Megan Thee Stallion (Rapper)

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      Megan Thee Stallion Testifies in Tory Lanez Trial. Here’s What to Know.

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      Megan Thee Stallion testified on Tuesday in the assault trial against Mr. Lanez. The case had previously played out on social media and in music released by the rappers.LOS ANGELES — Megan Thee Stallion, the Grammy-winning rapper, took the stand on Tuesday during the assault trial against the rapper Tory Lanez, testifying that she still had nerve damage after he shot her in the feet in the wake of an argument two years ago.The case has played out on social media and in music released by both rappers. On an album released in 2020, more than two months after the encounter, Mr. Lanez rebutted Megan Thee Stallion’s account; she has defended herself on Instagram, in interviews and with her own defiant track.Mr. Lanez, whose real name is Daystar Peterson, could face nearly 23 years of prison if convicted. He faces charges of assault with a semiautomatic handgun; of carrying a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle; and of discharging a firearm with gross negligence.Prosecutors say that in July 2020, in the early morning hours after a party in Los Angeles, Mr. Lanez lashed out at Megan Thee Stallion after she had criticized his rap abilities, firing toward her feet as she walked away from the vehicle they had both been riding in. The defense has disputed that Mr. Lanez fired the shots, suggesting it could have been another woman who they claim was upset that the two rappers had been intimate with each other.On Tuesday, Megan Thee Stallion largely reiterated what she had told reporters and recounted on social media about the encounter, testifying that she had initially misrepresented the events of that night to the police because tensions were high after the murder of George Floyd and she was afraid of how they would respond.“I didn’t want to talk to the officers because I didn’t want to be a snitch,” she testified.Megan Thee Stallion also testified about how the fallout from the encounter has made her depressed and hindered her career. She said that she was a private person who spoke out to defend her name, and that she had been the target of abusive comments on social media.“Because Tory has come out and told so many lies about me, and making this all a sex scandal, people don’t want to touch me,” she said. “It feels like I’m a sick bird.”The shooting occurred just as Megan Thee Stallion’s fame was growing. Months earlier, her collaboration with Beyoncé on a remix of “Savage” became her first No. 1 Billboard hit. That year, the blockbuster song “WAP” — a viral collaboration with Cardi B — turned her into an even bigger star.Here’s what to know about the case.What happened after the shooting?Initially, the details around what happened that night were hazy.Days after the shooting, Megan Thee Stallion — who was born Megan Pete — posted on her Instagram account that she had “suffered gunshot wounds” that required surgery but did not provide more details. But amid surging gossip and speculation, she later said the shooter was Mr. Lanez, who had been arrested and charged with concealing a firearm in the vehicle.Mr. Lanez addressed the situation in rap lyrics that suggested a conflicting account, including, “We both know what happened that night and what I did/But it ain’t what they sayin’.”In October 2020, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office charged Mr. Lanez with assault.Megan Thee Stallion’s career ascended in 2020 thanks to collaborations with Beyoncé on a remix of “Savage” and with Cardi B on the blockbuster “WAP.”Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated PressWhat has Megan Thee Stallion said?In an interview with CBS’s Gayle King this year, Megan Thee Stallion said that she and a friend had been driving with Mr. Lanez after a party at the home of Kylie Jenner, the beauty mogul, when an argument broke out in the S.U.V.After she exited the vehicle, she said, Mr. Lanez shouted “Dance!” and a sexist slur before shooting at her. He then apologized and offered her and the friend, Kelsey Harris, a million dollars for them to keep quiet about what had happened.When the police arrived, she said, she told officers that her foot injuries had been caused when she stepped on glass.She later addressed her initial decision to withhold information from the police in her song “Shots Fired,” rapping, “If it weren’t for me/Same week, you would have been indicted.”Megan Thee Stallion, 27, has been outspoken about the shooting and what she sees as the broader issues at play, writing in a guest essay in The New York Times that the “skepticism and judgment” that followed her allegations were emblematic of how Black women were “disrespected and disregarded in so many areas of life.”Outside the courthouse on Tuesday, several fans of the rapper voiced their support with a banner that read, “We stand with Megan.”What has Tory Lanez said?Mr. Lanez, 30, who has pleaded not guilty to all charges, has not given interviews about his specific account of that night. But at the start of the trial, his lawyer, George Mgdesyan, said the argument in the car had involved Ms. Harris, a friend of Megan Thee Stallion’s; he said Ms. Harris was angry when she learned that Megan Thee Stallion had been intimate with Mr. Lanez, Rolling Stone reported.On the 2020 album on which he addressed the shooting, which was called “Daystar,” Mr. Lanez rapped, “If you got shot from behind, how can you identify me?”It is unclear whether Mr. Lanez plans to take the stand.What evidence is at the center of the case?Prosecutors have homed in on a text message that they say Ms. Harris sent to Mr. Lanez’s bodyguard that night, writing, “Help” and “Tory shot Meg.” They are also expected to present a text message in which Mr. Lanez apologizes to Megan Thee Stallion after the shooting. The defense has countered that Mr. Lanez did not directly admit to carrying out the shooting, according to The Los Angeles Times.Mr. Mgdesyan also suggested that there was a lack of physical evidence to prove the case against Mr. Lanez beyond a reasonable doubt. He told jurors, The Los Angeles Times reported, that Mr. Lanez’s DNA had not been found on the gun. More

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      Is It Toxic to Tell Everyone to Get Therapy?

