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      Before the Astroworld Tragedy, Travis Scott’s ‘Raging’ Made Him a Star

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      The multiplatinum rapper earned a reputation for concerts that teetered on the edge of mayhem. Then eight people died during his performance in Houston on Friday.Travis Scott has always been a showman first and foremost.A master of marketing who is equally skilled at curating big-name collaborators and exclusive experiences, Mr. Scott is a figure of few words and little eye contact who isn’t known as a technically adept rapper or a dynamic offstage celebrity. Instead, he has built his multiplatinum, widely licensed name as an avatar of excess and a conductor of energy — an electric live performer who prioritizes how his music makes you feel (and act).Since 2015, when he established himself as a reliable concert headliner, Mr. Scott (born Jacques B. Webster) has gained an international reputation as a star attraction and an evangelist for good-natured physical expression — what he calls “raging” — whipping up mosh pits, crowd-surfers and stage-divers as his shows teeter on the edge of mayhem. In a rare trajectory, the smash hits came only later.“The way he interacts with his crowd, he’s one of the only artists that when he comes on, he can vibe with every single person,” one fan explained in the Netflix documentary “Travis Scott: Look Mom I Can Fly,” from 2019. Amid montages of blood, sweat and colliding bodies, another added: “You can fall and everyone will pick you up. It’s weird how one person’s music can turn everyone into such a family.”Such expressive, loosely choreographed rowdiness — a common and longtime feature of live performances across musical milieus, including metal, punk and ska — does not necessarily equate with mass danger.But Mr. Scott’s attempts to balance a kind of community-based catharsis with the powder keg of a rambunctious young crowd — which has led to accusations that he has incited fans and encouraged unsafe behavior — tipped decisively toward tragedy on Friday night in Houston, where eight people were killed and hundreds more injured as the rapper performed the final set of the night at the third iteration of his Astroworld festival.Several people died and dozens of others were injured at a Travis Scott concert in Houston, after a large crowd began pushing toward the front of the stage. Video showed crowds amassing earlier in the day, as about 50,000 people attended the festival.Amy Harris/Invision, via Associated PressAuthorities are still investigating what caused the surges in the audience of 50,000, and how that contributed to the “mass casualty event,” which lasted for an estimated 40 minutes, according to law enforcement. The Houston police chief, Troy Finner, said officials worried that ending the show sooner could have caused a riot.Mr. Scott said in a video statement on Instagram that despite acknowledging an ambulance in the crowd, he did not realize the extent of the emergency. He noted that he typically halts his concerts to make sure injured fans can make it to safety, adding: “I could just never imagine the severity of the situation.”Representatives for Mr. Scott said on Monday that he would cover all funeral costs for those who died at Astroworld, while also providing refunds to all attendees who bought tickets. The rapper has also canceled his upcoming headlining appearance on Saturday at the Day N Vegas festival, they said.While crowd-control disasters have occurred at rock concerts, religious celebrations and soccer matches, the incident in Houston has quickly turned Mr. Scott’s biggest selling point and foundational philosophy as an artist into a flash point about his culpability after years of encouraging — and participating in — extreme behavior by his fans.Twice before, Mr. Scott has been arrested and accused of inciting riots at his concerts, pleading guilty to minor charges. In an ongoing civil case, one concertgoer said he was partially paralyzed in 2017 after Mr. Scott encouraged people to jump from a third-floor balcony and then had him hoisted onstage.Yet those incidents only served to bolster the legend of the rapper’s live shows, with footage of stretchers, wheelchairs and the daredevil stunts that may have necessitated them — like leaping from lighting structures — used to illustrate Mr. Scott’s roving carnival of a career.By Sunday, however, an official commercial for this year’s Astroworld festival that emphasized such imagery had been removed from YouTube.Mr. Scott atop an Austin crowd in 2013, during the early days of his career.Rick Kern/WireImage, via Getty ImagesFinding an identity onstageMr. Scott, a Houston native who dropped out of the University of Texas to pursue music, became a protégé to Kanye West