Megan Thee Stallion (Rapper)

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      St. Vincent’s Synth-Funk ‘Pain,’ and 9 More New Songs

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe PlaylistSt. Vincent’s Synth-Funk ‘Pain,’ and 9 More New SongsHear tracks by Drake featuring Rick Ross, Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, Bebe Rexha and others.St. Vincent previews a new album called “Daddy’s Home” with the squelchy “Pay Your Way in Pain.”Credit…Zackery MichaelJon Pareles, Jon Caramanica and March 5, 2021Updated 4:08 p.m. ETEvery 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.St. Vincent, ‘Pay Your Way in Pain’[embedded content]St. Vincent (Annie Clark) piles artifice on artifice on the way to a digitized primal scream in “Pay Your Way in Pain,” from a new album, “Daddy’s Home,” due in May. A throwaway music-hall piano introduction cuts to fat, squelchy 1980s synthesizer tones as she sings, archly but with mounting desperation, about rejection on every front, surrounded by multiples of her own voice processed into gasping, tittering onlookers; they join her to harmonize on the words “pain” and “shame” like decades-later echoes of David Bowie singing “Fame.” It’s droll until it isn’t; at the end, she proclaims, “I want to be loved,” and that last word stretches for a rasping, breathless 17 seconds. JON PARELESNo Rome featuring Charli XCX and the 1975, ‘Spinning’Pros recognize pros. It’s telling that Charli XCX (the Id Girl of hyperpop) and Matty Healy of the 1975 (the most self-conscious yet ambitious arena-rock deconstructionist) both chose to collaborate with No Rome, a Filipino songwriter and producer who melds introversion, melody and electronics. The song ends up on Charli XCX’s turf: teasing, danceable and unstable, flaunting its pitch-shifting and digital edits. But it’s also thoroughly danceable and flirtatious: full of mindless motion. PARELESBruno Mars, Anderson .Paak, Silk Sonic, ‘Leave the Door Open’Both Anderson .Paak and Bruno Mars are diligent students of R&B history, especially devoted to its most opulent, funky and idealistic moments in the pre-disco 1970s. So it’s no surprise that their collaboration — Silk Sonic, though they also keep their own search-optimizing names in the billing — harks back, in “Leave the Door Open,” to the close-harmony seductions of groups like the Spinners, the Manhattans and the Stylistics; yes, kids, that’s an analog tape deck rolling as the video begins. The descending guitar glissando, the glockenspiel, the showy key changes, the contrast of grainy lead and perfectionist backup vocals, the detailed erotic invitation of the lyrics — “Come on over, I’ll adore you” — are all good things to revive. PARELESDrake featuring Rick Ross, ‘Lemon Pepper Freestyle’What’s a palate cleanse for Drake is, for most rappers, out of the reach of their ambition and skill. In between albums, he tosses off songs that focus on his tougher side, leaning in to wordy verses largely bereft of melody. “Lemon Pepper Freestyle” — from his new “Scary Hours 2” EP — is a relaxed classic of the form, full of sly rhymes delivered so offhandedly it almost obscures the technical audacity within. The song features frequent mischief buddy Rick Ross, but promptly dispenses with him so that Drake can embark upon a four-plus minute verse touching on his notary public, some wild times in Vegas, smooth co-parenting (“I send her the child support/She send me the heart emoji”), the