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      The Egyptian Rapper Wegz Wants to Take Arabic Hip-Hop Worldwide

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      The 25-year-old has become a streaming star without releasing a full album. He just wrapped his first shows in the United States, and hopes to take his music even further.On the ninth stop of his first world tour, the Egyptian rapper Wegz finished soundcheck at the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C. and relaxed on a worn black leather couch wearing a gray Carhartt fleece jacket and cream New Balance 990 sneakers. In his unflashy attire, passers-by might not have recognized one of the biggest artists in the emerging Arabic music scene calmly awaiting his set time.“That’s what I’m trying to do,” Wegz, 25, said. “Just revert people back to minimalism.”His numbers, however, have been growing. Wegz has been the most-streamed artist on Spotify in Egypt since 2020. In 2022, he was named the most-streamed artist on the platform across the entire Middle East and North Africa, and became the first Egyptian artist to perform at the FIFA World Cup final. He sold out concerts in London and Berlin before arriving in the United States last month as the first Arab artist with a global tour backed by the concert giant Live Nation.“He has been one of the pioneers who have taken Egyptian rap to a different place,” Salam Kmeid, head of content marketing at the regional music platform Anghami, said in a video call from Dubai. (Wegz’s track “El Bakht” is now the most streamed song of all time on the service.) “As an Arabic hip-hop movement, he has taken it to a different scale.”In the middle of his current tour — after the European leg had wrapped up but before his first dates in North America — the war between Israel and Hamas began. Wegz, who has been outspoken in support of Palestinians, has made it clear that he has no intent of soft-pedaling his views as he works to reach a broader global audience. He recently posted a video on Instagram of a pro-Palestinian rally in New York City, and announced that a portion of the proceeds from his tour will go to relief efforts in Gaza.“I will raise awareness about the cause along the way and condemn the dehumanizing and killing of Palestinians,” Wegz said in an interview. “I’m hoping to try to heal from all the horrific images I’ve seen in order to start seeing a better life so we can sing and dance and get back to enjoying what we do.”His rise has coincided with a wave of attention and appreciation for Arabic music. The Palestinian-Algerian rapper Saint Levant’s “Very Few Friends” and the Palestinian-American Lana Lubany’s “The Snake” both went viral on TikTok. On television, shows like Hulu’s “Ramy,” Netflix’s “Mo” and Disney+’s “Moon Knight” heavily feature Arabic music in thoughtful ways.“I think there’s a lot of talented people around the globe,” Wegz said, speaking in English. “I might be very talented as well.”Wegz performing at the FIFA World Cup final in 2022. He was the first Egyptian artist to take the stage at the event.Fareed Kotb/Anadolu Agency, via Getty ImagesSince his debut single “Batalo Fake” (Arabic for “No Longer Fake”) arrived in 2017, with an appearance from his fellow Egyptian M.C. Hesham Raptor, Wegz has been praised for his lyrics, which exude self-confidence while exploring themes around identity and the socioeconomic reality for youth in Egypt’s urban neighborhoods. While hip-hop with trap beats remains his foundation, his tracks also dabble in dancier production and Afropop. His most successful song to date, the uncharacteristically vulnerable “El Bakht” (“The Luck”), features a melodic rap about a brokenhearted lover over a syncopated beat, strings and plucked acoustic guitar.Despite his strong streaming numbers, Wegz still hasn’t released a full album, though he insists he’s working on one that he plans to put out after his tour. He attributes his success as a singles artist to being a lifelong student of his craft — a voracious listener nerding out about global music cultures.“I see myself as someone who’s here to show people things they might not have known about because my passion is the research of things, basically,” he said. “I want to know how you guys started this. I just keep digging and digging.”Born Ahmed Ali and raised in the coastal Egyptian city Alexandria, Wegz grew up in a modest area with his father, a math teacher, and his mother, a nurse and head of a children’s foster home. He has six siblings — some from different marriages — and last year told the Emirati entrepreneur and interviewer Anas Bukhash that he moved frequently as a child but made new friends fast. He added that he had been eager to take risks when his family urged caution (though his mother encouraged him to explore, which expanded his worldview).He developed a love of books at an early age, and wrote short stories and poems. His first exposure to music came from being surrounded by religious anthems, but as a teenager he branched out on his own, seeking secular music.“I tried to go online and go to internet cafes and listen to YouTube,” he recalled in the basement of the Washington venue. Wegz has said he grew up listening to American rappers including Young Thug, Future and the duo Mobb Deep, as well as the Egyptian singers Ahmed Adaweyah, Dalida, and Mohamed Mounir, and the Algerian musician Cheb Mami.His taste is eclectic, he pointed out, noting that he has “had a phase of every type of music in my life at least once.” (His current passion? Yemeni music, which emphasizes narratives: Even if an artist is “just staring at the tree, there’s a song for it where you can actually tell us how you feel about this tree and how you feel about being outside today.”)After some attempts at writing music, Wegz recorded his first song at 17 to have something private he could “share on his phone” with a handful of his friends. Working in a studio for the first time “was amazing,” he said. “It was what I wanted.”Just a few years later, he was getting attention in Egypt with “T.N.T.”, a haunting track produced by fellow Alexandrian rapper L5VAV that blends heavy trap percussion with Egyptian mahraganat, a style that combines low-fi, minimalist synths and edgy, heavy bass. (“I’m a big boss shaking up this great hall/I go heavy on that beat like I’m Rick Ross,” Wegz boasts in the song.) In 2020, “Dorak Gai” (“Your Time Is Coming”) — an aggressive but subtle diss track produced by the powerhouse Egyptian musician Molotof — put Wegz on the map throughout the Middle East and North Africa.Wegz gave credit to L5VAV, a frequent collaborator who appears on their hit “Khod w Hat” (“Take and Give”), for helping him hone his lyrical skills and navigate his early rise. “He helped me take music seriously,” Wegz said, with affection. “It was very motivating being around such an inspiring character.”Now he’s set his sights on reaching listeners beyond the Arabic-speaking world while still emphasizing genuine Arabic sounds and rhythms in ways that push the culture forward. “If the global eye is on you right now,” he said, there’s an opportunity to spotlight “the old things that we always had.”Kmeid, of the streaming service Anghami, said Wegz plays a vital role in Arabic music, and beyond. “He is actually the voice of his generation,” she said. “We do see how the Egyptian scene specifically sees Wegz as that young artist who came out of whatever background or history he had, a very simple person who really believed in his dream.”Wegz has plans to expand his brand beyond music, looking toward designing merchandise and a career in acting. Arabs have a rich history as traders, he explained, and that’s something he’s always kept in mind.“For now, I’m making music because I really love it and I have fun doing it,” he said.“People have fun listening to it, and I’m making money out of it. This is amazing.”“Overall,” he added, “I hope to always use my voice for good as long as I live.” More

