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      A ‘Virtual Rapper’ Was Fired. Questions About Art and Tech Remain.

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      Young people are increasingly at ease consuming culture via digital avatars or made with artificial intelligence. Should the same moral guidelines and laws apply to those works?The story of FN Meka — a fictitious character billed as the first musical artist partly powered by artificial intelligence to be signed by a major record label — might seem like a bizarre one-off. In August, Capitol Records dropped FN Meka, whose look, outlaw persona and suggestive lyrics were inspired by real-life music stars like Travis Scott, 6ix9ine and Lil Pump, amid criticism that the project trafficked in stereotypes.But to seasoned observers of technology in pop music and the debate over cultural appropriation, the rise and fall of this so-called robot rapper, whose songs were actually written and voiced by humans, has raised important questions that are not going away anytime soon.Last month alone, an A.I. artwork won a prize in Colorado and a computer program improvised a classical music solo in real time in New York City. From DALL-E 2, the technology that creates visual art on command, to Hatsune Miku, a Japanese software that does something similar for music, the arts world may be on the precipice of a sea change in how its products are created.And young people feel increasingly at ease consuming culture via digital avatars like FN Meka. It has already been happening in hip-hop: A hologram of the rapper Tupac Shakur, who died in 1996, performed at a music festival in 2012; Travis Scott gave a concert through his avatar in the video game Fortnite in 2020; and Snoop Dogg and Eminem rapped as their digital selves and their Bored Ape avatars in a metaverse performance at the MTV Video Music Awards last month.In this brave new world, do fake characters based on real people amount to unseemly borrowing, even theft, or just the kind of homage that has always defined pop music? Even when artificial intelligence does help write music, should the humans behind it be accountable for the machine-created lyrics? And as far as race is concerned, how do the rules of cultural appropriation work when the person doing the appropriating is not a human being with a unique cultural background but a fictitious identity backed by an anonymous, multiracial collective?“A lot of our moral intuitions and codes as humans may have evolved for a context where we have discrete human actors,” said Ziv Epstein, a Ph.D. student at the M.I.T. Media Lab who studies the intersection of humans and technology. “These emerging technologies require new legal frameworks and research to understand how we reason about them.”From left: The Tupac Shakur hologram, Travis Scott in Fortnite and Snoop Dogg at the Video Music Awards.From left: Christopher Polk/Getty Images; via YouTube; MTVFor FN Meka’s critics, the presence of more Black people or people of color in the rooms where the character was conceived, designed and promoted may have helped prevent the negative stereotypes that they say it furthered. Industry Blackout, a nonprofit advocacy group, said FN Meka “insulted” Black culture and leeched off the sounds, looks and life experiences of real Black artists. Capitol seemed to agree when it apologized for its “insensitivity” in a statement.To the critics, FN Meka’s (exaggerated) debt to A.I. and its exclusively digital existence had the effect of absolving the people who were really calling the shots. “There are humans behind technology,” said Sinead Bovell, a futurist and the founder of WAYE, an organization that educates young people about technology. “When we disconnect the two, that’s where we could potentially risk harm for different marginalized groups.“What concerns me about the world of avatars,” she added, “is we have a situation where people can create and profit off the ethnic group an avatar represents without being a part of that ethnic group.”In pop music generally and especially in hip-hop, the culture most likely to be exploited is Black culture, said Imani Mosley, a professor of musicology at the University of Florida.“There’s so much overlap between digital culture and Gen Z culture and Black culture, to the point where a lot of people don’t necessarily recognize that a lot of things Gen Z says are pulled from African American vernacular,” she said. “To interact with that culture, to be a part of that discourse, is to use certain digital and cultural markers, and if you don’t have access to that discourse because you’re not Black, one way to do that is to hide one’s own ethnicity behind the curtain of the internet.”For some, though, vilifying FN Meka’s creators raised the specter of artistic censorship.James O. Young, a professor of philosophy at the University of Victoria who studies cultural appropriation in art, acknowledged there is a long tradition in music of placing a premium on the artist’s lived experience. Young quoted the famous line attributed to the jazz legend Charlie Parker: “If you didn’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.”But recently the consensus has moved toward sanctioning only art that arises out of lived experience, to the detriment of both art and political solidarity, Young argued. He pointed to an episode five years ago in which a white artist was pilloried for painting the Black civil rights martyr Emmett Till’s corpse.“One of the claims is, ‘This is digital blackface,’” Young said of FN Meka. “Maybe it is.” But he advocated for balanced examination, rather than swift reaction. “You’ve got to be very careful: I don’t think you want to claim that all representations of Black people are somehow morally offensive.”The broader impoverishment highlighted by both sides of this debate is a lack of language and concepts for discussing art that is not, or not entirely, made by people.Epstein, of the M.I.T. Media Lab, cited the thinking of Aaron Hertzmann, a scientist at Adobe Research. In a paper called “Can Computers Make Art?,” Hertzmann argued that at the moment art can be made only by humans, who are the only ones capable of interacting socially with other humans. In this understanding, machine learning is a tool; the artist behind a drawing made by DALL-E or the similar program Midjourney is not the software, but the person who gave it instructions.However, Hertzmann allowed, “Someday, better A.I. could come to be viewed as true social agents.”Meanwhile, as culture is increasingly mediated through the digital realm, questions of how to account for all of the other people who directly or indirectly touched that art will multiply, undermining the conventional notion of the artist as expressing her indivisible perspective.Some art is now the result of “a complex and diffuse system of many human actors and computational processes interacting,” Epstein said. “If you generate a DALL-E 2 image, is that your artwork?” he added. “Can you be the social agent of that? Or are they scaffolded by other humans?”A final question is deceptively profound: Does it even matter who, or what, composes the song, paints the painting, writes the book? Metaverse avatars and A.I. programs are intrinsically derivative: They are all but guaranteed to be riffs on already existing artists and their works.Anthony Martini, a co-founder of Factory New, the virtual music company that created FN Meka, stands firmly on one side of that debate: “If you’re mad about the lyrical content because it supposedly was A.I.,” he said, “why not be mad about the lyrical content in general?” More