deadening effects of too much fame, the overpriced accouterments of too much fame and the usual confession/braggadocio nexus that even after more than a decade still stings: “To be real, man, I never did one crime/But none of my brothers can caption that line.” JON CARAMANICABebe Rexha, ‘Sacrifice’New year, nü-disco. Bebe Rexha turns whispering diva on “Sacrifice” — “Wanna be the air every time you breathe/running through your veins, and the spaces in between” — on an elegant track that includes the faintest nod to Real McCoy’s mid-90s ultra-bouncey “Another Night.” CARAMANICATank, ‘Can’t Let It Show’Tank pours out his regrets and begs for reconciliation on “Can’t Let It Show”: “I should’ve been everything I promised,” he croons in an aching tenor, going on to confess, “I’ve been stupid, heartless/I’ve been useless, thoughtless.” Then, in falsetto, he answers with what’s supposed to be her side of the dialogue: a repurposed Kate Bush chorus — “I should be crying but I just can’t let it show” — that makes him think he still stands a chance because she cares. Or is it all just his wishful thinking? PARELESMaroon 5 featuring Megan Thee Stallion, ‘Beautiful Mistakes’An awkward night out in a thankless marriage between a partner barely trying to save face and a partner trying very hard to do just enough so that observers might not notice how poorly suited the pair are to each other. CARAMANICAAshe and Finneas, ‘Til Forever Falls Apart’Perhaps Finneas is a little frustrated — though well-compensated — while he keeps things quiet (but deeply ominous) when he collaborates with his sister, Billie Eilish, whose vocals tend to be melodic whispers. He goes full-scale, orchestral Wall of Sound, appropriately, to share big crescendos with Ashe on “Til Forever Falls Apart,” which starts as a vow of fidelity but turns into visions of California apocalypse. PARELESOmar Sosa, ‘Shibinda’When the prolific Cuban pianist and composer Omar Sosa toured East Africa with his trio in 2009, he brought along a small recording setup, and captured himself playing with leading musicians in every country he visited. Afterward, he overdubbed additional layers of percussion and piano atop the original recordings; now he has finally released these recordings as an album, “An East African Journey.” In Zambia, Sosa met Abel Ntalasha, a multi-instrumentalist and dancer, whose song “Shibinda” tells of a young man growing into adulthood and preparing to marry. Ntalasha plays the kalumbu, a single-stringed instrument, and sings the song’s central incantation. Sosa gets involved gradually, contributing vocals and percussion and rhythmic spritzes high up on the piano. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOHafez Modirzadeh, ‘Facet Sorey’[embedded content]To make his new album, “Facets,” the saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh brought three leading jazz pianists into the studio. But before they arrived, he retuned many of the piano’s strings to reflect an old Persian technique of finding notes in the spaces between the tempered scale. On “Facet Sorey,” Modirzadeh doesn’t play a lick of sax; instead, the multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey handles the piece alone, conjuring up conflicted clouds of harmony, letting the piano’s slightly sour tuning create a feeling of rich uncertainty. RUSSONELLOAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Saweetie, City Girls and the Female Rapper Renaissance

