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      The Tao of Snoop Dogg

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      Nearly 30 years after emerging as a profane gangster rapper from Long Beach, Calif., Snoop Dogg has transcended his hip-hop roots and become culturally ubiquitous.Here he is in the new Addams Family movie. There he is on a Corona commercial. He has a show with Martha Stewart on VH1 and an investment fund, and is still releasing new music.Celebrities who cross genres can risk diluting their brand, spreading themselves too thin or alienating the core fans who propelled their rise to fame. Snoop has so far managed to avoid these pitfalls while, in crucial ways, remaining relentlessly on message.Zooming from his compound in Los Angeles, he smoked an enormous blunt while discussing how he went from a shy musician to a multiplatform entrepreneur with several new ventures in the burgeoning cannabis industry.To the brands he endorses, including Corona, Beyond Meat and Bic lighters, he is a gregarious spokesman. Yet Snoop has strong feelings about what he says is persistent racism in the business world, and is uninhibited in his critique of the status quo.This interview was condensed and edited for clarity.How have you managed to stay relevant for so long?The easiest thing you can do is just do you. I felt like doing me would be the easiest path to me remaining relevant in the industry. It’s originality and uniqueness. I just try to do me.OK. At what point did you think your career was going to be about more than just music?Probably after I did the “Murder Was the Case” movie. In the beginning, I wasn’t comfortable on camera. I was kind of shy. But once I got to that stage, as far as to be able to shoot a movie that I asked for, that I wanted to be a part of, and it came to life — it was fascinating to me.How did you overcome that shyness?Success and practice. The more success you have and practice you have, the more familiar you become with it. Either love it or hate. I love what it do for me and I love what it do for other people when they see me onscreen. It’s a feeling of joy when people understand it and they get it.How did you think about building out a career beyond music?We weren’t into branding or any of that at first. We were just into making good music and trying to be the dopest [expletive] in the world. My branding and my business came when I was able to go to No Limit Records with Master P, and be under his guidance and his tutelage and his wisdom. He taught me how to be a better businessman, how to be more than just a rapper, but to be about my business. It’s called show business. I had mastered show. But Master P showed me how to master the business.Who were your mentors besides Master P?Dr. Dre. Definitely Puffy. Russell Simmons. Guys like that, that were in my field but were able to jump outside of it and become bigger.I’m not really somebody that likes taking information from people. I’m more about: We trading game, chopping it up, bettering each other, giving information on how my business is going, how your business is working, how I see it from the outside looking in.I got a lot of relationships. Quincy Jones and Charlie Wilson are like uncles to me, where they shape and mold the lifestyle of Snoop Dogg, not just the business. What you learn about being a better person from somebody is more important than what you learn business-wise or career-wise.How did you make sure you had honest brokers around you as you were getting involved in new ventures?Sometimes you have to have the wrong people around you to know what the wrong people around you look like and what they act like. My experience came from having the wrong people in my business, to where they didn’t benefit me or didn’t teach me anything.A lot of people say don’t mix family and business, but you recently hired your wife as your business manager.Why not? You got to have people in your life that understand you, and understand business. She’s been my best friend for like 35 years, so she understands everything about me and how I get down. I don’t trust nobody like I trust her. At the end of the day, if something was to go wrong with me or if I wasn’t able to do it anymore, I know that everything would be in the right hands, and things would continue to run just like an operation.How do you think about which brands you want to work with these days?It’s got to be fun. And it’s going to make funds. So long as the word “fun” is involved, it’s cool.Do you consider potential partners through any moral or ethical lens?I think about all of it. I don’t want to associate myself with people who don’t have a like mind as me, just like they don’t want to associate themselves with me if I don’t have the same mind as them. Companies that get down with me know how I get down. They know the extracurricular things that I do. They know the things that I do in the hip-hop world and in the business world.They have to accept all of that when you’re dealing with Snoop Dogg. That’s the way I branded myself, to where when you get Snoop Dogg, you get all of it. It’s just, what version did you pay for? Did you pay for the version with the kids, the G-rated Addams Family movie? Or did you pay for the rated-R Snoop Dogg, the one the adults like? Which one did you pay for?