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      Readers’ Picks: 12 Motivating Workout Songs

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      Listen to Mary J. Blige, Gang of Four, Outkast and one track that was far and away the most frequently suggested.Working out to Mary J. Blige is more than just fine.Kevin Winter/Getty Images For The Recording ADear listeners,Last week, I shared a workout playlist and asked you to submit a song that motivates you to move. I thought I’d publish a few of the responses at the end of a future newsletter. But so many of you suggested such fun and varied selections that I’ve decided to do something completely unprecedented in the whole history of The Amplifier: create a playlist composed entirely of reader recommendations.I know, I know, “the whole history of The Amplifier” is, like, a month and a half at this point. But still — it’s unprecedented!As I wrote last week, for me, a good workout playlist combines familiarity and novelty. I kept that in mind when selecting and sequencing these tracks, so you’ll hear a mix of the new and old, the popular and the obscure. I loved reading about why these songs motivate you and what they inspired you to accomplish, so I’ve included your comments below.I also had fun seeing which tracks recurred in the recommendations; the one song that was far and away the most frequently suggested had to make it onto the list, and it appears here as track 11. (In the interest of suspense, scroll down for the reveal.) Bluegrass, baroque orchestral music, Beyoncé: Your picks truly encompassed a vast musical spectrum. More than one of you admitted to loving Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch’s “Good Vibrations,” which, honestly, you do you.I’m so happy we’re creating this musical community together — I think the collaborative nature of today’s playlist really speaks to that.Listen along here on Spotify as you read.1. Fleetwood Mac: “Tusk”I love how the song starts quiet and slow and builds and builds and builds on itself. I’ve seen it performed live and it puts a zing in my blood. I find it ideal for the warm-up that leads right into the workout. — Virginia Moench, N.C. (Listen on YouTube)2. Mary J. Blige: “Just Fine”The lyrics and beat are uplifting and encouraging. It’s great to walk, run, bike or lift to, plus you can take dance breaks! — Alexa, Philadelphia (Listen on YouTube)3. Janet Jackson: “If”This song has it all, and let’s not forget that epic video! If you have soul, “If” is guaranteed to make you break a sweat. Now drop and give me 20! — Paige Getz, Conn. (Listen on YouTube)4. TV on the Radio: “Wolf Like Me”It has the highs, the lows and the perfect crescendo at the end. I had a spin instructor that knew it was my favorite and would drop it in for me pretty regularly. — Shelley, Brooklyn, N.Y. (Listen on YouTube)5. Gang of Four: “I Found That Essence Rare”It’s gritty, rhythmic, has great energy and drives me to move the weights in the opposite direction than the pull of gravity. — Rick Gaston, Oakland, Calif. (Listen on YouTube)6. Hot Chip: “Flutes”My best runs help me recall the bodily sensation of losing myself on the dance floor. This song gets me there! — Greta, Chicago (Listen on YouTube)7. Sylvester: “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”Back in the day of aerobic classes, this was one of the songs we used on a regular basis — never got tired of it or the exercise. It’s also a great song to dance to! — Betsy Wendt, Silver Spring, Md. (Listen on YouTube)8. Jamie xx: “Gosh”This song is just what your neurons need when you want to shut the world off and pump through something in hyper-focus. I play it to work or jog and it makes me feel like I’m putting on sunglasses and rocketing into the matrix. Every single time. — Natalia, Manhattan, N.Y. (Listen on YouTube)9. Grimes: “Kill v. Maim”If I’ve got to do three minutes on a treadmill to spike my heartbeat in a strength session, it’s Grimes’s “Kill v. Maim.” Pretending you’re a vampire gangster (or whatever it’s about) frothing at the mouth is extremely motivating! — Laura, London (Listen on YouTube)10. Outkast: “B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad)”I made a mix a few years ago for a half-marathon I was preparing for. The fifth or sixth song I selected was Outkast’s “Bombs Over Baghdad.” On the day of the race, when I got to that song about 30 minutes in, it inspired me to pick up the pace. From there, I hit repeat for the next 90 minutes and felt amazing! “Bombs Over Baghdad” gives me a lift like no other. — Michael Pittman, Durham, N.C. (Listen on YouTube)11. Eminem, “Lose Yourself”It’s a cliché, but it is undeniably one of the greatest workout songs ever created: “Lose Yourself,” by Eminem. The believe-in-yourself lyrics, the dramatic tension heightening throughout the song, and the fact that the b.p.m. perfectly accompanies a cardio workout. — Joe Stracci, Cold Spring, N.Y. (Listen on YouTube)12. The Avalanches, “Because I’m Me”It’s like someone took Runner’s High and sonically bottled it into this recording. The initial beat drop! The horns! “Knock it out the ballpark, Frankie!” This song never fails to give me the extra push I need to finish a particularly tough run or workout. — Andre Plaut, Brooklyn, N.Y. (Listen on YouTube)Mom’s spaghetti,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Readers’ Picks! 11 Motivating Workout Songs” track listTrack 1: Fleetwood Mac, “Tusk”Track 2: Mary J. Blige, “Just Fine”Track 3: Janet Jackson, “If”Track 4: TV on the Radio, “Wolf Like Me”Track 5: Gang of Four, “I Found That Essence Rare”Track 6: Hot Chip, “Flutes”Track 7: Sylvester, “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”Track 8: Jamie xx, “Gosh”Track 9: Grimes, “Kill v. Maim”Track 10: Outkast, “B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad)”Track 11: Eminem, “Lose Yourself”Track 12: The Avalanches, “Because I’m Me”Bonus TracksTwo weeks ago, the enigmatic underground pop star Jai Paul made his live debut — 12 years after the release of his debut single. Tonight, he plays the first of two shows in New York City. In honor of this occasion, why not revisit the gorgeously glitchy pair of tracks that started it all, the menacing “BTSTU” and the shyly sensual “Jasmine”? And if you want a primer on why so many people care about this guy in the first place, I would humbly suggest this Pitchfork article I wrote about him almost exactly a decade ago (!) which doubles as a time capsule of 2013 internet ephemera. Were we ever so young? More

