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      Lizzo’s ‘Big Grrrls’ Asks Big Questions

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      The singer wanted a new kind of backup dancer. Along the way, she ended up making a new kind of TV show.Lizzo would have rather just hired her dancers through an agency. But, as she says on the first episode of her new show that premiered on Amazon Prime Video last month, “Girls who look like me just don’t get representation.”She’s talking about “representation” in the professional sense. But broader questions of representation loom on “Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls.” The eight-episode show follows a group of aspiring plus-size dancers who recently competed for a chance to back up Lizzo onstage and possibly join her tour as one of her “Big Grrrl” dancers.Lizzo tells the dancers that if they don’t rise to the occasion she’ll send them home — or she might not. A few episodes in, she tells them that they might all get to stay.“The No. 1 thing is I didn’t want to eliminate every week,” Lizzo said in a Zoom interview.“I’m looking for dancers, not dancer,” she said, emphasizing the plural. If she eliminated a woman every week, she said, she wouldn’t have anyone by the end.Ashley Williams.Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesArianna Davis.Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesA reality TV competition that doesn’t cut contestants may seem like a paradox. But Lizzo’s career has always featured surprising and somewhat contradictory combinations. She regularly appears nude and bristles at being called “brave” for it. She insists on the inherent value of fat bodies and has started a shapewear line. She twerks and she plays the flute.Inside Lizzo’s WorldThe Grammy-winning singer is known for her fierce lyrics, fashion and personality.‘Feel-Good Music’: Lizzo says her music is as much about building yourself up as it is about accepting where you are.Why ‘Truth Hurts’ Matters: In 2020, The New York Times Magazine put her No. 1 hit on its list of songs that define the moment.Diary of a Song: Watch how Lizzo made “Juice,” a party song that packs all of her joy and charm into three danceable minutes.Her Beauty Rituals: Lizzo talked to us about her skin rehab, impossible standards and what she does first thing in the morning.“I don’t have to fit into the archetypes that have been created before like Tyra Banks or Puff Daddy,” Lizzo said. “They all did it their own way, and that’s what I’m doing.” Lizzo’s persona as a TV host is part demanding queen, part nurturing mentor. Several times throughout the show, she delivers imperious one-liners to the camera, holds for a few seconds and then bursts into laughter.Lizzo’s warmer and more supportive moments are tempered by her choreographer Tanisha Scott, who brings tough love and an exacting rigor to her rehearsals.Lizzo, left, and the choreographer Tanisha Scott in a scene from the series.James Clark/Amazon Prime Video“I’m able to speak to them from my own personal experience, to not give up and not also feel sorry for yourself in any sort of way,” Ms. Scott said in a Zoom interview. Ms. Scott started her career as an untrained dancer with a larger-than-average body and has emerged as a rare success in her industry. She said she had to work 10 times harder than other dancers to get where she is.“So I wasn’t going to be sweet and easy and ‘this is a bunch of roses’ and ‘we all got this,’” she said. “No. You have to work for it.”Ms. Scott credits Lizzo with opening the door for the greater commercial viability of larger dancers. “She’s making this not a trend or a novelty, she’s making this a business,” she said.One of the unique elements of Lizzo’s show is how seriously it takes both the talents and struggles of its aspiring “Big Grrrls.” Every episode features athletic feats performed by larger-than-average bodies, including particularly jaw-dropping acrobatics by Jayla Sullivan, one of the contestants. But the show doesn’t shy away from the dancers’ injuries, insecurities and occasional food issues.Tonally, the show lives somewhere between body positivity — a concept that has fully penetrated certain corners of marketing — and body neutrality, a newer idea that encourages people to accept and respect their bodies. The entertainment and dance industries are also in a moment of transition in their attitudes toward larger bodies.“There’s a movement of plus-sized women coming to the forefront as leading roles, as stars,” said Nneka Onuorah, who directed the show and appears in an episode. “This show is just the tip of the iceberg on that.”Lizzo said she has seen the change “on a commercial level, where bigger girls are being welcomed in casting rooms.” “I’ll even hear things about, ‘Oh, we need a Lizzo type,’ which is really inspiring,” she said.Still, Lizzo said that there are still vastly fewer casting opportunities for large dancers. “I’ve seen big girls being cast in music videos almost as a joke, not as being taken seriously,” she said. “So I think it hasn’t infiltrated the actual dance industry.”Jessica Judd, who runs an organization in the Bay Area called Big Moves that focuses on making dance accessible to people of all sizes, agrees. Her group worked closely with choreographers in the mainstream dance world for years until they grew disillusioned by a pattern of fat-phobic comments and empty words around body diversity.“They absolutely know what to say — they absolutely know they probably shouldn’t say out loud that they only want a size 4 or below,” Ms. Judd said, “but then you look at who gets cast.”Jayla Sullivan, left, with fellow dancer Kiara Mooring.Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesJasmine Loren Morrison.Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesShe recalled comments people made about plus-size dancers being “brave” for getting onstage (“that’s not the compliment you think it is,” she said) and the sense that mainstream producers or choreographers were working with them to check a diversity box, then going back to their uniform casts.“I do not want to be a perpetual prop for the mainstream dance world trying to work out their issues around fatness and bodies,” Ms. Judd said.To Ms. Judd, Lizzo’s show is a major victory for representation, but does not necessarily portend anything for the broader dance world, where she has seen plenty of lip service paid to body positivity but little substantial change.“At the end of the day,” she said, “not a lot of presenters, directors, producers and choreographers are necessarily invested in having fat people involved in their organization.”Lizzo agrees that there is a long way to go for big dancers to be taken seriously and treated well in the dance industry. In the meantime, she is focused on her own work.“I just want people to know that more than anything this is an incredible television show,” she said, rattling off a list of the crew members who she worked with.“I’m just fat,” she added. “And I’m just making a show about what I need.” More

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      Kanye West Replaced by Swedish House Mafia and the Weeknd at Coachella