“I helped make this business famous before it became legal.”Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesBack when you started making music, did you ever imagine how big the legal cannabis market would get?No. Not as many times as I went to jail for it. And it’s still on my criminal record. I don’t understand how it could go from being the most hated, the most vicious thing that you could do, to now everybody’s capitalizing off of it, and they’re leaning toward a demographic that can prosper off of it, as opposed to the demographic that created the business.We should be able to have some of our people — that look like me — as executives, as C.E.O.s, as platform owners. You know, the top of the chain, not just the spokesperson or the brand ambassador. We need to be the brand owners.Is that part of the reason you’re involved in the business?I helped make this business famous before it became legal. The forefathers were the ones before me. The jazz musicians, the Bob Marleys, the Cheech and Chongs, the Willie Nelsons. All of those guys laid the foundation down. I just continued what they were doing and put a little bit more spice on. I’m still paying respect to them, and knowing that this is a love branch. Cannabis, marijuana, whatever you want to call it, is all about love and bringing people together.Is the issue of trying to close the Black wealth gap something you’re thinking about beyond the cannabis industry?That’s why I’m trying to be one of those examples, of someone who creates his own everything, owns his own everything, and has a brand strong enough to compete with Levi’s and Miller and Kraft and all of these other brands that have been around for hundreds of years. That’s what I want the Snoop Dogg brand to be.Do you think the platforms like Apple and Spotify are treating artists fairly?I just don’t understand how you only get this little bit amount of money per stream. I just don’t understand the dynamics of those numbers, and how they can create these systems without Black people up top, while Black people are the ones generating the most money from these systems through the music. So I’m just trying to figure out when they’re going to cut us in in the beginning, as opposed to always letting us be the ones who get it to a point where these platforms can sell for billions of dollars, and then the Black people that made it famous get nothing.Just like the TikTokers. All of the young Black content creators on TikTok have boycotted because they see that when they do the dances they don’t get the attention or the money. But as soon as the white dancers do it, it’s the biggest [expletive] in the world and they on Jimmy Fallon. That’s not fair. It’s not cool to just keep stealing our culture right in front of us and not include us in the finances of it all.We need to be involved early. They always cut us out. They call Snoop after they got their companies up and are like, “Hey, Snoop, you want to be a brand ambassador?” I want some equity. Give me a piece of the pie. If I can’t get no equity, [expletive] you and your company.We’re seeing more of that with athletes like Kevin Durant and Steph Curry, who are making investments in start-ups.Right, because they understand that they got to get it. I mean, you would think that those businesspeople up top would say: “You know what? It’s time to change the world. We’ve got to stop treating Black people like they’re less. They’re always the ones who do the hard work, the groundwork, but we never cut them in.”Like, why don’t we have an owner in an N.F.L.? That’s just racist. Period, point blank. We need to own an N.F.L. team. We got one half-owner in the N.B.A., Michael Jordan. But the whole league is 90 percent Black. So we still the slaves and they still the masters.That’s why in the music game, we took the initiative to say, [expletive] that. We’re the masters, and we own our masters. We’re going to negotiate with you the way we think it should be. We changed that industry years ago, with our mentality of having our own labels. More

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      Pop Smoke’s Second Posthumous Album, ‘Faith,’ Hits No. 1