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      It has become a social credential to be in therapy. It’s also incredibly difficult to access.About 30 minutes into “Stutz,” a new Netflix documentary from Jonah Hill, the movie’s slick veneer cracks open to expose a deeper artifice. We see Hill and his therapist, the 70-something Phil Stutz, shot in crisp black and white, sitting side by side in what appears to be Stutz’s Los Angeles office. Hill has long hair and a scraggly beard; he says he’s going to use one of Stutz’s treasured “tools,” and he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Then he makes a confession: “I’ve been lying to you in our private therapy sessions.” As he reveals this, the film flips into color and lays bare that they are actually on a set, in front of a green-screen simulation of Stutz’s office. Hill removes the wig he has been wearing to hide a haircut. The film’s initial premise was that we were seeing a single session unfold, but we now learn that it has been filmed over the course of two years — and Hill, in his real sessions, has been hiding his feeling that the project is stuck.Hill’s mission, announced early in the film, is to spread the healing power of therapy and share Stutz’s psychological tools with Netflix’s enormous audience. But the whole endeavor, he now tells Stutz, has felt “weird and false.” For half an hour, Hill has played the role of a distanced documentarian, interviewing Stutz while dodging any personal questions he received in return — like one about being an overweight kid and the conflict that generated with his mother. “I’m not going to go into it because this film is about you, not me,” Hill says. But the film, he eventually comes to realize, is like therapy itself: It can’t work unless he is willing to be vulnerable and share his own grief, fear and insecurity. The movie’s breakdown, however contrived, is meant to replicate a breakthrough — an opportunity to take a risk, connect with others and move forward.In today’s therapy-saturated culture, you hear countless messages about what therapy is and what it is for, many of them starkly different from Hill’s. Back in 1979, the historian and critic Christopher Lasch wrote that the New Left had retreated from politics and turned inward, focusing on personal psychological well-being instead of external collective struggles. These days that is funnily reversed: Psychology is often used, especially online, as a way to collectively press others. In some corners therapy has become a kind of social imperative, something anyone can urge strangers to engage in — not so they can explore their own experiences, but so their psychic toxicity can be contained before it spills onto others. Social media is filled with memes and jokes in which people “beg” men to get therapy, or deploy variations of the formula that “men will literally do anything but go to therapy.” On dating apps, being in therapy can vouch for your emotional soundness, while not being in therapy may be considered a red flag. Articles suggest, in the words of one writer, that “therapy could be the secret to a flourishing love life.”Hill had to confront the fact that therapy is irreducible to a set of abstract tools.These competing images of therapy — one personal, the other social — each stem from the basic assumption that therapy can do a lot of people a lot of good, and from the impulse to share it widely. The version we see in “Stutz” is based largely on self-exploration; by revealing the parts of ourselves we often hide, it suggests, we come to know ourselves more deeply and live our lives more fully. (Hill says he originally came to Stutz “out of desperation to get happier,” having “no healthy self-esteem” despite his wild success in Hollywood.) Therapy as a kind of social credential, meanwhile, is more about proving to others that you are safe to engage — that your projections, defenses and unresolved traumas won’t hurt those around you. One is akin to cleaning up roadside litter because you think it’s the right thing to do; the other is like slipping on a fluorescent vest and picking up garbage because a court so ordered.It did not take long for therapy to go from a social taboo to something very much out in the open. The pandemic only furthered this shift, leaving countless Americans alone (meaning, for some, in bad company) amid incessant talk of mental health and an ever-growing bombardment of content taking therapy to the masses. Young people have been especially hard hit: In 2021, 44 percent of high schoolers reported persistently feeling sad or hopeless. No wonder that young people have also seemed especially receptive to absorbing the ideas of therapy into their lives and their lexicons — speaking with casual familiarity about triggers and traumas and diagnoses.On “therapy TikTok,” therapists amass millions of followers, to whom they offer tidbits and buzzwords about things like attachment styles. Pop stars like Ariana Grande and Demi Lovato serve as spokespeople for teletherapy companies. Other celebrities incorporate mental-health awareness into their work. The singer-actor Selena Gomez has released a documentary, “My Mind & Me,” about her own mental illness; in September, the rapper Megan Thee Stallion introduced a mental-health website linked to her album “Traumazine,” which features a song called “Anxiety” (“I’m a bad bitch, and I got bad anxiety”). Divulging mental-health struggles has become routine among pop figures, a way of both connecting with young fans and offering a message that it’s OK to seek help.And yet high-quality psychotherapy remains staggeringly expensive and hard to find. According to the American Psychological Association, six in 10 psychologists say they don’t have openings for new patients. (My own therapist’s website says there’s a waiting list for teletherapy.) Reading about therapy on social media, I came across a popular post from the writer Casey Johnston, who summed up the search for a therapist like this: “Finding a therapist is simple, just contact 50 people, 25 are no longer in network, 15 don’t answer, 5 have switched to $600/hr life coaching, 2 don’t like your vibe, one now only does pets.” The shortage is especially acute for professionals who work with children and teenagers.In lieu of access to actual therapy, we seem to be inundated with content about therapy, as though its material scarcity creates an urge to spread the gospel by other means. You can devour never-ending media feeds promising tools to help process trauma, techniques to regulate emotions, tips for setting healthful boundaries. But something crucial to therapy feels missing when we’re absorbing these ideas passively, in solitude.What Hill came to realize while making “Stutz,” after all, is that his true subject isn’t his therapist or the tools he has learned. The real action is found in the sui generis nature of the patient-therapist relationship itself — one that is vulnerable, endearing and genuinely moving to watch. Those of us doing the watching are mere viewers engaged in a risk-free parasocial relationship, connecting to someone else’s connection. Hill had to confront the fact that therapy is irreducible to a set of abstract tools. This is something different from any of the millions of articles or TikTok videos offering, say, nine tips for handling a narcissist. All the therapy content online helps to demystify something that long operated behind closed doors, but it also underlines a new problem — that many of us are facing these challenges alone.Source photographs: Netflix More