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      A little over a week before the music festival’s first weekend, West, now known as Ye, dropped out of his headlining slot.Nine days before the return of Coachella, the festival has confirmed reports that Kanye West has dropped out as one of the event’s three headliners, and has been replaced by Swedish House Mafia with the Weeknd.No explanation was officially given about the departure of West, who was booked as the top performer for the third night of the festival, which repeats its lineup over two successive weekends. (Harry Styles and Billie Eilish lead the first two nights.) But the change, noted only in a revised lineup flier posted to the festival’s social media accounts on Wednesday, followed West’s ban from performing at the Grammy Awards, after weeks of unpredictable and troubling behavior online.The news of West’s apparent withdrawal was first reported on Monday by TMZ, and was quickly followed up by reports in the music press that the festival was seeking a replacement. Swedish House Mafia had been announced months ago as being part of the festival, though the group’s position in the lineup was left unclear. In October, the group released a track, “Moth to a Flame,” featuring the Weeknd on vocals.The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which was one of the first major events to be canceled by the spread of the coronavirus in 2020 — and was then postponed multiple times as the pandemic continued — will be held April 15-17 and April 22-24 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, Calif. It is being closely watched by the music industry as a symbolic moment for the full-scale return of the multibillion-dollar touring business. In February, the festival announced that attendees would not have to show proof of Covid-19 vaccination or a negative test to enter; masks are not required.West, who now goes by Ye, was nominated for five Grammys at Sunday’s ceremony, including album of the year for “Donda.” He won two nontelevised rap categories, bringing his career total to 24, but did not attend the show.The subject of a new Netflix documentary that coincided with the release of a new album-in-progress exclusively on a proprietary $200 speaker device, West had taken to posting extensively and combatively online about his divorce from Kim Kardashian, her dating life and their ongoing child custody battle.When Trevor Noah of “The Daily Show,” who was set to host the Grammys, said in a segment last month that West’s behavior was tipping into harassment and abuse, West responded in a post that referred to Noah with a racial slur. West was subsequently banned from Instagram for 24 hours and has not posted online since.Coachella’s 2020 event would have featured headlining performances by Rage Against the Machine, Travis Scott and Frank Ocean. A crowd surge at Scott’s own Astroworld festival last October left 10 people dead and many more injured, leading the rapper to withdraw from most public appearances. West indicated in an Instagram post in February that he planned to bring Scott, his onetime protégé and erstwhile brother-in-law, to the Coachella stage as a special guest during his set.Coachella is expected to welcome up to 125,000 attendees per day. More

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      The Psychic Contortions of the Black Billionaire

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      Listen to This ArticleAudio Recording by AudmTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.The story is so good it hurts to hear. In an era of stupefying inequality, one of the most famous members of the upper class is a former drug dealer from a notorious public-housing project. He switched the product and rode CD sales to a new ZIP code. He went from nobody to somebody to a fixture in public consciousness who hangs out with a former president. If you’ve been rapping along with Jay-Z since “Reasonable Doubt,” or maybe even his feature on the early Jaz-O single “Hawaiian Sophie,” you’d be forgiven for seeing that star scream across the sky and thinking his song was right: There’s nothing you can’t do.But when the force of his flow isn’t in your ears, what he did seems impossible once again. He is not just rich; he is, according to Forbes, a billionaire. Rappers aren’t supposed to make that much money. For starters, part of the job is knowing how to spend it, and Jay-Z has done plenty of that. But also, rappers, like athletes, tend to have short careers — the genre reinvents itself too quickly for elder statesmen to hang on. And it is a cutthroat business. Get rich or die trying is the injunction for this heady mix of the mostly male, mostly Black, cocksure young musicians rehearsing punch lines in the nation’s ghettos, where making it very well might be a matter of survival. It is a dreamer’s music, by necessity. But more than four decades into the genre’s reign, there are levels now. Some artists get paid. Others acquire capital.This is an uncomfortable situation. According to a recent survey conducted by the Federal Reserve, the median family wealth for Black households is $24,100. (The median white household has nearly eight times that.) Somewhere in that data set are eight Black American billionaires, at least according to the Forbes list. Whether your politics lead you to believe that these eight are inspirations or a problem, the last several centuries of history might lead you to ask how it is even possible they exist. Four of them — Oprah Winfrey, Jay-Z, Tyler Perry and Kanye West — made their names as entertainers. (There’s also Rihanna, who is a resident of the U.S. but not a citizen.) Rapper, as an occupation, appears more frequently on this short list than an Ivy League education does.Photo illustration by Ryan HaskinsIt is a strange fact of this country’s economic system that the most common way for Black people to become obscenely wealthy is to first become obscenely famous. Among other things, this means that much of their net worth is tied to the value of their public personas in ways that do not hold true for other billionaires. Whatever you think of Stephen A. Schwarzman, Miriam Adelson or even Bill Gates, their wealth is untethered to their Q Scores. Of course there are outliers. Elon Musk does relish playing to the crowd as the enfant terrible of auto manufacturing, generating an insulating admiration from his fans, but Kanye and Jay-Z are truly in a bind.For as long as it has existed, rap was, or was supposed to be, the crafted but splenetic outpouring of the dispossessed. At the same time, it has been about a life that most of its listeners cannot lead, but it held on, however tenuously, to its lower-class roots. Jay-Z always rapped as if he had the planet in his palm, even when it was really just a few blocks in Brooklyn. Over the years, he really did gain the whole world. And now a globally popular form of working-class youth music has, as its most powerful representatives, a pair of billionaires in their 40s and 50s. It has not been an easy balance to strike.Entertainers occupy a curious position where the lines between worker and owner sometimes blur. Rappers are signed to labels and then often open their own. Some of these labels collapse, often in a wave of recriminations about shady business practices. The contracts can control artists’ entire output, leaving them almost entirely dependent on the label to actually make something of their labor. Maximize revenue, cut labor costs. That, more than all the drug dealing said to take place, is the business world that produces many of these rappers. And they have, as often as not, leaned into this ethos. When they promise you that they’re reciting what they know, it is not really a reference to some social truth ripped from the depths of poor, Black neighborhoods. What they know is capital: What it is to have none, what it is to get a taste, what it takes to try to make peace with winding up on the other side of that divide.From the beginning, Jay-Z was a businessman. His debut album was released on the auspiciously named Roc-A-Fella Records, which he founded with two friends, Kareem Burke and Damon Dash. It made sense to have a piece of the action, because he helped popularize Mafioso rap, which took the bleak air of street-corner hustling and gave it the baroque mystique of gangster films. If there had not been a Black James Cagney or Francis Ford Coppola, there was at least a Shawn