in 2012. Using Mr. West’s inclination toward cultural pastiche, along with the genre-hopping, fashion-forward templates of artists like Kid Cudi and ASAP Rocky, Mr. Scott quickly emerged near the forefront of a micro-generation of rappers — Playboi Carti, Trippie Redd, Lil Uzi Vert — who brought a punk-rock sensibility to the mass scale of modern rap, especially in concert.After a few high-profile guest appearances and two mixtapes released in 2013 and 2014, Mr. Scott’s first studio album, “Rodeo,” was released by Epic Records and the rapper T.I.’s Grand Hustle label in 2015. Just a year earlier, Mr. Scott was playing for tiny audiences. But following his proper debut, the musician began realizing his dreams of ambitious stage design and adrenaline to match.In a 2015 GQ segment called “How to Rage With Travis Scott,” the rapper linked his childhood fantasy of becoming a professional wrestler to his later desire to make his concerts “feel like it was the WWF.”“Raging and, you know, having fun and expressing good feelings is something that I plan on doing and spreading across the globe,” Mr. Scott said. “We don’t like people that just stand — whether you’re Black, white, brown, green, purple, yellow, blue, we don’t want you standing around.”A concert review from Complex that year was titled, “I Tried Not to Die at Travi$ Scott and Young Thug’s Show Last Night,” calling the concert “the most dangerous safe haven” and “a turnt-up fight for survival.”But as Mr. Scott’s diverse audience expanded and his operation professionalized, he also ran up against the limits of his amiable anarchy. At the Lollapalooza festival that summer in Chicago, the rapper’s set was cut off five minutes in, after he told fans to rush the barricades, flip off security and chant, “We want rage,” resulting in a stampede that injured a 15-year-old girl. Mr. Scott later pleaded guilty to reckless conduct and was put under court supervision for a year.In 2017, Mr. Scott was arrested again following a performance in Arkansas, where he was charged with inciting a riot for encouraging fans to rush the stage and bypass security. He eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for disorderly conduct, and paid a $7,465.31 fine.The 2019 Netflix documentary “Travis Scott: Look Mom I Can Fly” traced the rapper’s evolution into a live performer with a specific aesthetic.NetflixA superstar expands his influenceMr. Scott’s celebrity soon skyrocketed. The same year as his arrest in Arkansas, he joined the extended Kardashian universe as the boyfriend of Kylie Jenner; the couple had a daughter, Stormi, in 2018 and are now expecting their second child.But it was the release of Mr. Scott’s third album, “Astroworld,” in the summer of 2018, that cemented him among the upper echelon of superstar performers — and salesmen. The album release was paired with an extensive merchandise collection that drove purchases, and it helped lead to collaborations with McDonald’s, Hot Wheels, Nike, Reese’s and more.“Astroworld” also featured the rapper’s first Billboard No. 1 single, “Sicko Mode,” with Drake, a feat Mr. Scott would repeat three more times from 2019 to 2020. He has collected eight Grammy nominations since 2013, released three chart-topping albums and is known as a streaming juggernaut.After recreating rodeos and flying atop an animatronic bird over his crowds, Mr. Scott staged an international tour for “Astroworld” — named for a defunct Six Flags theme park near where he grew up — that featured a functional roller coaster that shot out over the audience.Rolling Stone called it “the greatest show in the world,” comparing Mr. Scott’s “unhinged leaping” to Michael Jackson’s moonwalking, while The Washington Post crowned the rapper “one of the most electrifying performers of the moment,” a “maestro directing the chaos.”Amid his big-budget diversification, Mr. Scott used his blockbuster release to kick off the festival of the same name, building on the industry trend of big-tent, weekend-long concerts branded and curated by major artists. (Astroworld was canceled in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic; still, 28 million viewers watched Mr. Scott perform within the video game Fortnite.)The Netflix documentary “Look Mom I Can Fly” chronicled the lead-up to the “Astroworld” album and the first edition of the festival. But even as it underlined Mr. Scott’s penchant for stoking hype — fast-forwarding through the empty crowds of his early career to the bedlam of Lollapalooza, Arkansas and his pyrotechnic-heavy arena shows in hectic, high-voltage footage — there were moments that gestured toward the need for caution, as well.Mr. Scott is seen chastising security and egging his crowd on, but he is also shown multiple times pausing onstage as seemingly unconscious bodies are lifted through the crowd to be treated. “I feel bad, though,” he says following his release from jail in Arkansas. “I heard about kids getting hurt.”Ahead of another show, a member of the rapper’s team is shown backstage, preparing the venue’s security staff.