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      The Kid Laroi’s Ever-Growing Mixtape Is Now a No. 1 Album

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      By continually adding songs to “____ Love,” the teenage rapper and singer’s label pushed a release that arrived a year ago to the top of the Billboard 200.A year ago, the Kid Laroi, a teenage rapper and singer from Australia, released a debut mixtape, “____ Love,” which opened at No. 8 on the Billboard album chart thanks to a single, “Go,” featuring Juice WRLD, the emo rap star who had died in December 2019 at age 21.That might have been the end of the story. But over the last year, the Kid Laroi’s label, Columbia, has kept the album in the charts by releasing successive “deluxe” versions with additional tracks. The second iteration, called “Savage,” which added seven tracks to the original 15, came out in November and pushed the album to No. 3.Last month, two more new versions came out in the same week. First was “____ Love 3: Over You,” which added another seven tracks, including the hit “Stay,” featuring Justin Bieber. Then, four days later, came “____ Love 3+,” with six additional tracks. The full package now contains 35 tracks, which on digital services are organized, retro-style, across three “discs.”Since the newer versions are updates to the original album, they are counted as one collection on Billboard’s chart — a tactic that took hold last year, particularly in hip-hop, and has proved a successful chart strategy. With help from its two new versions, the album rose 25 spots to a peak of No. 1 in its 53rd week out, with the equivalent of 85,000 sales in the United States, including 114 million streams, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm. The Kid Laroi, whose real name is Charlton Howard, turns 18 this month.It is the fourth week in a row that the top album in the country has failed to crack 100,000 sales. But that spell will likely be broken on next week’s chart, as Billie Eilish’s return, “Happier Than Ever,” is expected to land at the top with big streaming and vinyl numbers.Also on this week’s chart, Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour” is No. 2, Doja Cat’s “Planet Her” is No. 3 and Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is No. 4. “Faith,” a posthumous album by the Brooklyn rapper Pop Smoke, fell four spots to No. 5. More

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      Police in China Detain Canadian Pop Star Kris Wu on Suspicion of Rape

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      Kris Wu, a 30-year-old celebrity, is the most prominent figure in China to be held over #MeToo allegations.The police in Beijing said Saturday they had detained Kris Wu, a popular Canadian Chinese singer, on suspicion of rape amid a #MeToo controversy that has set off outrage in China.The police did not provide details of their investigation into Mr. Wu. But it comes several weeks after an 18-year-old university student in Beijing accused him of enticing young women like herself with the promise of career opportunities, then pressuring them into having sex.Known in China as Wu Yifan, Mr. Wu, 30, is the most prominent figure in China to be detained over #MeToo allegations.He rose to fame as a member of the Korean pop band EXO, then started a successful solo career as a model, actor and singer. Though he denied the allegations when they first surfaced, they set off an uproar that led at least a dozen companies, including Bulgari, Louis Vuitton and Porsche, to sever ties with the singer.The Chaoyang District branch of the Beijing police said in a statement on social media on Saturday night that it had been looking into accusations posted online that Mr. Wu “repeatedly deceived young women into sexual relations.” It said that Mr. Wu had been detained while the criminal investigation continued.Mr. Wu’s accuser, Du Meizhu, has said publicly that when she first met Mr. Wu in December last year, she was taken by the singer’s agent to his home in Beijing for work-related discussions. She said that she was pressured to drink cocktails until she passed out, and later found herself in his bed.They dated until March, according to her account of the events, when he stopped responding to her calls and messages. She has also said she believed that he targeted other young women.Mr. Wu’s lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Ms. Du could not be reached.It was not immediately clear if the police were specifically investigating Ms. Du’s claims. In a statement in July, the police had released what appeared to be preliminary findings about Ms. Du’s allegations. The police had said Ms. Du had hyped her story “to enhance her online popularity,” an assessment that was criticized by her supporters as victim shaming.The outpouring of support for Ms. Du was a sign that the country’s nascent #MeToo movement continues to grow despite the government’s strict limits on activism and dissent. After Ms. Du spoke out, her supporters flooded the social media pages of several brands, threatening boycotts if they did not drop their partnerships with Mr. Wu, a campaign that quickly forced the companies to distance themselves from him.The accusations have triggered a heated debate on issues like victim-shaming, consent and abuse of power in the workplace — concepts that had rarely featured in mainstream discussions before the #MeToo movement went global.The authorities in China often discourage women from filing sexual misconduct complaints, and sexual assault or harassment survivors are frequently shamed and even sued for defamation. Censorship and limits on dissent have also stymied efforts among feminist activists to organize, even as trolls are given cover to spew abuse.Yet the high-profile nature of the controversy made Ms. Du’s allegations impossible to ignore for Chinese authorities, who are always on the lookout for what they deem to be potential sources of social unrest.The police announcement, posted on the country’s popular Weibo social media platform, immediately started trending, drawing more than six million likes.Lu Pin, a New York-based feminist activist, said the detention of Mr. Wu was a major step forward for the #MeToo movement in China.“Regardless of what the motivation of the police may have been, just the fact that he was detained is huge,” Ms. Lu said.“For the last three years, a number of prominent figures have faced #MeToo accusations but nothing ever happened to them,” Ms. Lu said. “Now with Wu Yifan, #MeToo has finally taken down someone with real power in China — it has shown that no matter how powerful you are, rape is not acceptable.”The detention of Mr. Wu comes amid a broader government crackdown on the entertainment industry.In recent years, Chinese authorities have moved aggressively to clean up the industrywide problem of tax evasion and to cap salaries for the country’s biggest movie stars. In June, the country’s internet watchdog began a crackdown on what it called the country’s “chaotic” online celebrity fan clubs, which the government has come to see as an increasing source of volatility in public opinion.The People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party, depicted Mr. Wu’s detention as a warning to celebrities that neither fame nor a foreign citizenship would shield them from the law.“A foreign nationality is not a talisman. No matter how famous one is, there is no immunity,” the propaganda outlet wrote. “Remember: The higher the popularity, the more you must be self-disciplined, the more popular you are, the more you must abide by the law.” More

