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      Grime Transformed British Music. A New Exhibition Traces How.

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      “Grime Stories: From the Corner to the Mainstream” at the Museum of London highlights the 20-year-old history and far-reaching impact of the British rap genre.LONDON — On a wall-mounted screen at the Museum of London, a low-resolution video showed young people rapping quickly and hungrily over syncopated beats. Every so often, a decidedly 2000s graphic flashed on the screen, reading “Risky Roadz 2.”The video is an early work from Roony “RiskyRoadz” Keefe, who documented the early days of grime, the muscular British rap genre. Keefe first picked up a camera to chronicle the nascent scene in 2004, and made DVDs of the freestyles he recorded.“I’d hear an M.C. and think, ‘You’re good, put them on,’” Keefe said in a telephone interview. The DVD helped propel the rapper in the scene, like he was an A&R talent scout, he added.Almost two decades later, Keefe, 37, is a co-curator of “Grime Stories: From the Corner to the Mainstream,” a small but heartfelt exhibition currently on view at the Museum of London until December that looks back at the early days of grime, and the context from which it emerged.“It’s a big thing, you know,” Keefe said. “You never think you’re going to end up in a museum.”Initially a tight-knit scene formed by young people in East London, grime now occupies a prized position in mainstream British music and culture. The genre’s selling power is so significant, Ikea featured D Double E, an East London M.C., in its 2019 Christmas advertisement. In politics, the 2017 campaign #Grime4Corbyn harnessed rappers’ clout, encouraging young people to back the then-leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.At the 2015 Brit Awards — Britain’s version of the Grammys — Kanye West performed with a host of grime artists. Drake has long embraced the genre, featuring the rappers Skepta and Giggs on his “More Life” mixtape in 2017, getting a tattoo of Skepta’s Boy Better Know crew, and helping to revive the cult TV show “Top Boy,” which stars the grime artist Kano and is set in East London.“Grime Stories” was designed as a “venue to speak about the real lived experience of East Londoners,” said Dhelia Snoussi, a curator at the Museum of London. A way to “tell some of the important stories that are lesser heard.”When it emerged in the early 2000s, grime was an urgent affirmation of identity. It developed as an evolution from and reaction to garage, a popular Black British dance genre that had moved in flashy, pop directions. Other British forms of rap had become overly Americanized, some felt, with slang borrowed from across the Atlantic. The creators of grime wanted instead to speak to life in their corner of London.Jammer’s basement was a key space in grime’s evolution, memorialized by the layers of artists’ tags covering the walls.John Chase/Museum of LondonThe exhibition was built around Keefe, who, as well as running a production company and directing, is a London black cabdriver. His knowledge of the city’s streets was a way to tell the story of the community surrounding the genre, but the curators “immediately realized that a lot of the places we wanted to take the cab to were no longer there,” Snoussi said, and gentrification became a focal point for the exhibition.The show includes short documentaries and memorabilia like Keefe’s first camcorder and a bag from Rhythm Division record shop, a hub in grime’s early days. (It is now a coffee shop.)Particularly for purists, grime is a genre with strict technical parameters, including a tempo of 140 beats per minute. But it’s also a way of thinking about community and identity. “It’s not a BPM, it’s not a sound, it’s everything,” says a video in the exhibition.The scene developed around public housing in East London, and its specificity of place is evident in the exhibition’s partial reconstruction of a basement belonging to the family of Jammer, one of the genre’s pioneering figures. Jammer’s basement hosted early collaborations, freestyles and recordings, memorialized by the layers of artists’ tags covering the walls.DJ Target, who now hosts a show on the BBC’s Radio 1Xtra station, was part of those early days. Grime soon became a culture, which influenced “how people dressed, how they would speak, how they looked, the haircut they would get, the slang words they were using,” he said. “And all of it just felt like it was ours.”That desire to see real experiences reflected in music was also a reaction to the young rappers’ environment. Despite growing up in London with parents who also may have grown up in Britain, early grime artists “were still trying to negotiate and find that sense of belonging,” said Joy White, an academic who has studied the genre since 2007.Success was initially localized, but then came 2003, a year that Dan Hancox, a music journalist, described as a “critical, explosive moment” for grime — similar to what 1977 was for punk. In 2003, the 19-year-old rapper Dizzee Rascal released his debut album, “Boy In Da Corner,” which went on to win Britain’s top music accolade, the Mercury Prize.