Afrobeat in the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on West African traditions, jazz and funk, he built an architecture of unpredictable offbeats, unhurried but kinetic. Before his death in 2020, he had started a hip-hop project, creating beats and synthesizer bass lines and lining up vocalists. Allen’s new album, “There Is No End,” was completed posthumously by the producers Vincent Taeger and Vincent Taurelle. “Mau Mau” features Nah Eeto, a rapper from Kenya, with multitracked vocals that calmly bounce around the syllables of her lyrics — some in English, some not — to highlight all the ways Allen could dodge the downbeat while constantly flicking the music onward. JON PARELESMaría Grand, ‘Now, Take, Your, Day’The rising tenor saxophonist María Grand wrote the tunes that appear on “Reciprocity,” her new LP, in the middle of a pregnancy, while reading spiritual texts and paying close attention to the bond she was building with her not-yet-born child. (The album’s liner notes include her written reflections on becoming a mother, and how this found its way into the music.) The album, featuring Kanoa Mendenhall on bass and Savannah Harris on drums, is also a testament to the constant regeneration that becomes possible within a close musical partnership; on track after track, Grand dances nimbly over Harris’s subtly shifting patterns, and Mendenhall stubbornly insists on never repeating herself. “Now, Take, Your, Day” begins with all three members singing the song’s title in harmony, before the rhythm section lays down a loosely funky beat and Grand introduces the song’s downward-slanting melody on saxophone. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOBella Poarch, ‘Build a Bitch’Like many TikTok stars, Bella Poarch is making a move into her own music. “Build a Bitch” comes across cute and furious. Tinkly toy-piano sounds and perky la-las accompany her as she points out that women aren’t consumer products. “You don’t get to pick and choose/Different ass and bigger boobs,” she coos. “If you need perfect, I’m not built for you.” A post-“Westworld” video set in an android factory ends, inevitably, in mayhem. PARELESSleater-Kinney, ‘Worry With You’The forthcoming, self-produced Sleater-Kinney album “Path of Wellness” will be the first the Portland band releases as a duo, since its longtime power-drummer Janet Weiss departed in 2019, and her absence certainly makes the song feel a bit muted and minor. But there’s still a familiar pleasure in hearing Carrie Brownstein’s snaking guitar riffs and staccato vocals intertwine with Corin Tucker’s, as they sing of a long-term togetherness that’s provided comfort in good times and bad: “If I’m gonna mess up,” they avow, “I’m gonna mess up with you.” ZOLADZMartin Garrix featuring Bono & The Edge, ‘We Are the People’The official 2020 UEFA European Football Championship song is exactly what you’d expect from a soccer anthem by a big-room EDM D.J. collaborating with half of U2: a grand, thumping march with pinging guitars, vast synthesizer swells and determinedly inspirational lyrics. “You’ve faith and no fear for the fight,” Bono sings, “You pull hope from defeat in the night.” The song uses familiar tools for stadium-scale uplift, but they can still work. PARELESHolly Macve, ‘You Can Do Better’Regrets and reverb both loom large on Holly Macve’s second album, “Not the Girl,” a set of country-rooted ballads that place her reedy voice — determinedly sustained through countless breaks and quavers — in wide-screen, retro arrangements. “You Can Do Better” is a stately, swaying waltz, a breakup-and-makeup scenario that builds up to dramatic questions, swirling across voices and strings: “Is it so wrong to love you?/Is it so wrong to care?” PARELESL’Rain, ‘Blame Me’L’Rain — the songwriter, musician and producer Taja Cheek — opens an ever-widening, ever more disorienting sonic vortex in “Blame Me,” from her second album, “Fatigue,” due June 25. Sparse guitars pick fragments of chords that fall, then rise, as L’Rain muses cryptically on mortality and remorse. Soon, they’re enveloped by a ghostly orchestra and distant voices intoning, “Waste away now, make my way down”; as the track ends, she’s still in a lush harmonic and emotional limbo. PARELESElaine, ‘Right Now’Elaine is from South Africa, where she already has a large audience. But her sound bespeaks international R&B ambitions, with programmed trap drum sounds and an American accent. In “Right Now,” she tries to juggle a damaged relationship against a burgeoning career. “I cannot continue carrying all your insecurities/I got more priorities,” she sings, quietly but adamantly. Her alto is low, intimate and flexible; with her priorities, she’s not about to indulge a cheating ex, even if she’s tempted. PARELESAlan Jackson, ‘Where Have You Gone’“Where Have You Gone,” the title song of Alan Jackson’s new, 21-song album, starts off like a lonely lament for someone who’s left him: “It’s been way too long since you slipped away.” But it turns out he’s lamenting the way “sweet country music” used to sound: steel guitar, fiddle, “words from the heart.” It’s the style Jackson has upheld through his career, looking back to Merle Haggard and George Jones, only to see it supplanted lately by arena-country and infiltrations of hip-hop. “The airwaves are waiting,” he insists; current country radio says otherwise. PARELESSons of Kemet featuring Moor Mother and Angel Bat Dawid, ‘Pick Up Your Burning Cross’Over the rough rhythmic onrush of this United Kingdom-based quartet — featuring Theon Cross’s pulsing tuba, Shabaka Hutchings’s roof-raising saxophone and the interlocked drumming of Edward Wakili-Hick and Tom Skinner — a voice hovers, singing and speaking and laughing. It belongs to Angel Bat Dawid, and it’s soon joined by that of Moor Mother, another revolutionary poet and musician from this side of the Atlantic. “I don’t think you remember me/I was in last place,” Moor Mother begins, serving notice as the band presses ahead. The piece is on “Black to the Future,” Sons of Kemet’s fourth album. RUSSONELLOErika Dohi, ‘Particle Of …’Erika Dohi, a Japanese keyboardist and composer now based in New York City, is one of the musicians affiliated with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver’s label 37d03d (“people” upside-down). “Particle Of …” comes from her new album “I, Castorpollux,” and while it was composed by Andy Akiho (who also directed her music video), it fits the album’s aesthetic of Minimalistic repetitions and startling fractures. It uses percussive, single-note patterns on piano and prepared piano, played live and then computer manipulated, equally virtuosic and digitally skewed. Chords arrive at the end, like a surprise visit from 20th-century modernism. PARELES More