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      in Television

      ‘Saturday Night Live’ Takes On the Jan. 6 Committee

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      Megan Thee Stallion was the host and musical guest of an “S.N.L.” episode that satirized what may have been the committee’s final public meeting.Although its first two episodes avoided opening sketches that recreated news events, “Saturday Night Live” eventually found reality too irresistible: This weekend’s broadcast led with a parody of what was potentially the final meeting of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.As the hearing began, Kenan Thompson, playing the committee’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, offered some momentous remarks. “Jan. 6 was one of the most dramatic and consequential moments in our nation’s history,” he said. “So to fight back, we assembled a team of monotone nerds to do a PowerPoint.”Summarizing the meeting’s agenda before holding up a tray of miniature cupcakes, he added, “We’re going to summarize our findings, hold a history-making vote, and then and only then, we all get to have a little treat.”He then turned the hearing over to Heidi Gardner, playing Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the committee’s vice chairwoman. Gardner explained that the committee’s evidence was aimed at all Americans: “Whether you’re a Republican who’s not watching or a Democrat who’s nodding so hard your head is falling off, one person is responsible for this insurrection: Donald Trump,” she said. “And one person will suffer the consequences: me.”For those viewers wondering where her toughness came from, Gardner suggested it was hereditary. She asked, “For your 10th birthday, did you eat pizza at Chuck E. Cheese with all your friends, or did you shoot a deer in the face with Dick Cheney?”Thompson almost acknowledged an eerily eager Michael Longfellow, playing Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, but reconsidered. (“Too spooky,” he said.) The committee also showed a video of Chloe Fineman (as Speaker Nancy Pelosi) and Sarah Sherman (as the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer) reacting in real time to the Capitol attack.While Fineman, as Pelosi, conducted a tense call with Mike Pence, Sherman, as Schumer, was also on the phone — to DoorDash, seeking a missing lunch order. (She said it contained “12 dill pickles, still floating in the juice, and a hot pastrami sandwich with very light mustard.”)Another video featured James Austin Johnson as former President Donald J. Trump, making remarks said to have taken place the day before the attack. Speaking on a phone, Johnson said: “The votes don’t matter at all. Because what even is a vote? It’s just a piece of paper, you fold up and put it in a hat, a guy shakes it around.” After some rambling remarks about Apollo Creed, Ivan Drago and Obamacare, Johnson wrapped up the call by casually asking, “Is Mike Pence dead yet?”Thompson concluded the meeting itself: “We tried,” he said. “It was a fun country while it lasted.”Giiiiiiiiirrrrrl of the weekIs it possible for a single joke — a single graphic — to make an entire sketch worthwhile? If so then “Girl Talk” might just have been that sketch. It started off innocuously enough, with an introduction from its host, Mo’nique Money Mo’nique Problems (Ego Nwodim), who described the program as “the talk show where ladies tell me their problems and I keep my advice real simple.”She and her guests (Megan Thee Stallion and Punkie Johnson) went on to discuss their problems and solutions in conversations consisting of different intonations of the word “Girl.” And just to be helpful to “any white people or men tuning in,” Nwodim provided subtitles for a discussion of the war in Ukraine, during which a two-syllable utterance of “girl” by Megan Thee Stallion produced an entire screen’s worth of densely packed (but educational!) text on the history of the conflict.Music video of the weekThis filmed segment for an original song called “We Got Brought” spun laughs (and a genuinely catchy tune) from a recognizably stressful premise: Nwodim, Megan Thee Stallion and Bowen Yang played the tag-along guests of three longtime friends who have met up at a club and ditched their plus-ones to hang out among themselves.Now the three guests, who are strangers to one another, are stuck at a table and unable to find anything to talk about. As one verse goes: “You’re all out of topics and the conversation’s lazy / So you just keep on saying, ‘That’s crazy, that’s crazy.’” The anxiety of Yang’s character — who tries to make small talk by remarking that only 25 people have died at Disneyland since 1955 — is so palpable it pops off the screen.Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Michael Che and Colin Jost continued to riff on the Jan. 6 committee and the outcomes from its latest meeting.Jost began:After the Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed Donald Trump, Trump responded the next day with a 14-page letter. Fourteen pages. OK, Unabomber. I don’t know if this is a coincidence, but Trump wrote the letter on the same day the F.D.A. confirmed the nation is experiencing a shortage of Adderall. I just know from experience in college, any time I wrote a 14-page paper in one night, I’d also taken a disturbing amount of Adderall.He went on:My favorite part of Trump’s letter is the beginning because it’s on really nice letterhead. It starts, “Dear Chairman Thompson.” And then the first line is just screaming. It’s like reading a Victorian love letter that says, “My beloved Winifred, WHO THE HELL ARE YOU HAVING SEX WITH?”Che picked up the thread:The committee showed a never-before-seen video from Jan. 6 of a desperate Nancy Pelosi speaking on the phone with Mike Pence. Which to Pence counts as adultery. In the video, Pelosi said that she wanted to punch out Donald Trump and knew that if she did, she’d go to jail and be happy. I assume because she owns stock in private prisons.Heartfelt musical performance of the weekIt was a moment that passed by almost as quickly as one of Megan Thee Stallion’s verses, but in the midst of a hectic night of comedy and costume changes, the rapper was genuinely moved during a portion of one her songs. In her performance of “Anxiety,” Megan Thee Stallion referenced her mother, Holly Thomas, who died of brain cancer in 2019. As those lyrics run:If I could write a letter to HeavenI would tell my mama that I shoulda been listenin’And I would tell her sorry that I really been wildin’And ask her to forgive me, ‘cause I really been tryin’And I would ask, please, show me who been realAnd get ‘em from around me if they all been fakeIt’s crazy how I say the same prayers to the LordAnd always get surprised about who he takeMegan Thee Stallion did not so much as swallow a syllable but the emotion of the lyrics were audible in her voice and visible on her face — some viewers wondered online if they even saw her shed a tear. On Friday, Megan Thee Stallion tweeted that she was contemplating a break following “S.N.L.,” and if she chooses to take it, she has surely earned it. More