Carter. But the business world is brutal, inside and outside the law.At its peak in the ’00s, Roc-A-Fella featured a stacked cast: Just Blaze on production; the Philadelphia icons Beanie Sigel, Peedi Crakk and Freeway; the sprawling Dipset crew in Harlem; a young producer from Chicago named Kanye West. When Cam’ron appeared on the show “Rap City” in an oversize pink T-shirt, counting off a large pile of bills while freestyling that he’d “seen all islands, Cayman to Rikers,” it seemed unfathomable that the Roc era would ever end. But in a few years, Def Jam bought out the label’s founding partners and appointed Jay as the umbrella corporation’s president. Fights over shelved albums, loyalty, blocked promotions and due credit broke up what had looked like a street family.This led to a peculiar situation in which boardroom drama spilled out in the form of diss tracks by Def Jam artists aimed at their employer’s lead executive. Roc-A-Fella eventually folded. But still, to this day, Jay-Z owes much of his image as a business magnate to the dynastic sheen his labelmates gave “the Roc,” not to mention the marketers, graphic designers and interns that made them icons of New York street swagger.Jay diversified his portfolio in the years after that. He has a stake in Oatly, two separate highly valued liquor companies — Armand de Brignac Champagne and D’Ussé Cognac — several homes, the streaming platform Tidal, a club near Madison Square and an expansive art collection. If on his debut he spoke a little beyond his means when he said he was “well connected,” he has made it true. It is hard to think of a door he cannot open. Even as he has outgrown what made him Jay-Z, that project remains central to his business. He is the best rapper alive, the entrepreneur who made it out of the projects, the kingpin. The albums remind you why the Cognac is worth so much money.‘What’s better than one billionaire? Two. Especially if they from the same hue as you.’This situation is not unique. In the entertainment world, people must become corporations if they want to become truly wealthy. High-profile singers, athletes, actors and so on often make their real money from endorsement deals rather than their day jobs. What separates the billionaires from their peers is that they turned endorsements into equity. Michael Jordan gets a percentage of Nike’s Jordan brand revenue. Kanye, who owns the Yeezy brand outright, has major deals with Adidas and Gap. Winfrey and Perry have sprawling media concerns. Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty is a subsidiary of the LVMH luxury conglomerate.Many of these businesses could keep running without their famed figureheads, but the sheen would dissipate somewhat. Dell does not sell its computers by trading on the fact that it and its founder share a name. But without Kanye’s imprimatur, it’s hard to imagine Yeezy’s moon-boot look becoming a default sneaker silhouette. Fenty, by contrast, seems to have capitalized on a real gap in the market by broadening the available shades for foundation and concealer. Still, the entertainer-billionaire is as much the product as the shoe or concealer up for sale. From the outside looking in, this seems like a shaky foundation for a fortune so vast. Stars lose their luster all the time. It’s part of their appeal.On “The Story of O.J.,” from his latest album, “4:44,” Jay-Z raps about the psychic drama of successful Black Americans. In the animated video, his character tells his therapist that he failed to invest in Dumbo real estate early and missed out on a 1,250 percent return. Later he explains that art he bought for $1 million appreciated in value and is now worth 8. The song weaves back and forth between an examination of racial stereotypes and a guidebook to gaining freedom through asset ownership.You could hear Jay-Z, over time, growing more comfortable with his newfound status. On “The Black Album,” he rapped, “I can’t help the poor if I’m one of them, so I got rich and gave back, to me that’s the win-win.” It’s a defensive sentiment. The poor do help one another; there is often no other choice. That song is called “Moment of Clarity” — but nothing seems very clear at all. All the old signifiers, the ones linking public prominence and political progress, are slipping. They have to be reasserted from the top down. “What’s better than one billionaire? Two. Especially if they from the same hue as you,” Jay-Z rhymed on “4:44.” The ghetto’s music is starting to sound like prosperity gospel. Rap is relatable because the fan embodies the rapper. The “you” is rarely the listener, rather an invitation to adopt a new “I.” That “I” might get high, duck, dive, sling, get shot at and shoot back. But who is this “I” who accumulates such an immense sum of money, he starts to see things from the other side while insisting we’re still the same? The hue tells me nothing about what you’ve become.For once, through drive and circumstance, a few Black artists actually stand to be the main beneficiaries of the popularity of Black culture. On paper that might be progress. But two things remain clear: Black art sells, and wealth collects. Money pools in rooms that remain hard to get into. Years ago, Forbes magazine organized a meeting between Jay-Z and Warren Buffett, treating the rapper like the heir apparent. They both spoke about the role of chance. Buffett talked at length about being white, male and born in the U.S. at the right time. It was the discourse of what we would now call “privilege,” which feels like an understatement when talking about one of the wealthiest men alive. When Jay-Z spoke, he told a story about a nearly inseparable friend of his who was arrested during a sting operation. Jay-Z happened to be out of the country for an early recording date. His friend was incarcerated for over a decade. That’s luck, the vicious kind that fortunes are made of.Blair McClendon is a writer, an editor and a filmmaker in New York. His writing has appeared in n+1, The New Republic and The New Yorker. More

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      Lady Gaga and Silk Sonic Follow the Grammy Formula: Old, but New

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      Despite nods to Gen Z, this year’s show favored history-minded performers like Silk Sonic, Jon Batiste, H.E.R. and Lady Gaga.There is no surer way for a young musician to acquire a quick coat of gravitas than an appearance on the Grammy Awards. And there is no surer way for a young musician to speed the way to the Grammys than by already appearing to be old.Such is the chicken-egg conundrum bedeviling the awards, and also the pop music industry, which coexist in uneasy alliance, looking askance at each other while furtively holding hands. At the Grammys, maturity is rewarded, and often demanded, putting it at direct odds with a music business that continues to valorize youth.At the 64th annual Grammy Awards, which took place in Las Vegas on Sunday night, these tensions were on display in myriad ways. Take Justin Bieber, who began his performance of the glistening, slinky “Peaches” sitting at the piano, singing earnestly and with pulp. For Bieber, 28, not generally regarded as a musician’s musician, it was a pointed ploy, or perhaps a plea.Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak — performing as Silk Sonic — won both song and record of the year for “Leave the Door Open,” a stunningly slick slice of 1970s-style soul. At the show, they nailed the yesteryear aesthetic, too, from suits to hairstyles to mannerisms. Both men, masterful purveyors of retro sonic ideology, are 36.Read More on the 2022 Grammy AwardsThe Irresistible Jon Batiste: The jazz pianist is an inheritor more than an innovator, but he puts the past to use in service of fun.A Controversial Award: Some people questioned the decision to bestow the Grammy for best comedy album to Louis C.K., who has admitted to sexual misconduct.Old, but New: Despite nods to Gen Z, this year’s show favored history-minded performers like Silk Sonic, H.E.R. and Lady Gaga.The Fashion: An exuberant anything-goes attitude was a reminder of why red carpets are fun in the first place.Zelensky’s Speech: Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, addressed the audience in a prerecorded video. Here’s what he said.Jon Batiste, the New Orleans jazz scion and late-night bandleader who won album of the year, delivered a performance that channeled second-line funk, classic soul and just the faintest touch of hip-hop. He is 35.Justin Bieber opened his performance of “Peaches” at the piano.Mario Anzuoni/ReutersThese are the sorts of performances, and performers, the Grammys crave: appearing young but aiming to embody old-fashioned values of musicianship. Because the Grammys telecast draws generations of viewers, and because Grammy voters are drawn from a wide pool that skews older, what emerges on the show, and in the awards themselves, is a kind of piteous compromise that holds real innovation at bay. The artists nominated in the top categories were refreshingly democratic, in terms of genre and age, but Batiste and Silk Sonic bested them all.That meant that the only one remaining for Olivia Rodrigo, nominated in all four, to win was best new artist, which she did. Rodrigo was last year’s clear breakout star, and the prime placement she was given on the telecast, with one of the first performances, indicated the Grammys understood her power. She was a jolt of uncut youth, performing “Drivers License” with a light eau de grunge, and then later thanking her parents when accepting the award for best pop vocal album for “Sour.”But that was something of a head fake, as was most of the show’s opening run of performances, which also included the precocious Grammy fave Billie Eilish, the K-pop group BTS, the reggaeton star J Balvin and Lil Nas X, whose blend of raunch and wit felt slightly tamped down during his medley of recent hits. The only other moment the show approached a moment of honest freshness was when Doja Cat raced to the stage to accept her award for best pop duo/group performance after leaving the room for a bathroom break. She and her co-winner SZA giggled at the snafu, and Doja spoke in the unfiltered manner she’s become known for, which felt fresh in this context: “I like to downplay a lot of [expletive], but this is a big deal.”As for several other young stars, well, they declined to show up — Tyler, the Creator, who won best rap album; Drake, who withdrew himself from consideration in the categories in which he was nominated; the Weeknd, who after last year’s no-nomination debacle has stated he’ll never again submit his music for consideration by the Grammys; Cardi B, nominated just once. (Taylor Swift also did not attend, but that absence did not have the air of a protest so much as an acknowledgment that this year was unlikely to garner her any trophies.)Lady Gaga brought very-old-school flair to a medley of songs from her duet album with Tony Bennett.Chris Pizzello/Invision, Associated PressThat lineup of no-shows could fuel an alternate award show, or concert (as was proposed by the hip-hop mogul J. Prince). And therein lies the Grammys’ Achilles’ heel: It needs artists like these, both for reasons of relevance and also as tribute-payers. As hip-hop has become the dominant sound of pop music, its stars are going to become the elders of tomorrow. If the Grammys continue to alienate its young titans, its attempts to honor the music moving forward will consistently fall flat. (That was emphasized by the oldest featured performer at this year’s show: Nas, 48, who spent half of his set performing 20-year-old songs that deserved a Grammys stage long ago.)This chasm — between the Grammys and youth, between the Grammys and hip-hop — means that the show has to double down on younger stars willing (and excited?) to be in dialogue with the sounds of yesteryear. Some of the most strikingly mature vocals of the night were by Rachel Zegler, singing Sondheim as part of the in memoriam segment. One of the show’s most stirring moments came from the R&B singer-songwriter H.E.R., who has perhaps been over-indexed with awards-show acclaim in recent years. Her performance, alongside Lenny Kravitz, Travis Barker and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, connected her to three generations of funk and rock.And then there is Lady Gaga, the onetime pop disrupter who has become the embodiment of institutional legacy through her ongoing work with the crooner Tony Bennett. Their latest album, “Love for Sale,” won best traditional pop vocal album, and Gaga performed a tribute to Bennett, 95 — who did not attend — singing two of the album’s songs, which originated in the 1930s. Her singing was sharp and invested, making a case for decades-old standards on a contemporary pop stage, the embodiment of the Grammys’ cross-generational goals.It was easy to lose sight of the fact that Lady Gaga is only 36. And looking at the next generation of pop talent — Eilish, Rodrigo, Doja Cat, Tyler, the Creator and beyond — it’s hard not to wonder how long will they be allowed to be young before the Grammys insists they grow up. More

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      Harry Styles Tries On Synth-Pop, and 13 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Angel Olsen, Koffee, Barrie 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.Harry Styles, ‘As It Was’In “As It Was,” Harry Styles latches on to the kind of peppy electro-pop that the Weeknd updated from groups like a-ha. The song is from Styles’s third album, “Harry’s House,” due May 20, and its insistently upbeat production stokes the ambiguity of the lyrics. When he sings, “In this world, it’s just us/You know it’s not the same as it was,” it’s impossible to tell whether he’s pulling away or longing to reunite. JON PARELESBarrie, ‘Jersey’The Brooklyn musician and producer Barrie Lindsay makes music that sounds like the work of an introvert with a kaleidoscopically vivid inner world. Throughout her tuneful, gently melancholy new album “Barbara,” there’s a muttered, endearingly modest quality to her vocal delivery that’s contrasted with her colorful, adventurous production choices. That signature push and pull can be heard on the album’s lush opening song “Jersey,” where, atop an intricately layered track, Lindsay shrugs sweetly, “You didn’t dream so long, I’m just the girl that you got.” LINDSAY ZOLADZAngel Olsen, ‘All the Good Times’Angel Olsen’s forthcoming album “Big Time,” out June 3, was written during an emotionally tumultuous moment in her life: At age 34, she came out as queer to her family, only to lose both of her parents, in quick succession, to illness shortly afterward. Olsen certainly knows how to capture and exorcise melodramatic feelings in her music — see: “Lark,” the bombastic leadoff track from her great 2019 album “All Mirrors” — but the first single from “Big Time” is more of a slow burn, smoldering and occasionally sparking with sudden, cathartic surges. Pivoting from the luscious synth-scapes of “All Mirrors,” “All the Good Times” harkens back to Olsen’s twangy roots, and its melody has a laid-back confidence that occasionally brings Willie Nelson to mind. “I’ll be long gone, thanks for the songs, guess it’s time to wake up from the trip we’ve been on,” Olsen sings, as the instrumentation swells to meet her suddenly impassioned croon. ZOLADZJensen McRae, ‘Take It Easy’“I don’t wanna talk about it any more,” the Los Angeles songwriter Jensen McRae announces as she begins “Take It Easy,” from her debut album, “Are You Happy Now?” But of course she does. The tone is serene, two chords riding a gentle