“That was a seminal moment for everybody to look and see that this is actually possible to do on a much bigger scale,” Target said.In the subsequent near-decade, more artists emerged from the grime scene to become influential figures in British music, despite record labels signing many rappers and then letting them languish.In the 2010s, many grime rappers embraced a more mainstream-friendly sound. Wiley had chart success with dance-focused tracks like “Wearing My Rolex” in 2008 and “Heatwave” in 2012. Artists like Tinchy Stryder, Skepta and Tinie Tempah also started climbing the British charts.The exhibition includes a gray Trinity Korg keyboard owned by Jammer and borrowed by Skepta to produce “That’s Not Me,” a 2014 track that announced a return to grime authenticity.That same year, a young M.C. from south London called Stormzy released his debut EP. Today, Stormzy is grime’s most successful breakout. “Without a brand-new star with the extraordinary, unique charisma and talent that Stormzy has,” Hancox said, “you wouldn’t have grime landing itself in the popular consciousness in the way it has.”Stormzy, now 28 and a household name in Britain, represents both grime’s far-reaching influence and how the genre has changed, with tracks on his albums swinging from more traditional grime to more recent genre innovations in Black British music.The influence of grime is built into the D.N.A. of many of those genres, including Afroswing, U.K. drill and road rap. The inspiration has moved in the other direction, too, and grime has evolved to encompass more fluidity and diversity in the beats and styles M.C.s choose to rap over.Jammer embraces these changes. “What people tend to say is, we want it to sound like the old days,” he said. “It’s not the old days.”“I’m here for the new, I’m here for the exciting,” he added. More

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      The 1975’s Chamber-Pop Confessions, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear new tracks from Alvvays, Tyshawn Sorey, Killer Mike 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.The 1975, ‘Part of the Band’Matty Healy, the proudly enigmatic singer-songwriter of the 1975, leads his group into chamber-pop with “Part of the Band,” the first song from an album due in October, “Being Funny in a Foreign Language.” He sings about “cringes and heroin binges,” about a “vaccinista tote-bag chic barista” and about literary-minded gay liaisons — “I was Rimbaud and he was Paul Verlaine.” He also queries, “Am I ironically woke?” The production wanders from chugging string ensemble to fingerpicked folk-rock to saxophone choir, with all of them mingling near the end. It’s pandemic confusion, self-questioning and ennui, with melodies to spare. JON PARELESAlvvays, ‘Pharmacist’A plain-spoken, everyday admission — “I know you’re back, I saw your sister at the pharmacy” — kick-starts the latest single from the Canadian dream-pop band Alvvays; as soon as the vocalist Molly Rankin sings that line, the song suddenly transforms into a fantasia of melancholic melody and squalling guitars. Hints of My Bloody Valentine and Japanese Breakfast hang in the hazy atmosphere, but Rankin’s bittersweet delivery gives “Pharmacist,” the opening track from the upcoming album “Blue Rev,” a distinct emotional undertow, like a stirring dream that ends a little too soon. LINDSAY ZOLADZJulien Baker, ‘Guthrie’“Guthrie” is a quietly harrowing postscript to Julien Baker’s 2021 album “Little Oblivions” from a collection, “B-Sides,” being released later this month. Like “Little Oblivions,” the song confronts what it’s like to be an addict: “Whatever I get, I always need a little more,” she sings. But while Baker overdubbed herself into a rock band on “Little Oblivions,” in “Guthrie” she’s solo, picking a soothing waltz on her guitar as she tears into her own failings. The song is a crisis of conscience and of faith, with a voice humbled by self-knowledge. “Wanted so bad to be good,” she offers, “but there’s no such thing.” PARELESKing Princess, ‘Change the Locks’“A year without no separation just might have broke us, baby,” King Princess sings in “Change the Locks,” a song about how pandemic proximity — and friction — could destroy a relationship. It’s three-chord folk-rock that explodes into hard rock when King Princess (the Brooklyn songwriter Mikaela Strauss) realizes how bad things have gotten. She wants to hold on; she knows she can’t. PARELESFlo, ‘Immature’English R&B lags American innovations by years or sometimes decades. The vocal trio Flo is catching up with what American acts like Destiny’s Child accomplished in the 1990s: calling out male assumptions while mastering recording techniques and harnessing voices, instruments and machines to sharpen their message of self-determination. The way Flo juggles individual voices and two or three-part harmonies, flirtation and fury, harks back to Destiny’s Child, but unerringly: “Why you gotta be so immature,” they sing, adding “Tell me how can I relate/If you don’t communicate?” Even before a crying-baby sample slips into the mix, it’s easy to know who’s in the wrong. PARELESGhetto Kumbé, ‘Pila Pila (Trooko Remix)’Ghetto Kumbé is a group from Bogotá that fortifies Afro-Colombian drumming and socially conscious lyrics with electronics; it released a potent self-titled debut album in 2020 and has opened for Radiohead. The group handed over tracks from its album to various producers for “Ghetto Kumbé Clubbing Remixes,” an album due in November. “Pila Pila,” a brawny tribute to the power of drums, got reworked by the Grammy-winning Honduran producer Trooko (who worked on “Residente” and “The Hamilton Mixtape”). He revved it up even further, switching the meter from 6/4 to 4/4, moving its incantatory lead vocal to the start of the song and bringing in a hopping salsa bass line, electronic hoots, jazzy piano and twitchy drum machines, constantly hurtling ahead. PARELESKiller Mike featuring Young Thug, ‘Run’A verse from a still-jailed Young Thug only adds to the urgency of “Run,” Killer Mike’s first new track as a solo artist since his vital 2012 album “R.A.P. Music.” Across four fruitful albums with Run the Jewels, it’s become commonplace to hear Mike rapping over El-P’s kinetic, collagelike beats, but it’s refreshing here to hear him link up once again with