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      DJ Khaled’s Latest All-Star Album, ‘God Did,’ Is His Fourth No. 1

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      The LP, featuring Drake, Kanye West and others, had the equivalent of 107,500 sales in the United States last week. The K-pop group Twice wasn’t far behind, with 100,000 at No. 3.Each new LP by DJ Khaled, hip-hop’s indomitable guru of positivity, is an all-star summit, chocked with A-list guest stars. “God Did,” his 13th studio album, which opens at No. 1 on Billboard’s latest chart, is no different. Its 18 tracks feature Drake, Jay-Z, Dr. Dre, Rick Ross, Travis Scott, Roddy Ricch, Eminem, Future, Kanye West, SZA, 21 Savage and three Lils — Wayne, Durk and Baby — as well as a posthumous appearance by Juice WRLD.“God Did,” DJ Khaled’s fourth album to top the chart, had the equivalent of 107,500 sales in the United States in its first week out, including 130 million streams and 9,500 copies sold as a complete package, according to the tracking service Luminate. Among the configurations of “God Did” in physical form is a $40 boxed set that comes with a Funko Pop figurine of the artist.Also this week, the K-pop girl group Twice opens at No. 3 with a seven-track mini-album, “Between 1&2,” with 100,000 sales that relied heavily on collectible CD packages (17 in all). Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” falls to No. 2 after its ninth time in the peak spot; the biggest album of the year so far, “Un Verano” has been bouncing between the top two slots on the chart for 17 weeks now.Kendrick Lamar’s “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,” which opened at No. 1 back in May, rises 20 spots to No. 4 after coming out on vinyl; of its 55,000 equivalent sales last week, 36,000 were on the LP format. At No. 5, Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” notches its 85th week in the Top 10, tying the run set by Peter, Paul and Mary’s self-titled debut album from 1962, with iconic folk songs like “If I Had a Hammer.” More