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      The new release by the Brooklyn rapper, who was shot and killed last year, tops Billboard, but fell short of his studio debut.“Faith,” the second album by the Brooklyn rapper Pop Smoke to be released since he was shot and killed in February 2020 at the age of 20, tops the Billboard chart this week, just as the previous one did.But the difference in listenership was stark: “Faith” opened with 88,000 equivalent album units, including 113 million streams and 4,000 in sales, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm, while “Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon,” from last July, was nearly three times more popular in its opening week, earning the equivalent of 251,000 albums sold, with 268 million streams and 59,000 in sales (including now-restricted merchandise bundles).“Faith” received tepid album reviews, with some questioning its posthumous assembly and the inclusion of more than 20 guests (Dua Lipa, Kanye West, Chris Brown) across the album’s 20 tracks. A deluxe edition adding four more songs was released on July 21, the day before the chart week ended.Pop Smoke, born Bashar Jackson, once a leader of Brooklyn’s rising drill movement, was killed last year during a home invasion in the Hollywood Hills after inadvertently revealing his address on Instagram. Los Angeles police officers said at a hearing in May that five teenagers had plotted to rob the rapper, coming away only with a watch that they sold for $2,000.Three people have been charged in juvenile court with Pop Smoke’s killing, while the alleged getaway driver, who the authorities say conceived of the plot and was 19 at the time, is being charged as an adult. A 15-year-old boy has been accused of firing the fatal shots, the authorities said, according to The Los Angeles Times. One person remains at large.Also on the Billboard chart this week: “Sob Rock,” a 1980s tribute by John Mayer, debuts at No. 2 with 84,000 in equivalent units, including 29 million streams and 61,000 in sales. “Sour” by Olivia Rodrigo is No. 3 with 77,000 units; “Planet Her” by Doja Cat is No. 4 with 59,000; and “Dangerous: The Double Album” by Morgan Wallen, who has apologized for his use of a racial slur in February, is No. 5. More

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      Lil Nas X and Jack Harlow’s Prison Break, and 13 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Remi Wolf, Camila Cabello, the War on Drugs 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.Lil Nas X featuring Jack Harlow, ‘Industry Baby’Lil Nas X continues his victory lap around a world of his own making on the triumphant “Industry Baby” with Jack Harlow, featuring appropriately brassy production from Take A Daytrip and Kanye West and a video in which the duo busts out of Montero State Prison. “Funny how you said it was the end, then I went and did it again,” he sings, his braggadocio packing extra bite since it’s directed not just at generic haters but pearl-clutching homophobes. (“I’m queer,” he proclaims proudly, in case there was any confusion there.) The wild video’s most talked-about set piece will probably be the joyous dance scene in the prison showers, but its most hilarious moment comes when Lil Nas X catches a guard enjoying the video for his previous single “Montero (Call Me By Your Name).” LINDSAY ZOLADZRemi Wolf, ‘Liquor Store’“Liquor Store” (and its “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” meets Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” music video) is a perfect introduction to the neon-Brite imagination of Remi Wolf, a charismatic 25-year-old pop singer from California. The song is a catchall repository of Wolf’s anxieties about sobriety and long-term commitment, but she tackles these subjects with such idiosyncratic playfulness that it all goes down smoothly. ZOLADZCamila Cabello, ‘Don’t Go Yet’Fifth Harmony’s original defector Camila Cabello returns with the fun, exuberant first single from her upcoming album, “Familia.” Cabello leans harder than ever into her Latin-pop roots here, but there’s also a sassy rasp to her vocals that brings Doja Cat to mind. “Baby don’t go yet ’cause I wore this dress for a little drama,” she sings, and the song’s bright, bold flair certainly matches that sartorial choice. ZOLADZAlewya, ‘Spirit_X’Alewya, a songwriter with Ethiopian and Egyptian roots who’s based in England, has been releasing singles that rely on a breathless momentum. “Spirit_X” has a defiant, positive message — “I won’t let me down” — expressed in terse lines that hint at African modal melodies, paced by looping synthesizers and a double time breakbeat. She makes a virtue of sounding driven. JON PARELESKamo Mphela, ‘Thula Thula’Amapiano music is sparse and fluid, representing the hypnotic elasticity that is baked into South African dance music, simmering the textures and drums of jazz, R&B and local dance styles like kwaito and Bacardi house into a slow, liquid groove. “Thula Thula,” a new single from the genre’s queen Kamo Mphela, captures the hushed energy of the genre: a shaker trembles alongside a sinister bass line and a rush of drums claps under the surface. Mphela offers a summertime invitation to the dance floor, but the track’s restrained tempo is a reminder that the