the veteran No I.D., whose understated production allows Killer Mike to tap into a smoother flow. “The race to freedom ain’t won,” he raps on the chorus, providing some welcome counterprogramming to your standard Independence Day jingoism. ZOLADZDomi & JD Beck (featuring Anderson .Paak), ‘Take a Chance’Jazz might be one of the only spaces left where the term “internet star” still means anything. Domi & JD Beck are Exhibit A, a duo of virtuosic post-jazz Zoomers who seem to have leaped out of a cartoon, and whose wow factor is suited to the small screen: A blond keyboardist rips solos while a diminutive drummer taps out hyper-contained, hyperactive beats. References to jazz history are funneled into the aesthetics of a sped-up TV jingle. Domi and Beck have found a champion in Anderson .Paak, and their debut album, “Not Tight,” is being jointly released by his new label and Blue Note Records. Redolent of lounge, ’70s fusion, trip-hop and breakbeat, this LP offers the nonstop dopamine drip of a doom-scroll, and it’s heavy on star features: Thundercat, Snoop Dogg and Mac DeMarco all pull up. “Take a Chance” is their moment with Paak, and if his earnest, rapped pledges of devotion don’t exactly square with the song’s feel-good vibes and the geometrically sound pop hook that Domi and Beck sing, you’re hard-pressed to hold it against them. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOTyshawn Sorey Trio, ‘Enchantment’A multi-instrumentalist, composer, University of Pennsylvania professor and MacArthur “genius” grantee, Tyshawn Sorey is likely to be found writing suite-length experimental works, or serving as composer in residence with an opera company, or conjuring up new systems for group improvisation. It’s been a long time since anyone really thought of him as “just” a jazz drummer. So, for Sorey, recording an album of standards with a piano trio qualifies as a curve ball. Of course, he has a big fondness for throwing curves. Sorey recently joined up with the pianist Aaron Diehl, one of jazz’s standard-bearing traditionalists, and the versatile bassist Matt Brewer to record “Mesmerism,” an album of jazz classics and lesser-known pieces from the canon. Horace Silver’s “Enchantment” is usually played as a tautly rhythmic samba, but the trio retrofits it, with Diehl putting the lush precision of his harmonies to work over a loose-limbed, shuffling beat from Sorey. RUSSONELLO More

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      What’s Next for Jack Harlow?

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherThe rise of Jack Harlow has been one of hip-hop’s most curious narratives over the past two years. So far in 2022 he’s had a huge pop hit, “First Class,” and released his second major label album, “Come Home the Kids Miss You,” which debuted at No. 3. He is one of hip-hop’s biggest emerging stars, and one whose aims are purely centrist.He is also white, and this is, necessarily, fraught territory; Harlow’s album rollout has not been without hiccups. But more interesting are his aims — not to be a crossover pop star who bypasses the hip-hop mainstream, but to make a version of hip-hop much different than his Black peers, and be accepted for it.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Harlow’s musical decisions, the touch-and-go aspects of his album rollout, and the long history of white rappers and the varying degrees of embrace they’ve achieved.Guests:Hunter Harris, author of the Hung Up newsletterLarisha Paul, who writes about music for Billboard, The Fader and othersPeter Rosenberg, a host on New York’s Hot 97 (WQHT-FM) and a host of the “Juan Ep Is Life” podcastConnect 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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      Burna Boy Faces Success and Second Thoughts on ‘Love, Damini’

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      On his sixth album, the Nigerian superstar admits some regrets.“Fame puts you there where things are hollow,” David Bowie sang back in 1975, and plenty of performers, before and after, have discovered the same thing. Their songs declare outsized ambitions and make premature boasts as careers begin. But then success, if it happens, brings as many pressures and perks — and, sometimes, a new willingness to confront misgivings.Burna Boy — the Nigerian songwriter Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu — has ascended steadily to international stardom over a decade of recording. In April, as part of his latest world tour, he became the first Nigerian act to headline the Madison Square Garden arena, featuring a cameo appearance — an elder-generation endorsement — from Senegal’s longtime musical ambassador, Youssou N’Dour.Burna Boy’s sixth studio album, “Love, Damini,” is a trove of material: 19 full-fledged songs. He summoned an international roster of collaborators including blockbuster hitmakers — J Balvin and Ed Sheeran — along with Khalid, Kehlani, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the Jamaican singer Popcaan and the British rapper J Hus. And like Burna Boy’s previous album, the Grammy-winning 2020 “Twice as Tall,” his new one both parades his accomplishments and admits to the doubts and regrets of an obsessive achiever.Burna Boy calls his music Afrofusion. Its core is the elegantly minimal percussion — hand-played and electronic — of Nigerian Afrobeats, which uses impacts and silences to imply three-against-two syncopations. Abetted by some of Africa’s most inventive producers, Burna Boy connects Afrobeats to its worldwide kin: R&B, Jamaican dancehall, reggaeton, Congolese rumba, hip-hop and more. His voice, a velvety baritone, has a suave composure that can hint at easy assurance or a melancholy reticence, and while his melodies don’t