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      Romeo Santos and Justin Timberlake’s Team-Up, and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Shygirl, Ava Max, Horse Lords 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.Romeo Santos and Justin Timberlake, ‘Sin Fin’Ever the canny collaborator, Justin Timberlake joins Romeo Santos — formerly of the Dominican-rooted boy band Aventura, now a stadium act on his own — to pump up a typically imploring bachata. Both of them are sleek high tenors who can always sound like they’re eager for romance; both also know what it’s like to sing answered by ecstatic screams. “Sin Fin” (“Endless”) is a bilingual pop promise with a stalking undercurrent. Timberlake sings, “Can’t escape my love ’cause it’s yours/Even if you walk out the door it’ll chase you down.” It opens with cathedral-choir harmonies, then buttresses the bongos and syncopated guitar of bachata with pop’s synthesizers and hip-hop’s hype-man cheers. Melding bachata and power ballad, it still begs for love with high drama. JON PARELESAva Max, ‘Million Dollar Baby’Ava Max is partying like it’s 2000 and 2004 on the thumping “Million Dollar Baby,” a sleek, calisthenic pop song that name-checks Clint Eastwood’s Best Picture winner and interpolates “Can’t Fight the Moonlight,” LeAnn Rimes’ once-inescapable “Coyote Ugly” theme song. (Who said Y2K nostalgia was dead!) While Max still hasn’t quite carved out a distinct persona in the pop sphere, she’s proven herself to be a satisfying practitioner of aughts-pop pastiche — there’s even a stuttering echo of “Bad Romance” on the bridge. “She broke out of her chains,” Max sings of her titular, diamond-encrusted heroine, “Turned the fire into rain.” LINDSAY ZOLADZAlex Lahey, ‘Congratulations’On the booming power-pop track “Congratulations,” the Australian singer-songwriter Alex Lahey attempts to process the news that an ex is getting married: “Congratulations,” she sings, dripping with sarcasm, “so happy for your perfect life.” There’s pathos in her voice during the verses — “If I don’t care then why do I still think about you all the time?” — but the chorus is volcanic and cathartic, as Lahey’s colossal guitar tones swell like a sudden surge of inner strength. ZOLADZShygirl, ‘Nike’“Peri-peri, too hot to handle,” the London-based Shygirl boasts with cool confidence on “Nike,” the latest single from her forthcoming debut album, “Nymph.” While the previous songs she’s released from the record have been glitchy and ethereal — think hyperpop crossed with “Visions”-era Grimes — “Nike” is all woozy low-end and spotlit swagger. “He tell me, ‘Nike, just do it,” Shygirl intones on the track (which was produced by the British electronic artist Mura Masa), her delivery full of winking, sensual charisma. ZOLADZHorse Lords, ‘Mess Mend’The instrumental “Mess Mend,” by the Baltimore band Horse Lords, starts out skewed — with chords from a slightly detuned piano hitting unevenly on offbeats — and gets nuttier from there, with a tricky 7/4 meter, a guitar melody that suggests a non-Euclidean hoedown and a gradual devolution into a funky electronic drone, not to mention a final twist. It’s a brainy lark. PARELESVDA, ‘Môgô Kélé’VDA — short for Voix des Anges — is a vocal duo from Ivory Coast that has become a consistent hitmaker in the Ivorian pop style called zouglou, which floats suavely sustained vocals over brisk polyrhythms and glossy synthesizers: airborne tracks that often hold sociopolitical messages. Above the speedy six-beat rhythms of “Môgô Kélé” — a hyperactive mesh of drums, marimbas, flutes and call-and-response vocals — VOA sings about easing tensions that have risen lately between Mali and Ivory Coast, citing their longstanding historical ties. The video shows jailed soldiers; it also gives the VDA a backdrop of both countries’ flags and words like “la paix,” “fraternité” and “union,” while the music sparkles and bounds ahead. PARELESDanielle Ponder, ‘Only the Lonely’“Love is lost and I must walk away,” Danielle Ponder sings, with mournful resolution, in “Only the Lonely,” a ballad that fights back any regrets with the certainty that “You don’t love me, you just lonely.” As the track rises from hollow keyboard tones to grand orchestral melancholy, Ponder’s voice opens up to reveal its bluesy power, with ghosts of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. By the end she finds herself, once again, nearly alone. PARELESCarm featuring Edie Brickell, ‘More and More’CJ Camerieri, who records as Carm, plays brass instruments in yMusic, a contemporary chamber ensemble he co-founded; he has also backed Bon Iver and Paul Simon. In his own music, he often multitracks his trumpet and French horn into a supportive brass choir, as he does in “More and More,” a collaboration with Edie Brickell as a topliner. She sings about love, almost diffidently, amid sustained swells of brasses and strings. an electronic drumbeat and some echoing trumpet calls raise tensions, only to dissolve them in the undulating warmth of Carm’s orchestrations. PARELESWild Pink featuring Julien Baker, ‘Hold My Hand’John Ross, who leads Wild Pink, went through extensive cancer treatment between the band’s 2021 debut album and its coming one, “ILYSM.” He has explained that “Hold My Hand” came from a moment of “lying on the operating table where a member of the surgical team held my hand right before I went under.” As he whisper-sings to ask, “Will you be there when I come around,” joined by Julien Baker sounding delicate and fond, the band rolls through four rising chords again and again, promising nothing but reassurance. PARELESDawn Richard and Spencer Zahn, ‘Vantablack’The ever-evolving, impossible-to-pigeonhole Dawn Richard once again introduces a new side of herself on the first movement of “Pigments,” an upcoming collaborative album she made with the experimentalist Spencer Zahn. Each track on the album is named for a specific hue: “Coral,” “Sandstone,” “Indigo,” and “Vantablack” make up “Movement 1,” which the pair released in full this week. The culmination “Vantablack” is a tranquil, abstract, and utterly gorgeous contemporary classical soundscape populated by lilting clarinet, Zahn’s airy bass playing, and above it all Richard’s fluttering vocals, which profess a deep and radical comfort in her own skin. ZOLADZSteve Lehman and Sélébéyone, ‘Poesie I’In the hip-hop-jazz-avant-electroacoustic group Sélébéyone — which means “intersection” in the West African language Wolof — the saxophonist, composer and producer Steve Lehman collaborates with rappers from New York City (HPrizm from the Antipop Consortium) and Dakar (Gaston Bandimic), a saxophonist from Paris (Maciek Lasserre) and a drummer based in Brooklyn (Damion Reid). The group’s second album, “Xaybu: the Unseen,” pushes its previous ambitions further. “Poesie I” knocks its rhythms around with piano clusters, drumming that keeps moving the downbeat, hopscotching saxophone lines and a rap from HPrizm that keeps switching up its flow: “These words don’t fit so I’m forcing ‘em in/smashing the edges,” he declares. PARELES More