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      Rod Wave’s ‘Beautiful Mind’ Is His Second No. 1 Album

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      The rapper and singer’s latest LP easily beat the other major debut in the Top 5 this week, Megan Thee Stallion’s “Traumazine.”The Florida rapper and singer Rod Wave tops the latest Billboard album chart with “Beautiful Mind,” easily beating out the latest from Megan Thee Stallion.“Beautiful Mind” opened with the equivalent of 115,000 sales in the United States, including 158 million streams, according to the tracking service Luminate, with tracks like “Yungen,” featuring Jack Harlow, performing particularly well on Apple Music. The total take for “Beautiful Mind” was a bit less than Wave had for “SoulFly,” his last time at No. 1, which opened with 189 million streams in April 2021.On Billboard’s Hot 100, Nicki Minaj’s new single, “Super Freaky Girl,” is No. 1, her first time topping that chart as an unaccompanied artist. (She went to No. 1 twice in 2020, with “Trollz,” a joint release with 6ix9ine, and on a remix of Doja Cat’s “Say So.”) Like MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This,” Minaj’s track draws heavily from Rick James’s 1981 song “Super Freak.”Megan Thee Stallion lands at No. 4 with “Traumazine,” her second studio album, which was announced just one day before its release and earned the equivalent of 63,000 sales, with 86 million streams.Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti,” a steady streaming hit since early May, fell one spot to No. 2 after its eighth time in the top spot; over 15 weeks on the charts, “Un Verano” has racked up two million in equivalent sales, including about 2.7 billion streams.Also this week, Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” holds at No. 3, and YoungBoy Never Broke Again’s “The Last Slimeto,” which came within striking range of No. 1 last week, falls three spots to fifth place. More

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      Why Do We Love TikTok Audio Memes? Call It Brainfeel.

