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    Female Rappers in the Spotlight Make Room for Motherhood

    As their influence and success continue to grow, artists including Sexyy Red and Cardi B are destigmatizing motherhood for hip-hop performers.When the rapper Sexyy Red realized she was pregnant with her second child this summer, just after her singles “Pound Town” and “SkeeYee” broke through on the charts and dominated TikTok, her excitement was met with hesitancy by some members of her team.She said some people in her camp were supportive. Others advised her to have an abortion, counsel she rejected. “I’m not never going to let nobody tell me what to do with my body,” she said during a video call in December.Sexyy, born Janae Wherry, publicly announced her pregnancy via an Instagram post on the heels of the release of “Rich Baby Daddy,” a hit collaboration with Drake and SZA. Now in her final trimester, she often performs in belly-hugging unitards as she twerks and raps her hits, taking her 3-year-old son, Chuckyy, on the road with help from her mother.Women in music, and particularly in the male-dominated battle zone of hip-hop, have long been advised to terminate pregnancies, or at least to recede from the spotlight until their babies were delivered, told that showcasing pregnancy and motherhood would make them seem weak, unappealing or unfocused on their highly competitive careers. Male-led rap crews and record labels have traditionally put their might behind one female M.C. at a time, creating pressure for women to not cede their moment for anything, including starting a family.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    YFN Lucci Pleads Guilty to Gang Charge Ahead of Trial

    The rapper was part of an indictment brought by the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., who is pursuing a separate racketeering case against Young Thug and YSL.Rayshawn Bennett, a rapper known as YFN Lucci, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to one gang-related charge in Atlanta, his lawyers said, as part of a deal with prosecutors in a case interconnected with the racketeering charges against the Atlanta rap crew YSL.Mr. Bennett was part of a wide-ranging 2021 indictment, brought by District Attorney Fani T. Willis of Fulton County, that accused him of murder, aggravated assault and violating the state’s criminal racketeering law. In 2022, Ms. Willis used the same racketeering law to charge Young Thug, the popular rapper, YSL leader and rival to Mr. Bennett.The trial against Young Thug and five of his associates is proceeding in the same courthouse as the trial against Mr. Bennett, who reached the plea deal during jury selection.Like in the YSL prosecution, the indictment against those accused of being part of YFN put forward social media posts and song lyrics as evidence of criminal activity.As part of the plea deal with Mr. Bennett, prosecutors dismissed 12 out of the 13 charges against him, including the racketeering charge. He pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act, said one of his lawyers, Drew Findling.Mr. Bennett agreed to a 20-year sentence, including 10 years in custody and the rest on probation. But he could be considered for release in less than four months, Mr. Findling said, when factoring in parole eligibility rules and the time he has served in jail since his arrest in 2021. (If he had been convicted on the murder charge, which involved what prosecutors described as a gang-related shootout in 2020, Mr. Bennett could have faced life in prison.)“He’s ready to put this behind him and get back to his four children, to his family and to his career,” Mr. Findling said.The two other defendants who were scheduled to stand trial alongside Mr. Bennett also took plea deals, the lawyer said.A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the plea deal.Mr. Bennett is from Atlanta and gained prominence with his 2016 song “Key to the Streets,” which featured Quavo and Takeoff from the chart-topping rap group Migos. He has been a side character in the sprawling Young Thug prosecution, which claims that other YSL members attempted to kill Mr. Bennett by stabbing him at the Fulton County Jail.Speaking to reporters outside the Atlanta courthouse on Tuesday, Mr. Findling denied that his client had any plans to cooperate with the YSL prosecution, saying, “He wants nothing to do with that case.” More