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      A Trip Home With Moneybagg Yo, Trap’s New Ambassador

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      MEMPHIS — Moneybagg Yo — Bagg to his friends — doesn’t get back to his Memphis hometown as much as he’d like anymore, so when he returned one Friday in July, he was primed for the occasion. His top, shorts and sneakers: Louis Vuitton. His chains and earrings: weighty and bright. His nails: freshly buffed to a shine. His Cadillac Escalade: bulletproof.He had arrived for an appearance at the eighth annual Birthday Bash, a concert organized by the Memphis rap stalwart Yo Gotti. “I feel like Michael Jackson at home,” Bagg said of the performance at FedExForum, home of the Memphis Grizzlies. “This is who created you.”Over the past few years, Bagg — born DeMario DeWayne White Jr. — has been steadily reaching audiences well beyond his home city. His last album, “A Gangsta’s Pain” from 2021, opened at the top of the Billboard album chart, his first No. 1, following two debuts in the Top 5. He placed five consecutive singles in the Top 20 of the Billboard rap chart, two of which, “Said Sum” and “Wockesha,” became pop hits, reaching the Top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100.He’s a sneakily lyrical rapper — bursting with pugnacious talk but also wry. His flow is syrupy, often swallowing syllables but not the vérité imagery and frisky, conversational tone that make some of his best lyrics sound like direct, mettle-testing addresses. “Wockesha,” a 2021 track that samples DeBarge’s “Stay With Me” (à la the Notorious B.I.G.’s “One More Chance”), showed that Bagg could record songs that leaned more melodic and tender, broadening his appeal.“I’m glad ‘Wockesha’ took off and did what it did ’cause now people accept me in that melodic vibe,” he said. “Bagg can do that now, we don’t look at him crazy.”Moneybagg Yo has been releasing music for a decade. With “Federal” in 2015, his mixtapes started garnering wider attention.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesThis fall, he’ll release his fifth studio album. Even though he primarily lives in Atlanta now, the day’s itinerary encapsulated how deep his hometown roots still run. “I’m still most definitely connected around here,” he said. “When I’m not at home, I’m at home.” His first stop was the nail salon, the next an overgrown 28.8-acre plot of land bought for him last year as a 30th birthday gift by his girlfriend, Ari Fletcher, a social media influencer. Driving alongside the property, he laughed as he pointed out the property’s boundaries: “Still going. Still going. Still going! Still going!”Eventually, he wants to host a community center, dirt bike paths, a paintball course and more there: “This for my neighborhood,” he said. After a brief meeting with a contractor to discuss the costs for the first wave of beautification, he headed to the nearby Walker Homes neighborhood in South Memphis, where he grew up, to pick up his 4-year-old son, Mari — one of his eight children — who was dressed for a day with dad in an all-white Polo outfit.“I just started being able to make my kids’ birthdays,” Bagg said of the long, unforgiving road he faced early in his career. “Until three years ago, I sacrificed me some birthdays, holidays, football games, doughnuts with dad. Now the world know me and the money gonna come, but I was trying to get the money and provide for them the whole time. There’s no excuse now.”Bagg has been releasing music for a decade — first, mixtapes that gained him renown locally, then beginning with “Federal” in 2015, ones that garnered much wider attention. His first major label album came in 2018. (His music is released by Interscope in partnership with Yo Gotti’s CMG Records and N-Less Entertainment.)“Every time I ever dropped a project, something always happen before I ever elevate, like a hardship,” Moneybagg Yo said.