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      Young Thug Lyrics Will Be Allowed as Evidence in YSL RICO Trial

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      A judge ruled on Thursday that at least 17 specific sets of lines from the Atlanta rapper and his collaborators could be used by prosecutors in their gang conspiracy case.A judge decided on Thursday that rap lyrics by the Atlanta artist Young Thug and his collaborators will be allowed as evidence in the racketeering trial of YSL, a chart-topping hip-hop label and collective that prosecutors say is also a criminal street gang responsible for violent crimes.Following months of dueling court filings and a day of arguments about the relevance and admissibility of the song lyrics, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville ruled that 17 specific sets of lines from the music of Young Thug and other YSL artists could be used by the state when the trial begins later this month to argue for the existence of the gang, the defendants’ membership in the alleged criminal conspiracy and their mind state regarding specific crimes they are accused of committing.“The lyrics are being used to prove the nature of YSL as a racketeering enterprise — the expectations of YSL as a criminal street gang,” Mike Carlson, a Fulton County executive district attorney, said in court.Defense lawyers in the case had argued that including the lyrics was a constitutional violation of the First Amendment protecting free speech and would unfairly prejudice the jury.Young Thug, born Jeffery Williams, was one of 28 people initially charged in May 2022 with conspiracy to violate Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, or RICO, with some accused of murder, attempted murder, armed robbery and other crimes. Prosecutors say Young Thug, who has denied all of the charges and pleaded not guilty, occupied a leadership position in the gang, known as Young Slime Life or Young Stoner Life, which they say is an offshoot of the national Bloods gang.Jury selection for the trial began in January with 14 defendants, following some plea deals and the severing of other defendants from the case. After more than 10 months, a jury was seated last week; six defendants — including Young Thug — are left, with the remainder of the trial expected to last from three months to a year. Opening statements are scheduled for Nov. 27.The use of rap lyrics in criminal prosecutions has long been a thorny topic, with critics and defense lawyers contending that negative attitudes toward crude and violent lyrics in hip-hop could bias a jury. Lawyers for Young Thug argued in this case that the use of lyrics, videos and social media posts was “racist and discrimination because the jury will be so poisoned and prejudiced by these lyrics/poetry/artistry/speech” that it amounted to “unlawful character assassination.”Brian Steel, a lawyer for Young Thug, said in court on Wednesday that lyrics needed to be specifically tied back to alleged crimes in order to be admissible. “They’re targeting the right to free speech,” Steel said.Doug Weinstein, a lawyer for Deamonte Kendrick, the YSL rapper known as Yak Gotti, said, “There is art here, and the art has got to be separated from real life.”“They’re going to look at these lyrics and instantly say these guys are guilty,” Weinstein said of the jury, adding that rappers were playing characters: “It’s what his audience is looking for and demands in gangster rap.”Prosecutors argued that because they were not charging the rappers for the content of their lyrics — as in a terroristic threat case — but merely using the lyrics as supporting evidence that other crimes had been committed, that they were not protected by the First Amendment and should be admitted.They added, “the Defense would seem to opine that if the Unabomber’s manifesto had been set to music, it could not be used against him.” And in court, Carlson, the prosecutor, raised the frequently cited Johnny Cash lyric, “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die,” arguing that if Cash had actually been accused of killing a man in Washoe County, where Reno is located, “his lyrics would have in all likelihood have been used against him.”Carlson also noted that, in a racketeering and gang conspiracy case like the one facing YSL, “evidence of existence and the nature of the organization is not only relevant, it’s required.”Among the specific lyrics admitted as evidence by the judge — taken from songs like “Eww,” “Just How It Is” and “Mob Ties” — are lines that prosecutors argued would establish the existence of YSL (“this that mob life”); the expectations for its self-professed members (“for slimes you know I’ll kill”); and Young Thug’s role as a leader (“I’m the principal (slime!),” “I’m a boss, I call the shots,” “I was a capo in my hood way before a plaque”).The use of the lyrics at trial, Judge Glanville said, would be conditional, depending on prosecutors laying a foundation for their relevance, with any additional lyrics subject to further analysis before they could be admitted. More

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      Missy Elliott and Willie Nelson Join the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

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      Innovators from genres that have long been underrepresented in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame were celebrated at the event’s 38th annual induction ceremony in Brooklyn.The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducted its 38th annual class of musical heroes on Friday at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, in a night dominated by strong women and giants from genres the institution had long treated as adjacent to rock.The latest inductees in the flagship performer category included Willie Nelson, the 90-year-old country icon; Missy Elliott, the hall’s first female rapper; the singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow; George Michael, the larger-than-life pop singer of Wham! who became one of pop’s first openly gay heroes; the soul vocal act the Spinners; Kate Bush, the eclectic British performer, who did not attend; and the political firebrands Rage Against the Machine, who were represented solely by their guitarist, Tom Morello.In other categories, the hall inducted DJ Kool Herc, who presided over hip-hop’s founding party 50 years ago; the rockabilly guitarist Link Wray; the spitfire R&B singer Chaka Khan; Al Kooper, one of rock’s most well-traveled musicians, who played with Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and many others; Bernie Taupin, Elton John’s longtime songwriting partner; and Don Cornelius, the creator and host of the TV show “Soul Train.”The induction came less than two months after the Rock Hall ejected Jann Wenner, one of its founders, who made disparaging remarks about female and Black performers as part of a New York Times interview. This year’s class demonstrated the organization’s recent commitment to inclusion, but the night didn’t end without a barbed reference to the controversy.