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    21 Savage Returns to No. 1 With ‘American Dream’

    Kali Uchis’s “Orquídeas” opens at No. 2, giving the Colombian American songwriter her highest chart position yet on the Billboard 200.21 Savage, the London-born mainstay of Atlanta rap, has the first new No. 1 album of 2024 with “American Dream,” following holdovers by Taylor Swift and Morgan Wallen.“American Dream” is 21 Savage’s fourth chart-topper overall, and the first time he has led the Billboard 200 as a solo artist since “I Am > I Was” five years ago; since then, he has gone to No. 1 twice via collaborative projects with Drake (“Her Loss,” 2022) and the producer Metro Boomin (“Savage Mode II,” 2020).The album is 21 Savage’s latest since the apparent resolution of his long-running problems with his immigration status. The week before the Grammy Awards in 2019, where he had been set to perform, the 31-year-old rapper, whose real name is Shéyaa Bin Abraham-Joseph, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for being in the United States illegally. After delays in his case, 21 Savage said in October that he had become a permanent U.S. resident.In its debut week, “American Dream,” which was announced just a few days before its release on Jan. 12 — and features guest appearances by Doja Cat, Travis Scott, Lil Durk, Young Thug and others, as well as spoken segments by the rapper’s mother, Heather Carmillia Joseph — had the equivalent of 133,000 sales in the United States. Most of that was from streaming, with nearly 170 million clicks, according to the tracking service Luminate. The 15-track LP had 4,000 sales as a complete package.Ariana Grande’s first solo song in more than three years, “Yes, And?,” opens at No. 1 on the Hot 100, her eighth track to top Billboard’s flagship pop singles chart. “Eternal Sunshine,” her next studio album, is due March 8.Also this week, “Orquídeas,” the fourth studio album by the singer Kali Uchis, which is performed primarily in Spanish, opens in second place, Uchis’s highest chart position ever. The album, whose title translates as “Orchids,” and features guest spots by Latin stars like Peso Pluma, Karol G and Rauw Alejandro, had the equivalent of 69,000 sales, including 51 million streams and 31,000 copies sold as a complete package.Wallen’s nearly year-old “One Thing at a Time,” which logged a 17th time at No. 1 last week, falls to third place this week, while Drake’s “For All the Dogs” is No. 4 and Swift’s “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” is No. 5. More

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    Lil Nas X, Ariana Grande and 21 Savage Kick Off 2024

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:Lil Nas X’s comeback single “J Christ,” a continuation of his trollcore pop narrative, with its ostentatious video and punchline-heavy media rolloutThe new 21 Savage album “American Dream,” the first blockbuster hip-hop album of the year, with many high-profile features and some reckoning with the immigration case that nearly derailed his careerThe sonic shift in Ariana Grande’s new song, “Yes, And?,” her first solo single in three yearsNew tracks from Bizarrap featuring Young Miko, and Jastin MartinSnack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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    Is ‘J Christ’ Lil Nas X’s Final Troll?

    The rapper and singer has always been a master of the internet, not of music. But with his latest release, “J Christ,” he’s lost his grip on virality, too.More than any working pop star, Lil Nas X understands how music is consumed in the contemporary landscape: in pieces, in memes, in reaction videos, in snippets of audio used to soundtrack get-ready-with-me clips on social media. In intimations and nudges. In discourse that may or may not have much to do with said music at all.And so for Lil Nas X, a song is a pretense. He is less a rapper or a singer than a meme maker with a seven-figure budget. Music is the fourth or fifth most important part of his presentation, the foundation for missives on X (formerly Twitter), TikToks and Instagram posts that matter as much, and probably more.Or, as the hook of his new single “J Christ” muses: “Is he ’bout to give ’em something viral?”That would be the goal, of course, but the best viral content bubbles up unpolished from the ether, slightly awkward and just novel enough to astound. That’s what Lil Nas X made his name with. It is the story of “Old Town Road,” his breakout