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      Why Do We Love TikTok Audio Memes? Call It Brainfeel. On March 25, 2020, Chris Gleason was in bed at his parents’ house in Pennsylvania, thinking up ideas for videos that might go viral. Just before graduating from college with a musical-theater degree in 2019, he took a job at a nautical-themed restaurant in the […] More

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      The Grammys, Improbably, Made It Work

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      So the Grammys this year were … good? Given the persistent clouds of uncertainty and scandal that have hovered over the ceremony and the voting process behind the awards in recent years, compounded by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, it was a welcome surprise that the ceremony was, more or less, a success.There were big wins for Megan Thee Stallion, Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift. Hip-hop stars DaBaby, Lil Baby, Roddy Ricch, and Megan all had impressive performances. Mickey Guyton, Miranda Lambert and Maren Morris showed the power of women in country music. With her four wins, Beyoncé is now tied for the second-most Grammys of all time.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about how the Grammys navigated a year of crisis, the minting of a new generation of stars, deserving downballot winners and what happens when the Grammys doesn’t invite the boomer generation?Guests:Jon Pareles, The New York Times’s chief pop music criticCaryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorJoe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterBen Sisario, The New York Times’s music industry reporterLindsay Zoladz, who writes about music for The New York Times and others More

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      The Best and Worst of the 2021 Grammy Awards