“I’m honored to be in the class of 2023, alongside such a group of profoundly ‘articulate’ women and outstanding, ‘articulate’ Black artists,” said Taupin, echoing Wenner’s comments in the interview.Here are some highlights from the show.Stars from beyond rock’s bordersWillie Nelson, the 90-year-old country star, was honored at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.Andy Kropa/Invision, via Associated PressSome of the most commanding presences were artists outside the traditional boundaries of rock ’n’ roll who claimed their places in music history proudly.In an arena-worthy spectacle that began with her own countdown clock, Elliott arrived onstage just after midnight outfitted in gold and surrounded by a phalanx of backup dancers. After an energetic spin through abbreviated versions of songs including “Get Ur Freak On,” “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” and “Work It,” she got emotional at the podium, revealing that this was the first time her mother had seen her perform. (Elliott hadn’t wanted to rap risqué records in front of her mom because “she from the church” she said, to laugher.)She mentioned women innovators who “gave me their shoulders to stand on,” including Pepa, Queen Latifah (who inducted her) and Roxanne Shante, and noted that on hip-hop’s 50th anniversary, she felt the magnitude of the moment: “You just feel like it’s so far to reach when you in the hip-hop world, and to be standing here, it means so much to me.”Earlier, Nelson sat stone-faced, in his signature red bandanna and long braids, as Dave Matthews gave a rambling but affectionate induction speech, praising Nelson’s longevity and history of activism — and his well-known penchant for marijuana.Nelson, who has been a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame for 30 years, cut to the chase in a brief acceptance speech, saying, “I never paid much attention to categories, and I’m not sure fans did either.” At 90, Nelson’s love of performing was still palpable. Seated and playing a weathered acoustic guitar, he nimbly ran through riffs and solos, leading his band on classics like “Whiskey River,” “On the Road Again,” and, joined by Crow, “Crazy,” his song made famous by Patsy Cline.Women celebrated womenSheryl Crow, left, was joined by Olivia Rodrigo for a duet of “If It Makes You Happy.”Andy Kropa/Invision, via Associated PressAs recently as 2016, there were years when the hall welcomed no women. But on Friday, they were a strong presence, and honored one another onstage and in supportive statements.The night kicked off with Crow, who began her career as a backup singer for Michael Jackson before breaking out on her own in the 1990s with hits like “All I Wanna Do.” She was joined onstage by Olivia Rodrigo, the 20-year-old pop star, for a duet of “If It Makes You Happy,” a power ballad about vulnerability. And Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac — in black lace and fingerless gloves — sang with Crow on “Strong Enough.”In a video segment, Nicks called Crow “everything that every girl should want to be.” In her acceptance speech, Crow thanked her parents “for all the years of unconditional love,” adding, “and piano lessons.”Khan sang her hits “Ain’t Nobody” and “Sweet Thing” with H.E.R. and “I’m Every Woman” with the pop singer and songwriter Sia, who entered the stage in a gigantic, rainbow-colored wig that obscured her face. In accepting her honor, Khan spent much of her time praising Jazmine Sullivan, the R&B singer who inducted her.Queen Latifah introduced Elliott by noting all the boundaries she’d broken: “Missy has never been afraid to speak out about the preconceptions, the stereotypes, the string of misogyny and the obstacles that have been placed in the way of women.”A night of notable absencesAfter a speech from Ice-T, left, Tom Morello spoke about his group Rage Against the Machine’s mission as a political band.Andy Kropa/Invision, via Associated PressThe ceremony was defined as much by who wasn’t there as who was.Bush, who shot up the charts last year when a decades-old song, “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God),” was used in the TV show “Stranger Things,” did not attend. Neither did three of the four members of Rage Against the Machine. And some of the most uproarious applause in the arena was for Michael, who died in 2016.Bush, who has not performed in public in nine years, was celebrated for her singularly dark and theatrical vision. The singer St. Vincent, her wide eyes staring straight ahead, performed “Running Up That Hill” in a black puffy lace top. In a statement posted to her website on Friday, Bush thanked the Rock Hall for welcoming her to “the most extraordinary rostrum of overwhelming talent.”Michael was inducted by Andrew Ridgeley, his childhood friend and partner in Wham!, who appeared in a crisp purple three-piece suit. He spoke of Michael’s intense drive for fame as well as his talents in the studio as a writer and producer and added, “His beauty gave balm and succor to the listener.”Though Rage Against the Machine didn’t perform, Morello gave a fiery speech following Ice-T’s induction that endorsed music’s power to spark progress. “Can music change the world?” he said, peppering his remarks with profanities. “The entire [expletive] aim is to change the world,” he proclaimed.Smaller names who made a big impactElton John, left, embracing his longtime songwriting partner, Bernie Taupin, who was inducted into the Rock Hall on Friday.Eduardo Munoz/ReutersSome of the most poignant moments came in celebrations of people who were never household-name stars. These fulfilled one of the Rock Hall’s key missions of contextualizing pop music history and shining lights on figures whose influence was greater than their fame.The Spinners began as a doo-wop group in Michigan in the 1950s, then spent years without fame at Motown before signing to Atlantic Records and making a string of hits that defined Philadelphia soul. DJ Kool Herc, who took the stage with a cane, was honored as a father of hip-hop and gave a tearful speech thanking various people from throughout his life, including artists like James Brown and Harry Belafonte.In a video inducting Link Wray, the rockabilly guitarist whose snarling 1958 instrumental “Rumble” became a controversial hit — it was banned in some cities, out of fear it would incite violence — Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin called Wray “my hero,” saying the song taught him “the drama you could set up with six strings.” He then appeared on the Barclays stage, leading a performance of “Rumble” with a three-piece rockabilly combo.John told of how his 56-year songwriting partnership with Taupin started randomly, when a record company paired them together, and spoke passionately about the underappreciated role of lyricists. Then, at the piano, John gave a stirring performance of “Tiny Dancer,” one of their most enduring collaborations.Taupin summed up his speech with an appeal to accept the all-inclusive borders of pop music.“It means no walls, no inherent snobbery,” he said. “It means we’re all in this together.”Caryn Ganz and Emmanuel Morgan contributed reporting. More