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      Tobias Rahim Wants to Take Danish-Language Pop Global

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      Tobias Rahim is a phenomenon in Denmark. Now, he wants the country’s music to be internationally renowned.Tobias Rahim, a 6-foot-7 Kurdish Danish pop singer, strode around the vast stage of Copenhagen’s Royal Arena one recent Saturday night dressed in a tasseled gold cowboy outfit.He was midway through “Stor Mand” (“Big Man”), a romantic duet sung with Andreas Odbjerg, another star in Denmark. But it seemed like Rahim barely needed to perform: He simply pointed his microphone at the 16,000-capacity crowd who manically sung every word for him.Soon, the crowd — some wearing cowboy hats just like Rahim — made their adoration even clearer, when a group started chanting, “The girls want your body.” The quirky 33-year-old, who posed nude for a previous project, quickly moved onto the next hit.In recent years, American music fans have become accustomed to listening to pop in languages other than English. K-pop groups and Spanish-language acts like Bad Bunny have had hits on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, and French-language singers have been appearing at major festivals in the United States.After making music in Colombia and Ghana, Rahim’s career truly took off in Denmark with his 2022 album “When the Soul Vomits.”Mathias Eis for The New York TimesDanish, an often staccato language spoken by only about six million people and whose alphabet includes the letters Æ, Ø and Å, is perhaps an unlikely choice for pop’s next lingua franca. But Rahim said in an interview the day after the show that there was no reason Danish-language pop couldn’t take off, too.Outside the country, Denmark has long been renowned for its gastronomy and noirish television dramas. Rahim said there was equal talent in its pop scene. “The energy field here is really strong,” he said. Rahim had heard criticism that Danish was an ugly language, but he said he disagreed: “Any language converted into music can be super beautiful.”A handful of Danish musicians, including the fresh-faced Lukas Graham and the arty singer MØ, have long made music in English to cultivate audiences abroad. Simon Lund, the music editor of Politiken, a major Danish newspaper, said in an interview that the country was still producing great English-language songs, but that it was also seeing a boom in Danish-language pop, with acts showcasing catchy melodies.Among those, Lund said, Rahim was the phenomenon. Last year, tracks from his second album, “Nar sjælen kaster op” (“When the Soul Vomits”), topped Denmark’s singles charts for nearly 40 weeks. “Når Mænd Græder” (“When Men Cry”), a track about how men should be able to be emotional, set off a national debate about the nature of masculinity, Lund added.In the run-up to Christmas, Rahim released a poetry collection that included a picture of him nude, clenching a rose in his mouth. The book sold out in stores and now, the singer is “impossible to ignore” in Denmark, Lund said.Growing up half-Kurdish and half-Danish in the coastal city of Aarhus, Rahim said he never felt like he fully belonged and often felt “half.” The nude photographs, he added, showed him as a proud, and whole, mixed-race “neo-Scandinavian man.”Mathias Eis for The New York TimesMathias Eis for The New York TimesThroughout his career, Rahim has tried to find success outside Denmark.In 2009, shortly after leaving school, he moved to Cali, Colombia, where he became friends with rappers and reggaeton musicians who lived in one of that city’s more impoverished neighborhoods. Rahim said he spent about two years making music there and left only after witnessing a neighbor get shot.In Denmark, he released a handful of tracks as part of the reggaeton duo Camilo & Grande, but in 2018, he got the urge to move again, this time heading to Accra, Ghana, where he performed as an Afropop artist under the name Toby Tabu. In Ghana, Rahim said he sought to act like any other local musician, hustling to get his upbeat songs played on the radio, performing support slots for big local names and sleeping on couches while he tried to break through.Despite those attention-grabbing travels, his career only truly took off in Denmark with the 2022 album “When the Soul Vomits,” written with the producer Arto Eriksen and filled with ’80s influenced pop songs and personal songwriting. Rahim said he used to be afraid of being vulnerable in his music, fearing that producers would tell him to stick to “sexy reggaeton,” but at the height of the coronavirus pandemic he forced himself to overcome such doubts. Soon, he was working on tracks about his Kurdish heritage and his father’s emotional distance.So far, becoming a pop phenomenon — even in a small country like Denmark — has been a mixed experience. Rahim said that last year he often felt like he was on a runaway train, and that he started having delusions “that someone was going to kill me.”In the fall, while rehearsing for a performance at Denmark’s main music awards, he had a panic attack. It “felt like my body was underwater,” he recalled. He pulled out of the show and public life, only returning with this spring’s arena tour. He is now feeling better, he said, and in recent weeks he released two tracks, “Toget” (“The Train”) and “Orange,” about the year’s challenges and a more hopeful future.At the concert, many fans shed tears during Rahim’s track “When Men Cry.”Mathias Eis for The New York TimesDuring a 90-minute interview, Rahim said that when it came to breaking through outside Denmark, he did not believe in having a master plan, but would simply go “wherever the river takes me.” He then pointed to a tattoo on his arm of a fish racing through a stream with the word “river” written in Danish above it to show how important the idea was to him.“I love the world, and I really feel an urge to interact with the world,” Rahim said, “but I also love making music here.”At the recent arena show, Rahim had decided that — for now at least — he was going to bring the world to Denmark. At the show’s climax, he announced that he was about to play “Kurder I København” (“Kurds in Copenhagen”), a tropical pop song about immigration that ends as a Middle Eastern party tune complete with Kurdish chants and traditional instruments.He invited several guest singers and musicians onstage, one waving the Kurdish flag, talked about how proud he was to be a Kurd, and then told the crowd he wanted them to all link their pinkie fingers and start bobbing up and down as if dancing at a Kurdish wedding.As the crowd followed his instructions, Rahim beamed from the stage. In that moment, he looked truly at home. More