song, which went from TikTok curiosity to bar mitzvah anthem in just a few months in early 2019.The vexatious “J Christ” tries to reverse engineer that kind of success. It is planned virality, mood-boarded and line-itemed. First, it is a concept — Lil Nas X is returning — and only then, a visual narrative and a song to animate it. The result is stylish but not artistic, glossy but without shine, hyperstylized but lazy. Being the most clever pop star is much easier than being the most clever online comedian, and his tropes are wearing thin.In the video, which vividly and sometimes beautifully riffs on cheap shock, he is a Christ-ish figure — another comeback king! — dancing his way through various fields of evil in a lumpy sequel to a beloved original: “Montero (Call Me by Your Name),” Lil Nas X’s comically baroque single and video from 2021. In that playful and bizarre clip, he theatrically tussles with the temptations of new fame, culminating in giving a lap dance to Satan. It was refreshing, winking bacchanal — a whole idea.“J Christ,” to the extent that it functions at all, works in bits. The video is merely a string of micro-shock vignettes, many of them a callback to his greatest hits (of two years ago): the Satan Shoes containing a drop of blood, the stripper pole to hell from the “Montero” video. He remakes the “Jesus crossing up Satan on a basketball court” meme. He ushers a flock of animals to a big boat. (That was Noah, but whatever.) In a promotional clip, he pounds his staff onto the ground and parts a huge body of water. (Moses, but who’s counting.)The video opens, for unclear reasons, with celebrity impersonators of Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Ed Sheeran, Kanye West and more lined up at heaven’s gate. This conceit, too, is recycled — either from the nearest Madame Tussauds, or from West’s 2016 “Famous” video, a far more titillating and genuine transgression.Each of these micro jokes functions like a jump scare — just unexpected enough to elicit a tiny gasp. But underneath, there’s little scaffolding. They’re punchlines designed to be clipped and denatured of meaning. The lyrics are empty, too — only the grating, nasal, syllable-extending assonance rhyming “vi-i-i-ral”/“hi-i-i-gh” has any stickiness. (It should be said that the video is a small triumph of wardrobe: striped sweat socks under cowboy boots paired with a sheer wrap, a pink cheerleader outfit, a bejeweled headpiece that bisects the face vertically. The haute-camp styling is the most conceptually rigorous thing here.)Record labels are increasingly in the content business, and by that metric, Lil Nas X is the platonic ideal of a star. Imagine the meetings involving artists who are less comfortable with the camera, less self-aware, less fluent with algorithmic distribution. Imagine musicians who simply wish to play music.Lil Nas X cannot. “yall mind if i enter my christian era?” he asked on Instagram a few weeks ago, in a caption to a video in which he sang a folk-gospel song more elegant than anything he’s thus far released.On TikTok, he wolfed down communion crackers. He posted a mock acceptance letter from Liberty University, the evangelical institution, signed by Jerry Falwell (who died in 2007).Lil Nas X even weaponized, meekly, the media outlets that would have given him breathless coverage regardless. The @PopCrave X account shared staged red carpet footage of the celebrity doppelgängers from his video shouting his praises as if it were real. Official Spotify accounts posted “LNX is back with more mid-music 🤷‍♂️” — he’s trolling the critics in advance.Call it what you want: a statement of fact, a statement of defiance, a statement of indifference. But really it’s just a cheap LOL, and a place for Lil Nas X defenders to aggregate.But all this attention farming must be tiring. During his last rollout, Lil Nas X spent loads of time on Twitter dunking on adversaries. Now, he’s doing much less of that, while sprinkling in the exasperation of the misunderstood: “since i’m a troll y’all discount my art as just ‘pissing ppl off,’” he wrote before “J Christ” was released.In a self-filmed four-minute video posted across all his social media on Monday, he paced and spoke seemingly extemporaneously about some of the backlash he’s received for his playful manipulation of religious imagery and themes. The Grammy-winning Christian rapper Lecrae said on X, “if God can transform King Neb, murders, slave masters, sex