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyPopcastSubscribe:Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsSaweetie, City Girls and the Female Rapper RenaissanceStreaming, social media and the tireless work of trailblazers have helped change the hip-hop landscape.Hosted by Jon Caramanica. Produced by Pedro Rosado.More episodes ofPopcastNovember 29, 2020Saweetie, City Girls and the Female Rapper RenaissanceNovember 18, 2020  •  More

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      Snapshots of the Many Megan Thee Stallions

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      On “Shots Fired,” the song that kicks open Megan Thee Stallion’s new album “Good News,” the 25-year-old Texas M.C. unleashes such a sustained and eviscerating torrent of ridicule toward a man that she says assaulted her that it (almost) feels like an act of violence.In under three minutes, locked into a relentless flow, Megan makes a vivid mockery of this unnamed man (presumed to be Tory Lanez, the rapper charged for shooting her in the feet): his height (“shrimp, stay in your place”), the caliber of his gun, his internet presence, his bank account and, perhaps most hilariously, his birthday (“I just thought it was another Thursday”). Occasionally, deep in the mix, Megan’s gleeful cackles ring out.Like all of Megan’s music, “Shots Fired” is a provocative invitation to consider what it means when a woman wields sexual, economic and artistic power in a world designed and defined by men. Listening to it for the first time, an oft-repeated quote sometimes attributed to Margaret Atwood came to mind: “Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them.” Such is her power: For three fleeting minutes, Megan very nearly makes these possibilities seem equally threatening.[embedded content]Produced by Buddah Bless, “Shots Fired” borrows, and speeds up, the beat from “Who Shot Ya?,” the Notorious B.I.G.’s famous 1995 Tupac diss track. And though none of the following 16 songs match the specificity of its fury, it is, aesthetically, a fitting scene-setter: “Good News,” like the strong run of mixtapes that preceded it, draws on the precision-cut bars and braggadocious charisma of the ’90s gangsta rap that Megan grew up on, updating it for the era of read receipts and strategically declined FaceTime calls.Though it’s being billed as her debut studio album, “Good News” is Megan’s second full-length (last summer’s “Fever” was considered her “debut mixtape”) and also her second release of 2020. In early March, she put out the brisk 24-minute “Suga,” an EP largely focused on Megan’s lyrical dexterity and, on songs like “Ain’t Equal” and “Crying in the Car,” some of the challenges she’d faced since rising to prominence, like loneliness, fake friends and the tragic sudden death of her mother.The EP’s highlight was “Savage,” a sumptuously confident song of self. It produced one of the pandemic’s first viral TikTok dance challenges and, even more impressively, a remix that fellow Houstonian Beyoncé lovingly embroidered with sultry backing vocals and some of her sharpest rapping to date. (This week it picked up three of Megan’s four Grammy nominations.)Rather rapidly, Megan has achieved a level of pop stardom without quite going pop: Her biggest successes, like “Savage” and the Cardi B duet “WAP,” have eschewed formulaic hooks and instead doubled down on hard rapping and gleeful, uncompromising raunch. Save for the glaring misfire “Don’t Rock Me to Sleep” — a sleek, synth-kissed tune that finds Megan rapping in a sing-songy voice, sounding bored with the midtempo beat — “Good News” wisely avoids attempts to sand down the edges of her sound.Just listening to Megan find her footing atop a kinetic beat on “Good News,” like the one Lil Ju provides on “Body,” gives off a secondhand thrill. Her exhortations are often ecstatic: “If you in love with your body, bitch, take off your clothes!” she hollers on “Work That,” a libidinous bop produced by her idol-turned-frequent-collaborator Juicy J. (The Southern rap of Juicy’s Three 6 Mafia and early Cash Money Records is her other prominent ’90s touchstone.)In her songs, videos and expert Instagram presence, Megan preaches to her fellow “hotties” a doctrine of self-love through body positivity and unabashed celebrations of female sexual pleasure. Megan may cut a singular figure — standing 5’10”, as she reminds in several of her songs — but the radical power of her music is in the contagious confidence it inspires in all sorts of bodies. “People say I’m full of myself,” she raps on the lively Young Thug collaboration “Don’t Stop.” “You’re right, and I ain’t even made it to dessert.”If anything, “Good News” could have used more of that Megan-featuring-Megan singularity. It sometimes gets stymied by high-profile but ultimately unnecessary features, a recurring major-label-debut cliché. Guests like SZA, on the winning throwback “Freaky Girls,” or the Los Angeles duo City Girls on the rowdy “Do It on the Tip” fare better, though, than most of their male counterparts. On the lopsided “Movie,” Lil Durk’s sensual imagination sounds vague and uninspired next to Megan’s. The dancehall star Popcaan similarly breaks the show-don’t-tell rule during an awkward hook that finds him crooning, quite literally, “Sexuallll innnnnntercourse.”One of the album’s most compelling moments comes on “Circles,” when Megan briefly lets down the armor of her impenetrable Hot Girl persona: “Bullet wounds, backstabs, mama died, still sad,” she raps. “My clothes fit tight, but my heart need a seamstress.”That’s a double-take moment, though it’s delivered almost as an aside. A few other striking lines pass too quickly, when Megan flashes glimpses of a personhood much more richly dimensional than the supernaturally empowered avatar that dominates the rest of “Good News.”In “Shots Fired,” Megan offers an allusion to the Breonna Taylor case, deftly connecting her own experience of gun violence to the larger systemic injustices faced by Black women (and recalling a forceful op-ed she recently wrote for The New York Times). In a much lighter moment, Megan commands her man to please her while she’s busy watching anime and makes a reference to the manga “Naruto,” casually flexing her low-key geek bona fides.Megan Thee Stallion clearly contains multitudes upon multitudes, and toggled between so many this year: the candid exhumation of her personal trauma on social media, the courage to make political statements about race and gender on “Saturday Night Live,” the bold and carefree erotic bliss she embodies in her music videos. They haven’t all found effective ways into her music — yet. “Good News” proves Megan’s prodigious talent, but it also suggests that, with a bit more digging, this gem could emit an even more prismatic shine.Megan Thee Stallion“Good News”(1501 Certified/300 Entertainment) More