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      Silk Sonic’s Retro Roller Jam, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Bomba Estéreo featuring Yemi Alade, Saint Etienne, Dry Cleaning 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.Silk Sonic, ‘Skate’With a new single, “Skate,” it becomes ever clearer that Silk Sonic — the collaboration of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak — is a project in vintage reverse engineering, finding and recreating the sounds and structures of the era when 1970s soul melted into disco. “Skate” — invoking bygone roller discos — has the scrubbing rhythmic guitars, the glockenspiel, the Latin percussion, the back-talking string section and the rising bridge of late 1970s hits. Can young 21st-century listeners feel nostalgia for a time before they were born? JON PARELESBomba Estéreo featuring Yemi Alade, ‘Conexión Total’Bomba Estéreo’s new single, “Conexión Total,” is an effervescent blend of pan flutes, marimbas and drum loops featuring the Nigerian Afropop idol Yemi Alade, whose 2014 song “Johnny” remains an anthem in the genre. The Colombian duo’s maneuver adds to a growing list of collaborations between African and Latin American artists, a much-needed reminder of the links between Afro-diasporic sounds and their origins. Euphoric lyrics from the lead singer Li Saumet and layers of carefully placed air horns coalesce into a prismatic summer jam, like a cool, carbonated drink foaming to the surface. ISABELIA HERRERASaint Etienne, ‘Pond House’You’d be forgiven for assuming that the looped, airy voice at the center of Saint Etienne’s new song belongs to the group’s lead vocalist Sarah Cracknell — but it’s actually a sample of Natalie Imbruglia’s 2001 song “Beauty on the Fire.” The British pop icons’ forthcoming “I’ve Been Trying to Tell You” (their first sample-driven album since the 1993 classic “So Tough”) is a collage of sounds culled from 1997 through 2001; they’ve described it as something of a concept album about late-90s optimism and the collective delusions of pop-cultural memory. Heady and idea-driven as that may sound, though, “Pond House” is as light as a sea breeze, a steady, aquamarine undertow drawing you into its hypnotic atmosphere. LINDSAY ZOLADZLos Lobos, ‘Los Chucos Suaves’Through four decades of recording, Los Lobos have always chosen their occasional cover versions instructively. During the pandemic they made their new covers album, “Native Sons,” filled with songs from Los Angeles bands including the Beach Boys, War, Buffalo Springfield and Thee Midnighters, along with one new Los Lobos song. “Los Chucos Suaves,” originally released in 1949 by Lalo Guerrero y Sus Cinco Lobos (!), recognizes an emerging Los Angeles pachuco culture, with elegant, zoot-suited Mexican Americans broadening their tastes — and dance moves — to Cuban music. Los Lobos’s version places Cesar Rosas’s rasp atop a mesh of cumbia and mambo, with distorted guitar, brawny baritone sax and frenetic timbales celebrating an early Latin cultural alliance. PARELESBéla Fleck featuring Billy Strings and Chris Thile, ‘Charm School’The album due in September from the banjo innovator Béla Fleck — who has collaborated with jazz musicians and chased down the banjo’s African roots — is “My Bluegrass Heart,” billed as his return to bluegrass. “Charm School” uses a classic bluegrass quintet lineup, with Fleck on banjo, Chris Thile on mandolin, Billy Strings on guitar, Billy Contreras on fiddle and Royal Masat on bass. But “Charm School” is by no means a traditional bluegrass tune; it’s a speedy, ever-changing suite, vaulting through keys, meters and tempos. The quintet alights in a seemingly familiar bluegrass zone only to dart off someplace else entirely, again and again. PARELESBarry Altschul’s 3Dom Factor, ‘Long Tall Sunshine’Barry Altschul’s drumming, and especially his rambunctious ride cymbal, is a study in something more than contrast: He knows how to skip across the surface of a beat while also giving it serious heft; his pocket is magnetic, but he’ll just as soon dice it up or splatter it to bits. Over an almost six-decade career in jazz, he’s played on both sides of the aisle, avant-garde and straight-ahead, and in his running trio — the 3dom Factor, with Jon Irabagon on saxophones and Joe Fonda on bass — he lassos it all together. “Long Tall Sunshine” is the title track from the 3dom Factor’s new live album, and it’s classic Altschul: brimming and charging but holding back too (thanks especially to Fonda’s bass), with a harmonically rangy melody that sets up Irabagon for an uncorked solo. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLODry Cleaning, ‘Tony Speaks!’On its magnificently odd debut album “New Long Leg,” released earlier this year, the London band Dry Cleaning fused post-punk grooves with the deadpan musings of the frontwoman Florence Shaw, a sharp, dryly funny observer of modern life’s absurdities. But “Tony Speaks!,” one half of a double-A-side single the band released this week, is its most barbed and political track yet. The song is an unnerving meditation on the banal but weighty effect that systemic problems can have on individual psyches: “I’m just sad about the collapse of heavy industry, I’ll be all right in a bit.” But Shaw’s most piercing musings come when she widens her lens and ponders climate change; her reflections poised in a delicate balance between comedy and tragedy. “I always thought of nature as something dead and uninviting,” she mutters, “but there used to be a lot more of it.” ZOLADZAda Lea, ‘Damn’“Damn,” from the Montreal-based singer-songwriter Ada Lea, unfolds like a quiet epiphany: a gradual accumulation of feelings and frustrations that, in an instant, snap into a sudden clarity. Atop an understated arrangement of guitar and percussion, Lea (whose real name is Alexandra Levy) sings of gradually