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      Kanye West’s Stormy Relationship With the Grammys Erupts Again

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      The musician, nominated for five awards, was told he will not be able to perform at the ceremony on April 3. The decision came after weeks of erratic and troubling public behavior.When the latest Grammy nominations were announced in November, Kanye West picked up five nods, including album of the year, teeing up a potential reconciliation between one of pop music’s most mercurial stars and the institution he has spent much of the last two decades criticizing, challenging and sometimes outright insulting — even as West has yearned for its affirmation.But last Friday, a little more than two weeks before the 64th annual Grammy Awards ceremony, set for April 3 in Las Vegas — and weeks into negotiations over a planned performance at the show — organizers told West’s team that he would not be allowed to perform, according to a representative of the rapper and producer.The organizers cited West’s erratic and troubling public behavior in recent weeks, according to a person with knowledge of the decision, who was granted anonymity to discuss an internal matter.That behavior included the release of an animated music video that portrayed the kidnapping and burial of a figure who looked a lot like Pete Davidson — the comedian who has been dating Kim Kardashian, West’s former wife — and an Instagram post taunting Trevor Noah of “The Daily Show,” who is hosting this year’s Grammys, with a racial slur that resulted in West being banned from Instagram for 24 hours. (Noah said on Twitter that he had not called for West to be cut. “I said counsel Kanye not cancel Kanye,” he wrote.)For West, music’s perennial chaos agent, the episode may have been just the latest blur of sensational headlines. But for the Grammys, it is also a setback in a campaign to lure West back to the fold. He is perhaps the most vocal of a circle of high-profile Black creators — also including Jay-Z, Drake, the Weeknd and Frank Ocean — who have condemned the Grammys for often failing to recognize the work of creators of color, particularly in hip-hop, in its most high-profile categories.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.The Recording Academy, which presents the awards, has made extraordinary efforts to accommodate West, who has won 22 Grammys in his career. For the latest show, a last-minute rule change resulted in West being added to the ballot for album of the year.In an interview with Billboard, Harvey Mason Jr., the academy’s chief executive, said that when the initial slate of nominees was prepared with eight contenders in the major competitions, he noticed a dearth of rap in the top categories. Within days, a proposal to expand the ballot to 10 slots in those categories was approved by the academy’s board, bringing “Donda,” along with Taylor Swift’s “Evermore,” into consideration for best album.Since becoming the academy’s chief last year, Mason has made personal appeals to dissenting artists, including West. That outreach, and the album of the year nomination, stirred frustration and anger among some members of the academy, who have been appalled by West’s past antics, such as posting a video on social media in 2020 that shows a Grammy trophy apparently being defiled in a toilet bowl.“How vile and disrespectful,” Diane Warren, the Grammy-winning songwriter of hits like “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” said at the time.West’s recent behavior on social media has made mending fences even riskier for the Recording Academy. Always an oversharer, West has lately used his Instagram account to air grievances over custody and child care issues amid his divorce from Kardashian. That dispute has coincided with West’s attacks on Davidson, as well as figures like Noah who have criticized the musician’s posts as verging on threats and harassment.Still, for the Recording Academy, reconciling with West could have symbolic power, suggesting that the institution’s efforts to revamp its voting membership and adapt to a faster-moving music business with a younger, more diverse listenership were working.West’s complaints about the Grammys go back at least 17 years. In 2005, even before that year’s nominations were announced, West was telling Grammy voters that if he did not win album of the year for “Late Registration,” his second LP, he would attribute the loss to a judgment on his personal behavior rather than his artistry.“I don’t care if I jumped up and down right now on the couch like Tom Cruise,” he told MTV News at the time. “I don’t care how much I stunt — you can never take away from the amount of work I put into it.” (He lost to U2’s “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.”)Since then, West’s criticisms of the Grammys have been sporadic but unrelenting. In 2015, for example, after Beck won album of the year for “Morning Phase,” West demanded that the alt-rock musician give the award to Beyoncé instead, in an echo of his infamous moment with Swift at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. He warned that such choices by Grammy voters would alienate “real artists.”“Because what happens is,” West said, “when you keep on diminishing art and not respecting the craft and smacking people in the face after they deliver monumental feats of music — it’s disrespectful to inspiration.”While West will not perform at this year’s Grammys, he is still invited to attend as a nominee — which presents a tricky problem for the academy if West wins a major award like album of the year. Would he use the opportunity of a speech on live television to make more inflammatory comments, either about his personal life or about the Grammys itself?As a safeguard for producers of the show, and for CBS, the Grammys’ longtime broadcast network, standard editing delays are built into the show. In 2017, for example, the Grammy audience heard Adele blurt out a frustrated profanity after she flubbed the opening of a George Michael tribute; people watching at home just heard bleeps.Joe Coscarelli contributed reporting. More