Caribbean lilt, even as she sings about grappling with burdens that seem to be both physical and emotional. She wonders, “Atlas, did your back get sore?,” but she finds a graceful equilibrium. PARELESThomas Rhett featuring Katy Perry, ‘Where We Started’What is country music right now? It’s a far cry from great pickers and singers collaborating in real time, as it was in honky-tonk history. Like the rest of pop, it’s a construction. Thomas Rhett, a country superstar, sings about a romance with a waitress who’s hoping for a musical career, played by Katy Perry, in “Where We Started,” the last song but the title track of his new album. “I’d be playing my guitar singing those covers in an empty room,” she faux-recalls. The beats are programmed drum-machine tones, like trap, with guitars that sound like loops, and the collaboration with Perry may well have been remote. It’s an artificial path toward a real feeling. PARELESIbeyi featuring Jorja Smith, ‘Lavender and Red Roses’Hand drums and echoey, hovering voices give “Lavender and Red Roses” the atmosphere of a ritual procession, as Ibeyi — the French, Afro-Cuban twins Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Díaz — and the English singer Jorja Smith bemoan a self-destructive partner: “I’ve welcomed you with open arms baby/But you still walk towards the dark lately,” they sing, as hope fades. PARELESMichael Leonhart Orchestra featuring Elvis Costello, Joshua Redman and JSWISS, ‘Shut Him Down’The Grammy-winning Michael Leonhart Orchestra converts itself into a crack studio band on “Shut Him Down,” the guest star-fueled opener to its newest album, playing a groove infused with the bubbling patter of Nigerian juju music. Elvis Costello takes center stage, rattling off a few shifty-eyed verses from the point of view of a man fighting a charge. Then the rapper JSWISS drops his own bars, toying with wordplay and internal rhyme, before the tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman carries things to a close. Always an effusive improviser, he threatens to blow the lid off this medium-boiling track, but ultimately plays along with the chill, jammy vibe. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOJuanita Euka, ‘Motema’Over the interplay of two crinkly, echo-laden guitars, the Congolese-born vocalist Juanita Euka sings with an easy confidence on “Motema,” which means “heart” in Lingala. The track comes from “Mabanzo,” the debut album from this young heir apparent (her uncle, Franco Luambo Makiadi, was a rumba star in Congo), who grew up in Buenos Aires and has lately become a promising voice on the London music scene. RUSSONELLOKoffee, ‘Where I’m From’The Grammy-winning Jamaican singer Koffee (Mikayla Simpson) widely stretches the reggae idiom on her debut album, “Gifted,” pulling in dembow, Afrobeats and more. In “Where I’m From,” she sing-raps about tough beginnings and current success, with a scrubbing funk guitar that echoes “Shaft,” a heaving bass line, ominous piano interjections and wordless choir harmonies that are at once mournful and lofty. PARELESVince Staples, ‘Rose Street’“I don’t sing no love songs, ain’t never sang no love songs,” Vince Staples proclaims at the top of “Rose Street,” and the title of the upcoming album it’ll appear on is possibly an explanation: “Ramona Park Broke My Heart.” As he raps nimbly atop a bass-heavy, vaguely ghostly beat, though, he gradually lets his guard down and confesses the reasons he’s reluctant to commit to the girl who wants him to stick around. “I promise you, you don’t gotta stress, it’s gon’ be OK,” he assures her before admitting, “OK, I’m lying, living day by day.” ZOLADZPup, ‘Totally Fine’The Toronto band Pup has long made frenetic punk-pop with neat verse-chorus-bridge structures underlying Stefan Babcock’s raucously overwrought and fully self-aware lead vocals. “Totally Fine,” from the band’s fourth album, “The Unraveling of Puptheband,” cranks everything up: feedback, drums, high and low guitars, Babcock’s blurted admission that “I just couldn’t decide/Whether I’m at my worst or I’m totally fine.” And then it cranks up further, with a big, stadium-ready singalong. The video, a fine sendup of tech-bro vanity, is a bonus. PARELESsadie, ‘Nowhere’Anna Schwab, the Brooklyn songwriter and producer who records as sadie, uses the twitchy double time, the computer-warped vocals and the cheap-sounding presets of hyperpop as a digital native. Yet in “Nowhere,” she also conveys something more than games-playing: a sense of how hard it is to cope with the pressures of 21st-century romance. “Think I’ll get it all right/Then it’s over,” she sings with knowing resignation. PARELESFlume featuring Caroline Polachek, ‘Sirens’In her purest soprano, Caroline Polachek sings her most benevolent aspirations, written during a pandemic peak: “If I could I’d raise my arm/And wave a wand to end all harm.” The Australian electronic musician Flume and his co-producer, Danny L. Harle, give her ethereal support at first — tremulous string tones and echoey arpeggios — but then throw up all sorts of sonic obstacles: clattering, thudding, lurching, scraping, distorting, and even bringing back the sirens she wishes she never had to hear again. PARELESGerald Clayton featuring Charles Lloyd, ‘Peace Invocation’The coolly warbling saxophone sound of Charles Lloyd, 84, is unmistakable on “Peace Invocation,” a duet with the pianist Gerald Clayton that appears on the younger musician’s newest album, “Bells on Sand.” The influence of a couple of other legendary saxophonist-composers hangs over this track, too: There’s the open-ended, shadow-casting style of Wayne Shorter, and hints of John Coltrane’s classic “Naima” in the irresolution of Clayton’s bittersweet melody. RUSSONELLO More

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      For Grammy Nominee Rogét Chahayed, Pop Isn’t Far From Mozart

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      Up for producer of the year, non-classical, on Sunday, a conservatory-trained collaborator focuses on “finding the simplicity, finding that golden chord progression.”Two very different kinds of education went into the music that has brought Rogét Chahayed a 2022 Grammy nomination for producer of the year, non-classical. One was traditional music school: the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where Chahayed studied classical music and jazz and earned a degree in piano performance. The second was a studio apprenticeship of late nights and split-second decisions: playing keyboards and building beats for the Los Angeles hip-hop mogul Dr. Dre.“The real me is a blend of classical music, jazz harmony and technique, everything together,” Chahayed said, speaking via video from his home studio in Los Angeles, where rows of electronic keyboards filled a wall of shelves, “So you’ll hear the voicings of Debussy and Ravel and stuff like that, that I really love, in my left hand, but maybe in the right hand I might be trying some Art Tatum. I love to try and see the connection between everything.”Chahayed’s huge catalog includes Doja Cat’s “Kiss Me More”; Jessie Reyez’s “Far Away”; Halsey’s “Bad at Love”; Big Sean’s “ZTFO”; Miguel’s “Sky Walker”; Kali Uchis’s “I Want War (But I Need Peace)”; Nas’s “27 Summers”; and two Grammy-nominated songs from previous years, Drake’s “Laugh Now Cry Later” and Travis Scott’s “Sicko Mode.” His nomination on Sunday is for songs with Kali Uchis, Doja Cat and Anderson .Paak, among others.Chahayed’s studio work draws on a store of music theory and music history along with instinct, attentiveness and luck. As a producer and songwriter, he can assemble complex harmonies and subtle multitracked orchestrations, reflecting his conservatory studies.But Chahayed can also come up with skeletal, arresting, earworm riffs that he often enriches, spatially and harmonically, as a track unfolds. He doesn’t mind repeating just two or three chords. “A lot of my composer and classical instrumentalist friends might look at that as like, ‘Oh, it’s so simple,’” he said. “Actually, producing music today reminds me a lot about the way Mozart would compose. Obviously a lot of Mozart’s music is very simple and very digestible, and it’s so open that if you make a mistake, you can hear everything. The difficulty is finding the simplicity, finding that golden chord progression.”Chahayed adeptly navigates the way songs are made in the 21st century: a process that’s at once musicianly, technological, intuitive and brutally Darwinist. Hooks and beats that were recorded in a few moments can sit for months on a hard drive, to be discovered, tweaked and augmented by collaborators who have never met. All that matters is whether someone hears that a track has potential, wants to finish it and finds something that works.