“Our kids, they push up against the front and spread all the way across that and fill in the whole front floor, so the pressure becomes very great up against the barricade,” the man, whose face is blurred in the footage, tells them. “You will see a lot of crowd-surfers in general, but also you see a lot of kids that are just trying to get out and get to safety because they can’t breathe, because it’s so compact.”“You won’t know how bad it can be with our crowd,” he adds, “until we turn on.” More

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      How the Mosh Pit and ‘Raging’ Came to Hip-Hop

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherIn the last decade, hip-hop has become increasingly familiar with the mosh pit, stage diving and crowds that take on lives of their own. No one’s career embodies that more than Travis Scott, whose fans are known as Ragers and who has built an empire on encouraging them toward abandon.The cause of death of the eight people who lost their lives at Scott’s Astroworld festival on Friday remains unknown. But video footage of the event shows issues with crowd control. Hip-hop festival performances are oriented toward the rowdy these days, and the tragedy at Astroworld feels like it could be a potential pivot point away from an era in hip-hop that’s become improbably wild.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the history of moshing in hip-hop, how the last decade has seen the energy typically associated with hardcore and punk shows become central to a huge swath of rap music, and the future of the rage.Guest:Roger Gengo, founder of Masked Gorilla and Masked RecordsConnect 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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      Post Malone and the Weeknd’s Emo Synth-Pop, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Jenny Lewis, TNGHT, Dawn Richard 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.Post Malone and the Weeknd, ‘One Right Now’Oh, the fragile male ego. “Don’t call me baby when you did me so wrong” is one of the milder jibes hurled at a straying girlfriend by Post Malone as he trades verses with the Weeknd. She may want to get together, but the guys have already moved on, with “one coming over and one right now.” A very 1980s track — springy synthesizer bass line and hook, programmed beat — carries pure, focused resentment about how much damage she’s done to “my feelings.” JON PARELESCharli XCX featuring Christine and the Queens and Caroline Polachek, ‘New Shapes’“What you want/I ain’t got it,” Charli XCX snarls over a blast of ’80s pop gloss. The British pop provocateur unleashes her ultrapop persona, brooding over cinematic new wave synths. “New Shapes” leverages the kind of vulnerability and insecurity that defines some of Charli’s best work, thanks to pointed verses from her guests (and previous collaborators), the sad girl supergroup of Christine and the Queens and Caroline Polachek. The whole thing doesn’t quite measure up to the irresistible drama of the beloved 2019 anthem “Gone,” but hey, the girls will take it. ISABELIA HERRERATerrace Martin featuring Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, Ty Dolla Sign and James Fauntleroy, ‘Drones’The polymathic musician and producer Terrace Martin is widely known for helping Kendrick Lamar sculpt his jazz-tinted masterpiece, “To Pimp a Butterfly,” but he’d been an asset in Los Angeles studios since the mid-2000s, when he first fell in with Snoop Dogg. The title track from Martin’s new solo album, “Drones,” is something like a reading of his résumé, with features from four resounding names in L.A. hip-hop. The dapper, G-funk beat is a braid of plunky guitar, pulsing electric piano and 808 percussion; the lyrics — sung partly by Lamar, in a sly shrug — describe a booty-call relationship that’s exactly as shallow as it looks to the outside world, and maybe not much more satisfying. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLODawn Richard, ‘Loose Your Mind’Following her eclectic album “The Second Line,” released earlier this year, Dawn Richard’s new track for the Adult Swim Singles series is all bass-heavy, aqueous funk. Her voice shape-shifts throughout “Loose Your Mind,” so at times it almost feels like she’s duetting with different sides of her prismatic personality. “Ain’t really nothing wrong when the feeling is golden,” she spits at the beginning, before a melodic chorus of Dawns responds in agreement: “Solid gold.” LINDSAY ZOLADZTNGHT, ‘Tums’Few songs defined the hypermaximalist sound of the 2010s as succinctly as the electronic duo TNGHT’s “Higher Ground,” that brassy, ever-escalating EDM anthem that was sampled by Kanye West on “Yeezus” and — I will die on this hill — has to be the inspiration behind the “Arby’s: We Have the Meats” jingle, right? After a long hiatus, the producers Hudson Mohawke and Lunice reunited as TNGHT in 2019, and have now released a new track called “Tums,” which Lunice says was created according to the duo’s guiding principles: “Keep it really fun. Dumb. Hard-hitting. Don’t overwork it.” Sampled giggles and slide whistles keep things fizzy on the surface, while the track’s booming low end guides it through a series of roller-coaster drops. “Tums” might not be as innovative as the pair’s earlier work, but maybe that’s because everything else has been sounding like them for years now. ZOLADZSimi, ‘Woman’With “Woman,” the Nigerian singer and songwriter Simi offers a tribute, corrective and update to Fela Anikalupo Kuti, who invented Afrobeat in the 1970s in songs including “Lady,” which scoffed at European feminism. “Woman” mixes current electronic Afrobeats with the funk of Kuti’s 1970s Afrobeat, while quoting Kuti songs between her own assertions about women’s strengths: “She won’t pay attention to the intimidation.” The rhetoric is tricky; the beat is unstoppable. PARELESGregory Porter featuring Cherise, ‘Love Runs Deeper’The standard elements of Gregory Porter’s style run through “Love Runs Deeper”: lyrics that linger on the difficulties — and the bounties — of care and connection; twinkling orchestral strings; a gradual build that allows his burly, baritone voice to unfurl itself with just enough tension and release. But this is more of a direct-delivery power ballad than most of Porter’s tunes: The melody wouldn’t feel out of place on an Adele or Halsey record, and it’s liable to get lodged in your head quickly and stay there. With supporting vocals from the young British singer Cherise, “Love Runs Deeper” serves as the soundtrack to Disney’s annual holiday-season advertisement, which this year is a short film (full of self-referential touches, like a Buzz Lightyear cameo) titled “The Stepdad.” The song is also included on a new Porter compilation, “Still Rising,” which features a mix of his greatest hits, B-sides and new songs. RUSSONELLOJenny Lewis, ‘Puppy and a Truck’“My 40s are kicking my ass, and handing them to me in a margarita glass” — how’s that for an opening line? Something about the gentle country strum and laid-back croon of Jenny Lewis’s new stand-alone single recalls her old band Rilo Kiley’s great 2004 album “More Adventurous,” though her perspective has been updated with the unglamorous realities and hard-won wisdom of middle age. After chronicling the wreckage of a few recent relationships, the eternally witty Lewis arrives at a mantra of tough-talking self-reliance: “If you feel like giving up, shut up — get a puppy and a truck.” ZOLADZChastity Belt, ‘Fear’Lydia Lund spends much of the Washington indie-rock band Chastity Belt’s new song “Fear” hollering until she’s hoarse, “It’s just the fear, it’s just the fear.” Apparently she recorded the vocals while she was staying at her parents’ house, and her commitment to the song was so intense that her mother knocked on the door to make sure she was OK because she “thought I was doing some kind of primal scream therapy,” Lund said. “And I guess in a way I am.” Lund’s impassioned delivery and the song’s soaring guitars turn “Fear” into a cathartic response to overwhelming anxiety, and provide a powerful soundtrack for slaying that dreaded mind killer. ZOLADZRadiohead, ‘Follow Me Around’“Kid A Mnesia,” the new, expansive compilation of Radiohead songs from their paradigm-shifting sessions in 1999-2000, has unearthed studio versions of songs that the band performed but never committed to albums, notably “Follow Me Around,” a guitar-strumming crescendo of paranoia. The video, apparently made with a small but persistent camera drone, nicely multiplies the dread. PARELESLorde, ‘Hold No Grudge’Lorde whisper-sings through the first half of “Hold No Grudge,” a bonus track added to her album “Solar Power.” It’s a memory of an early love that ended without a resolution; later messages went unanswered. Midway through, she’s still bouncing syllables off guitar strums, but the sound of the song comes into focus and Lorde realizes, “We both might have done some growing up.” She’s ready to let the passage of time offer solace. PARELESOmar Apollo featuring Kali Uchis, ‘Bad Life’Omar Apollo is known for combining cool funk grooves, slick charisma and sensual falsettos. But on “Bad Life,” his new single featuring Kali Uchis, the young singer-songwriter peels back the layers and puts his armor aside for a bare-bones exercise in vulnerability. “Bad Life” revels in contempt, burning slow and low alongside