slipping into an emotional rut: “Every year’s just a little bit darker, then the darker gets darker,” she sings in a low, throaty drawl, “then it’s dark as hell.” But in the song’s closing moments, Lea recollects herself and summons all her energy into a spirited, defiant refusal of everything that’s gone wrong: “Damn the work, damn the music, damn the fun that’s missing.” It’s the sound of hitting bottom but finally looking up. ZOLADZEkyu, ‘Oh Dje’Ekyu, a songwriter from Benin, sings about destructive envy in “Oh Dje”: “When someone goes up, we want to take them down/When someone moves forward, we want to stop him.” His voice is husky and melancholy, with an electronic veil; the rhythm is ticking, ratcheting Afrobeats-meets-trap, while guitar licks and manipulated vocals ripple in the distance. Below them all are bassy, looming synthesizer tones, threatening, as the lyrics suggest, to drag down everything. PARELESNao, ‘And Then Life Was Beautiful’“Hope will come someday soon,” the English songwriter Nao (Neo Jessica Joshua) promises in her helium-high soprano in “And Then Life Was Beautiful,” the title song from her next album. To recover from the way “Change came like a hurricane” in 2020, she advises self-preservation, patience, contemplation and gratitude amid invigorating triplets, rising chromatic chords and airborne vocal harmonies. She’s determined to conjure a sense of uplift. PARELESSilvana Estrada, ‘Marchita’Silvana Estrada’s voice oozes quiet fury. It’s a quality that connects her to a long line of women in Latin America, whose voices are almost synonymous with the experience of suffering and abandonment: icons like Chavela Vargas and La Lupe. But unlike some of her forebears, the 24-year-old Mexican artist’s anguish is so quiet, so raw, it burns in her chest, smoldering under the surface. On “Marchita,” the rolling melismas of Estrada’s voice glide over the warmth of a Venezuelan cuatro, blooming into waves of violin and violoncello strings. “Me ha costado tanto y tanto/Que ya mi alma se marchita,” she weeps. “It’s cost me so much that my soul is withering,” she says. That is the kind of slow-burning despair that steals life from you. HERRERAGrouper, ‘Unclean Mind’Grouper, a.k.a. Liz Harris, effortlessly collapses the grittiest of emotions into simple jolts of sorrow. Though she is known for her hypnotic tape loops, breathy whispers and quiet piano arrangements, on “Unclean Mind,” Harris swaps the familiar, morose piano keys of previous releases for the strum of an acoustic guitar. Her harmonic vocals are weightless, almost imperceptible, but the sentiment is transparent. “Tried to hide you from my unclean mind,” she sighs, “Put it in a costume/Turning patterns with a perfect line.” We may not know what kind of relationship she refers to, but the enigmatic beauty of Grouper’s music is that it is immersive without being obvious, so potent it needs little explication to convey the trickiest emotions. HERRERADot Allison, ‘Long Exposure’The Scottish songwriter and singer Dot Allison has recorded, as leader and collaborator, with arty musicians like Kevin Shields, Massive Attack and Scott Walker beginning in the 1990s. Her new solo album, “Heart-Shaped Scars,” is her first since 2009. It’s largely acoustic and minimal, with songs that meditate on the unhurried growth of plants. “Long Exposure” intertwines Allison’s voice with steady guitar picking, single piano notes and a chamber-pop string section, but it’s far from serene. It’s an indictment of a partner’s gradually revealed infidelity that gathers pain and wrath from the realization that it went on so long. PARELES More

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      Prince Made ‘Welcome 2 America’ in 2010. It Speaks to 2021.

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      A full album has emerged from Prince’s vault that balances hard insights with visceral joys.It’s almost as if Prince knew what lay ahead.In 2010, Prince recorded but then shelved a finished album, “Welcome 2 America,” which was full of bleak reflections on the state of the nation. It arrives Friday as the Prince estate continues to open up Prince’s vault of unreleased music since his death in 2016. Unlike much of what has emerged so far, it’s a complete, stand-alone album — a disillusioned statement that sounds all too fitting in 2021.“Welcome 2 America” was made two years into the Obama administration, and Prince didn’t see much progress. In the title track, women sing, “Hope and change”; then Prince dryly observes, “Everything takes forever/The truth is a new minority.”The songs take on racism, exploitation, disinformation, celebrity, faith and capitalism: “21st century, it’s still about greed and fame,” Prince sings in “Running Game (Son of a Slave Master).” Eleven years after the album was recorded — as the 2020s have brought bitter divisiveness, blatant racism, battles over history and a digital hellscape of hyped consumption and algorithmically boosted lies — Prince doesn’t sound pessimistic, just matter-of-fact.“Welcome 2 America” wasn’t made casually. It’s one of Prince’s more collaborative albums, constructed in discrete stages with different cohorts of musicians. Prince started out recording instrumental tracks — without vocals or lyrics — live in the studio with Tal Wilkenfeld on bass and Chris Coleman on drums. Then he worked with the singers Shelby J. (for Johnson), Liv Warfield and Elisa Fiorillo, sharing leads and harmonies with them. Morris Hayes, billed as Mr. Hayes, added keyboards and intricately jazzy simulated string and horn arrangements, earning credit as co-producer for six of the album’s 12 songs. Prince also did some final tweaking, including a rewrite of the title track.But Prince had already released one album in 2010 — “20Ten” — and his attention turned to forming a new live band (including Mr. Hayes and the three backup singers) that would tour the world for the next two years. The American portion was called the “Welcome 2 America” tour, but the album stayed unreleased. (The deluxe version of “Welcome 2 America” includes a Blu-ray of a jubilant 2011 arena show in Inglewood, Calif.)