“I enjoy working with the artists who let me cook from scratch,” Chahayed said.Michael Tyrone Delaney for The New York Times“If I have a philosophy, it’s that I want to be able to execute the vision of the artist first,” Chahayed said. “But also to do it in a way that’s innovative, that’s always finding a way to push the boundaries sonically.”The Colombian American songwriter Kali Uchis has only released a few tracks with Chahayed’s production — including “Aguardiente y Limón,” cited in his Grammy nomination — but they live near each other in Los Angeles, and she often visits his studio to work on music.A Guide to the 2022 Grammy AwardsThe ceremony, originally scheduled for Jan. 31, was postponed for a second year in a row due to Covid and is now scheduled for April 3.Jon Batiste Leads the Way: The jazz pianist earned the most nominations with 11, including album and record of the year. Here’s his reaction.The Full List: Pop stars like Justin Bieber, Doja Cat and Billie Eilish were recognized in several categories. See all the nominees.Snubs and Surprises: From a big shock to smaller slights, The Times music team breaks it all down.Performers: Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, BTS and Lil Nas X are among the first performers announced for the April 3 show, which will be available on CBS and Paramount+.A Major Change: The awards will be the first since the Recording Academy ended its heavily criticized anonymous nominating committees.“He just loves to just create, create, create,” she said by telephone from Los Angeles. “Just for the pure satisfaction of making things that are unique, and not for any type of ulterior capitalistic motives. If it so happens to end up being a big song, then great. But with me and Rogét, I’ve never gotten in the studio and felt any weird pressure to go in any direction. It was alway very organic, very natural and very, just, free.”After graduating from the conservatory in 2010, Chahayed moved back to Los Angeles, where he grew up; his mother is from Argentina, his father from Syria. He played jazz and chamber-music gigs and taught piano lessons; he also found a mentor: Melvin Bradford, better known as Mel-Man, one of Dr. Dre’s main producers since the 1990s.“I’d go to his house and make five to eight beats per day. From 1 p.m. all the way to sometimes 2, 3 or 4 in the morning,” he said. “We would send countless beats to Dre every day, just in hopes that maybe something would click.”He added, “It was definitely a big difference from sitting in a class learning about Bach chorales or ear training.”Chahayed also collaborated with others, including the producer Wesley Singerman. In 2013, they sold outright some tracks they had made; their music turned up, uncredited, on Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 album “To Pimp a Butterfly” in “For Sale?” and “U.”In 2014, Mel-Man surprised Chahayed one day by taking him to an unmarked building. It was Dr. Dre’s studio. “This door opens, and I just see a giant S.S.L. and Dre is sitting there turning knobs with his hands,” Chahayed said, referring to a Solid State Logic recording console. “He told me that he heard I was nice on the keys and he was going to put me to the test.”He passed muster and started working on Dre’s productions. “You have a responsibility to be the best you can be all the time and constantly portray musical excellence: technique, taste, flavor, rhythm,” he said. “I’ve had Dre right there, standing over everybody saying, ‘Hey, what you got?’ And when you have the biggest, most influential producer and rapper in the world telling you that, you’ve got to act.”One of Chahayed’s first blockbuster hits was “Broccoli” by Dram (who now goes by Shelley FKA Dram), featuring Lil Yachty, which has been streamed more than a billion times. Its steady-plinking piano chords, Chahayed said, were a happy accident. He had packed up his equipment after a session with Dram, only to receive a last-minute call that Lil Yachty was on his way to the studio. He unpacked and plugged in a keyboard, playing a few chords to test the connection; those chords became the song’s central loop.One of Chahayed’s first huge hits was “Broccoli” by Dram (who now goes by Shelley FKA Dram), featuring Lil Yachty.Michael Tyrone Delaney for The New York Times“Where and how I find most of my success as a producer and songwriter is, you know, just showing up,” Chahayed said. “Finding a sound and coming up with the progression, or a riff, or something identifiable that catches people’s attention.”“Kiss Me More,” the hit by Doja Cat featuring SZA that is nominated for record of the year (the recorded track), song of the year (the composition) and as part of album of the year, could have ended up as one more stray computer file. Chahayed was working with Yeti Beats, Doja Cat’s longtime executive producer, at what he called “a beat cook-up session.” Yeti Beats suggested some “keywords” — “anime music” and “cuteness” — with Doja Cat in mind.“I grew up with four younger sisters, and we all bonded a lot over anime and video game stuff,” Chahayed said. “This cute jazzy vibe from a lot of games kind of seeped in. So I tapped back into that realm that specific day, and we made a few ideas.”He chose a guitar-like sound and recorded a twinkly little riff that “just kind of came naturally in the moment,” he said. “I knew there was something special about that track.” Yeti Beats repeatedly presented the riff to Doja Cat, and at one session, he sped it up; it clicked.As Chahayed’s reputation has grown, so has his control over his music. He sometimes turns down requests to use his beats for particular songs. And, whenever possible, he tries to work alongside the main artist in real time.“For most people, a general procedure is have tons of beats and melodies and ideas and things of that sort ready. A lot of artists have a different kind of attention span, and maybe react better to things that are ready-made. But I’ve adapted more to the spontaneity of just showing up with the instruments. I enjoy working with the artists who let me cook from scratch.”He’s also looking ahead. “I always have a five-to-10-year plan,” he said. “Thankfully, I have been able to hit my last five-year goal: You know, get No. 1s, get Grammy nominated, accumulate tons of record sales and charting stuff. And it’s cool, but it only fuels me to go further. My real passion is that I want to score movies. I want to do what John Williams, Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer and Bernard Herrmann do. Those guys are my true heroes.”He added, “I’ll never stop producing. I’ll never stop making beats. I’ll never stop working with artists. But I would love it if you’re watching a movie and seeing ‘Music by Rogét Chahayed.’ That’s my obsession.” More

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      Daddy Yankee, Reggaeton’s First Global Star, Steps Aside