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      Olivia Rodrigo’s Haunting ‘Hunger Games’ Tune, and More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Megan Thee Stallion, Torres, Mount Kimbie and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. 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, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Can’t Catch Me Now’A latticework of acoustic guitar and a building intensity drive “Can’t Catch Me Now,” Olivia Rodrigo’s brooding new song from soundtrack for (deep breath) “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes.” “You think that you got away,” Rodrigo sings through gritted teeth, adding an eerily pastoral feel to another of her signature tales of heartbreak and revenge. “But I’m in the trees, I’m in the breeze.” LINDSAY ZOLADZMegan Thee Stallion, ‘Cobra’Megan Thee Stallion’s raps have constructed a persona that’s carnal, competitive and invincible even on bad days. But on “Cobra” — her first self-released single after leaving her old label — she hits “rock bottom,” admitting, “Yes, I’m very depressed/How can someone so blessed wanna slit they wrist?” The video shows Megan shedding her skin, but the song itself doesn’t declare victory; instead, a rock-guitar outro summons the bitterness of grunge. JON PARELESTorres, ‘I Got the Fear’Torres — the stage name of the singer-songwriter Mackenzie Scott — sullies organic folk sounds with a mechanized, industrial crunch on “I Got the Fear,” the second single from her sixth album, “What an Enormous Room,” due in January. Images of panic attacks and climate catastrophe haunt the song, but love provides a sliver of hope: “The dread doesn’t pay any rent money,” Torres sings, “But as long as it doesn’t get ahold of my honey, think I’ll be all right.” ZOLADZMount Kimbie, ‘Dumb Guitar’The English group Mount Kimbie keeps figuring out different ways to fuse meditation, confession and snarl. Its latest single, “Dumb Guitar,” promising a new album, taps through three chords with ever-evolving loops and waves of synthesizers, keyboards and guitars. As it churns ahead, Dominic Maker and Kai Campos sing lines like “Find a suit to wear out/Take the selfish side out,” “Another day I’ll kill myself” and “Lose it all in silence/Dig a hole in my mind.” The estrangement keeps growing, even as the music ebbs into a calm coda. PARELESWillow, ‘Alone’A shuffle rhythm, usually the sound of jaunty confidence, gets pushed and pulled into nervous, angular permutations in Willow’s “Alone,” a seething and then explosive two-minute distillation of a relationship full of need, betrayal and confusion. “I’m so tired of being a liar, it’s true,” Willow sings, well before the final rupture. PARELESEl Búho & Nita, ‘Cenizas de Agua’Robin Perkins, who records as El Búho (the Owl), is an English electronic producer who has devoted himself to Latin American rhythms, natural sounds and environmental activism. He collaborated with the flamenco-influenced Spanish singer and songwriter Nita (Cristina Manjón), from the group Fuel Fandango, on “Cenizas de Agua” (“Ashes of Water”). The track smolders with suppressed agitation about the fate of the planet. Over a subdued cumbia beat, surrounded by glimmering, time-reversed sounds, Nita’s lyrics contrast cherished memories with dire expectations: “I open my chest,” she sings. “I break the silence.” PARELESMajid Jordan, ‘Slip’Majid Jordan — the Canadian duo of the singer Majid Al-Maskati and the producer Jordan Ullman — makes hypnotically self-effacing R&B: pondering, contemplating, doubting, never raising its voice. In “Slip,” from the new album “Good People,” the beat is muffled and the keyboards are like distant radar blips as Al-Maskati struggles to stave off a temptation, though it’s clear he longs to succumb. PARELESJames Elkington, ‘A Round, a Bout’James Elkington, an English guitarist based in Chicago who has worked with Jeff Tweedy and Eleventh Dream Day, made his new instrumental album, “Me Neither (LP 1)” — the first of two parts — on his own, mostly with folky acoustic guitars but not ruling out electronics. In “A Round, a Bout,” melodies slowly materialize above, and then below, a serene picking pattern, sounding reticent but somehow inevitable. PARELESPeter Evans, ‘The Cell’On “The Cell,” Nick Jozwiak’s bass and Michael Shekwoaga Ode’s drums buckle in together, creating a pulpy beat for the trumpeter Peter Evans to dive beneath and around. Joel Ross finds the open space that’s left and lets his vibraphone ring there, one or two notes at a time. Ross and Evans are both dexterous players who can blow your hair back: The vibraphonist is known for his prolix soloing, and Evans for his extended technique. On “Ars Memoria,” the second album from the quartet that Evans calls Being & Becoming, both simmer down and submit themselves to the group imperative. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOAnthony Pirog featuring Wendy Eisenberg, ‘Night Winds’If you know Anthony Pirog, it’s probably as a fearless guitar slasher with a rack of effects pedals that let him encase himself in a turbulent cocoon. But on his newest album, “The Nepenthe Series, Vol. 1,” Pirog invites others to control the environment. During the pandemic, he asked peers and mentors to record one track each that they considered “ambient,” then he would play his way into the sound. The list of collaborators is impressive: Andy Summers, Nels Cline, John Frusciante. He made “Night Winds” with Wendy Eisenberg, another youngish guitar innovator; it is the album’s most cluttered and inclement-sounding track, and the most absorbing. Eisenberg’s growling, pseudo-industrial backdrop adds a high contrast to Pirog’s twinkly long tones, which pile up gradually until it all washes out into silence. RUSSONELLO More

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      How the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Is Trying to Evolve

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      John Sykes, the chairman of the organization behind the hall, talks about the ouster of Jann Wenner, the need to diversify inductees and surprises at this year’s ceremony.The 38th annual Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony will take place at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Friday, bringing Kate Bush, Willie Nelson, George Michael, Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott, Rage Against the Machine and the Spinners into pop music’s leading pantheon.In addition, Chaka Khan, Al Kooper and Bernie Taupin will receive the musical excellence award. DJ Kool Herc and Link Wray will be inducted as influences and Don Cornelius, the “Soul Train” creator and host who died in 2012, will be honored as a nonperformer.This year’s event comes at a pivotal moment for the Rock Hall, which has been under pressure for years to diversify its ranks, and in particular to admit more women. While the hall is already home to pop heroines like Aretha Franklin, Madonna, Joan Jett and Whitney Houston, overall women are woefully underrepresented, making up fewer than 100 of the nearly 1,000 inductees since 1986.The institution’s public image problems were compounded recently when Jann Wenner, the Rolling Stone magazine co-founder who helped start the Rock Hall, spoke to The New York Times about “The Masters,” his book of interviews with stars like Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen and John Lennon — all of them white men. Justifying the absence