immediately seem sharp-edged, he places each note to add yet another layer of polyrhythm.The music draws pleasure from every strategic detail: from the weave of sampled and echoing backup vocals in “Different Size,” from the percussive syllables that break up the title and refrain of “Kilometre,” from reversed guitar tones and distant reggae horns in “Jagele,” from the saxophone curlicues that answer his voice in “Common Person.” The surfaces are glossy and reassuring; the inner workings are slyly playful. But Burna Boy broods more than he celebrates.In “Glory,” the album’s opening song, Burna Boy promises “This is my story”; it begins with the sober South African harmonies of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, before piano chords chime in and Burna Boy sings that he’s been “having nightmares of the day I fall off.”His guests often join him as fellow strivers. Khalid croons in the hymnlike “Wild Dreams,” as Burna Boy urges listeners to dream big but ends with a warning: “Remember Martin Luther King had a dream, and then he got shot.” J Balvin trades verses with him in “Rollercoaster,” a bilingual Afrobeats-dembow blend, with Burna Boy expressing gratitude, renouncing “the fast life” to be “pure of heart,” and resigning himself to ups and downs. And with Ed Sheeran, he shares “For My Hand,” a wedding-song-worthy vow of mutual devotion through rough times, singing, “Whenever I’m broken, you make me feel whole.”Work-life imbalance destroys a romance in “Last Last,” the album’s most agitated song; over nervously strummed minor chords and a vocal phrase sampled from Toni Braxton’s “He Wasn’t Man Enough,” Burna Boy sings, “I put my life into my job/And I know I’m in trouble.” In “It’s Plenty,” he notes, “Don’t wanna waste my days/I want to spend them on enjoyment,” but the production keeps the bouncy track at a distance, and soon Burna Boy is apologizing — “Don’t know how to show you my love” — and feeling numb and compulsive: “No matter what I do, it’s not enough.” In “How Bad Could It Be,” amid crystalline guitar picking and ghostly women’s voices, he’s more convincing as he details depression, alienation and anxiety than he is with the song’s halfhearted advice: “When you feel as sad as you can feel/Say, ‘How bad could it be?’”He has other concerns, like the smog in Lagos, Nigeria’s capital and Burna Boy’s current residence. “Because of oil and gas, my city’s so dark/Pollution make the air turn black,” he sings in “Whiskey,” a midtempo track punctuated by vintage-sounding horn-section samples and furtive guitar runs. And even when he’s promising carnal delights — in “Dirty Secrets,” “Science” and “Toni-Ann Singh”— they’re mixed with minor chords and ominous undercurrents.On “Love, Damini,” Burna Boy could easily have congratulated himself and strutted through new conquests instead of looking inward. But even now, he’s not self-satisfied enough to party — not this time.Burna Boy“Love, Damini”(Atlantic) More

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      Man Who Shot the Rapper Nipsey Hussle Is Convicted of Murder

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      A jury found Eric R. Holder Jr. guilty of first-degree murder for the 2019 killing of Hussle, an artist who devoted his adult life to championing his South Los Angeles neighborhood.Eric R. Holder Jr. was found guilty of first-degree murder more than three years after fatally shooting the Los Angeles rapper Nipsey Hussle.Pool photo by Frederick M. BrownLOS ANGELES — More than three years after the fatal shooting of the rapper Nipsey Hussle, whose 2019 killing in front of the local clothing store he owned scarred the South Los Angeles neighborhood he had devoted his adult life to championing, a jury on Wednesday found Eric R. Holder Jr. guilty of first-degree murder in the case. The verdict closes a painful chapter in recent hip-hop history.At trial, prosecutors described the gunman as an embittered acquaintance who had belonged to the same street gang as Hussle but felt disrespected by him during a brief parking-lot run-in.That Mr. Holder pulled the trigger was not in dispute in court. His own public defender and multiple witnesses identified him as the assailant who fired toward Hussle with two handguns, hitting the rapper at least 10 times before kicking him in the head.But Mr. Holder’s legal team had argued that the case was overcharged. Aaron Jansen, the public defender representing Mr. Holder, said that the killing was not premeditated and instead occurred in the “heat of passion,” about nine minutes after a conversation in which Hussle invoked neighborhood rumors that Mr. Holder had cooperated with law enforcement, or snitched, a serious offense in the gang world, and urged him to clear things up.Mr. Holder should have been charged with voluntary manslaughter, his lawyer said.After meeting for less than an hour on a second day of deliberations, the jury members indicated they agreed with Los Angeles county prosecutors that Mr. Holder had made the decision to kill Hussle as he returned to a car after the two spoke, loaded a gun, took a few bites of French fries and then marched back through the parking lot to confront the rapper.Mr. Holder, 32, was also found guilty of two counts of attempted voluntary manslaughter, stemming from the two bystanders who were wounded in the shooting, lesser charges than the attempted murder counts that prosecutors had brought.Mr. Holder’s lawyer argued that his client had no specific intention of harming either of the wounded men, both of whom were strangers to him, when he attacked Hussle outside of the Marathon Clothing shop in the Crenshaw neighborhood where the rapper and his assailant grew up.In addition, Mr. Holder was found guilty of possessing a firearm