a soft-focus electric guitar. Apollo opens the track with a heart-piercer: “You give me nothing/But I still change it to something.” Ouch. The singer’s voice curls into anguished melismas, and when the orchestral strings soar in halfway through, the resentment cuts crystal clear. HERRERAAlt-J, ‘Get Better’Alt-J created a serene and almost unbearably mournful song with “Get Better,” a fingerpicked chronicle about the profundity and mundanity of a loved one’s slow death like Paul Simon’s “Darling Lorraine” and Mount Eerie’s “Real Death.” It’s profoundly self-conscious, citing the similarly acoustic arrangement of Elliott Smith; it offers personal moments, stray events, reminiscences, belongings, thoughts of “front line workers,” admissions that “I still pretend you’re only out of sight in another room/smiling at your phone.” The loss is only personal, but shattering. PARELES More

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      Popcast Mailbag! Halsey, Nicki, TikTok and, of Course, Taylor

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherYou ask, we answer. Or prevaricate. It depends!On this week’s Popcast, part of our semiregular mailbag series, the team takes questions on a range of topics:the year in Taylor Swiftthe quality of Halsey’s new musicthe state of the music videothe ways TikTok can be a lifeline for a legacy actthe direction Drake’s career should head inthe increasingly idiosyncratic vocal styles of young female pop starswhether we still buy physical mediaAnd much more.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterCaryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorConnect 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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      Tupac Shakur Touring Exhibition Opens in January

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      The show, spearheaded by Shakur’s estate, will start out in Los Angeles. It’s “a story about race in America using Tupac as a proxy,” one of its producers said.A major touring exhibition centered on Tupac Shakur and spearheaded by his estate will arrive in Los Angeles in January.The exhibition, “Tupac Shakur. Wake Me When I’m Free,” opens on Jan. 21, in a newly built, temporary 20,000-square-foot space in the entertainment complex L.A. Live in downtown Los Angeles.Shakur, a hip-hop artist, poet, actor and activist who released his first album in 1991 and went on to become one of the top-selling rappers in the 1990s, was killed in Las Vegas in 1996, at age 25. The case was never solved. He also acted in films including John Singleton’s “Poetic Justice,” in which he starred opposite Janet Jackson. In the decades since his death, he has inspired dozens of albums, books, movies, theater productions and even a hologram. In 2017, he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.The exhibition, named after a Shakur poem included on the album “The Rose That Grew From Concrete, Volume 1” in 2000, features artifacts, contemporary art, music and multisensory elements in telling the story of Shakur’s life.“It became evident very quickly that this was way bigger than his music,” Arron Saxe, one of the exhibition’s co-producers, said in a phone interview on Monday. “You can’t talk about Tupac without talking about Afeni, his mother, and you can’t talk about Afeni without talking about her involvement in the Panther Party, and you’re then talking about the connections with the Civil Rights movement.”It’s “a story about race in America using Tupac as a proxy,” he added.Shakur’s estate worked for more than six years and has a number of partners, among them Nwaka Onwusa, the chief curator at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and Jeremy Hodges, the show’s creative director and founder of Project Art Collective. Shakur’s activism and his music will be highlighted, Saxe said. Part of the exhibition’s aim, he said, will be to demystify the legend.“There will be notebooks, song lyrics, poetry and also everyday stuff like shopping lists, and phone numbers on pieces of paper,” Saxe said. Humanizing him is a focus “because he and a lot of these other figures are mythical, larger than life.”After about six months, the exhibition will travel to other cities in the United States and internationally. More

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      Drake Earns a Fifth Week at No. 1 Ahead of Music’s Major Fall Releases