of women and people of color, he said that none were “as articulate enough on this intellectual level” and did not qualify as “philosophers of rock.”The response was harsh and immediate, including from the Rock Hall itself: The day after Wenner’s interview was published, the board of the hall’s governing foundation voted to eject him immediately.But the effort to remake the Rock Hall has been underway for several years now, and many give credit to John Sykes, a longtime media executive who took over from Wenner as chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation in 2020. He has pushed the hall to diversify its makeup, particularly on its nominating committee, which largely operates outside of the public eye. This year the hall even opened up its definition of rock ’n’ roll, calling it “a spirit that is inclusive and ever-changing.”Still, change is taking time at an institution that has spent the better part of four decades heavily favoring male artists over females.Four years ago, Evelyn McDonnell, a music critic and journalism professor at Loyola Marymount University, published an essay that included detailed numbers about the hall’s ranks. According to her research, just 7.7 percent of individuals who had been inducted to that point were women.McDonnell has updated her numbers for 2023. Despite a sharp increase in the number of female inductees in recent years — among them Dolly Parton, Tina Turner, Carly Simon and the Go-Go’s — she found that only 8.8 percent of people in the hall are women.“They’ve dug themselves into such a hole,” McDonnell said in an interview, “that you really have to do something structural and significant to turn the ship around.”The Rock Hall prefers to count each act as one inductee, no matter how many members it has; using that methodology, the hall says that 15 percent of inductees are, or include, women.In an interview last week, Sykes addressed the hall’s progress so far, as well as its need for further change. He also spoke about plans for this year’s ceremony, including a surprise appearance by Olivia Rodrigo.Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.When you became chairman of the foundation, what was your mission or goal? Did you see it as an institution in need of change?I saw it as an institution that, like the music, had to continue to evolve. Rock ’n’ roll music, since its inception in the ’50s, has constantly evolved to different sounds, different styles. But one thing it’s had in common is attitude and spirit. My top priority coming in was to remind the music community that rock ’n’ roll was not rock. It was not one sound. It was an amalgam of rhythm and blues, country and gospel created in the ’50s. And it kept evolving.Number two, I needed to reset the board and the nominating committee to reflect those artists that we’re honoring. So we added nine new board members, four women, four African Americans. What I’m trying to do now is to update the general voting body that actually decides who gets in the Hall of Fame, to reflect the artists that are eligible. I want to make sure the voting body is young and diverse enough to really make the most educated decisions about who should be inducted.The biggest complaint has been about a relative lack of women inductees. How have you addressed that specifically?What I’ve tried to do with the nominating committee is shine a light on the fact that these women and people of color have been underrecognized and need to be nominated and then inducted. So if you look at the last three years, we’ve inducted the Go-Go’s, Tina Turner, Carole King, Dolly Parton, Carly Simon, Pat Benatar. Sylvia Robinson, who started the first hip-hop label. Elizabeth Cotten, great blues player. Kate Bush, Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott, Chaka Khan.We have to do better, but we’re making progress.How do you actually make that change? How can you increase the representation of women without putting a thumb on the scale of what’s supposed to be a deliberative process?It starts with the people you put on the nominating committee. We have six more members now on the committee, and we’ve been focusing on putting more women and people of color on the committee, because that’s how it starts.Number two, we just remind them to understand the genesis of rock ’n’ roll. It doesn’t hurt to basically refresh people every year as to where this came from, and the fact that all of these sounds are to be honored.Why was it important for the board to take action against Jann Wenner so quickly?This had nothing to do with Jann Wenner as a person or anything about his history. It would have happened to anyone on that board who said those things. That’s what I made clear to the entire boardroom when we discussed this. Because those things go against the heart and soul of what the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is all about. Rock ’n’ roll doesn’t know color. It doesn’t know gender. And for us to have one of our board members say that, we felt that we couldn’t do our jobs continuing with someone like that as part of our community.When you talk about the evolution of the Rock Hall and how it includes other genres, it raises the question of boundaries. Like, what isn’t it?Rock ’n’ roll is what’s moving youth culture, what a 16-year-old is obsessed with. The only other qualification I would put on it is which of those artists inspired those that followed. In the ceremonies you’ll see Harry Styles, Pink, Olivia Rodrigo, Dave Matthews, Ed Sheeran come up and play. I call those Future Hall of Famers. They’re there because they’re so inspired by those artists that are getting inducted.Olivia Rodrigo is coming in this year. Last year she got up and sang “You’re So Vain” by Carly Simon. She’s going to play with Sheryl Crow this year. It’s this mutual admiration that connects the past with the present.What is your night like at the ceremony? When there’s a question of whether such-and-such will perform, or if there’s one member the others are feuding with, are you the negotiator backstage?I’m one of the negotiators. We have a great team that works on the show, along with Joel Peresman, the president. And if there’s an issue we’ll go to the artists. But at the end of the day, we’re all fans.The drama can be good, right?Rock ’n’ roll is not always nice. So if the members of Blondie all don’t want to stand on the stage together, well, sometimes you’ll hear it come out. We don’t edit anything. They’re free to do whatever they want. And yeah, if there is a little bit of animosity or rebellion, you know, that’s rock ’n’ roll. More

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      15 Great Songs From 1989 (the Year, Not the Album)