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      Frank Ocean Headlines Coachella and Plays Reworked Songs

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      During his first large-scale performance in years, the enigmatic singer suggested a new album was coming, just “not right now.”Three years after a much-hyped headlining set was foiled by the pandemic — and nearly six years since his most recent large-scale concerts — the venerated but rarely heard from singer-songwriter Frank Ocean closed the opening weekend of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Sunday with a typically emotional performance of reworked favorites, and a hint that a new album was coming.Wearing a bright blue jacket with the hood pulled tight around his face, Ocean took to the stage around an hour late, beginning with a rock version of “Novacane,” his 2011 debut single that describes meeting a girl at Coachella, before playing reworked versions of hits including “Bad Religion” and “White Ferrari.”Soon, he walked to the front of the stage — beneath vast screens — and explained he was performing on Sunday because he used to regularly attend the desert festival with his younger brother, Ryan Breaux, who died in a car crash in 2020. Ocean said one of his “fondest memories” was dancing with his brother in a tent there to the rap duo Rae Sremmurd.“I know he would have been so excited to be here with all of us,” Ocean added.Ocean, 35, has not released an album since 2016, with minimal public appearances, only a few singles and a luxury fashion line in between. At times on Sunday, he was barely visible to the crowd despite the large screens, as his hourlong set — which included a DJ interlude from the Paris-based producer Crystallmess — rounded out the festival weekend’s headline performances, following the Puerto Rican pop star Bad Bunny on Friday and the K-pop girl group Blackpink on Saturday.Ocean’s stage time was perhaps meant to be longer. But after playing “At Your Best (You Are Love),” his version of an Isley Brothers track once covered by Aaliyah, Ocean announced: “Guys I’m being told it’s curfew, so that’s the end of the show.”The festival — one of the pre-eminent events in the pop music calendar, with some 125,000 daily attendees, regardless of who’s booked onstage — was held once again at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, Calif., its home nearly every year since 1999, and also livestreamed via YouTube. Other performers across the three days included Rosalía, Burna Boy, Gorillaz, Blondie (with Nile Rodgers), boygenius and the rap producer Metro Boomin, with special guests Future and the Weeknd.Coachella’s other headliners this year included the Puerto Rican pop star Bad Bunny and the K-pop girl group Blackpink.Emma Mcintyre/Getty Images For CoachellaOcean had initially been slated to headline in April 2020, before Coachella was postponed and then canceled twice because of Covid-19; the festival returned last year without Ocean, featuring the headliners Billie Eilish, Harry Styles and Swedish House Mafia instead. Coachella repeats for its second annual weekend from Friday to Sunday.Given those canceled appearances, Ocean’s set on Sunday was highly anticipated, even by those unable to get tickets. Most of the festival was livestreamed on YouTube throughout the weekend and thousands of music lovers waited online Sunday to watch Ocean’s set, too. But YouTube said in a tweet late Sunday that the livestream of his concert would not go ahead. Hundreds of social media users immediately expressed their frustration with crying emojis and animated GIFs.On Monday, neither YouTube nor Coachella responded to a request for comment about why Ocean’s set wasn’t streamed. (Björk, who also performed on Sunday, was not shown on the livestream either.)At the festival, Ocean, who has lately been selling jewelry through his luxury brand Homer, kept his overall presentation minimal, as well: “NO FRANK OCEAN MERCHANDISE,” read a sign on the grounds, to the disappointment of some fans.Having long built its name on genre-spanning spectacle, rare appearances, debuts and reunions — from the Tupac Shakur hologram and Beyoncé’s 2018 tour de force to reconciliations between core members of Pixies, Rage Against the Machine, Outkast, Guns N’ Roses and more — Coachella had more than just Ocean’s re-emergence this past weekend. On Friday, the pop-punk group Blink-182 appeared with its classic lineup — the trio of Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge and Travis Barker — for the first time since 2014. The band was a late addition to the festival, with its set not announced until Wednesday.And on Saturday, the enigmatic British singer and producer Jai Paul, whose sparse career output makes Ocean seem prolific, performed his first ever concert. Starting off in near-darkness and without a word to the crowd, Paul appeared initially nervous, but was smiling broadly by the end of the 11-track set. While Paul’s performance was not shown live online, it later appeared in full on the official YouTube stream.On Saturday at Coachella, the British singer and producer Jai Paul performed his first ever concert. Julian Bajsel + Quinn Tucker at Quasar MediaSome of the biggest cheers during his set came for “BTSTU,” a track