“Welcome 2 America” was completed in 2010 but then shelved.Mike Ruiz, via The Prince Estate“Welcome 2 America” makes its way from the bitter derision of its title track toward a guarded optimism, with detours — it’s a Prince album after all — into physical pleasures. The title song telegraphs its mood with its first notes: a snake hiss of cymbals and a bass line that inches upward, skulks back down and then plunges further, against a backdrop of ambiguous chords and synthesizer swoops. The track edges toward funk, and the women sing, but Prince doesn’t; he simply talks, deadpan, about information overload, high-tech distractions, privilege, fame and culture, asking, “Think today’s music will last?” Singing in harmony, the women amend an American motto to “Land of the free, home of the slave.”In the cryptic “1010 (Rin Tin Tin),” Prince asks, “What could be stranger than the times we’re in?” over skeletal, choppy piano chords, and he goes on to decry “too much information” and a “wilderness of lies.” With “Running Game (Son of a Slave Master),” Prince confronts a microcosm of rich vs. poor: the way the music business takes advantage of newcomers.Yet as usual in Prince’s catalog, “Welcome 2 America” balances hard insights with visceral joys. He sings about pointless conflicts over religion in “Same Page, Different Book” — “So much more in common if you’d only look,” he insists — but his lyrics about rocks, missiles and car bombs arrive backed by crisp syncopations. In “1000 Light Years From Here,” he puts breezy Latin funk behind reminders of Black perseverance, touching on the subprime mortgage crisis and the 2008 financial-sector meltdown: “We can live underwater/It ain’t hard when you’ve never been a part/Of the country on dry land.” Prince put new lyrics to “1000 Light Years” as an upbeat coda to the even more pointed “Black Muse” — a song about slavery, injustice and America’s debt to Black culture — on the last album he released during his lifetime, “HitnRun Phase Two.”Prince pauses the sociopolitical commentary for “Check the Record,” a rock-funk stomp about infidelity, and for “When She Comes,” a sensual falsetto ballad marveling in a woman’s ecstasy. (Prince also reworked “When She Comes” for “HitnRun Phase Two,” emphasizing male technique instead.)As the album ends, Prince calls for positive thinking. “Yes” reaches back to the supercharged gospel-rock of Sly and the Family Stone. After that tambourine-shaking peak, “One Day We Will All B Free” eases into reassuring, midtempo soul. But the “Yes” that Prince calls for is an affirmation that “We can turn the page/As long as they ain’t movin’ us to a bigger cage,” and “One Day We Will All B Free” is also a warning about unquestioning belief in what churches and schools teach. Prince saw a long struggle ahead.Prince“Welcome 2 America”(NPG/Sony Legacy) More

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      Britney Spears Files to Remove Father Jamie Spears From Conservatorship

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      More than 13 years after a strict legal arrangement gave James P. Spears control of the singer’s affairs, a new lawyer for Ms. Spears asked the court to remove him from the arrangement.More than 13 years after the life and finances of Britney Spears were put under the strict, court-approved control of her father, James P. Spears — and a month after Ms. Spears broke her public silence on the arrangement, calling it abusive and singling him out as its ultimate authority — a new lawyer for the singer has moved to have Mr. Spears removed from the unique conservatorship.The detailed petition to oust the singer’s father from the complex legal setup was filed in Los Angeles probate court on Monday by Mathew S. Rosengart, a former federal prosecutor and high-powered Hollywood lawyer, who has worked with celebrities including Sean Penn, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Steven Spielberg.The move, less than two weeks after Mr. Rosengart was approved as the singer’s lawyer, is framed as a first step in a broader strategy to examine the conservatorship, which the filing calls a “Kafkaesque nightmare” for Ms. Spears.Mr. Rosengart took over as Ms. Spears’s lawyer after Samuel D. Ingham III, the court-appointed lawyer who had represented her for the duration of the arrangement, resigned in light of the singer’s recent comments about her care. In 2008, at the outset of the conservatorship, Ms. Spears had been found to lack the mental capacity to hire her own counsel.In the filing Monday, Mr. Rosengart cited a section of the probate code that gives the court broad discretion to remove a conservator if it “is in the best interests” of the conservatee, and pointed to Ms. Spears’s recent comments in court as evidence that her father’s role was detrimental to her well-being.The filing added that “serious questions abound concerning Mr. Spears’s potential misconduct, including conflicts of interest, conservatorship abuse and the evident dissipation of Ms. Spears’s fortune.”“There might well come a time when the court will be called upon to consider whether the conservatorship should be terminated in its entirety and whether — in addition to stripping his daughter of her dignity, autonomy and certain fundamental liberties — Mr. Spears is also guilty of misfeasance or malfeasance warranting the imposition of surcharges, damages or other legal action against him,” Mr. Rosengart wrote.Lawyers for Mr. Spears did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday. He has previously defended his care of, and concern for, his daughter.In an additional filing, Mr. Rosengart requested that a certified public accountant in California, Jason Rubin, be named conservator of Ms. Spears’s estate, which was listed as including cash assets of $2.7 million and noncash assets of more than $57 million.The lawyer noted, since the court had ruled recently that Ms. Spears had the capacity to choose her own lawyer, she “likewise has sufficient capacity to make this nomination.”In his petition to remove Mr. Spears, Mr. Rosengart added: “Any father who genuinely loves his daughter and has her best interests at heart should willingly step aside in favor of the highly respected professional fiduciary nominated here.”The petition was supported by Ms. Spears’s current personal conservator, Jodi Montgomery, as well as her mother, Lynne Spears, who said in the filing that her daughter’s relationship with her father had “dwindled to nothing but fear and hatred” because of his “microscopic control” over her life.At an emotional hearing on June 23, Ms. Spears, 39, said she wished to end the conservatorship, which oversees both her personal care and estate, without having to undergo psychiatric evaluations; she added that she had not known that she could file to end it.But Mr. Rosengart said in his petition on Monday that he was for now focusing on “the most pressing issue facing Ms. Spears: removing Mr. Spears as conservator of the estate.”The next status hearing in the case is scheduled for Sept. 29.Ms. Spears has long chafed at the conservatorship’s strictures behind the scenes, calling her father and his oversight over her life oppressive and controlling, according to confidential court records recently obtained by The New York Times. Ms. Spears also raised questions over the years about the fitness of her father — who has struggled with alcoholism and faced accusations of physical and verbal abuse — as conservator.