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      A playlist celebrating a staggeringly great year in music: Pixies, Janet Jackson, De La Soul, Madonna, Indigo Girls and more.Pixies want you to know that 1989 was really a stunning year in popular music. Gie Knaeps/Getty ImagesDear listeners,Today’s playlist is a homage to the music of 1989. Yes, the year. Why, you ask? Does it have anything to do with … you know … a certain musician rereleasing one of her most popular albums, with a title referencing the year she was born? I have no idea what you’re talking about. I simply wanted to celebrate a staggeringly great year in music.Consider just some of the albums released during this annus mirabilis: “Like a Prayer.” “3 Feet High and Rising.” “Paul’s Boutique.” “Doolittle.” “Rhythm Nation 1814.” “Pretty Hate Machine.” “Disintegration.” “Full Moon Fever.” “The Stone Roses.” “Bleach.” I could go on, but I have a playlist to get to.For brevity’s sake, I limited myself to 15 songs. I left off some artists who have made appearances on previous playlists; I adore “Disintegration,” for example, but I also did an entire Cure playlist a few months ago. Some 1989 hits, too, are so ubiquitous — “Love Shack,” “Free Fallin’,” “Like a Prayer” — that I don’t need to put them on the playlist: You will probably hear them in the next few days as a result of simply going about your life. And some omissions are just personal. As a small child, I was so terrified of Jack Nicholson’s “Joker” in the Tim Burton-directed “Batman” that Prince’s No. 1 hit “Batdance” still kind of creeps me out.That still left plenty of great songs to choose from, though. On this playlist, 1989 reveals itself to be a year when inventive, imaginative sampling had reached the mainstream in the music of Beastie Boys, De La Soul and Public Enemy; a generation of female pop stars like Madonna and Janet Jackson were coming into their power; and the alt-rock wave was beginning to form underground thanks to artists like Pixies and Nirvana.This one will leave you with a new appreciation for a year in which so many great songs were released. Reach out, touch faith, and enjoy the enduring bounty of music from 1989.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Janet Jackson: “Miss You Much”Let’s kick things off with the first single from Janet Jackson’s pop opus “Rhythm Nation 1814,” released in September 1989. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’s unparalleled production really makes this one sound gigantic. (Listen on YouTube)2. De La Soul: “Me Myself and I”Built around a sample of Funkadelic’s “(Not Just) Knee Deep” (among a few other songs), De La Soul’s crossover hit is a playful ode to self-acceptance. (As the group’s Posdnuos put it, “The press was referring to us as the hippies of hip-hop. This song became a way to express that this wasn’t a gimmick, and that we were being ourselves.”) “3 Feet High and Rising,” the debut album featuring this single, ranked No. 1 on the Pazz & Jop Poll, the Village Voice’s (former) annual barometer of critical consensus. (Listen on YouTube)3. The Stone Roses: “She Bangs the Drums”In May 1989, the Manchester pop-rockers the Stone Roses released their beloved, ambitious, and impossible-to-top self-titled debut album. Dreamy, singalong hooks abound, as on this exuberant single. (Listen on YouTube)4. R.E.M.: “Pop Song 89”Though R.E.M.’s sixth album, “Green,” came out in late 1988, I couldn’t resist including this cheekily titled leadoff track, which was — true to its prophecy — released as a single in 1989. (Listen on YouTube)5. Depeche Mode: “Personal Jesus”In a 1990 Spin interview, Martin Gore of Depeche Mode said that the band’s hit from the year before was inspired by Priscilla Presley’s memoir, “Elvis & Me”: “It’s about how Elvis was her man and her mentor and how often that happens in love relationships; how everybody’s heart is like a god in some way,” he said. “We play these godlike parts for people but no one is perfect, and that’s not a very balanced view of someone, is it?” Something tells me he’ll be interested in Sofia Coppola’s upcoming movie “Priscilla,” based on the same source material. (Listen on YouTube)6. Beastie Boys: “Egg Man”Many people still consider “Paul’s Boutique,” Beastie Boys’ ambitious 1989 celebration of the art of sampling, to be the group’s masterpiece. “Egg Man” may be one of the sillier songs on the album — it is, quite literally, about how the mischievous Boys liked to egg people — but the craft that went into its construction is still clear. (Listen on YouTube)7. Love and Rockets: “So Alive”Goth rock was steadily seeping into the mainstream by 1989, as evidenced by the success of the Cure’s ”Disintegration” and this darkly glittering surprise hit from the British alt-rockers Love and Rockets, which hit No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. (Listen on YouTube)8. Madonna: “Cherish”I do not need to remind you that “Like a Prayer” is a great song, so how about this slightly-less-overplayed hit from Madonna’s triumphant fourth album? If there were a Drug Store Music Hall of Fame (and there should be), I would nominate this song. (Listen on YouTube)9. Pixies: “Debaser”Not to get all “High Fidelity,” but “Debaser” — that ecstatically bizarre welcome into the wonderful world of “Doolittle” — has got to be one of the greatest Side 1, Track 1’s ever. (Listen on YouTube)10. Elvis Costello: “Veronica”“Is it all in that pretty little head of yours?” Elvis Costello sings on this bittersweet midcareer hit, inspired by his grandmother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s. “What goes on in that place in the dark?” Co-written with Paul McCartney (which makes sense, given the faint echoes of “Eleanor Rigby”), “Veronica,” which peaked at No. 19 on the Hot 100, became Costello’s highest-charting single in the States. (Listen on YouTube)11. Public Enemy: “Fight the Power”“1989, the number of another summer,” Chuck D begins on this incendiary call to consciousness, written for “Do the Right Thing,” Spike Lee’s film of the same year. “Fight the Power” was a lightning rod upon release, and 34 years later it remains a potent indictment of racism and a richly textured tribute to Black art. (Listen on YouTube)12. Nirvana: “About a Girl”In the summer of 1989, a little-known rock band from Seattle released its debut album, “Bleach,” on the indie label Sub Pop. It would have been hard to predict then that Nirvana’s next studio album would have a seismic effect on the music industry, but the craft of “Bleach” tracks like “About a Girl” certainly displays the nascent songwriting talent of the band’s leader, Kurt Cobain. (Listen on YouTube)13. Galaxie 500: “Strange”Elsewhere beneath the mainstream, the indie trio Galaxie 500 released its great second album, “On Fire,” in October 1989. Though sometimes associated with shoegaze and dream-pop, there’s a sky-scraping boldness and a stirring emotion animating the LP’s fourth track, “Strange.” (Listen on YouTube)14. Kate Bush: “This Woman’s Work”One of the more wrenching songs ever written about childbirth, Kate Bush initially composed “This Woman’s Work” for the 1988 John Hughes movie “She’s Having a Baby.” The following year, she released this slightly different version as the closing track on her album “The Sensual World.” (Don’t sleep on Maxwell’s cover, either.) (Listen on YouTube)15. Indigo Girls: “Closer to Fine”And finally, it’s Barbie’s favorite track on the Indigo Girls’ 1989 self-titled album. Thanks to its inclusion in this summer’s hot-pink blockbuster, “Closer to Fine” is experiencing a well-deserved resurgence, but plenty of soul-searchers have been belting along to it in their cars since ’89. (Listen on YouTube)Don’t know about you, but I am un chien Andalusia,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“15 Great Songs from 1989 (The Year, Not the Album)” track listTrack 1: Janet Jackson, “Miss You Much”Track 2: De La Soul, “Me Myself and I”Track 3: The Stone Roses, “She Bangs the Drums”Track 4: R.E.M., “Pop Song 89”Track 5: Depeche Mode, “Personal Jesus”Track 6: Beastie Boys, “Egg Man”Track 7: Love and Rockets, “So Alive”Track 8: Madonna, “Cherish”Track 9: Pixies, “Debaser”Track 10: Elvis Costello, “Veronica”Track 11: Public Enemy, “Fight the Power”Track 12: Nirvana, “About a Girl”Track 13: Galaxie 500, “Strange”Track 14: Kate Bush, “This Woman’s Work”Track 15: Indigo Girls, “Closer to Fine”Bonus TracksIf you’re looking to read something about that other 1989 thing, well … I wrote about its most provocatively titled “From the Vault” track.I also — busy week — published a profile of the independent-minded Gen Z pop star PinkPantheress, who graciously did not make fun of me for not going on as many roller coasters as she did while I was reporting this story. Bless her for that.Plus, if you’re looking for some new music as an alternative to that big release that shall not be named, let Jon Pareles and Giovanni Russonello provide you with some recommendations, from artists like Mr Eazi, Kevin Sun, Silvana Estrada and more. More