that mixes Prince-like sensuality with fuzzy electronics and has been sampled by both Drake and Beyoncé. “I know I’ve been gone a long time,” Paul sang, “but I’m back and want what is mine.”Ocean first rose to promise with “Nostalgia, Ultra,” a 2011 mixtape. In the years since he has become a cult favorite, a major-label star, a Grammy winner, a chart-topper and a disrupter of those very systems, only further fueling the fan mythology around him. Following the success of his 2012 debut album, “Channel Orange,” Ocean waited four years to release a follow-up, eventually unveiling two projects — one, the visual album “Endless,” to satisfy his record deal, and another, “Blonde,” released independently — along with a magazine titled Boys Don’t Cry.Although Ocean released a few one-off singles and played a small slate of concerts, mostly at festivals, the following year, he soon receded from view again.In 2019, in association with his internet radio show Blonded, Ocean attempted to start a series of club nights — dubbed PrEP+ after the H.I.V. prevention drug — that he called a “homage to what could have been of the 1980s NYC club scene” if the medication had existed then. After three events in New York and two additional singles, plans to expand the parties into “larger raves across the world” were spoiled by the pandemic, the singer said later in a statement delivered to fans via merchandise.He added, seemingly in the third person, “The Recording Artist has since changed his mind about the singles model, and is again interested in more durational bodies of work.”Onstage at Coachella, Ocean didn’t debut any new music in full, but he did mention a new album was on the way. As the vast audience screamed in delight, Ocean quietened the crowd. “Not right now,” he said. “It’s not right now.” More

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      8 New Songs You Should Hear Now

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      A dive into tracks by Tyler, the Creator, Feist, Bully and more recent highlights.Tyler, the Creator released a new track as part of an expanded edition of “Call Me if You Get Lost.”Luis “Panch” PerezDear listeners,I have a constantly replenishing playlist on my phone called “Thursday Nights and Friday Mornings.” It’s named for the time I do some of my most focused new-music listening, in preparation for the publication of the Playlist, a weekly feature that I compile with my colleagues Jon Pareles and Jon Caramanica.* Each Friday, we recommend a handful of songs released in the past week, a task that helps me stay on top of all (well, most) of the new music that comes out in a given week, and often the Jons’ picks point me toward what I missed.Every few weeks, I’ll be sending out an Amplifier digest of recent Playlist highlights. Today, we’ve got a mix of some possibly familiar names (Lucinda Williams; Feist; Tyler, the Creator) and hopefully some new ones, too.Listen along here on Spotify as you read.1. Jess Williamson: “Hunter”This is one of my favorite new songs right now. It’s from the Texas-born singer-songwriter Jess Williamson, whose music I’ve been following since her haunting 2014 debut, “Native State.” Last year, she teamed up with a fellow musician from the South, Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee, and formed a country duo called Plains. Williamson’s contributions to Plains’ excellent record “I Walked With You a Ways” felt like a step forward for her as a songwriter, and I hear that growth on “Hunter,” the first single from her next solo album, “Time Ain’t Accidental,” out in June. It’s a bittersweet song about the spiritually exhausting process of looking for love, but on the chorus Williamson sounds hopeful and replenished, reminding herself, “I want a mirror, not a piece of glass.” (Listen on YouTube)2. Bully: “Days Move Slow”My former colleague at Vulture Jesse David Fox once compared an early song from Alicia Bognanno’s grungy power-pop band Bully to “Sugarhigh,” the fictional alt-rock hit that Renée Zellweger’s character sings at the end of “Empire Records” — and now I will never un-hear that similarity as long as I live. (It’s definitely a compliment.) I interviewed Bognanno over video chat in August 2020, and I remember a very sweet dog named Mezzi dozing behind her. (A dog lover myself, I always ask my interview subjects about their pups. Always.) Sadly, Mezzi has since passed on, but “Days Move Slow,” from the forthcoming Bully album “Lucky for You,” is both an ode to her memory and a chronicle of Bognanno trying to propel herself out of the muck of grief. That probably makes it sound like a downer, but the song has a resilient, upbeat energy about it — sort of like an excitable canine. Rest in power, Mezzi! (Listen on YouTube)3. Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro: “Beso”Some couples announce their engagement with a ring pic on Instagram. Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro, two of the brightest Spanish-language stars in the current pop firmament, hinted at theirs in a music video. Their sweet and sultry duet “Beso” is a highlight from their recently released collaborative EP, “RR” — and proof of their musical chemistry. (Listen on YouTube)4. Tyler, the Creator: “Sorry Not Sorry”Fun fact: In 2021, only two albums made appearances on all three of our critics’ Top 10 lists — Olivia Rodrigo’s head-turning debut “Sour” and Tyler, the Creator’s sprawling rap odyssey “Call Me if You Get Lost.” Last week, Tyler released an expanded edition featuring a few new tracks, including this one, the gregarious “Sorry Not Sorry.” I really like this song’s Jekyll-and-Hyde energy, as a repentant Tyler apologizes for a number of personal and professional slights and then, occasionally, a brasher version of himself takes it right back: “Sorry to the fans who say I changed — ’cause I did.” (Listen on YouTube)5. Mahalia: “Terms and Conditions”I’m a total mark for any song that mines and cleverly updates the sounds of Y2K pop or “TRL”-era R&B. (See also: The entire output of the young British girl group Flo.) “Terms and Conditions,” from the 24-year-old singer Mahalia, does just that. It’s giving me hints of