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesWhen he began having broader success, Bagg said he was surprised to learn that many established stars, like Future, were longtime fans: “A lot of people was really riding, listening to my music, that you wouldn’t expect.” Pharrell produced a track on “A Gangsta’s Pain.” Bagg formed a strong bond with the rapper Kevin Gates, who facilitated his conversion to Islam in 2018; he travels with an $8,000 prayer mat, a gift from Gates.Now more than ever, regionally specific rap can make it to the top of the charts in relatively unvarnished form, and Bagg’s wins have largely been on his own terms. Even though he’s beginning to collaborate more widely, he still prefers working with his own set of producers rather than those who are better-known.Since Bagg has grown into the biggest rap star to emerge from Memphis in a generation, he needs to be mindful, even at home. Throughout the day, he was accompanied by two oversized security guards with evident military training.“They had to get me to understand it, like, bruh, you need that, that’s what make you a superstar,” Bagg said. “It don’t just come with you being scared, it comes with you moving smart.”He’d just arrived at the Crystal Palace, a skating rink where a teenage Bagg and friends would while away weekend nights. The rink has been closed for years, but Bagg has been in contact with city officials about the possibility of revitalizing it. In the parking lot, Bagg asked his driver to turn the SUV so he could keep an eye on the street.“I’m so comfortable, I could be in house shoes right now,” he said, almost giggling.Minutes later, he headed to “the red store,” a bare-bones convenience store that’s the only retail establishment for blocks in the middle of streets dotted with rundown homes. “We gambled right there,” he said, pointing to a house up the block, then leaned in and whispered with a quick laugh, “I was selling dope right here.” He has a picture of the store tattooed on him.The rapper said his new album would be a turn back toward the energy of his “Federal” era. Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesHe stepped into the building, greeting employees and fans and telling an associate to buy out all the Rap Snacks chips in his signature flavors (Heat vs. Hot and Dill Pickle Jalapeño), then peeled off a few $100 bills to give to the store’s owner.Bagg’s next stop was intensely personal: visiting, for the first time, the grave of a longtime friend, Nuskie, who was killed in January at age 24. “I really ain’t snapped back,” Bagg said of wrestling with the tragedy. “I’m just dealing with it better now.”He sat down to roll a blunt from a pouch of weed, and thought about his trajectory. “Every time I ever dropped a project, something always happen before I ever elevate, like a hardship,” he said, adding that he planned to name his plot of land after Nuskie. Then, for the only time all day, he was silent.The show beckoned, though. By now, he was traveling with a full caravan of cars filled with old friends. They stopped at the Superior Shop, a clothing store where Bagg dropped off some Louis Vuitton pants to be tailored, and met up with the rapper EST Gee, a label mate and friend also in town for the concert.Once the store became claustrophobically crowded, with well over 100 people filling the room, he headed to Straight Drop, a seafood restaurant in North Memphis. The building’s lobby was filled with pallets of bottles of Vior, an alkaline water Bagg is an investor in. (“It’s every day, it’s clean.”) While waiting for the catering-size platters of fish and shrimp to come out, he and EST Gee filmed some footage for a video for a new song, “Strong,” in the parking lot.Earlier in July, he had performed to tens of thousands of people at London’s Wireless Festival, his first international show, but here he was, a platinum rapper back on his home turf, continuing to do things the old-fashioned way. He said his recent string of successes only emboldened him to double down on the specificity of his sound. The new album, he said, would be a turn back toward the energy of his “Federal” era. He recently put his permanent flawless diamond teeth back in.“Trap taking over the world now,” he said. “It ain’t limited no more.” More

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      What Is a ‘Fake’ Artist in 2022?