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      Lil Durk and Ghost Shake Up the Billboard Chart

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      After an eight-week run at the top for the “Encanto” soundtrack, new albums from the rapper and the Swedish metal band take over.After eight straight weeks leading the Billboard album chart — and nine at the top overall — the “Encanto” soundtrack has finally been bumped from No. 1 by new releases from the Chicago-born rapper Lil Durk and the costumed Swedish metal band Ghost.Lil Durk, a mainstay of the Chicago rap scene who has relocated to the Atlanta area, and lately reached a new audience through a crossover with the country star Morgan Wallen, tops the chart with his album “7220.” It had the equivalent of 120,500 sales in the United States in its opening week, including nearly 165 million streams. Those numbers are tallied by Luminate, the new name for MRC Data, the tracking service that is owned by Billboard’s parent company.It is Lil Durk’s second time at No. 1, after “The Voice of the Heroes,” a joint album with Lil Baby, last June.At No. 2 is “Impera” by Ghost, whose members perform in elaborate satanic regalia. The lead singer, Tobias Forge, appears in black robes and skeletal makeup as a demonic antipope called Papa Emeritus IV — his influences include black metal and Andrew Lloyd Webber — backed up by a crew of Nameless Ghouls. (Forge’s identity became widely known only after four former Nameless Ghouls sued him for back pay in 2017; the case was later dismissed.) “Impera,” Ghost’s fifth studio album, had the equivalent of 70,000 sales, mostly from copies sold as complete albums, in formats like CDs and vinyl LPs.“Encanto” falls to No. 3, and Wallen’s “Dangerous” is No. 4. The British singer Rex Orange County opens at No. 5 with “Who Cares?” More

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      Oxxxymiron, Russian Rapper, Brings a Banned Antiwar Message to Istanbul

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      The rapper, Oxxxymiron, said proceeds from his show would go to help Ukrainian refugees. Russians at the concert denounced the war but said they felt helpless to stop it.ISTANBUL — Only a month ago it would have been an innocuous scene in Moscow: Oxxxymiron, one of Russia’s most popular rappers, performing his latest tracks onstage with a banner behind him reading: “Russians against war.”But after President Vladimir V. Putin decided to invade Ukraine, what had been typical for the rapper, known for his political sloganeering, quickly became impossible.On Tuesday, instead of playing one of a string of six long-anticipated, sold-out arena shows in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Oxxxymiron gave an antiwar concert in a packed club in Istanbul, while streaming the performance on YouTube and other platforms in the hope that people in Russia would watch and donate. He promised that all proceeds, including ticket sales, would go to help the more than three million Ukrainian refugees who have fled Russian aggression.A crowd of Russians, many of whom had left their own country over the past three weeks, fearing Mr. Putin’s tightening oppression, filled a club in Istanbul’s trendy Kadıköy district, chanting “No to war!” and “Glory to Ukraine!” — slogans that could now get them jailed at home.“Millions in Russia are against this war,” said Oxxxymiron, also known as Miron Fyodorov.“I hate feeling so powerless, but I understand well that what we are doing today is the absolute minimum,” he said during the concert. “This is important not only to Ukraine but to Russia, too, which we can lose.”Thanks to the internet, rap has become a dominant genre in Russian pop culture over the past few years, with new stars defying the government’s preferred aesthetics and values. At one point the Kremlin, worried that it might lose the loyalty of young Russians, put pressure on some of the most outspoken rap artists and shut down concerts.Outside the club before the show. Tens of thousands of Russians have moved to Istanbul since the war in Ukraine began.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesOxxxymiron has been a pioneer of the movement and a symbol of the post-Soviet generation of globalized Russians. After growing up in Russia and Germany, and getting a degree at Oxford, he returned to his native St. Petersburg and quickly became an ambassador of Russian rap on the international stage.Oxxxymiron may now be seen as one of Russian rap’s old guard, but his sentiments about the war are shared by many Russian artists across genres. Many of them either started their careers in Ukraine before moving to Russia or toured actively in Ukraine, building a fan base there.After Valery Meladze, a pop singer who had regularly appeared on state-run channels, called for the war to end as soon as possible, he was quickly removed from some music channels in Russia, along with other pro-Ukrainian and Ukrainian artists.The rapper Face said he that had fled Russia and that he “practically” was no longer a Russian artist or citizen. “I don’t plan to return to Russia, to pay taxes there,” Face, also known as Ivan Dryomin, wrote on Instagram. “Our state has forced me and my loved ones to leave our house, our land.”Not all Russian rappers oppose the invasion. Timati, who has supported Mr. Putin and been praised by him, argued that the war in Ukraine “was a forced measure taken by the country’s leadership.”“I love Ukraine and the Ukrainian people,” Timati, also known as Timur Yunusov, said in a social media post. “I am very sorry that we have been pushed against each other and that we couldn’t find a compromise.”Outside the Istanbul club where Oxxxymiron performed, people said they were still digesting the shock of Russia’s attack on what many consider a “brotherly nation.” Millions of Russians have relatives in Ukraine, and many worked, studied or spent parts of their childhoods there.Antiwar slogans, like this one brandished outside the Istanbul club, can now lead to jail terms in Russia. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times“I feel complete powerlessness and anger for what is happening, that you cannot influence anything,” said Natalia, 32, an I.T. engineer from Belarus, who said her country was “an accomplice in this war.”“I don’t understand how anyone could support it,” said Natalia, who declined to give her last name, fearing repercussions against relatives back home.Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4Zelensky’s appeals. More