return to nightlife is a marathon, not a sprint. ISABELIA HERRERALorde, ‘Stoned at the Nail Salon’Lorde has always been an old soul; when she first arrived as a precocious 16-year-old in 2013, there was even a popular internet conspiracy theory that she was only pretending to be a teenager. Although she’s still just 24, Lorde sounds prematurely weary on her new single “Stoned at the Nail Salon,” from her forthcoming third album “Solar Power.” “My hot blood’s been burning for so many summers now, it’s time to cool it down,” she sings atop a muted chord progression that bears a striking resemblance to Lana Del Rey’s “Wild at Heart,” another recent Jack Antonoff production. The mellifluous “Stoned” flirts with profundity but then suddenly hedges its bets — “maybe I’m just stoned at the nail salon,” she shrugs in each chorus — which gives the song a hesitant, meandering quality. But perhaps the most puzzling declaration she makes is how “all of the music you loved at 16 you’ll grow out of.” Is this perhaps a self-deprecating wink at her own past, or a gentle hint that her new album might be a departure from what her fans have been expecting? ZOLADZIlluminati Hotties, ‘U V V P’As Illuminati Hotties, Sarah Tudzin has been rolling out deliriously catchy, high-octane summer jams for the past few months, like the incredibly titled “Mmmoooaaaaayaya” and the effervescent “Pool Hopping.” Her latest preview of her forthcoming album “Let Me Do One More,” though, slows things down considerably. “Every time I hear a song, I think about you dancing,” she swoons on “U V V P,” buoyed by a beachy beat. Late in the song, a spoken-word contribution from Big Thief’s Buck Meek transforms the vibe from a ’60s girl-group throwback to a lonesome country ditty, as if the versatile Tudzin is proving there’s no genre she can’t make her own. ZOLADZIndigo De Souza, ‘Hold U’Sometimes a song only needs to communicate the most honest and heartfelt emotions to work. That is the spirit of Indigo de Souza’s “Hold U.” There’s a splatter of programmed drums; a jangly, soulful bass line; and the melted caramel of de Souza’s voice, which gushes with simple lyrics (“You are the best thing, and I’ve got it, I’ve got you”) and blooms into a falsetto, her sky-high oohs curling into the air. It is a love song, but it’s not just about romance — “Hold U” is about living fully with your emotions, and embracing the love that emerges from being in community, too. HERRERABrandi Carlile, ‘Right on Time’Piano ballad turns to power ballad in “Right on Time,” an apology that rises to a near-operatic peak as Brandi Carlile acknowledges, “It wasn’t right.” It’s clearly a successor to “The Joke,” but this time, she’s not helping someone else; she’s facing the consequences of her own mistakes. PARELESThe War on Drugs, ‘Living Proof’The War on Drugs reaches back to the late-1960s era when folk-rock, drone and psychedelia overlapped, when the Velvet Underground and the Grateful Dead weren’t that far apart. But it’s self-conscious retrospection, aware of what’s changed in a half-century. “Living Proof” lays bare that awareness. “I know the path/I know it’s changing,” Adam Granduciel sings, as he returns to an old neighborhood and finds it’s not what he remembered. “Maybe I’ve been gone too long,” he reflects. The song has two parts: feathery acoustic guitar strumming and piano chords and then, at the end, a subdued march, as Granduciel declares, “I’m rising, and I’m damaged.” PARELESJordyn Simone, ‘Burn’An old-fashioned soul song is at the core of “Burn”: an invitation to “stay the night” that escalates toward despair — “There’s no hope for people like me” — and fury, as Jordyn Simone declares, “I didn’t ask for no goddamn savior.” Simone, 21, was a strong enough singer to be a teenage contestant on “The Voice,” and in “Burn” her vocal builds from a velvety tremulousness to flashes of a bitter rasp. Meanwhile, the production’s lugubrious strings and club-level bass open up new chasms beneath her. PARELESWilliam Parker, ‘Painters Winter’ and ‘Mayan Space Station’The bassist, organizer and free-jazz eminence William Parker released two albums with separate trios on Friday: “Painters Winter,” featuring the drummer Hamid Drake and the saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter, and “Mayan Space Station,” a sizzling free-fusion workout, with the guitarist Ava Mendoza curling out surf-rock lines and conjuring spacey fuzz while the drummer Gerald Cleaver drives the group steadily on. Together the LPs give an inkling of how broad Parker’s creative footprint has been on New York jazz. For a fuller measure, look to the 25th annual Vision Festival, happening now through next week in Manhattan and Brooklyn; he helped found the festival a quarter-century ago with the dancer and organizer Patricia Nicholson Parker, his wife. At 69, he hasn’t slowed down: Parker is slated to perform in no fewer than five different ensembles over