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      Lil Wayne Remembers Touring With DMX During Trillerfest Performance

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      A week after X’s family and friends staged a memorial service in New York, the ‘Lollipop’ hitmaker takes a moment during the Miami, Florida concert to honor the fallen rapper.

      May 3, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Lil Wayne heaped praise and respect on late rapper DMX during a gig in Miami, Florida on Saturday night, May 1. The “Lollipop” hitmaker was performing as part of Trillerfest when he took a moment to honor the fallen star, who died last month (April 21), aged 50.

      Sharing a story about touring with DMX, Wayne said, “When I was a younger kid, we used to be on tour a lot, right. Like six months a year. We used to have so many artists we didn’t need to have no opening acts ’cause we just needed another record label, and it was just us and them. So back then we went on this tour called The Cash Money/Ruff Ryders Tour.”

      “Being from New Orleans, it’s so far away from New York and Cali [California] and s**t like that. We didn’t know if it was real when we seen it on TV [sic], the New York guys, the L.A. people. So when we saw DMX, we all fell in love.”

        See also…

      He added, “When I got on tour with him, and now you’re in the hotel lobby, you’re backstage, you run into a n**ga and he actually says something to you, and when you see this n**ga talk like how he rap, and you see this n**ga is what he is, and you see this n**ga has a zillion dogs with him…, it’s impossible not to be obsessed, infatuated, impressed, whatever [sic].”

      Wayne’s tribute came a week after DMX’s family and friends staged a memorial service at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in New York.

      “DMX: A Celebration of Life” was attended by Nas and Swizz Beatz, who both gave speeches, Eve, and Jadakiss, among others, while Kanye West’s Sunday Service Choir also paid tribute with performances at the memorial.

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      Lil Wayne and Foushee Collaborate Once Again for Her New Song 'Gold Fronts'

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      The singer, who was previously featured on the New Orleans-based rapper’s latest single ‘Ain’t Got Time’, reveals that she got his verse after showing him the song in person.