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      Megan Thee Stallion owned the stage, struggling indie venues got a much needed spotlight and the event proved a pandemic awards show doesn’t have to look like a video conference.The 63rd annual Grammy Awards promised to be different: There was a new executive producer at the helm for the first time in decades; a new host; and a new challenge — assembling a pandemic awards show that didn’t feel like a video conference. With a small audience of nominees outside in Los Angeles, the show highlighted the contributions of women and the impact of Black Lives Matter protests, offered screen time to workers at independent venues crushed by the pandemic and extended tributes to musicians we lost during this challenging year.Here are the show’s highlights and lowlights as we saw them.Best M.V.P.: Megan Thee StallionThough she didn’t win the night’s final and biggest category, record of the year, Grammy night belonged to Megan Thee Stallion. She took home the three other awards she was nominated for: best new artist and, for the remix of “Savage” featuring Beyoncé, best rap song and best rap performance. Each speech was a wholesome gift: words of exuberance from an artist experiencing the first flush of truly widespread acclaim. But her self-assured performance was the loudest statement of all. It opened with a bit of “Body,” and pivoted into her part from the “Savage” remix. But the main focus was a performance of “WAP” with Cardi B that was wildly and charmingly salacious, frisky and genuine in a way that the Grammys has rarely if ever made room for. That it took place on CBS, historically the most conservative of all the broadcast networks, was chef’s kiss. JON CARAMANICABest Accessory: Harry Styles’s Boa“Watermelon Sugar” never sounded better than when Harry Styles and his boa performed it on the Grammys stage.Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording AcademyThe first-time nominee Harry Styles kicked off the show with a groovy, casually charismatic rendition of “Watermelon Sugar,” complete with an excellent backing band (Dev Hynes on bass!) and an instantly iconic feather boa. Styles often gets the knee-jerk Mick Jagger comparisons, but Styles possesses a much more laid-back — if no less magnetic — stage presence. “Watermelon Sugar” never sounded better than it did during this performance, which made its subsequent surprise win for best pop solo performance all the more understandable. Something tells me boa season is approaching. LINDSAY ZOLADZWorst Twist Ending: Billie Eilish’s Record of the Year Win“This is really embarrassing for me,” said Billie Eilish, accepting record of the year with her producer brother Finneas O’Connell.Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording AcademyAt the very end of a Grammys ceremony that did its best to pretend like the Recording Academy has always supported and centered Black artists, women and especially Black women, Billie Eilish was put in an impossible position that we’ve seen too many times before. Awarded record of the year for “Everything I Wanted,” a mid tempo in-betweener of a track, only a year after sweeping the top four categories with her debut album, Eilish could only gush over Megan Thee Stallion.“This is really embarrassing for me,” Eilish, a white teenager who — like many in her generation and beyond — worships Black culture, said. “You are a queen, I want to cry thinking about how much I love you.” She went on. It was uncomfortably reminiscent of Adele praising Beyoncé when “25” beat “Lemonade” for album of the year in 2017, and also of that infamous Macklemore text to Kendrick Lamar. Some online bristled at the performative white guilt on display, while others applauded Eilish’s apparently sincere fandom. But only a stubbornly old-fashioned voting body that still just honors rap when it’s convenient could be blamed. JOE COSCARELLIBest Reality Check: Presenters From Shuttered VenuesThe Apollo in Harlem, which has been closed for a year during the pandemic.George Etheredge for The New York TimesNeither musicians nor fans can forget that the pandemic has shut down live music. Sprinkled among the awards presenters — instead of the usual actors promoting CBS shows and stray sports figures — were people who work at long-running clubs and theaters: the Station Inn in Nashville, the Troubadour and the Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles, the Apollo Theater in Harlem. They spoke pretaped from their empty music halls and announced the winners live. Billy Mitchell, who started working at the Apollo in 1965, recalled that James Brown had demanded to see his report card, insisted he improve his grades, and later gave him money that Mitchell put toward business school and a lifelong career at the Apollo, where he eventually became the official historian. Music changes lives offstage, too. JON PARELESBest Disco Fantasy: Dua LipaDua Lipa’s “Future Nostalgia” has lived its entire life in quarantine, but it begs to be let loose into the night and onto dance floors around the world. At the Grammys, the British pop singer and songwriter gave us a glimpse of the other side — glitter, flashing lights, throbbing bass lines, people dusting off ’70s dance moves, slight awkwardness. Her two-song set started with “Levitating,” a funky roller-rink jam with a charming DaBaby feature, and ended with “Don’t Start Now,” the powerhouse kiss-off that was nominated for both record and song of the year. The track didn’t take home either prize, but Lipa left with a trophy for pop vocal album and the honor of coaxing the most at-home viewers into a few minutes of spirited couch dancing. CARYN GANZBest Confrontational Politics: Lil Baby and DaBabyLil Baby released “The Bigger Picture,” a stream-of-consciousness, autobiographical protest song, less than three weeks after George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis last summer, on the very day that Rayshard Brooks was fatally shot by police in the rapper’s native Atlanta.With appearances by the actor and activist Kendrick Sampson, who reenacted Brooks’s killing; the organizer Tamika Mallory, who addressed President Joe Biden in a speech; and Killer Mike, who added some Run the Jewels to the mix, Lil Baby’s performance managed to invoke the despair and anger of that moment without it feeling co-opted by the institutions that were playing host.Earlier in the show, DaBaby did the same, adding a new verse to “Rockstar,” his sneakily wrenching ode to firearms, and making eye contact with America as he rapped in front a choir of older white people in judge’s robes: “Right now I’m performing at the Grammys/I’ll probably get profiled before leavin’.” COSCARELLIWorst Queen Worship: The Grammys to BeyoncéBeyoncé won four awards at this year’s Grammys ceremony, bringing her lifetime total to 28.Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording AcademyDid you know that Beyoncé has now won more Grammys than any other female artist in history (28)? Of course you did; the Grammys could not stop reminding you. To be clear, this is a monumental achievement, and one that goddess among mortals Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter absolutely deserves. But there was a Grammys-doth-protest-too-much quality to the way Trevor Noah and the show’s presenters kept reminding us of this fact over and over, almost as though the Recording Academy was trying to make amends to Beyoncé for its past transgressions on live television. (Those transgressions include, but are not limited to, icing the woman who has basically redesigned the modern pop album over the past decade out of wins in the big four categories since 2010.)It was awkward. Even Beyoncé’s recognition for “Black Parade” — a good song, sure, but hardly among her best or most impactful work — felt strangely conciliatory, a mea culpa for not giving “Lemonade” its proper due several years ago. The always gracious Beyoncé certainly made the most of it, though, and her acceptance speeches were among the night’s highlights — especially her beaming big-sister energy as her “Savage” collaborator Megan Thee Stallion accepted their shared, very deserved award for best rap song. ZOLADZBest Use of Quarantine Time: Taylor Swift’s Album of the Year ‘Folklore’Taylor Swift is now the only female artist in Grammy history to win album of the year three times.Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated PressGoing into Grammy night, album of the year was Taylor Swift’s award to lose. Perhaps no other LP has come to symbolize our pandemic year more thoroughly than “Folklore,” which Swift created entirely during quarantine and embellished with a warm and woolly homebound aesthetic. Her Grammy performance — a medley of the “Folklore” songs “Cardigan” and “August,” along with “Willow” from her second 2020 album, “Evermore” — relied perhaps too literally on that aesthetic.The flickering visual whimsy all around her and her producers Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner (who both joined her onstage, in a set made up to look like a one-room cottage) detracted a bit from the direct power of her songcraft, which was more easily appreciated in the other awards-show performance she has given in support of “Folklore,” a beautifully bare-bones interpretation of “Betty” at last year’s Country Music Awards. But Swift, a one-time Grammy darling who before tonight had not had a win since 2016, has been out of the show’s spotlight for long enough that her win felt triumphant. In keeping with a night defined by female artists’ achievements it added an impressive feather to her cap, making her the only female artist in Grammy history to win album of the year three times. ZOLADZBest Blasts (and Ballads) from the Past: Silk Sonic and In MemoriamBruno Mars is nothing if not a diligent archivist, digging into the details of vintage styles, and Anderson .Paak joins him on the retro quest in their new project Silk Sonic. They went all in on “Leave the Door Open,” a period-piece homage to smooth 1970s vocal-group R&B. In three-piece mocha suits and shirts with collars that spread almost shoulder-wide, they traded off gritty leads and suave backup harmonies, choreography included. From another time capsule, Mars and Paak returned for the In Memoriam segment, paying raucous tribute to Little Richard with Mars whooping it up into an old-fashioned microphone and Paak slamming a kit of tiger-striped drums. The memorial segment continued with tasteful modesty: Lionel Richie delivering Kenny Rogers’s “Lady” with elegiac melancholy, Brandi Carlile singing John Prine’s last song, “I Remember Everything,” with affectionate respect.The closing tribute probably made more sense in the United Kingdom. With Coldplay’s Chris Martin on piano, Brittany Howard worked up to belting “You’ll Never Walk Alone” (from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Carousel”) over a country shuffle. It was a convoluted memorial to Gerry Marsden, of Gerry and the Pacemakers, who remade the song in 1963 and saw it adopted as the Liverpool Football Club’s anthem. Even odder, the song reappeared moments later, with Howard singing over a better backup track, in a commercial. PARELESBest Juggling Act: Trevor NoahChris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated PressHosting an awards show during pandemic season is a job without precedent, or sturdy rules. At this year’s Grammys — a mélange of live performances, pretaped segments and award presentations handed out on a downtown Los Angeles rooftop — the remit of the job was deeply confused. And still Trevor Noah proved mostly adept: vibrant energy, a little bit of awe, some topical-humor fluency and a bit of cheek, but not too much. Occasionally he literally inserted himself into the end of a performance, or purposely overlapped with something happening elsewhere onstage, which in moments felt awkward, but actually helped to add glue to a patchwork affair. There were some lumpy spots, and his cringey joke about sharing a bed with Cardi B felt like an attitudinal relic of the 1980s, but on the whole, Noah made something that could have felt like several competing shows feel like one. CARAMANICABest Self-Criticism: Harvey Mason Jr.“We hear the cries for diversity, pleas for representation and demands for transparency,” said Harvey Mason Jr., interim president and chairman of the Recording Academy.Rich Fury/Getty Images for the Recording AcademyThe obligatory Grammy speech by the head of the Recording Academy tends to mingle platitudes about the power of music with mild lobbying. Harvey Mason Jr., who took over as interim president and chairman after the academy fired Deborah Dugan just before last year’s Grammy Awards, offered something different: the closest the Grammys have gotten to a mea culpa. “We hear the cries for diversity, pleas for representation and demands for transparency,” he said, over a soundtrack of earnest piano. “Tonight I’m here to ask that entire music community to join in, work with us not against us, as we build a new Recording Academy that we can all be proud of.” He added, “This is not the vision of tomorrow but the job for today.” Promising sentiments — will they be enough? PARELESBest Overdue Nomination: Mickey GuytonTrevor Noah awkwardly introduced Mickey Guyton as “the first Black female solo artist ever nominated in a country category” — far more a reflection on country music and the Grammys than on her own clear merits. (She lost best country solo performance to Vince Gill in the pre-telecast ceremony.) But Guyton, who will be co-hosting the Academy of Country Music Awards in April, gracefully seized this prime-time moment, singing “Black Like Me,” a blunt indictment — “If you think we live in the land of the free/You should try to be Black like me” — that strives to end on a hopeful note. It’s a hymnlike song that welcomed a backup choir and a big buildup on the way to a climactic, “Someday we’ll all be free.” And it made Guyton a very hard act for Miranda Lambert and Maren Morris to follow. PARELESBest Mixed Emotions: HaimDanielle Haim started “The Steps,” nominated for best rock performance, seated behind the drums, with a pugnacious look on her face and a beat to match. She was singing about being underestimated and misunderstood, and the Grammys simply stuck the three-sister band — Danielle, Este and Alana — in the middle of the floor. But Haim switched instruments as well as moods mid-song; Danielle moved from drums to guitar and back while her voice briefly changed from annoyed to wounded; it can hurt to be misunderstood. By the end she was back on the counterattack, but the song was no longer simple. PARELES More