workers, etc. he can add another Blasphemer to the list.” And the antic Twitch streamer Kai Cenat fumed, “God gonna handle you, bro.”These are deep-sigh, predictable responses to deep-sigh, predictable jokes. But in his response video, it would seem Lil Nas X is taking critiques like these seriously. At one point, he apologizes for some of his specific bits, even while confessing that he doesn’t fully understand the imagery he was referencing.That said, the most powerful aspect of the clip is the anticipation that he might break character at any moment. Is this simply part of the bit, a setup for the next meme? Is he going to end up sitting down with Cenat for a debate about God, or do a saint-sinner duet with Lecrae?As he’s walking, Lil Nas X’s selfie camera returns again and again to a shelf with a pair of goofy yellow boots, a collaboration between Crocs and the unbearable meme brand MSCHF (his partner on last cycle’s Satan Shoes). Even in what’s meant to be his most earnest moment, the jester is just around the corner — it’s almost impossible to convey gravity when your sincerest form of expression is mockery. More

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    Ariana Grande’s House-Groove Kiss-Off, and 9 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Lil Nas X, Waxahatchee, serpentwithfeet and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes), and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Ariana Grande, ‘Yes, And?’Ariana Grande returns with a thumping, crimson-lipped kiss-off on “Yes, And?,” a feather-light confection safely — but still enjoyably — in her comfort zone. Grande has been filming the movie version of the smash musical “Wicked” since her 2020 album “Positions,” so this comeback single lets her have some fun with the house-music revival (à la Beyoncé’s “Break My Soul”) that has become popular in her absence. The most obvious sonic reference that Grande and her fellow writers and producers Max Martin and Ilya Salmanzadeh are conjuring here is Madonna’s “Vogue,” and though the song does its best to seem like a communal rallying cry (“Boy come on, put your lipstick on/Come on and walk this way through the fire”), its most pointed lyrics are about the particular and seemingly vexing experience of being Ariana Grande. “Don’t comment on my body, do not reply,” she intones on a suddenly serious spoken-word bridge. “Your business is yours and mine is mine.” It’s a relief when the beat returns and she once again ascends, blithely resuming her dance on air. LINDSAY ZOLADZLil Nas X, ‘J Christ’Lil Nas X has returned using what’s worked for him before: an evangelical-baiting song title and a video that twists biblical imagery, with the rapper and singer being crucified and then reappearing as Noah. (He also goes one-on-one with the devil on a basketball court and shimmies as a cheerleader with a skirt and pompoms.) The underlying song is solid but secondary: a piano lick, a percussive melody and a blunt attempt at notoriety. The hook is “Bitch, I’m bad like J. Christ,” but another line is the point: “Is he ’bout to give ’em something viral?” Let the algorithms decide. JON PARELESJeymes Samuel, D’Angelo and Jay-Z, ‘I Want You Forever’Jeymes Samuel, Jay-Z and the elusive D’Angelo are in no particular hurry on “I Want You Forever,” a loose, sprawling nine-and-a-half-minute reverie from the soundtrack of Samuel’s new film “The Book of Clarence.” “All I want to say is that I love you so much, I don’t want to be without you,” D’Angelo croons repeatedly, until his language seems to liquefy. Under such hypnosis, even Jay sounds uncharacteristically chill, but his laid-back flow can’t hide the heartbreak in his words: “Slept on the couch, ’cause the bed ain’t a bed without you.” ZOLADZserpentwithfeet, ‘Safe Word’Trust is an aphrodisiac in “Safe Word.” Josiah Wise, who records as serpentwithfeet, promises that “The safe word is me” and “I’m your shelter,” while adding that he’s “insatiable,” in “Safe Word.” Plucked guitar notes, sparse percussion and whistling accompany the high croon of his voice, which insists on intimacy even when it gets some Auto-Tuned flourishes. PARELESWaxahatchee featuring MJ Lenderman, ‘Right Back to It’Katie Crutchfield, Waxahatchee’s singer and songwriter, marvels at long-term love by admitting how much she tests it. “I let my mind run wild/Don’t know why I do it,” she sings, “But you just settle in like a song with no end.” The track is easygoing and countryish, complete