Mya, Destiny’s Child and a whole lot of J. Lo’s glimmering millennial time capsule “If You Had My Love.” But it’s also got a contemporary twist, as Mahalia tells a potential suitor what she won’t tolerate (“If you look at her, consider bridges burned”), flipping the dry language of contractual agreements into something confident, fun and flirty. (Listen on YouTube)6. Lucinda Chua featuring yeule: “Something Other Than Years”Like the Mahalia song, I have my colleague Jon Pareles to thank for this next Playlist pick, from the London-based songwriter Lucinda Chua. “Something Other Than Years” is a sparse, hypnotic duet with the Singaporean musician yeule, which finds Chua pleading in a glassy voice, “Show me how to live this life,” a request that seems to be answered by yeule’s celestial melody. Jon describes the rest of Chua’s new album “Yian” as a collection of “meditations seeking serenity — often just two alternating chords, set out slowly on keyboard and sustained by orchestral strings.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Feist: “Borrow Trouble”I love it when Feist — an artist often associated with calm and quietude — lets loose and makes a ruckus, as she does on this stomping tune from her upcoming album, “Multitudes.” Wait for her primal screams at the very end! (Listen on YouTube)Two Lucindas in a single playlist? Better believe it. The country-rock legend Lucinda Williams’s voice has sounded defiant since at least the 1980s, but since recovering from a 2020 stroke, her survivor’s rasp has taken on a whole new gravitas. “New York Comeback” — from the upcoming album “Stories from a Rock N Roll Heart” — has Williams’s characteristic grit and lack of sentiment (“No one’s brought the curtain down,” she sings wrly, “maybe you should stick around”) but there’s something poignant about hearing Amplifier fave Bruce Springsteen (along with his wife and bandmate Patti Scialfa) singing backing vocals to support her as if he’s just one more rock ’n’ roll lifer nodding to another. (Listen on YouTube)These are my terms and conditions,Lindsay*If the grammatically correct plural of “attorney general” is indeed “attorneys general,” maybe I should say “Jons Pareles and Caramanica.”The Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“8 New Songs You Should Hear Now” track listTrack 1: Jess Williamson, “Hunter”Track 2: Bully, “Days Move Slow”Track 3: Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro, “Beso”Track 4: Tyler, the Creator, “Sorry Not Sorry”Track 5: Mahalia, “Terms and Conditions”Track 6: Lucinda Chua featuring yeule, “Something Other Than Years”Track 7: Feist, “Borrow Trouble”Track 8: Lucinda Williams, “New York Comeback”Bonus TracksA few of you have written in to ask if we archive previous Amplifier playlists on Spotify. We do! The easiest way to find them is through our account page, where we also archive all the weekly Friday Playlists, too.And speaking of reader emails: Special thanks to Sharon Smith for — after I mentioned that Bob Dylan won his first Grammy nearly two decades into his career, for his 1979 song “Gotta Serve Somebody” — directing me to this blistering performance of Dylan playing the song live at the 1980 Grammys. (Kris Kristofferson, as you’ll see, was loving it.) Apparently the producers asked him to cut the song down to three or four minutes; he played for six and a half. Classic Bob! More

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      Drake Surprises With a Kim Kardashian Sample, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Kaytraminé, Blondshell, Yaeji and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Drake, ‘Search & Rescue’“I didn’t come this far, just to come this far and not be happy” — so said Kim Kardashian on the 2021 series finale of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” discussing why it was time to split from her husband, Kanye West. Two years later, their divorce is finalized, but the narrative persists. That line appears at a pivotal moment in Drake’s new song, “Search & Rescue.” Hovering above a morbid, anxious piano figure, Drake raps about the hollowness of being lonely, and after the chorus, uses Kardashian’s words but reframes them, making them sound like a lament about the single life. Here are two contrasting forms of despair, played off each other. Drake is pleading for connection: “Take me out the club, take me out the trap/Take me off the market, take me off the map.” Kardashian is yearning to be free. But Drake is also a sometime high-profile antagonist of West’s, and his leveraging of Kardashian’s words — an official sample, certainly approved by her — is unlikely to be understood as anything but a broadside from two seemingly unattached people, who would cause a whole lot of trouble were they to attach to each other. JON CARAMANICAKaytraminé featuring Pharrell Williams, ‘4EVA’“4EVA” is the winningly bubbly debut single from Kaytraminé, the duo of the rapper Aminé and the dance music producer Kaytranada. It pairs the irreverence of Leaders of the New School with the sumptuous physicality of A Tribe Called Quest, all delivered at a tempo that triggers a sense of freedom and release. CARAMANICAMahalia, ‘Terms and Conditions’The English R&B singer Mahalia sets out her own EULA — the page everyone clicks through on the way to a website or app — in “Terms and Conditions.” She specifies “the man you’re required to be” over a briskly ticking beat, vocal harmonies and bursts of strings; she wants honesty, attention and fidelity, which don’t seem that much to ask. Can she treat a relationship as a matter of cold internet metrics? The penalties are spelled out: “I’ll cut you off and I won’t regret it,” she sings. JON PARELESIndigo De Souza, ‘You Can Be Mean’With a proudly discordant yelp in her voice, Indigo De Souza vents every bit of her annoyance at her latest hookup in “You Can Be Mean,” a grungy stomp topped by a mock synthesizer. “I can’t believe I let you touch my body,” she snarls. “It makes me sick to think about that night.” She briefly considers extenuating factors, like a bad parent, but not for long. “I don’t see you trying that hard to be better than he was,” she notes. PARELESBlondshell, ‘Salad’The