“Anything that happened to me had to be approved by my dad, and my dad only,” Ms. Spears said at the hearing, as she described being forced into a mental health facility after a disagreement at a concert rehearsal.“I cried on the phone for an hour and he loved every minute of it,” she added. “The control he had over someone as powerful as me — he loved the control, to hurt his own daughter, one-hundred thousand percent.”At the July 14 hearing where Mr. Rosengart was approved as Ms. Spears’s counsel, she stated, “I’m here to get rid of my dad.” Mr. Rosengart asked for Mr. Spears to resign on the spot; a lawyer for the singer’s father declined.Mr. Spears, 69, has said instituting the conservatorship was necessary to save his daughter’s life and career during a period of concern about her mental health and substance abuse, and that he has acted out of love, working to protect her from exploitation.Since 2008, Mr. Spears has overseen his daughter’s finances, sometimes with a professional co-conservator. He had also largely controlled Ms. Spears’s personal and medical care until a personal conservator, Ms. Montgomery, took over in September 2019 on an ongoing temporary basis.Mr. Spears cited health reasons when he stepped down. But two weeks prior, there had been an alleged physical altercation between Mr. Spears and Ms. Spears’s 13-year-old son. No charges were filed in the incident, but the child’s father, Kevin Federline, was granted a restraining order barring Mr. Spears from seeing the children.Lynne Spears said in the petition to remove Mr. Spears that the incident “understandably destroyed whatever was left of a relationship between” Ms. Spears and her father.She added: “It is clear to me that James P. Spears is incapable of putting my daughter’s interests ahead of his own on both a professional and a personal level and that his being and remaining a conservator of my daughter’s estate is not in the best interests of my daughter.”Conservatorships are typically reserved for people who cannot take care of themselves. Ms. Spears’s case has received scrutiny in recent years because she continued to perform as a pop star — and bring in millions of dollars — while under the arrangement.“I shouldn’t be in a conservatorship if I can work,” Ms. Spears said at the June 23 hearing, while calling for its termination. “It makes no sense. The laws need to change.” She also requested that those behind the conservatorship be investigated for abuse.Lawyers for Mr. Spears have called into question the actions of the others involved in Ms. Spears’s care. In a court filing after Ms. Spears’s remarks, which were broadcast in the courtroom and, as she insisted, to the public, Mr. Spears’s lawyers called for hearings to look into her claims.“Either the allegations will be shown to be true, in which case corrective action must be taken, or they will be shown to be false, in which case the conservatorship can continue its course,” they wrote.Mr. Spears’s lawyers also denied the characterization that he was responsible for the singer’s recent treatment, noting that Ms. Montgomery had been “fully in charge of Ms. Spears’s day-to-day personal care and medical treatment” for nearly two years, despite some of Ms. Spears’s claims predating Ms. Montgomery’s appointment.“Mr. Spears is unable to hear and address his daughter’s concerns directly because he has been cut off from communicating with her,” Mr. Spears’s lawyers wrote last month, adding that he was “concerned about the management and care of his daughter.”Lauriann Wright, a lawyer for Ms. Montgomery, said that Ms. Montgomery had “been a tireless advocate for Britney and for her well-being,” with “one primary goal — to assist and encourage Britney in her path to no longer needing a conservatorship of the person.”Mr. Spears, known as Jamie, currently oversees his daughter’s finances. He temporarily stepped down as a conservator of her person in 2019.Valerie Macon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn Ms. Spears’s speech to the court last month, she said she had been forced to perform, take medication and remain on birth control.Following her remarks, the singer’s court-appointed lawyer, Bessemer Trust, the wealth-management firm that was set to take over as the co-conservator of Ms. Spears’s estate, requested to withdraw, in addition to Mr. Ingham. Outside of the conservatorship, Ms. Spears’s longtime manager, Larry Rudolph, also resigned, citing her stated intention to potentially retire.Ms. Spears had expressed concerns about her father’s level of control over her for years as part of the court proceedings, which were largely sealed. In 2016, the probate investigator in the case concluded that the conservatorship remained in Ms. Spears’s best interests based on her complex finances, susceptibility to outside influence and “intermittent” drug issues, according to the report.But the investigator’s report recommended over the longer term “a pathway to independence and the eventual termination of the conservatorship.” More

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      Dusty Hill, Long-Bearded Bassist for ZZ Top, Dies at 72

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      The band, known for its hard-charging, blues-inflected rock, was one of the biggest acts of the 1980s, selling more than 50 million albums.Dusty Hill, the quiet, bearded bass player who made up one third of ZZ Top, among the best-selling rock bands of the 1980s, has died at his home in Houston. He was 72.His bandmates Frank Beard and Billy Gibbons announced the death on Wednesday through Facebook and Instagram. They did not provide a cause or say when he died.Starting in the early 1970s, ZZ Top racked up dozens of hit records and packed hundreds of arenas a year with their powerful blend of boogie, Southern rock and blues. But the band really took off in the 1980s, when Mr. Gibbons, the lead singer and guitarist, and Mr. Hill grew their signature 20-inch beards and the band released a series of albums that added New Wave synthesizers — often played by Mr. Hill — to their hard-driving guitars, producing MTV-friendly hits like “Legs” and “Sharp-Dressed Man.”The band paired their grungy sound and innuendo-filled lyrics with a knowing, sometimes comic stage act — Mr. Hill and Mr. Gibbons, in matching sunglasses and Stetson hats, would swing their hips in unison, spinning their instruments on mounts attached to their belts. (Despite his name, Mr. Beard, the drummer, sports just a mustache.) Their stage sets might include crushed cars and even livestock.Though in public Mr. Hill and Mr. Gibbons were often mistaken as twins, their musical styles differed — Mr. Gibbons a showy virtuoso, Mr. Hill a grinding, precise musical mechanic.Mr. Hill rarely gave interviews, preferring to let Mr. Gibbons speak for the band. And he gladly accepted his supporting role for his bandmate’s masterful lead guitar playing.