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      How Kneecap Is Pioneering Irish-Language Rap

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      The trio Kneecap is pioneering Irish-language rap, a genre that barely existed a decade ago.BELFAST, Northern Ireland — On a recent evening in a small, rowdy, West Belfast bar, Mo Chara and Móglaí Bap, two members of the rap group Kneecap, were posing for photographs with fans. One of the bar’s patrons, tapping out a text message nearby, called out to the rappers, “How do you spell ‘ceart go leor’?” an Irish phrase meaning something like “OK.”It might seem like a weird question for hip-hop artists, but Kneecap’s members should know. They have found fame here in a genre they are pioneering: Irish-language rap.Since 2017, when Kneecap released “CEARTA” (the Irish word for “rights”), the band’s popularity has been growing on both sides of Ireland’s internal border and among the diaspora across the Irish Sea. The band’s signature blend of ramshackle rave and rudimentary hip-hop beats, mixed with republican politics — in the Irish sense of seeking unity for the island’s north and south — has brought Kneecap sold-out gigs in Belfast and Dublin, and a growing fan base in England and Scotland.Even a decade ago, the notion of Irish-language rap seemed fantastical. But something is happening in Ireland — north and south — which lately finds itself in the midst of a so-called Celtic revival, with questions of identity, place and culture being interrogated across the arts, politics, fashion and even spirituality.The Irish language is central to this resurgence. The dominance of English in Ireland is a legacy of British colonization, stretching to the 12th century. English became the language of opportunity, progress and employment, and Irish came to be seen as incompatible with modern life. But people carried on speaking Irish in some pockets of the island, and a boom in Irish-language schools from the 1970s raised new generations that viewed the language with pride and enthusiasm rather than shame and resistance.D.J. Próvaí showing a photo of his father’s arrest during the Bloody Sunday uprising of 1972.Paulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York TimesRepublican murals in the Falls Road district of Belfast.Paulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York TimesKneecap’s signature style blends ramshackle rave and rudimentary hip-hop beats with republican politics.Paulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York TimesKneecap was born out of an Irish-speaking west Belfast squat, whose all-night parties featured both techno and traditional Irish music on the sound system. “We felt there was something bubbling, and we wanted to represent that,” Móglaí Bap said.“Irish language and culture doesn’t necessarily have to be an image of rural traditional music,” Mo Chara said. “It can involve youth culture.”Kneecap’s lyrics feature republican slang and slogans — often used in a tongue-in-cheek manner — that have stirred controversy in Northern Ireland. D.J. Próvaí, the third band member, said he left a job as an Irish teacher in 2020 after his school objected to a Kneecap video in which an anti-British slogan — “Brits out” — appears drawn on his buttocks.“Republicanism is so vast, and on a spectrum,” Móglaí Bap said in an interview. “We like to toy with it. We like to take the irony on, and also not be dictated about what kind of republicanism we’re going to believe in.”Frequent references to taking drugs in the band’s lyrics have placed Kneecap at odds with republican dissidents, many of whom have a zero-tolerance policy toward drug use. (The band’s name comes from a form of torture that republican paramilitary groups would inflict on those they accused of drug dealing.) “We’re screaming about the ‘Ra,” Móglaí Bap said, using a familiar name for the Irish Republican Army, “even though the ‘Ra would probably shoot us for doing all of these sort of things.”Not all artists embracing the Irish language are motivated by politics, however: Often, it is as much about rediscovering the past as reckoning with the present. In summer 2020, Manchán Magan, a writer and broadcaster, published “32 Words for Field,” a catalog of lost words to describe the Irish landscape. The book recalled ancient Irish terms like “scim,” which can mean a thin coating of particles, like dust on a shelf, “but it can also mean a fairy film that covers the land, or a magical vision, or succumbing to the supernatural world through sleep,” Magan writes.“32 Words for Field” was an instant cult hit, and it became a mainstream one. Its initial print run sold out in pre-orders before it reached bookstores.Magan said the recent boom in Irish-language creativity was part of a continuing search for an Irish identity, unshackled from colonialism and Catholicism. “What we’re trying to do is rooting ourselves back to — not nationalism, but those things that came before the nation,” he said in an interview. “Connection with the spirit, or some sort of universal mythology, all of those things that bring us together, that make us realize we’re united.”Catherine Clinch, left, and Carrie Crowley in a scene from “The Quiet Girl,” an Irish-language movie that won two honors at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. InscéalIn Irish-language cinema, barely a genre a few years ago, the latest hit is “The Quiet Girl” (“An Cailín Ciúin”), which last month won two honors at the Berlin International Film Festival, and this month beat the Academy Award-nominated “Belfast” to win best film at the Irish Film and Television Academy Awards. Adapted from a 2010 short story in The New Yorker by Claire Keegan, “The Quiet Girl” was partly funded by an initiative called Cine4, run by the Irish-language television station, TG4.The film’s writer-director, Colm Bairéad, said he looked forward to the film being screened around Europe, when audiences would hear “the Irish language bouncing around these auditoriums where the language just hasn’t been heard throughout the history of the medium.”Cleona Ní Chrualaoí, the producer of “The Quiet Girl,” said the current resurgence of Irish-language creativity was, in part, because of people who went through the Irish-language school system. “That has really helped our positive relationship with the language,” she said. “We have generations of children, who have become adults who really respect the language.”Móglaí Bap said Kneecap’s members came from “probably the first generation coming out of the Irish-language education system that developed their own sense of identity within the language.” For the band, rapping in Irish wasn’t just about lyricism, or even identity, Mo Chara said. It offered, he added, “a completely different understanding of the culture, and even of reality around you.”“We found this wee niche,” Móglaí Bap said. “The language is a way for us to bring people with us.”Kneecap has played sold-out gigs in Belfast and Dublin, and has a growing fan base in England and Scotland.Paulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York Times More