with homey banjo picking, and MJ Lenderman provides supportive harmony vocals and electric guitar. But the scratchy tension in Crutchfield’s voice betrays her continuing self-doubts. PARELESFaye Webster featuring Lil Yachty, ‘Lego Ring’The indie-folk crooner Faye Webster and the iconoclastic rapper Lil Yachty have been friends since middle school, and their easy chemistry makes “Lego Ring,” a single from Webster’s upcoming album “Underdressed at the Symphony,” sound more cohesive than expected. Amid crunchy guitars and percussive hits of piano, Yachty’s Auto-Tuned warbles provide textured backing vocals for Webster, singing an ode to one of the cheaper pieces of jewelry ever coveted in a pop song. “Me and you, the dream team,” Yachty sings, playfully, when he takes the lead, “always together like string beans.” ZOLADZSheryl Crow, ‘Evolution’Sheryl Crow ponders artificial intelligence in “Evolution.” She hears her music deep-faked on the radio; she wonders, “Where are we headed in this paradise?/We are passengers and there’s no one at the wheel.” The song is a broad-shouldered rock anthem, bolstered by strings and a squealing lead-guitar solo. It posits the superiority of human feelings and hopes for a “grand solution,” but the best odds Crow can offer are “maybe.” PARELESJhené Aiko, ‘Sun/Son’Can love be renewable energy? “You charge me up,” Jhené Aiko coos in “Sun/Son,” as she connects the warmth of an embrace to “solar power.” She’s surrounded with cascading vocal harmonies over a purring, melodic bass line, luxuriating in the romance; an alternate piano-centered version turns the same sentiments into a hymn. PARELESBrhyM, ‘Deep Blue’Bruce Hornsby collaborated with the contemporary chamber group yMusic on the coming album “Deep Sea Vents,” billing their merger as BrhyM. “Deep Blue” touches on Minimalism, psychedelia and traditional jazz, with a steady backbeat, a polytonal piano lick, electric sitar and back-talk from trumpet, clarinet and violin. It’s casually philosophical. “I said to the universe, ‘Sir, I exist,’” Hornsby sings. “The universe replied, “The fact does not create in me a sense of obligation.’” PARELESBen Frost, ‘The River of Light and Radiation’The composer Ben Frost chops up brutally distorted electric guitars and programmed kick drums to propel “The River of Light and Radiation,” which starts as ominous pummeling and grows ever more dire, adding jolt after jolt. PARELES More

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    What Songs Would ‘Saltburn’ Characters Have Spun in 2007?

    The soundtrack to Emerald Fennell’s movie has been a talker. Hear tracks by M.I.A., Girl Talk, Nelly Furtado and others that would have been a good fit.“Saltburn” has catapulted the 2001 song “Murder on the Dancefloor” back to the charts, but there’s a lot more to discuss about the film’s soundtrack.Chiabella James/Amazon StudiosDear listeners,Over the weekend, I finally watched “Saltburn,” the provocative, polarizing and occasionally downright icky coming-of-age thriller that no one can stop talking about right now.The movie, written and directed by the “Promising Young Woman” filmmaker Emerald Fennell and starring the current It Boys Barry Keoghan and Jacob Elordi, charts the fates of two unlikely friends who meet at Oxford and later spend a debauched summer at the titular estate where the (much) wealthier of the two boys lives with his aristocratic family.“Saltburn” plays out like a diabolically dark, millennial take on “Brideshead Revisited.” And the operative word there is millennial, since the 38-year-old Fennell delights in planting innumerable period-specific details — including an evocative soundtrack — that remind viewers that these boys belong to the Class of 2006.The soundtrack has elicited such potent nostalgia that it has catapulted Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s 2001 neo-disco hit, “Murder on the Dancefloor,” used in a crucial scene, back into the Top 10 on the British charts. This week, the song cracked the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time.Fennell has confirmed that most of the movie takes place in summer 2007, and ever since, armchair script supervisors on social media have made a sport out of pointing out the film’s most chronologically questionable cultural references. (For example: Some of the characters are watching a DVD of “Superbad,” which was still only out in theaters that summer.)The most egregious music cue is a karaoke