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherHere’s one sort of simulated artist: This month, a virtual rapper called FN Meka became the center of a critical storm involving digital blackface and the ethics of using artificial intelligence to (re)create cultural production. As a result of the backlash, FN Meka was dropped from Capitol, the major label that had signed the project, though it was debatable exactly how much of the rapper’s music was algorithmically derived at all.And here’s another sort: Spotify continues to populate some of its main playlists with so-called “fake” artists, which is to say, music made by artists under pseudonyms who create tracks purely to populate these playlists at a lower cost to Spotify than artists who are signed to major record labels. They have, in some cases, millions of listens, but outside of the walls of the streaming platform, they fundamentally don’t exist.Are either of these cases acceptable? And more pressingly, are they avoidable?On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the various ways music is being alienated from the humans who created it and the listeners who hear it, and the philosophical implications for creative agency.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterRyan Broderick, author of the Garbage Day newsletterTim Ingham, founder and publisher of Music Business WorldwideConnect 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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      Bad Bunny’s Album Ties ‘Encanto’ for Most Weeks at No. 1 This Year

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      “Un Verano Sin Ti,” a streaming blockbuster, notches its ninth time at the top of Billboard’s chart. Rod Wave’s “Beautiful Mind,” last week’s No. 1, drops to second place.Is Bad Bunny the new Bruno?Bad Bunny, a.k.a. Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, the Puerto Rican superstar who just rocked Yankee Stadium for two nights, has clinched a ninth week at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart for his latest release, “Un Verano Sin Ti,” tying Disney’s “Encanto” soundtrack for the most times at the top this year.“Un Verano Sin Ti” had the equivalent of 105,000 sales in the United States last week, including 144 million streams, according to Luminate, the tracking service that supplies the data for Billboard’s charts. In the 16 weeks since it came out, “Un Verano” has bounced in and out of the top spot but never fallen lower than No. 2. (“Encanto” — the source of “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” the inescapable viral smash of early 2022 — had a near-consecutive run at No. 1, missing it only once.)Although no track from “Un Verano” has gone higher than No. 4 on the Hot 100 singles chart, the album as a whole has been a streaming blockbuster. Songs from it have racked up about 2.9 billion clicks so far in the United States, and the full album has garnered 2.1 million equivalent sales, a composite figure that incorporates popularity on multiple formats, including streams and sales.At the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night, Bad Bunny was named artist of the year, and the broadcast carried his performance of “Tití Me Preguntó” from Yankee Stadium, where the stage was filled with prop palm trees and the Puerto Rican and Dominican flags.Besides Bad Bunny and “Encanto,” the only title with a longer run at No. 1 in recent years is Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album,” which notched 10 consecutive times at the top in the first part of 2021 and has remained a steady hit. It lands at No. 4 on the latest chart, in its 85th week out.Rod Wave’s “Beautiful Mind,” last week’s top seller, falls to No. 2, while Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” holds at No. 3 and Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House” is No. 5. More

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      California Bill Could Restrict the Use of Rap Lyrics in Court