“Sometimes you don’t even notice the bass,” he said in a 2016 interview. “I hate that in a way, but I love that in a way. That’s a compliment. That means you’ve filled in everything and it’s right for the song, and you’re not standing out where you don’t need to be.”Joseph Michael Hill was born in Dallas on May 19, 1949. He started his musical career singing and playing cello, but he switched instruments at 13, when his brother, Rocky, who played guitar, said his band needed a bassist. One day Dusty came home to find a bass on his bed; that night, he joined Rocky onstage at a Dallas beer joint.“I started playing that night by putting my finger on the fret, and when the time came to change, my brother would hit me on the shoulder,” he said in a 2012 interview.In 1969, Dusty was living in Houston and working with the blues singer Lightnin’ Hopkins when Mr. Beard, a friend from high school, suggested that he audition for an open spot in a trio, called ZZ Top, recently founded by Mr. Gibbons. They played their first show together in February 1970.Mr. Hill, left, and Mr. Gibbons performing in 1973. The band was successful throughout the ’70s but really took off in the ’80s.Tom Hill/WireImage, via Getty ImagesThe band’s humor was evident from the start: They named their first album “ZZ Top’s First Album.” Real success came in 1973 with their third release, “Tres Hombres,” which cracked the Billboard top 10. That same year they opened for the Rolling Stones in Hawaii.Many of their early songs leaned heavily on sexual innuendo, though sometimes they set the innuendo aside completely. “La Grange,” their big hit on “Tres Hombres,” was about a bordello.In 1976, after a string of hit albums and nearly seven years of constant touring, the band took a three-year hiatus. Mr. Hill returned to Dallas, where he worked at the airport and tried to avoid being identified by fans.“I had a short beard, regular length, and if you take off the hat and shades and wear work clothes and put ‘Joe’ on my work shirt, people are not expecting to see you,” he said in a 2019 interview. “Now, a couple of times, a couple of people did ask me, and I just lied, and I said: ‘No! Do you think I’d be sitting here?’”The band reunited in 1979 to release “Degüello,” their first album to go platinum, and the first time Mr. Gibbons and Mr. Hill grew out their beards. It was also the first sign that they were going beyond their Texas roots by adding a New Wave flavor to their sound, with Mr. Hill also playing keyboard.They achieved superstar status in 1983 with “Eliminator,” which included hit singles like “Legs,” “Sharp Dressed Man” and “Give Me All Your Lovin.’” It sold 10 million copies and stayed on the Billboard charts for 183 weeks.In 1984, Mr. Hill made headlines when he accidentally shot himself in the stomach. As a girlfriend was taking off his boot, a .38 Derringer slipped out, hit the floor and went off.Mr. Hill in a concert in 2015. Walter Bieri/EPA, via ShutterstockThe band’s success continued through the 1980s, and while later albums — in which they returned to their Texan blues roots — didn’t climb the charts, the trio still packed stadiums. And despite their raunchy stylings, they began to draw grudging respect from critics, who often singled out Mr. Hill’s subtly masterful bass playing.“My sound is big, heavy and a bit distorted because it has to overlap the guitar,” he said in a 2000 interview. “Someone once asked me to describe my tone, and I said it was like farting in a trash can. What I meant is it’s raw, but you’ve got to have the tone in there.”ZZ Top was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2004.Mr. Hill married his longtime girlfriend, Charleen McCrory, an actress, in 2002. He also had a daughter. Information on survivors was not immediately available.In 2014 he injured his hip after a fall on his tour bus. He required surgery, and part of the tour had to be canceled. On July 23, he left their latest tour, citing problems with his hip. It is unclear whether that had any connection to his death.Contrary to their image — and the hard partying that their music seemed to encourage — Mr. Hill and his bandmates kept a low, relatively sober profile. And they remained close friends, even after 50 years of near-constant touring.“People ask how we’ve stayed together so long,” he told The Charlotte Observer in 2015. “I say separate tour buses. We got separate tour buses early on, when we probably couldn’t afford them. That way we were always glad to see each other when we got to the next city.”Alex Traub contributed reporting. More

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      Joey Jordison, Slipknot Drummer, Dies at 46

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      Mr. Jordison’s explosive, virtuosic playing and elaborate solos, sometimes performed atop a hydraulic riser, made him a fan favorite.Joey Jordison, the founding drummer for the ghoulishly theatrical metal band Slipknot, who helped write many of the group’s best-known songs and often performed wearing a crown of thorns and a silver mask streaked with black paint, died on Monday. He was 46.His family confirmed the death in a statement, which did not say where he died or specify a cause.In a tribute in New Musical Express, the culture and music magazine, the writer James McMahon called Mr. Jordison one of the greatest heavy metal players of all time.Mr. McMahon recalled that Slipknot’s self-titled debut was greeted in one of two ways when it was released in 1999.“One was a guttural disgust,” he wrote. “This was a band that huffed the fumes of dead crows before stage time, who punched each other in the face onstage.“The other was adoration: If you felt different, strange or unique at the dawn of the millennium, few bands offered you sanctuary like the nine-piece did.”