scene featuring Flo Rida’s party anthem “Low,” which was released in October 2007 and didn’t become a global smash until early 2008. Eagle-eared listeners have also pointed out that an Arcade Fire song released in mid-2007 plays in a pub scene meant to take place near the beginning of the 2006 school year, and that MGMT’s “Time to Pretend,” the song that’s the soundtrack to a languid summer 2007 montage, appeared on an album that didn’t come out until that fall. (The movie’s music supervisor has responded, “It’s as close as possible, really, just to put you back in that space. If it had been a couple of years later, that would have been an absolute no.”)Still, ever since watching the movie, I’ve become obsessed with these quibbles and consumed with one question: What would the characters in “Saltburn” have actually been listening to in summer 2007? Today’s playlist is my attempt to answer that.I am not a professional music supervisor, nor am I member of the king’s nobility — I’m not even British. But I do have credentials that make me exceptionally qualified to create this particular playlist: In the summer of 2007, I was a rising junior in college with a nearly full 160GB iPod.I consulted a number of primary sources, including a playlist on said iPod that I actually created at the end of the year “Saltburn” takes place (titled, with undergraduate melodrama and for reasons I now truly do not recall, “2007 Was a Bad Year”). It features a few artists whose music does appear in “Saltburn” (MGMT, Bloc Party) and quite a few whose songs do not, but whose sounds I think would have potently conjured the era (M.I.A., Hot Chip, that auteur of the aughts sound Timbaland). It is probably not as quintessentially British as the film’s actual soundtrack, but alas, I did not go to uni, I went to “college.”As you can probably already tell, I had way too much fun putting this playlist together. You may call this sound “indie sleaze,” but I just call it my early 20s.Listen along on Spotify while you read.1. MGMT: “Time to Pretend”Hilariously, or perhaps just fittingly, the first song on my actual 2007 iPod playlist is a song that was prominently featured in “Saltburn.” Few albums were debated as hotly around my college radio station office that year as MGMT’s glam-pop debut, “Oracular Spectacular.” While it technically wasn’t released until Oct. 2, this song is such a perfect, montage-ready encapsulation of that era’s sound that I will permit Fennell a little poetic license with this one. (Listen on YouTube)2. Spoon: “Don’t You Evah”Another one from my 2007 iPod playlist, from another album I played a lot that summer: Spoon’s effortlessly tuneful sixth album, “Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.” I can picture the elegantly wasted denizens of Saltburn vibing to this bass line. (Listen on YouTube)3. Johnny Boy: “You Are the Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve”Any 2007 playlist worth its salt had to have at least one semi-obscure, critically adored indie-pop track downloaded from a music blog. This 2006 should-have-been-smash from the short-lived British duo Johnny Boy checks that box, with flair. (Listen on YouTube)4. M.I.A.: “Boyz”It was also the summer of “Kala,” M.I.A.’s bold, blown-out sophomore album, which I think still stands as her greatest achievement. Though “Kala” was not released until early August, this exuberant single came out in June, setting the season’s tone. (Listen on YouTube)5. Hot Chip: “Boy From School”I actually cannot believe this song was not used in “Saltburn”: The title says it all! Though released in 2006, the British electro-pop group Hot Chip’s moody dance floor anthem would still have been getting plenty of play the following summer, especially in Britain, where it peaked at No. 40 on the singles chart. (Listen on YouTube)6. Justin Timberlake featuring Timbaland: “SexyBack”Another 2006 banger that would have still been ubiquitous the following summer, the Timbaland-produced “SexyBack” was released at the height of Justin Timberlake’s commercial popularity and his poptimist-approved hipster cred. (Listen on YouTube)7. Chamillionaire featuring Krayzie Bone: “Ridin’”This is the song I would have put in place of “Low”: another instantly recognizable, era-defining hip-hop track, but one that would have by then been out for long enough that an out-of-touch bloke could have credibly mangled it at karaoke. (Listen on YouTube)8. Nelly Furtado: “Maneater”It was simply