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      With new albums by Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift and Adele looming, the rapper’s “Certified Lover Boy” remains atop the Billboard chart.Before Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift and Adele make themselves known on the Billboard album chart, there is still Drake.In the absence of much competition, the rapper’s latest album, “Certified Lover Boy,” logged its fifth nonconsecutive week at No. 1 with the equivalent of 74,000 sales in the United States, including 100 million streams and fewer than 1,000 copies sold as a complete package in its eighth week out, according to MRC Data.But major releases loom this fall as formidable challengers: Sheeran’s new album, “=,” pronounced “equals,” was released on Friday and will make its chart debut next week, while Swift’s rerecorded version of “Red,” from 2012 — now called “Red (Taylor’s Version)” — is due out Nov. 12.Yet even those top-selling singer-songwriters should enjoy their likely spots at No. 1 while they last, as the new album from Adele, “30,” is scheduled for release on Nov. 19, and is shaping up to be another blockbuster.Drake’s five weeks at the top of the Billboard 200 so far this year with “Certified Lover Boy” match the stay of his previous album, “Scorpion,” in 2018, according to Billboard. And it ties his second-longest reign for a release, trailing the 13 weeks at No. 1 for his 2016 album, “Views.”“Certified Lover Boy” is followed on this week’s chart by some of the year’s most consistently popular releases, including “Dangerous: The Double Album” by Morgan Wallen at No. 2; “Planet Her” by Doja Cat at No. 3; “Sincerely, Kentrell” by YoungBoy Never Broke Again at No. 4; and “Sour” by Olivia Rodrigo at No. 5.New albums by Lana Del Rey (“Blue Banisters,” No. 8) and Elton John (the collaborative “The Lockdown Sessions,” No. 10) were the top debuts of the week. More

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      Jay-Z, Foo Fighters and Carole King Join the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

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      Barack Obama (via video), Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift spoke on behalf of the inductees at a ceremony that also honored Tina Turner, the Go-Go’s and Todd Rundgren.CLEVELAND — Like many awards shows during the pandemic, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame hosted a virtual induction ceremony in 2020. On Saturday night at the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, where the organization’s museum is based, the event returned with a powerful lineup to laud its 36th annual class: a former United States president, Taylor Swift and a Beatle.A video introduction for Jay-Z that flaunted the New York City rapper’s wide reach opened with a tribute from Barack Obama. “I’ve turned to Jay-Z’s words at different points in my life, whether I was brushing dirt off my shoulder on the campaign trail, or sampling his lyrics on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the 50th anniversary of the Selma march to Montgomery,” said Obama, who spoke in the package alongside Beyoncé, Chris Rock and LeBron James.The comedian Dave Chappelle, who delivered Jay-Z’s formal induction in the arena, opened with, “I would like to apologize …” — an apparent reference to the controversy surrounding his recent Netflix special, “The Closer” — before sticking to the subject at hand: Jay-Z’s eternal sense of calm and how he has stayed true to his community through the decades.“When he said this is Jay everyday. When he told us he’d never change. You heard this and you probably said as a white person, ‘Well, maybe this guy should focus on his development,’” Chappelle said. “But what we heard is that he’ll never forget us. He will always remember us. And we are his point of reference. That he is going to show us how far we can go if we just get hold of the opportunity.”A tuxedo-clad Jay-Z, who did not perform, followed with a charming, sometimes meandering 10-minute speech in which he referred to the mentors and peers who guided him: LL Cool J (who received a musical excellence award on Saturday after he wasn’t voted in on his sixth nomination), KRS-One, Rakim and Chuck D, among others. “Growing up, we didn’t think we could be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,” Jay-Z said. “We were told that hip-hop was a fad. Much like punk rock, it gave us this anti-culture, this subgenre, and there were heroes in it.” Hopefully, he added at the end of his remarks, he is showing the “next generation that anything is possible.”The actress Angela Bassett inducted the singer Tina Turner, who did not attend the event.Michael Loccisano/Getty ImagesThe actress Drew Barrymore, center, with the Go-Go’s. David Richard/Associated PressJay-Z joined one of the more diverse recent Rock Hall classes: Carole King, the singer and songwriter who was honored by the organization in 1990 with her songwriting partner and former husband Gerry Goffin; the arena rockers Foo Fighters, whose frontman, Dave Grohl, traced the band’s longevity to the familial bond developed between the musicians; the indefatigable powerhouse