as a felon and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon. He could face life in prison, and was scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 15. Mr. Jansen said that in sentencing, he will ask the judge to consider Mr. Holder’s mental health history, including a years-old schizophrenia diagnosis.In court, Mr. Holder stared forward, unflinching. He wore a dark navy suit and white sneakers. There was no sound in the courtroom as the verdict was announced — no reaction from the half-full gallery.Hussle, whose real name was Ermias Joseph Asghedom, was mourned widely after his death at 33 as a principled artist and entrepreneur who transcended his early years as a member of the local Rollin’ 60s Crips, emerging as a hard-boiled, motivational lyricist and community ambassador. His public memorial in April 2019, at what was then known as the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles, drew some 20,000 admirers, including Stevie Wonder and Snoop Dogg.Though not a commercial hitmaker for most of his career, Hussle was known for his extensive industry connections and independent business sense, having sold music on his own terms for 15 years before releasing his major label debut, “Victory Lap,” in 2018. A Grammy nomination for best rap album and a management partnership with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation near the end of his life had the rapper poised for a move deeper into the mainstream.Along the way, Hussle had also preached Black empowerment through business and education, investing his winnings as a musician in the neighborhood where he was raised. With a group of backers, Hussle bought the strip mall at the corner of Crenshaw Boulevard and Slauson Avenue that housed his Marathon store, while also helping to open a nearby co-working space dedicated to increasing diversity in science and technology.Following the verdict, John McKinney, the Los Angeles County deputy district attorney prosecuting the case, said he hoped that it would bring “some resounding peace” to friends and fans of the rapper.“This verdict and the story of his life will be talked about for sure at Crenshaw and Slauson,” Mr. McKinney said, “but the meaning of it will carry far beyond those streets.”On the Sunday that Hussle was killed, he had stopped by the shopping plaza for an unannounced visit, as he often did, according to court testimony. While catching up with friends and employees in the parking lot, Hussle spent about half an hour signing autographs and posing for photos with fans.At that time, Bryannita Nicholson, a woman Mr. Holder had been casually dating, was driving him around the area, Ms. Nicholson testified. A key witness for the prosecution who said that she had transported Mr. Holder to and from the scene of the shooting, Ms. Nicholson was granted immunity from prosecution for her appearance in court.When Ms. Nicholson pulled into the plaza so that Mr. Holder could get something to eat, she spotted Hussle in the parking lot and remarked in passing that he looked handsome, she said on the stand. Mr. Holder, a fellow member of the Rollin’ 60s Crips, approached Hussle for a brief conversation while Ms. Nicholson waited in the car, she said.The encounter between the two men was casual and low-key, according to testimony. But prosecutors said Hussle told Mr. Holder that there were rumors going around the neighborhood that he had snitched. Hussle encouraged Mr. Holder to “get the paperwork” showing he had not, said Mr. McKinney.“It just seemed like a regular conversation,” Mr. McKinney told the jury. “But obviously it wasn’t.” He called the pair “two men whose arcs in life were bending in different directions.”As the men finished speaking, Ms. Nicholson said she overheard talk of snitching as she approached Hussle for a selfie, which she posted to Facebook. It would be the last photograph of the rapper. Asked in court if she sensed that a fight was about to occur, Ms. Nicholson said, “No, I wasn’t afraid at all.”As Ms. Nicholson pulled into another nearby parking lot so Mr. Holder could eat, she testified, he pulled out a handgun and began loading it. He walked back toward Hussle’s store; a short time later, Ms. Nicholson heard gunshots.According to witnesses, Mr. Holder had confronted the rapper outside and said, “You’re through” as he opened fire.“You got me,” Hussle said, according to the prosecutor. Two men who were standing with Hussle, Kerry Lathan and Shermi Villanueva, were wounded by the shots.In his opening statement, Mr. McKinney, the prosecutor, portrayed Ms. Nicholson as a kind of unwitting accomplice. “I think you’ll find in her a naïveté, a simplicity,” he said. Mr. Holder mostly avoided her eyes or looked at her dispassionately as she testified.In that testimony, Ms. Nicholson said that when Mr. Holder got back into her car, he told her to drive or he would slap her. That evening, she learned of Hussle’s death. But Ms. Nicholson said it wasn’t until more than a day after the shooting, when her mother recognized her white Chevy Cruze on the news, that she realized that Mr. Holder may have been involved.Mr. McKinney emphasized that Ms. Nicholson quickly agreed to cooperate with the police, allowing the authorities access to data from her phone and submitting to hours of interviews. “I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, this is my reputation, too,’” she testified.In addition to being the agreed-upon motive in the shooting, the concept of snitching — and its outsize importance in gang culture — loomed over the trial. While Mr. Holder was repeatedly identified as the gunman, lawyers on both sides cited some witnesses’ reluctance to testify in detail, or even show up to court, for fear of retribution.