brooding “Salad” is a rock-song revenge fantasy cut through with the Blondshell singer-songwriter Sabrina Teitelbaum’s wry humor: “Look what you did,” she sings, “you’ll make a killer of a Jewish girl.” Still, a genuine sense of menace lurks just out of frame, in a crime Teitelbaum alludes to but can’t name outright when she wails, “God, tell me why did he hurt my girl.” Here, as on the rest of her self-titled debut album as Blondshell, which is out on Friday, Teitelbaum offers candid dispatches from the darker, often unsung corners of a young woman’s experiences. LINDSAY ZOLADZLucinda Williams, ‘New York Comeback’A characteristic grit and defiance courses through “New York Comeback,” a new single from the country-rock legend Lucinda Williams, which features Bruce Springsteen and his wife and bandmate, Patti Scialfa, on backing vocals. The song comes from “Stories from a Rock N Roll Heart,” Williams’s forthcoming album and her first release since suffering a stroke in 2020. That context adds a bit of weight to the song, but as ever, Williams is gimlet-eyed and unsentimental, singing in her signature growl, “No one’s brought the curtain down, maybe you should stick around.” ZOLADZYaeji, ‘Passed Me By’The D.J. and producer Yaeji, whose debut album “With a Hammer” comes out on Friday, pens a letter to her younger self on the booming but introspective “Passed Me By.” The song — on which Yaeji oscillates between English and Korean — begins as a kind of free-form incantation, but all at once a slow, echoing drum beat drops and gives it a loose pop structure. “Do you know that the person is still inside of you, waiting for you to notice?” she sings in the song’s final moments, a question that both lingers and haunts. ZOLADZUncle Waffles, ‘Asylum’Lungelihle Zwane, the D.J. and producer who calls herself Uncle Waffles, distills her new album, “Asylum,” into a five-minute megamix and dance extravaganza for her “Asylum” video. Uncle Waffle was born in Swaziland (now Eswatini) and is now based in South Africa. With a quick-changing array of singers and rappers — men, women, soloists, groups — she works countless variations on the midtempo beat, shaker percussion and gaping open spaces of South African amapiano. It’s still only a small sampling of what she concocts in the course of the album. PARELESArthur Moon, ‘7 O’Clock Clap’Lora-Faye Ashuvud, the songwriter, singer and producer behind Arthur Moon, finds joy in disorientation in “7 O’Clock Clap.” As speedy staccato blips and skittering percussion race above a languid bass line, the song has advice what to do when “you’re a foreigner in your own production/in your own bed, in your own body.” There’s a big grin in the vocal as Ashuvud sings, “Take your shoes off, get a move on/Pray to someone, break your cover!” PARELESLabrinth, ‘Never Felt So Alone’“Never Felt So Alone” first surfaced as part of Labrinth’s soundtrack for “Euphoria,” and snippets thrived on TikTok for years. The full-fledged version — a collaboration by Labrinth, Billie Eilish and Finneas — luxuriates in heartache. Labrinth intones the title as a falsetto plaint above hollow, puffing organ chords that hark back to Brian Wilson; the beat is slow, sporadic, almost stumbling. Midway through, the track stages a near-collapse, with fragmented lyrics and bits of dead air, then grandly reassembles itself. Eilish takes over to deliver her side of the story — “Who knew you were just out to get me?” — before each moves on, resigned to loneliness. PARELESPeter Gabriel, ‘I/O’The title of Peter Gabriel’s first new album in 21 years, “I/O,” stands for input/output, a metaphor he earnestly spells out in its title track, preaching the oneness of humanity and nature over solemn keyboards; “Stuff coming out, and stuff going in/I’m just a part of everything.” But the song takes off in the nonverbal moments of the chorus, when electric guitars surge and the Soweto Gospel Choir backs him in the exultant vowel sounds of “i, o, i, o.” PARELESThis Is the Kit, ‘Inside/Outside’Calm on the outside but bustling within, “Inside Outside” ponders fate, physics and free will. “All the molecules were focused on your next move,” Kate Stables sings, as complex counterpoint gathers around her. The sparse acoustic guitar at the beginning is deceptive; soon she’s in a polytonal tangle of horns, guitars and cross-rhythms, living up to her admonishment: “Bite off as much as you can chew.” PARELES More

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      Myke Towers Is Seizing His Moment

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      In just a few years, the rapper has become one of the most sought-after collaborators in Latin music. His new album, “La Vida Es Una,” surveys his many aesthetics.Myke Towers could tell you that he never knew he would make it big, but that wouldn’t be true. Because back in 2014, six years before the rapper would put out his debut, he was preparing for a make-or-break show in his hometown, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and breaking wasn’t an option.“Puerto Rico is the most difficult crowd to please,” he said this month, video-chatting from a Miami hotel room a few weeks before the release of his new album, “La Vida Es Una” (“Life Is One,” a reminder that we only live once). “They don’t just give out approval, you have to show that you are good enough. If you make it in P.R., you’re going to make it anywhere.”Over the course of two back-to-back albums, he did just that. “Easy Money Baby” from 2020 went triple platinum, building off the success of his 2016 mixtape, “El Final del Principio” (“The End of the Beginning”), while incorporating reggaeton, Brazilian funk and Colombian melodies. “Lyke Mike,” released in 2021, was a firm statement of purpose that strung together harder trap bangers. It peaked at No. 3 on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart and cracked the Top 50 on the all-genre Top 200. With his new album, out Thursday, Towers aimed to marry the two approaches, striking a balance that illustrates his creative flexibility.