singer Tina Turner, finally inducted as a solo performer after gaining entry as part of Ike and Tina Turner in 1991; the 1980s power-pop band the Go-Go’s, hailed as the sound of “pure possibility” in a big-hearted introduction by Drew Barrymore; and the classic rock auteur Todd Rundgren, who recently told TMZ that he “never cared much about the Hall of Fame” and stayed true to his word, skipping the event to perform a solo set in Cincinnati. HBO will present highlights from the ceremony on Nov. 20.Jay-Z’s speech, filled with asides and memories, well demonstrated how despite the multitude of big personalities packed into one of Cleveland’s biggest venues, the event often centered on more intimate moments.Swift helped set the more personal tone, recalling in her induction speech for King how at age 7 she used to dance throughout her house in socked feet while listening to the musician’s records. “I cannot remember a time when I didn’t know Carole King’s music,” said Swift, who went on to describe the seemingly magical way that King’s songs could be introduced by an outsider — a parent, a sibling, a lover — only to become an integral part of a person’s own internal world.“I cannot remember a time when I didn’t know Carole King’s music,” said the singer Taylor Swift, left, with King.Gaelen Morse/ReutersSwift embodied this idea in her show-opening performance, gliding through “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” which Swift reinvented as a gently pulsating synth-pop ballad that wouldn’t feel out of place in her own discography. King, who could be seen onscreen in the venue wiping away tears as Swift finished the song, thanked the pop star for “carrying the torch forward” in her own speech.“I keep hearing it, so I guess I’m going to have to try to own it, that today’s female singers and songwriters stand on my shoulders,” said King, who was quick to extend the spotlight to her own forebears. “Let it not be forgotten that they also stand on the shoulders of the first woman to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. May she rest in power, Miss Aretha Franklin!”In his speech for the Foo Fighters, Paul McCartney joking pointed out how Dave Grohl followed in his own footsteps. Both were swept up by music at a young age, McCartney said, landing in popular groups that came to an untimely end. Both rebounded by making albums and playing all the musical parts (Grohl with Foo Fighters’ self-titled 1995 debut; McCartney with his 1970 solo album). “Do you think this guy’s stalking me?” the Beatle cracked.Onstage, Grohl, born roughly 60 miles east of the Rock Hall in Warren, Ohio, praised the influence of the Beatles and in particular McCartney, describing him as “my music teacher.” After the Foo Fighters muscled through a trio of battle-tested rock singalongs — “The Best of You,” “My Hero” and “Everlong” — McCartney repaid the favor, joining the band for a galloping cover of the Beatles’ “Get Back.”The singer Paul McCartney, right, inducted the Foo Fighters. He joined the band for a galloping cover of the Beatles’ “Get Back.”Michael Loccisano/Getty Images H.E.R. and Keith Urban paid tribute to Turner.Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty ImagesIn other performances, H.E.R., Christina Aguilera, Mickey Guyton and Keith Urban combined to pay tribute to Tina Turner, who did not attend the event. During the in memoriam segment, Brandi Carlile joined her bandmates Phil and Tim Hanseroth for an understated take on the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do Is Dream” to honor Don Everly, who died in August.The Go-Go’s captured all of the sunny, sneering urgency of their 1981 debut “Beauty and the Beat,” the first and only album from an all-woman band to score the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s chart, opening with “Vacation,” pogo-ing into “Our Lips Are Sealed” and closing with a bounding, bass-heavy “We Got the Beat.”In Janet Jackson’s 2019 induction speech, she spoke of the Rock Hall’s well-documented gender imbalance, asking voters to “please induct more women.” The Go-Go’s bassist Kathy Valentine echoed these comments during the band’s own time onstage.While Valentine credited the Rock Hall for making progress, she also prodded the organization to do more. “By honoring our historical contribution, the doors to this establishment have opened wider,” she said. “Because here is the thing, there would not be less of us if more of us were visible.” More

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      Fetty Wap Is Arrested on Federal Drug Charges at Citi Field