“I don’t know nothing, don’t see nothing,” Mr. Lathan, who was wounded in the incident, said during his turn on the witness stand.“You don’t want to testify about what happened?” the prosecutor asked.“That’s right,” Mr. Lathan said.Mr. Jansen, the defense lawyer, had argued that it was precisely that anti-snitching culture that transformed a conversation between Hussle and Mr. Holder into a provocation.“Even people who are shot don’t want to come in and testify against Rollin’ 60s gang members,” Mr. Jansen said in an interview after the verdict. “I thought those facts supported what we were saying: Eric Holder didn’t want to be labeled as a snitch either, out of fear of retribution.”Mr. Jansen added: “I just wanted people to remember that Eric Holder Jr. is a human being. He did a terrible thing and he will have to face justice for that.”Last Tuesday, Mr. Holder was attacked while in custody, briefly delaying the final days of the trial. His lawyer said that his client had been punched in the face and “sliced with some kind of razor.”Because of the high-profile nature of the case, and because it hinged on questions about consequences for snitching, Mr. Jansen said his client should have been in protective custody.In court, prosecutors did rely in part on the testimony of Herman Douglas, known as Cowboy, a onetime Rollin’ 60s member who worked at Hussle’s Marathon store. Mr. Douglas testified that while he was no longer involved in gang life, he still vigilantly watched every car and person that crossed his path for signs they might be dangerous. At no point in Hussle’s conversation with Mr. Holder, he said, did he sense that the rapper was at risk. “I would’ve snatched him up out of there,” Mr. Douglas said.When the defense questioned Mr. Douglas about whether there could be consequences as dire as “getting beat up or even killed” for snitching, Mr. Douglas said that was unlikely. He noted that his participation in the trial could be considered snitching by some. But things had changed since he was coming up in the neighborhood.“I ain’t worried,” he said. “Maybe in the ’80s, yeah, but this is 2022.”Following the guilty verdict, Mr. Douglas sat outside the courtroom and cried into his hand, his shoulders shaking. Later, he told reporters he did not know if he would ever feel closure after his friend’s death. But he said that he hoped his participation in the trial would show others that sometimes it was worth speaking up.“Just do what’s right,” he said. “No matter what people say.” More

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      Bad Bunny Returns to No. 1 With ‘Un Verano Sin Ti’

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      The Puerto Rican rapper, singer and pop star’s latest album, “Un Verano Sin Ti,” tops the Billboard chart again in its eighth week of release.In its eight weeks on the Billboard album chart so far, the Puerto Rican rapper, singer and pop star Bad Bunny’s latest release, “Un Verano Sin Ti,” has remained a streaming steamroller, frequently topping 150 million online plays per week. This time, the album’s 160 million streams were enough for a return to No. 1, despite two new releases in the Top 5 and just 657 copies of “Un Verano Sin Ti” sold as a full album.Bad Bunny, who was Spotify’s top streaming artist globally for the last two years, called his latest “a record to play in the summer, on the beach, as a playlist.” That seems to be working: In the week ending June 30, “Un Verano Sin Ti” totaled 115,000 equivalent sales units — combining streams, sales and track downloads — according to the tracking service Luminate.That was enough to easily hold off the debut of “Growin’ Up” by the hit-making country singer Luke Combs, which earned 74,000 total units, including 56 million streams — a healthy total in country, where streaming has been slower to take over. Although “Growin’ Up” comes in at No. 2, its streaming total was the lowest of all of the albums in the Top 5.“Breezy,” the latest by the R&B singer Chris Brown, was the week’s other big debut, finishing at No. 4 in a close race, with 72,000 total units and 87 million streams. Sales activity for last week’s No. 1, the surprise release “Honestly, Nevermind,” by Drake, fell 64 percent, but the album holds on to No. 3 with 73,000 units, including 94 million streams.Rounding out the Top 5 is the deluxe edition of “7220” by the Chicago rapper Lil Durk, which topped the chart when it was released in March. The new version, which sent “7220” back up from No. 18 last week with 95 million fresh streams, added 13 additional songs, bringing the total track list to 31. More

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      Beyoncé’s ‘Break My Soul,’ and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Taylor Swift, the Mars Volta, Gorillaz featuring Thundercat 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.Beyoncé, ‘Break My Soul’The first song from Beyoncé’s album due July 29, “Renaissance,” has a clubby house beat and an attitude that equates defiant self-determination with salvation. She and her co-producers, Tricky Stewart and The-Dream, work two chords and a four-on-the-floor thump into a constantly changing track. They sampled shouted advice — “Release your anger! Release your mind! Release your job! Release the time!” — from “Explode” by the New Orleans bounce rapper Big Freedia. Beyoncé extrapolates from there: joining the Great Resignation, building “my own foundation,” insisting on love and self-love, facing every obstacle with the pledge that “You won’t break my soul.” When she invokes the soul, a gospel choir arrives to affirm her inner strength, as if anyone could doubt it. JON PARELESGorillaz featuring Thundercat, ‘Cracker Island’A kind of living cartoon character in his own right, the charismatic