the course of this year’s festival. RUSSONELLOKippie Moeketsi and Hal Singer, ‘Blue Stompin’’The alto saxophonist Kippie Moeketsi was among the first to fit bebop’s musical language into South African jazz, but he didn’t import it whole cloth. He made the language sing rather than banter, and he played with a circular, spinning approach to rhythm — related to marabi and earlier South African styles — not the typical American sense of swing. On his unaccompanied intro to “Blue Stompin’,” Moeketsi leaps in with a sharp, bluesy cry, then nods toward a carnival-style rhythm before growling his way to the end of the cadenza. Then he locks into the main melody, playing in unison with the American tenor saxophonist Hal Singer, who wrote the tune. A former Duke Ellington Orchestra member who had scored some radio hits of his own as a jump-blues saxophonist, Singer was in South Africa in 1974 on a State Department tour when he recorded a few tracks with Moeketsi. Those became an album, originally released in South Africa in ’77; it has just been remastered and released digitally by the Canadian label We Are Busy Bodies. RUSSONELLO More

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      Kanye West Unveils ‘Donda’ Album, With a Verse From Jay-Z

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      As fans packed the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta to get a first listen, West danced in a spotlight but chose not to say a word.ATLANTA — A man who is rarely short on words, Kanye West didn’t even have a microphone.Premiering his new album, “Donda,” in front of a packed crowd at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium here on Thursday night, the rapper, who has become known as much for his failed presidential run and his pending divorce as his music, chose not to say a single thing.Dressed in a red jacket with matching pants, West walked around on a white tarp, delivering outsize gestures and dance moves to his new music for less than an hour before leaving. It was a decidedly different tone from his previous public listening sessions, including one he held in 2016 at Madison Square Garden before the release of “The Life of Pablo.” For much of the night, West stood in the center of the stadium’s football field, in the middle of a spotlight, surrounded by fog. When he walked around the venue, he spent a good portion of his time in front of the section where his four children with Kim Kardashian, North, Saint, Psalm and Chicago, were seated. Despite the fact that she has filed for divorce from West, Kardashian and her sister Khloe were also in attendance.“Donda,” West’s 10th studio album, was scheduled to be released by G.O.O.D. Music/Def Jam Recordings on Friday, but it did not appear at midnight, when new music typically reaches streaming services, and still has not surfaced. Representatives for West did not respond to requests for comment about the plan for the album’s release.The album, his first since 2019’s “Jesus Is King,” was named after the rapper’s late mother, Donda West, who began her career as a professor at Morris Brown College in Atlanta in the 1970s. Kanye West was born in the city during this time, although the family would eventually relocate to Chicago. His mother died in 2007 from complications related to plastic surgery. Presumably in honor of her Atlanta ties, West gave 5,000 tickets to Thursday’s listening session to faculty and students at historically black colleges and universities in the city, including Morris Brown, Clark Atlanta, Morehouse and Spelman.Fans were given few details about “Donda” before the event, and the excessively loud speakers at the stadium made it hard to decipher lyrics or other key details. What was clear from the public listening session, which also streamed live via Apple Music, was that the album continued to explore themes of religion both sonically and lyrically, and featured a bevy of guest artists, including a new collaboration with Jay-Z.The lyrics from “Donda” seemed to have little to do with the rapper’s late mother directly, although the album does feature her voice in a few interludes. (“No matter what, you never abandon your family,” she says at one point.) The first track that was played during the event featured West repeatedly chanting “We gonna be OK” over an organ as the crowd illuminated the stadium with cellphone lights. Even on the more boastful songs (“Excuse my manners, I got status. Excuse my problems, I got commas”), there were still heavy nods to his Christian faith. One hook from the album featured the lyrics “I know God breathed on this,” as well as the cheeky lyric “God the father like Maury.”