“In this album, I want to make music to perform live,” he said, speaking animatedly in a casual white tee and a gold chain. “I want to give energy to people so they can go out and forget about their problems, forget about what’s stressing them.”Almost a decade ago, Towers, now 29, was still waiting for his shot. Raised in the barrio of Caimito in south San Juan, he grew up surrounded by music, mainly his grandmother’s: salsa, merengue, old school boleros — if it was classic Latin music, she was playing it. But Towers wanted to cut his own path in rap, and by the time he graduated from high school, he’d started releasing music on SoundCloud, initially fairly anonymously. “At the beginning, I didn’t even want to show my face,” he said with a laugh. “I just wanted to show my skills. I knew that I had to put in a lot of work to be in the mix.”“Wherever I go, I make music from Puerto Rico,” Towers said. “When I’m making music, I’m listening to the people who came before me.”Ysa Pérez for The New York TimesHe didn’t just practice music, he analyzed it, dissecting every move idols like Daddy Yankee and Jay-Z made, and seeing how he could apply them to his own life. “I studied the game,” he explained. “I have my own identity, but I started with them, and the respect that I had for them.”As his SoundCloud releases gained more traction, he began putting his name on the tracks — styling “Mike” as “Myke” — and performing around the city. He viewed his first shows as tests, and by 2014 he was ready for graduation: that important hometown performance, in La Perla.For artists who grew up in the area, performing in La Perla, the island’s famous slum — located on a stretch of rocky coastline in Old San Juan — is a rite of passage. In video of Towers’s set posted to YouTube, the rapper is dressed in all black, standing under a white beach canopy as he confidently delivers the verses of the aspirational “Dinero En Mano.” (He later released the track, filled with ominous strings, on “El Final del Principio.”) By the end of the song, the crowd is singing along with him.“It was one of my most important shows,” he recalled. He shook his head and grinned, almost as if he was still in disbelief that he had pulled it off. “A lot of people, they didn’t even know my songs, but they were like, ‘Who’s that? Why is he confident performing like that?’”Even before he released his first full-length album, Towers had already teamed up with Bad Bunny and Becky G, laying the groundwork that would make him one of Latin music’s most in-demand collaborators. Since then, the rapper’s features with Rauw Alejandro, Luis Fonsi and Farruko have all been certified platinum.With “La Vida Es Una,” Towers agonized over the track list, sifting between more than 50 songs to select the set that could demonstrate his transition from a vanguard of Puerto Rico’s grass-roots trap scene to a self-assured hitmaker. His versatility is what first grabbed the attention of Orlando Cepeda, known as Jova, one of Towers’s frequent co-writers and the co-founder of the Puerto Rican label that first signed him in 2018. After hearing his rap music, Cepeda asked if Towers had anything more commercial. He was impressed.“He’s an artist without limits,” Cepeda said in a phone interview. “He’s a writer, he’s a composer, he’s a lyricist. I think that hearing someone who comes from the hood like he does, when you listen to his music, it inspires, it excites, it makes people want to work with him.”By the time Towers graduated from high school, he’d started releasing music on SoundCloud.Ysa Pérez for The New York TimesIn addition to tapping some of his past collaborators, including Ozuna and J Balvin, for “La Vida Es Una,” Towers also enlisted producers from across the Latin music diaspora, including Sky Rompiendo (from Colombia) and Tainy (Puerto Rico). “I want to show my fans the difference between ‘Mike’ and ‘Myke,’” he said, explaining his efforts to blend his grittier rap roots with his mainstream ambitions. “In the beginning, my fans would say things like, ‘Oh, you went commercial. What are you doing?’ Those comments would get in my head, and I felt like I was losing who I am, but I like to challenge myself. I took a lot of risks on this album, but I feel confident that when people listen to it, they’ll hear something they needed from me before.”The new album includes songs for his more pop-minded fans: “Sábado” and the Daddy Yankee collaboration “Ulala (Ooh La La),” two dance-floor-ready tracks produced by the Texas duo Play-N-Skillz. Towers heats things up on “El Calentón,” a sparse track that begins as a reggaeton jam before building to a display of his lyrical dexterity. And as its title might suggest, “Flow Jamaican,” produced by Di Genius, dives into reggae rhythms, with Towers switching up his flow in the lead-up to the song’s earworm of a hook.The album was primarily recorded in Puerto Rico, a place with such a long, diverse musical history, Towers said, that anyone who taps into it comes away overflowing with ideas, influences and potential: “Wherever I go, I make music from Puerto Rico. When I’m making music, I’m listening to the people who came before me.” He lit up, a wide smile spreading across his face as he described his usual routine of returning home from tour to his wife and son, and then heading to the studio.“My family is my home base,” Towers said. “Going back to them is spiritual to me. Before I had my son, I would be in the studio until 7 a.m., every day. I’ll always have that hustler spirit, but when I found out I was going to have a kid, it was about working smarter, not harder.”Towers ends the album with a triumphant celebration, “Lo Logré” (“I Made It”). “It’s an anthem that a lot of people are going to relate to,” he said.“People think I made it and it was easy, they forget the process, everything that it took to make it happen. I value every moment in my career because years ago I was even crying trying to make it come true. There are trials you go through, but when you come out on the other side, people just see that you made it. And I have, but I haven’t. I have more dreams to achieve.” More

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      The Inevitability of Ice Spice