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      For “Legendaddy,” an album billed as his last, the reggaeton forefather surveys the shifting styles that shaped his career.Plunge into the recesses of YouTube, and you’ll find a video of Daddy Yankee performing live in his late teens, wearing a silver zip-up windbreaker and a creeping caterpillar mustache. It was 1996, and the future global ambassador of reggaeton freestyled a cappella to a crowd of hundreds. He flaunted a breathless flow with touches of Patois intonation, a signature of the time, when the genre “underground” — a predecessor to reggaeton — was flourishing. The D.J. dropped a beat, chopping drum breaks and syncopated dembow riddims. Yankee effortlessly kept up, brandishing the hyperspeed raps that would make him a superstar in the next decade.Daddy Yankee, cherub-cheeked and about 19, grew into a reggaeton kingpin, a pop star and a tycoon, helping transform a street sound into an industry cash cow. In 2004, he announced his ascent into the mainstream with a strategic and simple opening statement: “Who’s this? Da-ddy Yan-kee!” A little over a decade later, he rode the acoustic guitar strums and liquefied, popeton beat of “Despacito” into vexing, international ubiquity.But after a 32-year career, is it time for Yankee to rest on his laurels? In a sentimental video posted on March 20, the Big Boss announced his retirement from the music industry. There is one victory lap left: a final tour and an impeccably titled album, “Legendaddy.”Retirement albums can be tricky. Some artists misguidedly ride recent trends in an attempt to reproduce the aesthetics of a younger generation; others reprise the tricks that made them famous in the first place; the most successful dare to bare their souls and create new intimacy with listeners.Yankee, 45, has never really been one for profound personal vulnerability. He was, however, always honest about his youth in the Villa Kennedy caseríos, or housing projects, in San Juan, where he and DJ Playero, another reggaeton pioneer, tinkered with reggae en español and freestyling, and distributed their experiments on mixtapes in the early ’90s. When Yankee was 16, a bullet lodged in his right leg, a souvenir of crossfire outside Playero’s studio one afternoon. It forced him into over a year of recovery, closed the door on his major league baseball ambitions and refocused his energies toward music.As underground, and later reggaeton, sprawled, Yankee fine-tuned the art of merging sex and bombast in song. Harnessing street swagger and dirty talk, he leveraged his breakneck rap flows into carnal dance floor anthems, like “Latigazo” from 2002 or his 2004 smash “Gasolina.” These became the songs that taught an entire diaspora about sex and the ecstasy of a perreo sucio, the kind of grinding that involves exchanging denim dye and sweat with a dance partner.There have been sporadic moments of social commentary in Yankee’s music, as on the theatrical blockbuster album “Barrio Fino.” But after “Gasolina” engulfed the Anglo mainstream, his celebrity grew and he swapped his prurient playboy image for that of a wealthy mogul: In 2005 alone, he inked a brand partnership with Reebok to design sneakers, apparel and accessories; agreed to model for Sean Jean’s spring collection; landed an endorsement contract with Pepsi; and signed a $20 million, five-album deal with Interscope Records.While Yankee settled into his role as a reggaeton capitalist, his mid-00s success also felt like affirmation for a generation of youth of the Caribbean diaspora. Reggaeton was the first music that was fully ours — fresh, raw, exhilarating, sensual. It brought us closer to the islands that birthed us, moving us toward some wistful dream of wholeness instead of constant loss.In the early and mid-2010s, Yankee released a spate of albums, but many of them lacked dimension and verve, relying on unimaginative commercial tropes. Around 2016, he started dabbling with two ascendant sounds: the first crest of EDM-reggaeton fusions, and the nascent genre of Latin trap, in which he became an in-demand featured guest. Both allowed him to remain in the spotlight, embrace his image as an elder statesman and avoid competing with a new wave of artists who were refreshing the movement with sentimentality and grit.For “Legendaddy,” his first solo album in a decade, El Cangri has inventoried the sounds and styles that have defined his career: self-mythologizing rap, perreo, EDM and popeton. The most dynamic moments come when Yankee reaches for the magic of the past — whether indulging in boastful hubris or summoning listeners into dance floor reverie. “Uno Quitao y Otro Puesto” is a corrosively effective blast of late-career posturing, complete with gunshot accents à la “Sácala.” On “Enchuletiao,” Yankee doesn’t rap, he barks a flood of bars about his unrivaled eminence in the genre, delivered through gritted teeth. “¿Qué tú me va’ a enseñar, si yo he esta’o en to’a las era’?” he says. “What are you gonna teach me, if I’ve been in all of the eras?” It’s a reminder of his technical skills — he hasn’t sounded this electric, this deliciously abrasive in years.With their stadium-sized trumpets and vibrant piano lines, “Rumbatón” and “El Abusador del Abusador” are thrilling, nostalgic callbacks to the salsa-reggaeton fusions of the mid-00s (fittingly, Luny of the duo Luny Tunes produced “Rumbatón”). “Remix” and “Bloke” are classic reggaeton romps, harnessing the kind of sexual fantasies and salacious exchanges that once made the sound so irresistible; the first even includes a reference to the Big Boss’s 2007 track “Impacto.”Yet a good portion of the songs follow prosaic, predictable pop formats: “Para Siempre” weaves acoustic guitar textures into a bland, mid-tempo popeton ballad, while “La Ola” and “Zona del Perreo” almost sound like they were engineered for Spotify’s “Viva Latino” playlist. “Pasatiempo,” with Myke Towers, lands primarily because of its interpolation of Robyn S’s “Show Me Love.” Sampling universally beloved bangers is a method Yankee has been unafraid to employ in the past (i.e., “Con Calma”), and it works here yet again.“Legendaddy” also has some egregious missteps: two EDM fusions, the globally popular style that has recently had a grip on the Latin charts. “Bombón,” featuring Lil Jon and the dembow visionary El Alfa, is virtually unlistenable — college spring-break music, complete with “Yeah!” ad-libs from an era long gone. “Hot,” which is dominated by its Pitbull feature, is essentially a caricature of Miami nightclub fare.Yankee does leave space for one refreshing moment of adventure with “Agua.” The track, a collaboration with Nile Rodgers and the reggaeton star Rauw Alejandro, is sparkling disco pop gloss, complete with groovy guitar riffs from the Chic legend.As a farewell album, “Legendaddy” honors all the styles of Yankee’s trajectory, highlighting the superpower that has enabled him to survive as a senior figure in a young artist’s game: flexibility. And in that way, the album also mirrors the history of reggaeton itself: a sound that is now unrecognizable from its political, grass-roots beginnings, and one whose history implies constant transformation.There is always the chance that Yankee will return on some kind of comeback tour, as plenty of hip-hop giants have done after bowing out. Yankee got his flowers while he was still around, and his indelible impact cannot be understated. But “Legendaddy” also speaks volumes about what reggaeton needs more of in this moment: fresh blood, unorthodox aesthetics and storytelling world-builders seeking to inject the genre with the euphoria, fireworks and narrative depth the movement has promised since its inception. More