not a party in the summer of 2007 until someone put on “Maneater,” the sublime and slightly hipper alternative to Furtado’s other 2006 single about a lascivious woman. (Listen on YouTube)9. Bloc Party: “Banquet”Of course there was song from the post-punk revivalists Bloc Party’s 2005 debut, “Silent Alarm,” in “Saltburn”; I just would have chose this more propulsive and admittedly on-the-nose selection instead of “This Modern Love.” (Listen on YouTube)10. Girl Talk: “Bounce That”And finally, nothing said “college party in the mid-to-late-aughts” like a cut from Girl Talk’s 2006 hyperactive mash-up opus, “Night Ripper” — or maybe just someone stealing the aux cord and playing the entire album from start to finish. (Listen on YouTube)Take ’em to the chorus,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“2007: The Summer of ‘Saltburn’” track listTrack 1: MGMT, “Time to Pretend”Track 2: Spoon, “Don’t You Evah”Track 3: Johnny Boy, “You Are the Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve”Track 4: M.I.A., “Boyz”Track 5: Hot Chip, “Boy From School”Track 6: Justin Timberlake featuring Timbaland, “SexyBack”Track 7: Chamillionaire featuring Krayzie Bone, “Ridin’”Track 8: Nelly Furtado, “Maneater”Track 9: Bloc Party, “Banquet”Track 10: Girl Talk, “Bounce That”Bonus TracksAfter I featured the British musician and poet Labi Siffre in Friday’s newsletter, a Times editor sent me a link to Siffre’s exquisitely funky 1975 song “I Got The …” — which is prominently sampled in Eminem’s star-making 1999 single, “My Name Is.” I admit that this kind of blew my mind. It also led me to two fascinating facts I’d like to share with you.First, that Beck and his producers the Dust Brothers were planning to sample “I Got The …” on a single from the 1999 album “Midnite Vultures,” but Eminem beat him to it. (What could have been!) Also, even more impressively, Siffre refused to clear the Eminem sample for the producer Dr. Dre until they removed all lyrics that Siffre had deemed homophobic. “Diss the bigots not their victims,” Siffre said years later in an interview. “I denied sample rights till that lazy writing was removed.” If only every Eminem song had undergone the Labi Siffre test! More

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    T.I. and Tiny Are Accused of Rape in Lawsuit

    The Atlanta rapper and his wife, who have denied the allegations, are accused of drugging and assaulting a military veteran around 2005 in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles on Tuesday.The Atlanta rapper T.I., born Clifford Harris, was sued on Tuesday, along with his wife, Tameka Harris, known as Tiny, by a woman who accused the couple of drugging and raping her after she met them at a Los Angeles nightclub around 2005.In the lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court under California’s Sexual Abuse and Cover-Up Accountability Act, which extended the statute of limitations for sexual abuse claims, the woman is identified only as Jane Doe, a veteran of the U.S. Air Force, who was 22 or 23 years old at the time. She previously gave her account of the alleged assault and its aftermath in an interview with The New York Times in 2021, when she spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her family.In her lawsuit, the woman accuses Mr. Harris, 43, and Ms. Harris, 48, of sexual battery, battery, sexual assault, negligence, false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress, and is seeking damages.In a statement provided by a lawyer for the couple, Andrew B. Brettler, Mr. and Ms. Harris denied the accusations, calling the civil suit a shakedown. “This plaintiff has been threatening to file this lawsuit for three years,” the statement said. “For three years, we have emphatically and categorically denied these allegations. For three years we have maintained our innocence and refused to pay these extortionate demands for things we didn’t do.”They added, “We are innocent of these fake claims, we will not be shaken down and we look forward to our day in court.”Prosecutors in Los Angeles had previously declined to pursue criminal charges against the Harrises in this incident, citing the statute of limitations. “Without the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence being evaluated, the case is declined due to the expiration,” the Los Angeles County authorities wrote in a charge evaluation filing in September 2021.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More