bassist Thundercat is a natural fit in the Gorillaz universe — so much so that it’s almost surprising he’s never collaborated with them before. Thundercat’s insistent bass line and backing vocals add a funky jolt to the group’s “Cracker Island,” a sleek and summery jam that happens to be about … a made-up cult? Thankfully the tune doesn’t get bogged down by anything too conceptual, though, and invites the listener to simply lock into its blissed-out groove. LINDSAY ZOLADZElizabeth King, ‘I Got a Love’The Memphis-based vocalist Elizabeth King once seemed headed toward gospel stardom. In the early 1970s, she and a group of all-male backing singers, the Gospel Souls, scored a radio hit and won the Gospel Gold Cup award, presented by the city’s gospel D.J.s. But then King stepped back, spending decades raising 15 children; her public performances were limited to singing on a weekly gospel radio program. It wasn’t until last year that King, now in her 70s, released her first full album, the impressive “Living in the Last Days.” She returns this week with “I Got a Love.” On the title track, King reprises the sultry style of praise-singing that she had perfected in the 1970s, telling us about her rock-sturdy romance with God over a slow and savory tempo. Behind her, a tube-amplified guitar slices out riffs, an organ alternates between full chords and long rests, and a heavy, pushing bass keeps the band’s muscles flexed. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOAmanda Shires, ‘Take It Like a Man’The title track from Amanda Shires’s upcoming album is a poetic and provocative torch song enlivened by an electrifying vocal performance. Featuring her husband Jason Isbell on guitar, “Take It Like a Man” is a sweeping ballad that continuously builds in blistering intensity — sort of like something Shires’s Highwomen bandmate Brandi Carlile might release. But the song is a showcase for the unique power of Shires’s voice, which is both nervy and tremblingly vulnerable at the same time. “I know the cost of flight is landing,” she sings as the melody ascends ever higher, “and I know I can take it like a man.” ZOLADZThe Cultural Impact of Taylor Swift’s MusicWith two quarantine albums and new recordings of her older albums, the pandemic has been a time of renewal and reinvention for Taylor Swift. A Fight for Her Masters: Revisit the origin story of Swift’s rerecordings: a feud with the powerful manager Scooter Braun. Pandemic Records: In 2020, Ms. Swift released two new albums, “Folklore” and “Evermore.” In debuting a new sound, she turned to indie music. Fearless: For the release of “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” the first of the rerecordings, Times critics and reporters dissected its sound and purpose. Reshifting the Power: The new 10-minute version of a bitter breakup song from 2012 can be seen as a woman’s attempt to fix an unbalanced relationship by weaponizing memories.Taylor Swift, ‘Carolina’“Carolina,” from the soundtrack to the forthcoming movie “Where the Crawdads Sing,” holds the distinction of being one of the spookiest songs in the Taylor Swift catalog; save for “No Body, No Crime,” it’s the closest she’s come to writing an outright murder ballad. Co-produced with Aaron Dessner, “Carolina” sounds of a piece with Swift’s folky pair of 2020 releases: The arrangement begins with just a sparsely strummed acoustic guitar that eventually swells into a misty atmosphere with the addition of strings and banjo. As on her 2015 single “Wildest Dreams,” there’s a hint of Lana Del Rey’s influence as Swift digs into her breathy lower register to intone ominously, “There are places I will never go, and things that only Carolina will ever know.” ZOLADZSessa, ‘Canção da Cura’“Canção da Cura” (“Song of Healing”) from the Brazilian songwriter Sessa’s new album, “Estrela Acesa” (“Burning Star”), hints at some clandestine ritual. In his gentle tenor, Sessa sings, “To the sound of the drums I’ll consume you.” Acoustic guitars and percussion set up an intricate mesh of syncopation, and in his gentle tenor, with hushed backup vocals overhead, Sessa sings, “To the sound of the drums I’ll consume you.” It’s a brief glimpse of a mystery. PARELESThe Mars Volta, ‘Blacklight Shine’After a decade of other projects, the wildly virtuosic, conundrum-slinging guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López and the singer and lyricist Cedric Bixler-Zavala have reunited as the Mars Volta, with a tour to start in September and a new song: “Blacklight Shine.” It’s a six-beat, bilingual rocker, full of complex percussion and scurrying guitar lines, with lyrics like, “the high control hex he obsessively pets with his thumbs/thinking no one’s watching but I got the copy that he can never erase.” But unlike many of Mars Volta’s past efforts, this one strives for catchiness, and its rolling rhythm and harmony vocals hint, unexpectedly, at Steely Dan, another band that tucked musical and verbal feats behind pop hooks. An extended “short film” connects the song’s underlying beat to the Afro-Caribbean rhythms of Puerto Rican bomba. PARELESCKay featuring Davido, Focalistic and Abidoza, ‘Watawi’Commitment is an iffy thing; in “Watawi,” the Nigerian singers CKay and Davido and the South African rapper Focalistic stay evasive when girlfriends ask “What are we?” CKay suavely croons a non-answer: “We are what we are.” Keeping things up in the air is the production by Abidoza from South Africa, which hovers around a syncopated one-note pulse as it fuses the cool keyboard chords of South African amapiano with crisp Afrobeats percussion. In its final minute, the track introduces a fiddle that could easily lead to a whole new phase of the relationship. PARELESAlex G, ‘Runner’There’s something wonderfully