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      Soccer Mommy Stretches Her Sound, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Phife Dawg, Omar Apollo, Zola Jesus 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.Soccer Mommy, ‘Shotgun’Sophie Allison, who records as Soccer Mommy, continues to stretch beyond the sparse indie-rock of her early songs. “Shotgun” previews an album due in June — “Sometimes, Forever” — that is produced by Oneohtrix Point Never (Daniel Lopatin), an auteur of big, blurry implications. “Shotgun” is a promise of devotion to someone who might be troubled. It places Allison’s breathy, dazed vocals above a hefty beat and a low, twangy riff; as the chorus vows “Whenever you want me I’ll be around,” new layers of echoey guitars and sudden drum blasts loom, suggesting that her path isn’t entirely clear. JON PARELESMaren Morris, ‘Humble Quest’“Humble Quest,” the title track of the new album by Maren Morris, carefully balances humility and a growing determination: “I was so nice till I woke up/I was polite till I spoke up,” she sings. The verses are dogged and subdued, with steady drums and descending piano chords; the chorus leaps upward, insisting, “Damn I do my best/Not gonna hold my breath.” But the song tapers off at the end, returning to the piano chords; the quest continues. PARELESKurt Vile, ‘Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone)’As usual, Philadelphia’s Kurt Vile is an ambling, amiable presence on “Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone),” a gently psychedelic ditty in no particular hurry to get to where it’s going. “Standing on top of Mount Airy Hill … thinkin’ ’bout … flying,” he begins, sounding like a cross between Bill Callahan and John Prine, the kindred spirit he collaborated with on the 2020 EP “Speed, Sound, Lonely KV.” Beginning with that release, Vile has begun to embrace more directly the country inflections of his music and vocal delivery, and here they add to the song’s eccentric charm. “I’ve been around, but now I’m gone,” he vamps, letting that last word fly loose in an airy falsetto before adding a winking line that doubles as the title of his forthcoming album: “Watch my moves.” LINDSAY ZOLADZFlock of Dimes, ‘It Just Goes On’Under her solo moniker Flock of Dimes, Jenn Wasner tends to make knotty, intricate indie-rock, enlivened by unexpected chord changes and unusual time signatures. She’s described the hypnotic “It Just Goes On,” though, as “perhaps one of the most simple and direct songs I’ve ever made,” and the understated arrangement allows her dreamy vocals to shine. The first track on a B-side companion piece to her excellent 2021 album “Head of Roses,” “It Just Goes On” is a slow-motion reverie centered around a murky guitar riff that hangs, like Wasner’s evocative lyrics, in a state of suspended possibility: “If it never started, it doesn’t have to end, it just goes on.” ZOLADZJane Weaver, ‘Oblique Fantasy’The English songwriter, singer and guitarist Jane Weaver reaches back to the clockwork Minimalism of 1970s kraut-rock in “Oblique Fantasy,” a patiently evolving assemblage of guitar and synthesizer lines — picked, strummed, fluttering, blipping, peaking into feedback — over an unswerving, motoric beat, as she lives up to her promise: “I will get under your skin.” PARELESKilo Kish featuring Miguel, ‘Death Fantasy’The avant-pop singer Kilo Kish has a pipe dream: the demise and undoing of all frameworks, definitions and limits that might constrain her. On “Death Fantasy,” from her new album “American Gurl,” Kish raps in a breathless staccato about her ambition: “I have a death fantasy/Death of my aesthetics, this falsing fiction carved in my way,” she chants. On Instagram, Kish referred to the song as a “manifesto” and a “declaration of freedom.” But with lurching drums, neon-drenched synths, Miguel’s sky-high, looping vocalizations and a jarring flatline, “Death Fantasy” is less anthemic — it’s more a trance-like spell, conjured to convince you of the promise of starting anew. ISABELIA HERRERAPhife Dawg, ‘Forever’Well-earned 1990s nostalgia and grown-up regrets fill Phife Dawg’s “Forever,” the title track from a new album, released six years after his death, that blends his last raps with tribute verses from guests. Phife Dawg had reunited with A Tribe Called Quest, but he died before their final album together was released in 2016. In “Forever,” he rhymes through the group’s history as “four brothers with a mic and a dream.” A plush soul string section, a lurching beat and old-school turntable scratching accompany him as he recalls the group’s ascent. Suddenly he silences the track and, a cappella, he admits, “Lack of communication killed my tribe/Bad vibes.” But bygones are bygones, he declares: “Despite trials, tribe-ulations, no doubt we were built to survive.” PARELESOmar Apollo, ‘Tamagotchi’The 24-year-old singer Omar Apollo has a knack for jagged, irreverent pop songs. On “Tamagotchi,” he conscripts the Neptunes to mastermind his latest vision: there’s Pharrell’s signature four-count start, a muted Spanish guitar loop coiling under bilingual bars about Apollo’s ascendant celebrity. But the best part of “Tamagotchi” is that Apollo doesn’t take himself too seriously: “I’m making bread (Bread)/Sound like Pavarotti,” he snickers at one point. By the honey-soaked R&B bridge, you’ll be drenched in his charisma. HERRERAFrya, ‘Changes’Frya, from Zimbabwe, has clearly listened to Adele: where she applies vibrato, her approach to syncopation and sustain, and where she makes her voice build and break. But she has a songwriter’s gift: how to turn words and sounds into an emotional connection. “Say my name please in that tone again,” she begs in “Changes,” as it climbs from piano ballad to orchestral plea, perfectly strategized and emotionally telling. PARELESSon Lux and Moses Sumney, ‘Fence’The magnificently eerie “Fences,” from the soundtrack to the metaverse movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” deals in falsetto reassurances and gaping abysses. Over sustained electronic tones, tolling bass notes and orchestral swells, Moses Sumney sings an apologetic, waltzing refrain — “Only meant to give you my all/never meant to build you a wall” — that multiplies its vocal harmonies but sounds ever more bereft. PARELESZola Jesus, ‘Lost’“Everyone I know is lost,” Nika Roza Danilova, who records as Zola Jesus, wails on the doomy, kinetic new single from her forthcoming album, “Arkhon.” The track begins with a decidedly post-apocalyptic vibe: earthy, guttural rumbles, synthesizers that toll like air-raid sirens, and a percussive series of sharp breaths, spliced together to create the song’s beat. But Danilova’s powerful vocal soon provides a stirring counterpoint and a defiant sign of life, like a signal flare shot up through an icy landscape. ZOLADZMarvin Sewell, ‘A Hero’s Journey’The guitarist Marvin Sewell, who’s usually heard injecting soul and scruff into other people’s bands, takes a moment to ruminate alone on “A Hero’s Journey.” He plays the acoustic guitar with a shivering slide, returning frequently to a mournful motif on the higher strings. Though understated, the track is a standout on “Black Lives,” a two-disc compilation of new music performed by a wide stylistic range of contemporary jazz artists. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOMark Turner, ‘Waste Land’At first, the occasional clatter from Jonathan Pinson’s drums seems like the main source of agitation on an otherwise low-key track: The interplay between Mark Turner’s tenor saxophone and Jason Palmer’s trumpet — both of them doused in reverb, played with crystal clarity and zero hurry — is almost placid. But there is a worried tension in the space between their horns, one that doesn’t get totally exposed until near the end. Finally, we’re left without resolution, as the band rises toward a landing that never fully comes. RUSSONELLO More