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      The bill, which applies more broadly to other forms of creative expression, has unanimously passed the Senate and Assembly and could become law by the end of September.A California bill that would restrict the use of rap lyrics and other creative works as evidence in criminal proceedings has unanimously passed both the State Senate and Assembly, and could soon be signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom.The bill, introduced in February by Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer, a Democrat who represents South Los Angeles, comes amid national attention on the practice following the indictment of the Atlanta rappers Young Thug and Gunna on gang-related charges. Prosecutors have drawn on the men’s lyrics in making their case.The California measure, however, would apply more broadly to any creative works, including other types of music, poetry, film, dance, performance art, visual art and novels.“What you write could ultimately be used against you, and that could inhibit creative expression,” Mr. Jones-Sawyer said Wednesday in an interview. He noted that the bill ultimately boiled down to a question of First Amendment rights.“This is America,” he said. “You should be able to have that creativity.”Mr. Newsom has until Sep. 30 to sign the bill into law. If he neither signs nor vetoes the bill by that date, the measure would automatically become law. The law would then go into effect on Jan. 1, 2023, Mr. Jones-Sawyer said.When asked whether Mr. Newsom planned to sign the bill, his office said that it could not comment on pending legislation. “As will all measures that reach the governor’s desk, it will be evaluated on its merits,” it said.Though the bill’s genesis is in preventing rap stars’ lyrics from being weaponized against them, the measure loosely defines “creative expression” to include “forms, sounds, words, movements, or symbols.”It would require a court to evaluate whether such works can be included as evidence by weighing their “probative value” in the case against the “substantial danger of undue prejudice” that might result from including them. The court should consider the possibility that such works could be treated as “evidence of the defendant’s propensity for violence or criminal disposition, as well as the possibility that the evidence will inject racial bias into the proceedings,” the bill says.“People were going to jail merely because of their appearance,” Mr. Jones-Sawyer said. “We weren’t trying to get people off the hook. We’re just making sure that biases, especially racial biases toward African Americans, weren’t used against them in a court of law.”The bill would require that decisions about the evidence be made pretrial, out of the presence of a jury. For decades, prosecutors have used rappers’ lyrics against them even as their music has become mainstream, with critics and fans arguing that the artists should be given the same freedom to explore violence in their work as were musicians like Johnny Cash (did he really shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die?) or authors like Bret Easton Ellis, who wrote “American Psycho.”In other cases, though lyrics were not used as evidence, they were discussed in front of the jury, which “poisoned the well” by allowing bias to enter the court, according to Mr. Jones-Sawyer’s office. It also noted that while country music has a subgenre known as the “murder ballad,” it is only the lyrics of rap artists that have been singled out.Charis E. Kubrin, a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine, who has extensively researched the use of rap lyrics in criminal proceedings, said that the way prosecutors have used defendant-authored lyrics in court was unique to rap.The practice, she said, essentially treated the lyrics as “nothing more than autobiographical accounts — denying rap the status of art.” The California bill is significant, Dr. Kubrin said, because it would require judges to consider whether the lyrics would inject racial bias into proceedings. “This is bigger than rap,” she said.Among the first notable times the tactic was used was against the rapper Snoop Dogg at his 1996 murder trial, when prosecutors cited lyrics from “Murder Was the Case.” The rapper, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, was acquitted.Snoop Dogg entering a Los Angeles court in 1996, where a prosecutor cited his lyrics during a murder trial. He was acquitted.Mark J. Terrill/Associated PressMost recently, the charges against Young Thug and Gunna have called national attention to the tactic. Both men, who have said they are innocent, were identified as members of a criminal street gang, some of whom were charged with violent crimes including murder and attempted armed robbery.Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffery Williams, co-wrote the Grammy-winning “This is America” with Childish Gambino and is one of the most influential artists to emerge from Atlanta’s hip-hop scene.In November, two New York lawmakers introduced a similar bill that would prevent lyrics from being used as evidence in criminal cases unless there was a “factual nexus between the creative expression and the facts of the case.” It passed the Senate in May.In July, U.S. Representatives Hank Johnson of Georgia and Jamaal Bowman of New York, both Democrats, introduced federal legislation, the Restoring Artistic Protection Act, which they said would protect artists from “the wrongful use of their lyrics against them.”The California bill is supported by several other music organizations and activist groups, including the Black Music Action Coalition California, the Public Defenders Association and Smart Justice California, which advocates criminal justice reform.In a statement of support from June, the Black Music Action Coalition, an advocacy organization that battles systemic racism in the music business, said that prosecutors almost exclusively weaponized rappers’ lyrics against men of color.“Creative expression should not be used as evidence of bad character,” the organization said, maintaining that the claim that themes expressed in art were an indication of the likelihood that a person was violent or dishonest was “simply false.”Harvey Mason Jr., the chief executive of the Recording Academy, which runs the Grammy Awards, said that the bill was intended to protect not only rappers, but also artists across all genres of music, and other forms of creativity.“It’s bigger than any one individual case,” Mr. Mason said. “In no way, at no time, do I feel that someone’s art should be used against them.” More

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

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