uncanny about the music of Philadelphia’s Alex G. His songs often gesture toward familiar sounds and textures — “Runner,” from his forthcoming album “God Save the Animals” bears a melodic resemblance to, of all things, Soul Asylum’s early ’90s anthem “Runaway Train”— but their gradual accumulation of small, idiosyncratic sonic details produce an overall sense of strangeness. “Runner” initially sounds like warm, pleasant alt-rock pastiche, but before it can lull the listener into nostalgia, the song suddenly erupts with unruly emotion: “I have done a couple bad things,” Alex sings a few times with increasing desperation, before letting out a thrillingly unexpected scream. ZOLADZLil Nas X featuring YoungBoy Never Broke Again, ‘Late to da Party’Exile comes in many forms — sometimes it’s spiritual, sometimes it’s literal. The pop-rap phenom Lil Nas X recently took umbrage — seriously or not, who can tell — at not being nominated for a BET Award at this year’s ceremony. YoungBoy Never Broke Again remains on house arrest, one of rap’s most popular figures but one who’s achieved that success without the participation of traditional tastemakers. Together, they share the kinship of outsiders, even if they never quite align on this song, which is notionally aimed at BET; the video features a clip of someone urinating on a BET Award trophy. They are radically different artists — two different rapping styles, two different subject matter obsessions, two different levels of seriousness. By the end it feels as if they’re seeking exile from each other. JON CARAMANICATove Lo, ‘True Romance’“What does a girl like me want with you?” the Swedish songwriter Tove Lo asks in “True Romance,” a four-minute catharsis. The track uses only two synthesized chords and a slow pulse, but the vocal is pained, aching and constantly escalating the drama: a desperate human voice trying to escape an electronic grid. PARELESRachika Nayar, ‘Heaven Come Crashing’The composer Rachika Nayar explores the textural and orchestral possibilities of electric guitar and digital processing: effects, loops, layering. Much of her work has been meditative, and so is the beginning of “Heaven Come Crashing,” with shimmering, sustained washes of guitar and abstract vocals from Maria BC. But there’s a surprise midway through: a hurtling drumbeat kicks in, and what had been a weightless drift is suddenly a warp-speed surge forward. PARELESAbraham Burton and Eric McPherson, ‘Will Never Be Forgotten’In an alternate universe, the release of new music from the tenor saxophonist Abraham Burton and the drummer Eric McPherson would be a major event. Both are Gen X jazz eminences, and across decades playing together, their styles have grown in complement to one another. Burton holds long notes in a strong but wavery yowl or shoots out notes in string-like bursts, conveying a wounded tenderness in spite of all that volume and power. McPherson has a relatively gentle touch on the drums, but still channels the earth-moving polyrhythmic force of Elvin Jones. Last summer, these longtime musical partners gave a concert, joined by the bassist Dezron Douglas, as part of Giant Step Arts’ outdoor series at the old Seneca Village site in Central Park. The performance closed with “Will Never Be Forgotten,” a lament with a descending bass line and a melody that winds downward like a teardrop. A full recording of the concert was released on Juneteenth, as “The Summit Rock Session at Seneca Village.” RUSSONELLO More

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      Drake’s ‘Honestly, Nevermind’ Is His 11th No. 1 Album

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      The dance-oriented surprise release debuts with the equivalent of 204,000 sales — the streaming star’s lowest opening-week tally for a studio album.A little over a week ago, Drake announced a surprise new album, “Honestly, Nevermind,” and released it online a few hours later. Just like clockwork, it has now gone to No. 1, becoming Drake’s 11th album to top the Billboard 200 chart.“Honestly, Nevermind,” Drake’s seventh studio LP — and his 17th full-length release overall, counting compilations and mixtapes — opened with the equivalent of 204,000 sales in the United States, including 250 million streams, according to the tracking service Luminate. Those figures were enough to send the dance-heavy “Honestly” to No. 1 by a comfortable margin. But they were low by the standards of Drake, who for more than a decade has routinely posted gigantic numbers for new work.The album’s 204,000 equivalent sales — a measurement that reconciles streams with downloads and any traditional album purchases — are a fraction of the 613,000 that Drake posted for the opening of his last studio album, “Certified Lover Boy” (2021). And they are Drake’s lowest since “Care Package,” a compilation of previously released tracks, which opened (at No. 1, naturally) with 109,000 in 2019. Apart from “Care Package,” no Drake album has begun with fewer than half a million equivalents since “What a Time to Be Alive,” a mixtape with the rapper Future from 2015, when streaming represented a minority of overall music consumption. (As of last year, streaming makes up 83 percent of recorded music sales revenue in the United States.)Still, a No. 1 is a No. 1. And with 11 of them, Drake has now matched Barbra Streisand and Bruce Springsteen. Ahead of them on the list of artists landing the most chart-toppers on the Billboard 200 are Jay-Z (with 14) and the Beatles (19).Also this week, BTS’s “Proof,” last week’s top seller, falls to No. 4. Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” is No. 2, Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House” is No. 3 and Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is No. 5. More