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      Book Review: ‘Tupac Shakur: The Authorized Biography,’ by Staci Robinson

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      Access to the late rapper’s journals gives Staci Robinson’s authorized biography a rare intimacy, without delving deeply into his music.TUPAC SHAKUR: The Authorized Biography, by Staci RobinsonLast month, after 27 years, a suspect was charged in the murder of Tupac Shakur. A firecracker and crusader as sharp as he was brusque, Tupac reached megastar status in 1996, when his fourth studio album, “All Eyez on Me,” went five times platinum. Often hailed as one of the greatest rappers of all time, he was a magnet for controversy during his life, and became a martyr for hip-hop militance after his death.Though anticipated by those familiar with the case, the arrest may provide long-awaited closure that aptly comes in conjunction with Staci Robinson’s poignant “Tupac Shakur.”The Tupac story has been told many times over, but this is the only authorized biography, meaning Robinson was granted nearly unprecedented access to the Shakur family and to Tupac’s many journals and notebooks. Along with scores of interviews, the book is stuffed with photocopies of the rapper’s personal writings. As if tucked between the pages, these hand-scrawled poems, raps and musings provide windows into his mind.For Robinson, this is a personal undertaking. She and Tupac were in the same high school social circle in Northern California, and over time she fielded calls to work on writing projects for him. With Shakur’s aunt she collaborated on “Tupac Remembered,” a 2008 collection of interviews, and was an executive producer on “Dear Mama: The Saga of Afeni and Tupac Shakur,” the 2023 docuseries about the rapper and his mother.Robinson writes in an introduction that she took up the biography at Afeni’s request in 1999, but that the project was put “on hold” a few weeks after she submitted the manuscript. Called on decades later to complete the work, Robinson spends its pages advocating not only for Tupac’s integrity, but for the spirit of Black resistance he embodied.“He wanted to relay stories that needed to be told,” she writes. “It was time to tell the truth about America’s history, about its dark past and especially about the oppression and disparities that were plaguing communities.”“Tupac Shakur” is a touching, empathetic portrait of a friend. Even familiar stories achieve new intimacy at closer range. And small moments help clarify longstanding narratives, coloring in the outlines of this well-known tale of the actor-rapper-activist who died at 25. The book attempts to contextualize the sadness and paranoia beneath the charisma; throughout his life, we learn, “van Gogh would come to be a touchstone for Tupac.”As in “Dear Mama,” Robinson’s biography sees the rapper’s legacy as inextricable from his mother’s, and the book begins not with Tupac, but with Afeni — her exposure to racism in the Jim Crow South, her arrest in New York as a member of the Black Panthers and her standing trial while pregnant.Afeni, we are told, was the bedrock of Tupac’s moral mission. “Ingrained from birth and into his upbringing were both Afeni’s fears and her dreams for her son — the expectation that he would carry on her dedication to the Black community and the will to help others achieve freedom from oppression,” Robinson writes.The book posits that Tupac inherited an antagonistic relationship with the police from the Shakurs — his mother, her first husband, Lumumba, and Tupac’s stepfather, Mutulu. Yet it astutely chronicles his life as a microcosm of the ongoing Black American struggle. Robinson often draws direct parallels between Tupac’s creative life and his run-ins with law enforcement. She notes that he was assaulted by Oakland police officers only weeks after shooting the video for “Trapped,” a diatribe against police brutality; filming on the 1993 movie “Poetic Justice,” in which he starred, was put on pause during the L.A. riots.Black cultural responses to injustice were early fuel for a sensitive, boisterous would-be artist. We hear of him furiously riding his tricycle around the apartment as Gil Scott-Heron plays on the turntable; he “entered a new realm” portraying 11-year-old Travis Younger in “A Raisin in the Sun” at a Harlem fund-raiser for Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign.We get what feel like firsthand peeks into his turbulent rise to stardom, too; Robinson recounts how his mother would send Tupac traveling with care packages that included condoms, vitamins, prayer cloths and phone numbers for bail bondsmen.Though there are frequent references to his prolific output, “Tupac Shakur” doesn’t focus much on music, which undersells him as an artistic genius. The book mostly considers his songs as ways to explain his behavior; it is not overly concerned with how they were made or whether they succeeded aesthetically. Lyrics either underscore a caring nature or are vehicles for public controversy.In this way, the narrative plays into a longstanding Tupac binary — the sensitive revolutionary and the hair-trigger thug — though it insinuates the latter was primarily a construction of a sensationalist press. And while offering a valiant defense, Robinson excuses Tupac of many provocations. It spends very little time on his 1994 sexual-abuse conviction, and absolves the rapper in an earlier incident at an outdoor festival that left a 6-year-old boy dead, even though the gun in question was registered to him. It doesn’t even consider that he might be culpable, accidentally or by proxy.Robinson does not stand at a historian’s distance. Her writing radiates admiration, and at times she even speaks on Tupac’s behalf. Even so, this is far from hagiography. At its best, the book feels like a plea to re-examine the world that made Tupac Shakur so angry.TUPAC SHAKUR: The Authorized Biography | By Staci Robinson | 406 pp. | Crown | $35 More

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      Lauryn Hill Continues to Evolve on Her ‘Miseducation’ Anniversary Tour