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      The rapper, who had been set to perform at the Rolling Loud music festival, was arraigned Friday on Long Island.The rapper Fetty Wap pleaded not guilty to federal drug charges on Friday, a day after he was arrested by F.B.I. agents at Citi Field, where he was scheduled to perform at the Rolling Loud music festival.The artist, whose legal name is Willie Junior Maxwell II, was arraigned at a federal court in Central Islip, N.Y. He and five co-defendants, including a former New Jersey corrections officer, were charged with one count of conspiring to distribute and possess controlled substances.Officials said the defendants distributed more than 100 kilograms of cocaine, heroin, fentanyl and crack across Long Island and New Jersey over a yearlong period beginning in June 2019. The other five defendants, who were arraigned on various dates within the past month, were also charged with using firearms in connection with drug trafficking.“The pipeline of drugs in this investigation ran thousands of miles from the West Coast to the communities here in our area, contributing to the addiction and overdose epidemic we have seen time and time again tear people’s lives apart,” Michael J. Driscoll, an assistant director-in-charge in the F.B.I., said in a statement.Mr. Maxwell, 30, who is from Paterson, N.J., rose to fame in 2015 with his hit single “Trap Queen,” in which he sings and raps about cooking drugs with a partner. The New York Times once described it as “shimmering and yelping and borderline whimsical,” and the song was nominated for a Grammy in 2016. Mr. Maxwell released a new mixtape called “The Butterfly Effect” last week.Mr. Maxwell was scheduled to perform on the first day of Rolling Loud, a traveling hip-hop festival, at Citi Field. Bobby Shmurda, Jack Harlow and 50 Cent were among the artists on the bill. A law enforcement official with knowledge of the case, but who was not authorized to speak publicly, said that Mr. Maxwell was taken into custody shortly after he arrived at Citi Field. He had been slotted to perform at 4:45 p.m., according to the festival’s website.Mr. Maxwell’s lawyer, Navarro W. Gray of Hackensack, N.J., said in a statement, “We pray that this is all a big misunderstanding.” Mr. Gray said he hoped that Mr. Maxwell would be released “so we can clear things up as soon as possible.”The rapper was represented by another lawyer, Elizabeth Macedonio, for his court appearance, which was conducted by video conference. He did not seek bail and was held in detention. The charge carries a minimum sentence of 10 years, and a maximum of life in prison.Ms. Macedonio did not immediately respond to a request for further comment; nor did Mr. Maxwell’s label, 300 Entertainment.Timothy D. Sini, the district attorney for Suffolk County, said the defendants had used eastern Long Island as the base for a multimillion-dollar drug ring.“They were wholesale drug dealers who pumped massive quantities of narcotics into our communities,” Mr. Sini said in a statement, adding, “The magnitude of this operation was enormous.”Three of the defendants had already been charged in connection with the case. In June 2020, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Mr. Sini’s office and other agencies announced charges against the former New Jersey corrections officer, Anthony Cyntje, now 23, of Passaic; Brian Sullivan, now 26, of Lake Grove, N.Y.; and Anthony Leonardi, now 47, of Coram, N.Y.The indictment unsealed Friday also included charges against Mr. Leonardi’s brother, Robert Leonardi, 26, of Levittown, Pa., as well as Kavaughn Wiggins, also 26, of Coram, N.Y.Prosecutors said the Leonardi brothers, Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Wiggins participated in the purchase and transport of drugs from the West Coast, while Mr. Maxwell was a “kilogram-level redistributor” and Mr. Cyntje transported cocaine to New Jersey.Patrick J. Brackley, a lawyer representing Mr. Cyntje, said that he was “alleged to have participated in only one day of the entire conspiracy” and that he had pleaded not guilty to the charges. Since his arrest on Oct. 13, Mr. Cyntje has been held at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, Mr. Brackley said. He was being held in quarantine because of Covid-19 protocols.When the authorities announced the charges last year, they identified Mr. Sullivan and Anthony Leonardi’s son James Sosa, then 25, as ringleaders of the operation, charging both with working as major drug traffickers, among other counts.A lawyer for Mr. Sullivan, David H. Besso, said he was “a regular kid from Long Island” and had pleaded not guilty to the charges. He has been in custody at Yaphank Correctional Facility since his arrest last year, Mr. Besso said.The authorities said Friday that they recovered $1.5 million in cash, numerous fentanyl pills, 16 kilograms of cocaine, two kilograms of heroin, two 9-millimeter handguns, two other pistols, a rifle and ammunition in the course of the yearlong investigation. More