      Mar 30, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Lil Wayne and Foushee have treated fans to a new collaboration. The New Orleans-based rapper and the “Deep End Freestyle” songstress, who previously worked together for his latest single “Ain’t Got Time”, collaborated once again for her new song called “Gold Fronts”.

      The 38-year-old MC announced the release of its music video via Instagram on Monday, March 29. Sharing a part of the clip in which he rapped his verse, he exclaimed, “Video OUT NOW!!! @fousheelive ‘GOLD FRONTS’ ft Me!!!!”

      Also celebrating the new song release was Foushee. Posting the footage on her own Instagram account, she declared, “GOLDFRONTS ft @liltunechi out now. this one special… thank you team!” She followed it up with another point of the clip by writing, “@liltunechi they can’t take our gold fronts!!!!”

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      “Gold Fronts”, which is created as if it talks about grills, narrates the experience of Black people in the United States. It also tells about how 2020 has affected many people’s mental health like depression as Foushee rhymes about self-medication. Wayne then joins in and harmonizes with the singer during her chorus.

      When opening up about her collaboration with Wayne, Foushee revealed that she got his verse after showing him the song in person. “It started with Wayne DMed me, just showing love,” she told Zane Lowe on his Apple Music’s show. “I threw out the idea to work and he was with it. And I was so shocked. This is someone that I listen to him. I was just like… This is what a lot of those moments where I’m just like… There’s nothing like…. I got my sound effects too. That was planned. Yeah. So he agreed to work.”

      “I went to Miami, I got there. It was just like, ‘What we working on?’ And I was so shocked because I’m like, ‘What? What? No, wait, wait. I’m just a bit like, can I just play some music first off?’ Played him a whole bunch of music,” the alternative artist continued. “He played me some music. And I was like, ‘Wow. Can I do something to one of your songs?’ So I ended up recording to his songs and it took me so long to write. Because I was just like sweating.”

      “I had this birthday party. And it’s just such a beautiful night. We were linking up for the first time in a long time, just very intimate birthday party. And then he just texted me. He just texted, words, right here. Whoo. I was like, ‘Wait. No, no, no.’ I was playing music. I’m like, ‘Everybody, I’m going to play this song right now.’ And we all started running and screaming,” she went on recalling. “He didn’t even start the real s**t. We’re just like, ‘Oh. Yeah.’ ”

      Foushee admitted that she was thrilled upon hearing Wayne rhyming the lyrics. “I thought it was the most beautiful verse I heard from him from a long time. I thought he really put his heart and soul into that. And it was a different side of him that we haven’t seen in a while,” she pointed out.

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      Robin Thicke Turns Bank Robbery Experience Into Song for Lil Wayne's Grammy-Winning Album

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      WENN/Instagram/Judy Eddy

      During an appearance on ‘The Kelly Clarkson Show’, the ‘Blurred Lines’ hitmaker claims that the armed hold-up incident, which took place when he was 18, did not leave him traumatized.

      Mar 3, 2021
      AceShowbiz – Robin Thicke wrote a song about a teenage bank robbery experience that made it onto a Grammy-winning album for Lil Wayne.
      The “Blurred Lines” hitmaker once found himself in the middle of an armed hold-up, while grabbing some cash in a bank, and it inspired him to write a song about the drama years later.
      “When I was around 18 years old, I was in the bank getting some cash for a weekend vacation and the bank just got robbed,” he remembered during an appearance on “The Kelly Clarkson Show”. “These two guys came in with masks [and] automatic weapons, and told everyone to get down on the ground.”
      “So I ended up writing this whole song about my experience going through a live bank robbery and years later, Lil Wayne ended up doing a verse on it and put it on his album, and won a Grammy on that album actually.”

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      And Thicke admits the event itself wasn’t too scary, because it was just “like a movie.”
      “It was a little traumatising,” he admits, “but once it was over, I was OK with it. It reminded me of the movies. It seemed kind of surreal at the time, but I didn’t really feel threatened as much as I thought [I would].”
      “[I thought], ‘Wow this does look like a movie.’ It was probably because they [bankrobbers] were very young. They seemed like they were like, 19, 18 years old… They looked just like my friends, dressed up in masks.”
      [embedded content]
      “I didn’t see these big muscular adult men, I saw these two slim teenage men come in – and they looked my buddies.”

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