“They were Slipknot, and you were a Maggot,” he added, referring to the nickname that the band’s fans embraced for themselves.Mr. Jordison founded Slipknot in 1995 with the percussionist Shawn Crahan and the bassist Paul Gray. By the time the band issued its debut album, its membership had expanded to nine members.Their first album was certified platinum within a year. “I was a night manager at a Sinclair gas station from ’95 to ’97,” Mr. Jordison told Rolling Stone in 2001. “That’s where most of ‘Slipknot’ was conceived.”The group helped to reinvent hard rock in the early 2000s, incorporating elements of alternative metal, shock rock and hip-hop into its sound and developing a stage show that leaned heavily on theatrics. Its members performed in matching jumpsuits and sinister masks, emphasizing their anonymity by using the numbers zero through eight as stage aliases.In 2005, Slipknot won a Grammy for best metal performance for the song “Before I Forget.” Slipknot had three Top 10 singles on the Billboard 200 during Mr. Jordison’s time with the band, Billboard reported, reaching No. 1 in 2008 with “All Hope Is Gone,” which Mr. Jordison wrote with his bandmates.Mr. Jordison’s explosive, virtuosic playing and elaborate solos, sometimes performed atop a hydraulic riser, made him a fan favorite. He remained with Slipknot until 2013 when, he said in an interview with Metal Hammer magazine, he was unceremoniously dismissed from the band by email in a “hurtful” misunderstanding about his health.In 2016, as he accepted a Metal Hammer Golden Gods award, he said in a speech that he had been booted from Slipknot after he learned that he had transverse myelitis, which is characterized by inflammation of the spinal cord that can cause sensory problems and limb weakness.Although some people recover with minor or no problems, the process can take years.“I got really, really sick,” he said. “I couldn’t play anymore. It was a form of multiple sclerosis, which I don’t wish on my worst enemy.” He said he “got myself back up, and I got myself in the gym,” and beat the disorder with therapy.“It is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life,” he said.Nathan Jordison was born on April 26, 1975, in Des Moines and grew up about 20 miles west, in Waukee, Iowa, Rolling Stone reported. The oldest of three children, he discovered Kiss and Black Sabbath in the early 1980s. He began playing music with a friend, starting with the guitar and switching to drums because the friend could not play them well, according to Rolling Stone.His parents nurtured his interest in music, surprising him with his own drum kit when he was in the fifth grade.Information on survivors was not immediately available.Monte Conner, who signed Slipknot to Roadrunner Records in 1998, said in a statement on Wednesday that Mr. Jordison’s “manic playing style and innovative drumming were truly unique in every way.”Mr. Jordison “was an equally great songwriter who understood what went into writing songs with choruses and hooks that connected with and spoke to an entire generation of heavy metal fans,” Mr. Conner said. “Joey lived and breathed the music and was a total scholar in all things heavy metal. He used that knowledge to take everything he loved about the various genres of metal and combine it all into a melting pot of sounds that had never before been heard.”In his Golden Gods Award speech, Mr. Jordison said he had no ill feelings toward the members of Slipknot over his dismissal from the band. He asked the audience to “give them praise,” and fondly recalled his time “in the basements of Des Moines, Iowa,” with Mr. Crahan and Mr. Gray, who died in 2010.Despite his illness, Mr. Jordison rededicated himself to music, playing guitar for the bands Murderdolls and Sinsaenum, and playing drums for the metal band Vimic.In May 2000, Slipknot featured prominently in a New York Times article about what some at the time were calling new metal or heavy alternative music. Slipknot, then at the vanguard of that movement, had been rejected by 10 labels before landing on Roadrunner Records.“A guy at Sony told us, ‘If this is the future of music, I don’t want to be alive,’” Mr. Jordison recalled. “I just thought, If that’s what he thinks, then we are doing something right.”Isabella Grullón Paz More

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      Testing Britney Spears: Restoring Rights Can Be Rare and Difficult

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      To get out of conservatorship, the pop star will likely have to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, an uneasy melding of legal standards and mental health criteria.Her voice quaking with anger and despair, the pop star Britney Spears has asked repeatedly in court to be freed from the conservatorship that has controlled her money and personal life for 13 years. What’s more, she asked the judge to sever the arrangement without making her undergo a psychological evaluation.It’s a demand that legal experts say is unlikely to be granted. The mental health assessment is usually the pole star in a constellation of evidence that a judge considers in deciding whether to restore independence.Its underlying purpose is to determine whether the conditions that led to the imposition of the conservatorship have stabilized or been resolved.The evaluation process, which uneasily melds mental health criteria with legal standards, illustrates why the exit from strict oversight is difficult and rare. State laws are often ambiguous. And their application can vary from county to county, judge to judge, case to case.Isn’t Ms. Spears’s artistic and financial success proof she is self-sufficient?Yes and no. A judge looks for what, in law, is called “capacity.” The term generally refers to benchmarks in a person’s functional and cognitive ability as well as their vulnerability to harm or coercion.Under California law, which governs Ms. Spears’s case, a person deemed to have capacity can articulate risks and benefits in making decisions about medical care, wills, marriage and contracts (such as hiring a lawyer), and can feed, clothe and shelter themselves.Annette Swain, a Los Angeles psychologist who does neuropsychological assessments, said that because someone doesn’t always show good judgment, it doesn’t mean they lack capacity. “We all can make bad decisions at many points in our lives,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that we should have our rights taken away.”Even so, Ms. Spears’s professional and financial successes do not directly speak to whether she has regained “legal mental capacity,” which she was found to lack in 2008, after a series of public breakdowns, breathlessly captured by the media. At that time, a judge ruled that Ms. Spears, who did not appear in court, was so fragile that a conservatorship was warranted.Judges authorize conservatorships usually for one of three broad categories: a severe psychiatric breakdown; a chronic, worsening condition like dementia; or an intellectual or physical disability that critically impairs function.Markers indicating a person has regained capacity appear to set a low bar. But in practice, the bar can be quite high.