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      Celebrating the 25th anniversary of “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” as well as her legacy with the Fugees, the singer and rapper reveled in the power of reinvention.“She is having so much fun onstage” was the surprised thought that ran through my mind as Lauryn Hill kicked off her Ms. Lauryn Hill & Fugees: “Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” 25th Anniversary Tour at the Prudential Center in downtown Newark on Tuesday night.Having grown up in nearby South Orange, N.J., her joy was partly because she was at home, and partly because we were all there to celebrate that a quarter of a century ago, she made history with her 10-times-platinum multigenre album “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.” Its 10 Grammy nominations yielded five wins, which was a record for a female artist, and “Miseducation” became the first hip-hop LP to take home album of the year.Perhaps Hill was also amped by the high stakes of the performance. Earlier this year, her Fugees group mate Pras was found guilty for an illegal foreign influence scheme, leading some to predict that this full reconciliation of Pras, Hill and Wyclef Jean would be their final tour as a trio.Or maybe, I was projecting glee back onto her since this was the first of her concerts at which I’ve felt fully at ease since attending her initial solo tour back in 1999. Every time since — including when I bought tickets to her performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland in 2009, only for her entire European tour abruptly canceled — I’ve been disappointed by her inconsistency.Most of those shows came after Hill settled a suit with four musicians, known collectively as New Ark, who said she hadn’t properly credited them for their contributions to the sound and success of “Miseducation.” With the exception of the taping and release of “MTV Unplugged” in 2001, she had gone into a self-exile. “I had to step away when I realized that for the sake of the machine,” she later told Essence magazine, “I was being way too compromised.”From left: Wyclef Jean, Hill and Pras of the Fugees. The group’s set featured guest stars and beloved songs.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesWhen she returned to the stage a few years later, she had so radically rearranged the songs from the beloved “Miseducation,” they were often unrecognizable.The revisions stung fans hard because the music had spoken so directly to so many — including me. “Miseducation” was released on my 23rd birthday on Aug. 25, 1998, and because of that simple calendar fact, I thought the album was all mine. Back then, I was in transition — between a relationship with my college boyfriend and the young man who would become my life partner. I was obsessed with her B-side cuts “When It Hurts So Bad” and “I Used to Love Him” with Mary J. Blige, since these breakup songs captured my range of emotions: “What you need ironically/Will turn out what you want to be” became my mantra as I moved from heartache to hopefulness.The album was so tied up with a younger version of myself that I understood it only through nostalgia, failing to appreciate who Hill was becoming in the present. A more mature way of experiencing her live was to let go of my expectations and recognize that she was innovating, recreating and disproving past accusations of unoriginality. “There’s no way I could continue to play the same songs over and over as long as I’ve been performing them without some variation and exploration,” she wrote in 2018. “I’m not a robot. If I’d had additional music out, perhaps I would have kept them as they were.”In Newark this week, as Hill appeared onstage in a bright red ruffled corseted gilet, bedazzled sunglasses and a jeweled kufi, she entranced the crowd, reminding us that she was one of our generation’s definitive preachers and now prodigal daughters. She opened each song in its familiar arrangement, and then quickly switched up its tempo, genre or melody.The soulful “Final Hour” was remixed with the beat of “Money, Power & Respect,” the Lox’s collaboration with DMX and Lil’ Kim; the marching band from Hill’s alma mater Columbia High School joined her live band onstage for “Doo Wop (That Thing)”; Latin jazz beats were interspersed throughout the tender “To Zion,” a song for her oldest son that was not merely a tribute, but a complete triumph.The music was set to a backdrop of images that featured quotes from Frantz Fanon and Marcus Garvey, Hill’s personal home videos, and a montage of Black artists and activists including Josephine Baker and Angela Davis. My favorites showed Hill over time, which seemed in direct conversation with the beautiful black-and-white photographs of the musician looking into a mirror from the liner notes of “Miseducation” itself.For those unaccustomed to Hill’s latest style, her musical digressions often sound dissonant. In a way, they are right. The remixes can be disinviting, and many fans near me in the crowd found it hard to keep up with her changes. Whereas Taylor Swift’s note-for-note versions of her old albums are celebrated, I am increasingly intrigued by Hill’s appetite for revolutionizing her older material.Hearing these songs rearranged not only forced me to pay closer attention to her powerfully packed lyrics and melodic rhyme flow, but also reactivated my sense of curiosity, anticipation and admiration for her.Hill is known for rearranging the songs from “Miseducation” onstage.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesIn a genre like hip-hop, where remixing, sampling and turning older music into the new is a core artistic principle and central practice, Hill’s experimentation is not that surprising. But as a female rapper, she has often been held to a double standard and has had to play by different rules. Onstage, she isn’t merely entertaining us; she’s showing us what it means to have to reclaim this album as fully hers, while pushing her artistry into the future.It is a big ask from an artist with only one full album. And it’s a meaningful challenge to the very notion of the “great” album, which has a timelessness that is as dependent on its spirit of innovation and production value as well as our personal connections to it — how much we loved it, and the vision of ourselves that it projected back onto us when we heard it for the first time. As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, is it possible to both champion Hill’s groundbreaking contributions to the genre while also allowing the album itself to grow up as much as we have?An answer of sorts came during another part of the show. When Pras and Wyclef finally joined Hill for the second set, their reunion relied on our familiarity with the Fugees’ catalog — “Vocab,” “Zealots,” “The Mask” — and at one point, there were more than eight people onstage with mics, including guests such as John Forte, Outsidaz and Remy Ma, for a roaring rendition of “Cowboys.” It was a joy to see the three intact and their playful competitiveness and musical chemistry restored. While being flanked by so many of her male peers, Hill still commanded the space as she always did, proving her mettle as one of our greatest M.C.s.But as the Fugees set wore on, I began to long for the “Miseducation” one. Suddenly, I wanted to linger in the unpredictability of Hill’s arrangements, her constant improvising, her seamless movement between singing and rapping.By finally accepting Hill’s ability to change, I realized that I had misread so much before. Here was an artist — once again, and on tour — rewriting the rules of hip-hop, and American popular music at large. She was not just teaching us how to hear “Miseducation” differently, but showing us what it looks like for a musician to truly evolve and redefine what we call a classic as something brand-new. More