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicIt was only last August — seven months ago! — that Ice Spice became seemingly ubiquitous with “Munch (Feelin’ U),” a casually devastating burn of a would-be suitor. Then an emerging rapper from, or more accurately adjacent to, the Bronx drill scene, she’s had a rapid ascent to a contemporary version of pop stardom. She’s now in the Top 5 of the Billboard Hot 100 with “Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2,” a collaboration with the equally TikTok-friendly PinkPantheress. And she recently released her debut EP, “Like..?”It seems like Ice Spice demand is outstripping supply — thanks to the omnipresence of her music on TikTok in recent weeks, she’s become eminently consumed even as she has released just a limited amount of music. But modern celebrity is built on this kind of shareability, and her ease in these spaces is a primary driver of her success, in addition to a writing style that’s highly conversational and accessible.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the rise of Ice Spice, how her music-making moves in lock step with the TikTok and Instagram meme universe, and the bottom-up approach to stardom that’s likely to define the future of pop.Guest:Jeff Ihaza, a senior editor at Rolling StoneConnect 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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      Three Convicted in 2018 Murder of Rapper XXXTentacion

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      After more than 27 hours of deliberation, a Florida jury found three men guilty of killing the rising rapper during a robbery in the parking lot of a motorcycle shop.Nearly five years after the killing of the rising rap star XXXTentacion, who was fatally shot in broad daylight during a 2018 robbery just as his polarizing career was exploding, a jury in Florida on Monday ended more than a week of deliberations when it found three men guilty of first-degree murder in the case.Prosecutors said that Michael Boatwright, 28, and Trayvon Newsome, 24, were the gunmen that June afternoon, with Boatwright firing the fatal shot during a struggle over money. The third man convicted, Dedrick Williams, 26, was said to be the getaway driver and mastermind behind the robbery.All three face mandatory life sentences; prosecutors did not seek the death penalty in the case, which was tried at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.Surveillance video played in court showed the rapper’s BMW being blocked by an S.U.V. as he tried to leave a motor sports store in Deerfield Beach, Fla., leading to a confrontation with two masked assailants, who escaped with $50,000 in cash.The trial turned largely on the jury’s interpretation of testimony from a fourth man present that day, Robert Allen, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder last year and testified against his alleged co-conspirators. The Broward County prosecutors also relied on surveillance video from the store that showed two of the men inside, seemingly observing XXXTentacion (born Jahseh Onfroy), as well as cellphone and Bluetooth data tying the men to the location and the S.U.V.XXXTentacion onstage in 2017. The rising rapper was shot and killed during a robbery in 2018.Matias J. Ocner/Miami Herald, via Tribune News Service and Getty ImagesThe evidence also included videos that prosecutors said showed the defendants dancing and posing with cash hours after the killing.During more than 27 hours of deliberations across eight days, jurors had asked to review more than 1,000 text messages, along with photos and videos, seized from the cellphones of two of the defendants, including a picture of a news story about the shooting.Defense lawyers for Boatwright, Newsome and Williams, who were tried together, argued that DNA evidence failed to link them to the shooting. (The jury was asked to decide separately on each man’s guilt or innocence, and could have convicted just one or two of those accused.)The defense pointed vaguely to other theories of the crime — including behind-the-scenes wrangling that attempted to include information about XXXTentacion’s online beef with the megastar Drake, who fought successfully to avoid being deposed in the case. They also said that Allen, who had previous felony convictions, was an unreliable witness.“Plans hatched in hell do not have angels for witnesses,” Pascale Achille, the lead prosecutor, said in her rebuttal after closing arguments.The foursome had been planning to commit robberies that day, prosecutors argued, when they happened upon XXXTentacion at the motorcycle shop, where they had hoped to buy a mask. After confirming the musician’s identity inside, the men then waited for him in the parking lot and pulled in front of his car, allowing the two gunmen to attack, their faces covered. A passenger riding with XXXTentacion fled, and a scuffle over the rapper’s Louis Vuitton bag containing the $50,000 ended when Boatwright shot the rapper, prosecutors said.XXXTentacion, 20, a singer, songwriter and rapper who blended genres and first took off on the streaming platform SoundCloud, was high up on the roller coaster of viral fame when he was killed.In the 18 months before the shooting, he had gone from a little-known, troubled teenager making music in his bedroom to the top of the Billboard chart thanks to the success of his anarchic breakout single, “Look at Me!,” and a follow-up album, “?,” which debuted at No. 1.At the same time, he was awaiting trial on charges of battery, false imprisonment and witness tampering stemming from the alleged violent assault of a former girlfriend.“If I’m going to die or ever be a sacrifice, I want to make sure that my life made at least five million kids happy, or they found some sort of answers or resolve in my life, regardless of the negative around my name, regardless of the bad things people say to me,” the rapper said in a video posted to social media before his death.Since his killing, XXXTentacion — whose striking visage has been absorbed into modern hip-hop’s iconography — has been the subject of a documentary, “Look at Me,” and been featured on albums by Kanye West and Lil Wayne, in addition to the posthumous music released in his name. More