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      The Sounds of Ukrainian Pop

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherThe Russian invasion of Ukraine is entering its fourth week, upending life, damaging cities and towns and spawning a refugee crisis. Culture, needless to say, has largely come to a standstill.Pop music in Ukraine has long been a window to understanding the country. The scene is wide and varied — there is, among many other styles, the theatrical pop of Max Barskih, the indie pop of Luna, the quick-tongued rapping of Alyona Alyona and the dance-soul of Ivan Dorn. The music is bold and modern, in dialogue with the styles popular in the rest of Eastern Europe, and beyond.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about some of the country’s pop stars, the musical traditions they borrow from and work within, and how they have grappled with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, both in music and on the internet.Guest:Liana Satenstein, senior fashion writer at VogueConnect 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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      My Favorite Rap Songs Are All Fight and No Flight

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      Mitski moved to Nashville. She’s not quite sure why, because she didn’t really know anyone there, but she liked how specifically weird it was — a town with stories. A local businessman had recently died and left his substantial estate to his Border collie. Bachelorette parties were a surreal and ever-present cottage industry: “There’s always a woman crying on the street and five other women in matching T-shirts comforting her,” as Mitski put it to me. “It feels like such a good place to observe the human condition.” More

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      Earl Sweatshirt Doesn't Want to Be a God

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      Mitski moved to Nashville. She’s not quite sure why, because she didn’t really know anyone there, but she liked how specifically weird it was — a town with stories. A local businessman had recently died and left his substantial estate to his Border collie. Bachelorette parties were a surreal and ever-present cottage industry: “There’s always a woman crying on the street and five other women in matching T-shirts comforting her,” as Mitski put it to me. “It feels like such a good place to observe the human condition.” More

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      L’Rain Makes a Way Out of No Way

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      Mitski moved to Nashville. She’s not quite sure why, because she didn’t really know anyone there, but she liked how specifically weird it was — a town with stories. A local businessman had recently died and left his substantial estate to his Border collie. Bachelorette parties were a surreal and ever-present cottage industry: “There’s always a woman crying on the street and five other women in matching T-shirts comforting her,” as Mitski put it to me. “It feels like such a good place to observe the human condition.” More