“‘Restored to capacity’ before the psychotic break? Or the age the person is now? That expression is fraught with importing value judgment,” said Robert Dinerstein, a disability rights law professor at American University.Records detailing grounds for the petition from Ms. Spears’s father, Jamie Spears, to become his daughter’s conservator are sealed. A few factors suggest the judge at the outset regarded the situation as serious. She appointed conservators to oversee Ms. Spears’s personal life as well as finances. She also ruled that Ms. Spears could not hire her own lawyer, though a lawyer the singer consulted at the time said he thought she was capable of that.Earlier this month, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny said Ms. Spears could retain her own counsel.Does “capacity” differ among states?Yes. Some states, like California, detail basic functional abilities. Others do not. Colorado acknowledges modern advances like “appropriate and reasonably available technological assistance.” Illinois looks for “mental deterioration, physical incapacity, mental illness, developmental disability, gambling, idleness, debauchery, excessive use of intoxicants or drugs.”Sally Hurme of the National Guardianship Association noted: “You could be found to be incapacitated in one state but not in another.”Who performs the psychological assessment?Ideally, a forensic psychiatrist or a psychologist with expertise in neuropsychological assessments. But some states just specify “physician.” Psychiatrists tend to place greater weight on diagnoses; psychologists emphasize tests that measure cognitive abilities. Each reviews medical records and interviews family, friends and others.Assessments can extend over several days. They range widely in depth and duration.Eric Freitag, who conducts neuropsychological assessments in the Bay Area, said he prefers interviewing people at home where they are often more at ease, and where he can evaluate the environment. He asks about financial literacy: bill-paying, health insurance, even counting out change.Assessing safety is key. Dr. Freitag will ask what the person would do if a fire broke out. “I’d call my daughter,” one of his subjects replied.Who chooses the evaluator?Ms. Spears has not been able to choose her evaluators in the past because the conservator has the power to make those decisions. However, if she moves to dissolve the conservatorship, she can select the evaluator, to help build her case. If the conservator, her father, opposes her petition and objects to her selection, he could nominate a candidate to perform an additional assessment. Ms. Spears would likely pick up both tabs as costs of the conservatorship.To avoid a bitter battle of experts and the appearance that an assessor hired by either camp would be inherently biased — plus the strain of two evaluations on Ms. Spears — the judge could try to get both sides to agree to an independent, court-appointed doctor.What impact does a mental health diagnosis have on an evaluation?Many states explicitly say that a diagnosis of a severe mental health disorder is not, on its own, evidence that a person should remain in conservatorship.Stuart Zimring, an attorney in Los Angeles County who specializes in elderlaw and special needs trusts, noted that he once represented a physician with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder who was under a conservatorship. The doctor’s rights were eventually restored after he proved he was attending counseling sessions and taking medication.“It was a joyous day when the conservatorship was terminated,” said Mr. Zimring. “He got to practice medicine again, under supervision.”The association between the diagnosis of a severe mental disorder and a determination of incapacity troubles Dr. Swain, the Los Angeles psychologist.“Whatever they ended up diagnosing Britney Spears with, was it of such severity that she did not understand the decisions that she had to make, that she could not provide adequate self-care?” she asked. “Where do you draw that line? It’s a moving target.”Does the judge have to accept an evaluator’s findings?No, but judges usually do.What standard does a probate judge apply to reach a decision?In most states, when a judge approves a conservatorship, which constrains a person’s autonomy, the evidence has to be “clear and convincing,” a rigorous standard just below the standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”But when a conservatee wants those rights restored, many experts believe the standard should be more lenient.Some states indeed apply a lower standard to end a conservatorship. In California, a judge can do so by finding it is more likely than not (“preponderance of evidence”) that the conservatee has capacity. But some states say that the evidence to earn a ticket out still has to be “clear and convincing.”Most states do not even set a standard.“There’s an underlying assumption that if you can get the process right, everything would be fine and we wouldn’t be depriving people of rights,” said Jennifer Mathis, deputy legal director of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. “Our take is that the process is fundamentally broken and that we shouldn’t be using guardianship in so many cases.”If someone is doing well, isn’t the conservatorship no longer necessary?Yes and no. “Judges are haunted by people they have had in front of them who have been released and disaster happens,” said Victoria Haneman, a trusts and estates law professor at Creighton University. “So they take a conservative approach to freedom.”Describing the Kafkaesque conundrum of conservatorship, Zoe Brennan-Krohn, a disabilities rights lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, said: “If she’s doing great, the system is working and should continue. If she is making choices others disagree with, then she’s unreliable and she needs the system.”Or, as Kristin Booth Glen, a former New York State judge who oversaw such cases and now works to reform the system, put it, “Conservatorship and guardianship are like roach motels: you can check in but you can’t check out.”Can an evaluator recommend a less restrictive approach than a conservatorship?At times. Judge Glen once approved the termination of a guardianship of a young woman originally deemed to have the mental acuity of a 7-year-old. After three years of thoughtful interventions, the woman, since married and raising two children, had become able to participate fully in her life. She relied on a team for “supported decision making,” which Judge Glen called “a less restrictive alternate to the Draconian loss of liberty” of guardianship.A supported decision-making approach has been hailed by the Uniform Law Commission, which drafts model statutes. It has said judges should seek “the least restrictive alternative” to conservatorship.To date, only Washington and Maine have fully adopted the commission’s recommended model. More