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      The Grammys Discover Youth

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      A pandemic awards show that seemed poised to disappoint ended up pivoting instead, shifting its focus to women, hip-hop and most crucially, the next generation.The annual postgame bemoaning of the Grammys rarely fails to disappoint. Between its consistently fraught relationship with Black artists, its weighing down of the young with the old, and its stoic resistance to the ways in which pop music is evolving, the ceremony has become as powerful for its symbolic out-of-touchness as for its commemorations.So it would be easy to look at the 63rd annual Grammy Awards, which aired Sunday night from Los Angeles, and underscore what was broken. Beyoncé won four trophies, giving her a total of 28 for her career, the most of any vocalist, tying her for second-most of all time. But these wins, like almost all of them, came in genre categories, not in the biggest, all-genre categories, despite her undeniable influence across the whole spectrum of pop. After sweeping the big four categories last year, Billie Eilish won record of the year for “Everything I Wanted” — a safe choice — and spent her speech repenting by uncomfortably fawning over Megan Thee Stallion.In most years, those would have been the defining moments — well-intentioned acts gone awry. And yet. The Grammys this year were frisky, energetic, largely well-paced and sometimes surprising. They often met popular music where it actually has been over the past year, with performances by central stars of pop, hip-hop, rock and country. Women dominated all the major categories — in addition to Eilish’s victory, Taylor Swift won album of the year for “Folklore,” H.E.R. won song of the year for “I Can’t Breathe” and Megan Thee Stallion won best new artist.But the most crucial aspect of the show was this: Almost all of the performers were under 40, and plenty were under 30. This may seem like an obvious move, but at the Grammys, youth and current relevance have often been treated as inconveniences to be navigated deftly, lest older generations — of artists and, presumably, viewers — feel left out. (This year, given the coronavirus pandemic, there was also likely an impetus to keep elders as far from harm’s way as possible.)Most vividly, that meant several largely unvarnished performances by hip-hop stars, still a shock on the Grammys stage despite the genre’s role at the center of pop evolution for decades. Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B paired for a clever and buoyantly sexual performance of “WAP” that was more erotically direct than any Grammys moment in memory. (Think Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” at the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards, and then some.) Lil Baby’s protest anthem “The Bigger Picture” was rendered as full social justice theater, with a building in flames, a square-off between protesters and shield-bearing police officers, and spoken-word calls for policy improvements.When these performances nodded to the Grammy tradition of melding the new with the old — typically an act of suffocation — it was done cheekily. During Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B’s performance, there was a brief tap dance routine acknowledging the pioneering Black tap dancers the Nicholas Brothers. And DaBaby delivered an intense and fantastically odd performance, in which he was backed by a choir of older women in church robes who appeared to have been given direction to look as comedically shocked as possible.Early in the show, during a Jools Holland-like performance with several acts on adjacent stages, Eilish was theatrically morbid, and Harry Styles was lithe and sinuous. Later, Bad Bunny and Jhay Cortez performed wholly in Spanish, a rare acknowledgment of the power of contemporary Spanish-language music. BTS scaled a rooftop to deliver a dizzying rendition of its hit “Dynamite,” a hyperchoreographed taunt at any performer who opted to be bound to, you know, a stage. And Dua Lipa advertised herself as a nu-aerobics queen, with an impressive set of hi-test disco.For a second year in a row, the Grammys put a spotlight on the teen singer-songwriter Billie Eilish, and her producer, Finneas.Kevin Mazur/The Recording Academy, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThrough another lens, Lipa’s performance could be seen as a wink to the music of yesteryear — a classicist with a high-gloss veneer. Typically, those sorts of artists are Grammy stock-in-trade, and there were a handful of them this year, like Silk Sonic, the recently formed union of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, who played pointedly retro, shimmery luxury soul. And despite becoming less central to pop music in general, guitars were not in short supply. Black Pumas scuffed up their typically modest rock-soul ever so slightly. Haim played loose, lovely, harmony-rich rock, and Taylor Swift performed a medley of songs from her quarantine albums, reimagining the Grammy stage as a mystical forest haunt.That said, consider it a victory that the Grammys largely opted in favor of youth, even when the mode of creation was old-fashioned. That reflects a dawning awareness that the show — the performances, at least, if not always the awards — has the power to be prescriptive, not simply hoary. Take, for example, its treatment of country music this year: None of the country performers were men, and given that almost every major star of country radio is a man, this was a meaningful gesture. It provided a huge showcase for Mickey Guyton, the first Black woman solo artist ever to receive a nomination in a country category — her rendition of “Black Like Me” was deeply invested and bracing. (Guyton still lost best country solo performance to Vince Gill, a Grammy perennial.) She was followed by sharp, but less pointed performances by Miranda Lambert and Maren Morris (who was inexplicably saddled with a John Mayer cameo).For a sense of the confusingly evolving and ongoing conundrum the Grammys finds itself in, look no further than this year’s hip-hop awards. Best rap album was won by Nas, one of the defining rappers of the … 1990s. This was his first Grammy, won for a little-heralded late-career album — the sort of years-late-dollars-short gesture that is a frequent Grammy occurrence. But best rap song and best rap performance went to Megan Thee Stallion (with Beyoncé), who is in almost every way, besides popular acclaim, a rookie. That the Grammys have honored her so thoroughly so early in her career must feel baffling to the pioneering rappers of decades past. On the other hand, hip-hop has come far enough to have its elders pull out head-scratching wins, just like rock, country and pop old-timers have for generations.The Grammys remain, at heart, a balancing act — a big tent that aims to satisfy everyone, fully pleasing no one. Even the distribution of this year’s major awards, after last year’s Eilish sweep, felt overly conspicuous. But Swift is 31, Megan Thee Stallion is 26, H.E.R. is 23, Eilish is 19. That no one is making them wait for their acclaim is its own sort of victory. More