“Donda,” West’s 10th studio album, was scheduled to be released on Friday but has not yet surfaced.John CanonWhile an official track list has not been released, the songs played during the listening session featured guest appearances from rappers including Pusha T, Lil Baby and, perhaps most surprisingly, Jay-Z. Despite their close relationship early in West’s career, they had been open about the strain in their friendship in recent years. The new collaboration teased a “return of the throne,” nodding to the pair’s joint album “Watch the Throne” a decade ago. One Jay-Z lyric appeared to reference West’s onetime support for President Trump: “Hold up, Donda, I’m with your baby when I touch back road/told him stop all of that red cap, we goin’ home.”A few lyrics on the album seemingly nod at his separation from Kardashian, including one where West pleads, “I’m losing my family.” Elsewhere he raps, “Single life ain’t so bad.”It is unclear if the songs played at the event represent the entirety of “Donda.” West, who appeared to still be working on the album in the hours leading up to the event, according to his social media, is known to make changes to projects up until they are released, and sometimes afterward. (Jay-Z’s verse was recorded at 4 p.m. on the day of the listening session, according to Young Guru, the rapper’s longtime recording engineer.)The crowd for the event packed the Atlanta stadium, where there are no restrictions on crowd size despite the Covid-19 pandemic. Attendees were given paneled posters that featured a blurry image of the rapper and his mother. The back of the poster included instructions on how to transform it into a fan, as well as the words, “Mom West was a remarkable woman and a role model who we all loved dearly and cherished. We are fortunate that our lives crossed paths.” Merchandise with a childhood photo of West’s mother was also available, in addition to a beige long-sleeve shirt that featured the name of the album, the date and a Mercedes-Benz logo.Although it had only been announced three days earlier, the listening session attracted fans from outside Atlanta, too, including three friends from Madison, Wis. The trio said they traveled from Madison to Milwaukee at 3 a.m. to catch a 5:30 a.m. flight to Atlanta.“Kanye’s the best producer/rapper out there,” Sam Brink, 22, said. “That justifies the money” the friends spent to attend, he added. Even before the event began, he said he had high expectations for the album and hoped it would be released as scheduled.“I’ll put it this way, if it doesn’t drop, we’re flipping cars,” Brink said with a chuckle. By the time the friends were headed back to Wisconsin on an 8:30 a.m. flight Friday morning, there was still no sign of “Donda” on streaming services. More

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      Lil Nas X in the Pop Stratosphere

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      “Old Town Road,” remember? Were we ever so young?In just the handful of years since, Lil Nas X has become a bona fide pop star, even if his music is sometimes a step behind his persona.His recent single, “Montero (Call Me by Your Name),” went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. But he made as much noise by releasing the song in several different versions (à la “Old Town Road”) to squeeze maximum value from it, and by making easy sport of swatting down internet combatants dissatisfied with how he expresses himself, his sexuality and his art.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Lil Nas X’s unconventional path to pop success, his unconventional methods of maintaining it and his possible futures beyond it.Guest:Jazmine Hughes, The New York Times magazine staff writer and Metro reporter More

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      ‘All the Streets Are Silent’ Review: Hip-Hop and Skateboarding Collide

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      This documentary is a portrait of downtown New York in the late 1980s and early ’90s that revels in nostalgia.In the late 1980s and early ’90s, long before hypebeasts spent hours waiting for coveted drops outside the Supreme store in SoHo, skaters assembled at a smaller shop on Lafayette Street. There, they would smoke and watch skate videos, listen to music and crack jokes with friends.“All the Streets Are Silent,” a documentary from the director, Jeremy Elkin, is a portrait of that time, capturing the transformative moment when hip-hop and skateboarding culture converged in New York. It draws on archival footage of influential figures like Justin Pierce and Harold Hunter, among dozens of others, and incorporates new interviews with major players like Fab 5 Freddy and Darryl McDaniels, of Run-DMC. Throughout, Elkin explores how racial associations with both subcultures crumbled as their worlds collided.The film revels in fuzzy, intimate home videos from the period, courtesy of the narrator, Eli Gesner, who spent much of his youth filming the scene on his camcorder. There are shots of skaters dodging traffic at Astor Place or partying at the now defunct hip-hop nexus Club Mars. At one point, a young Jay-Z appears, rapping at lightning speed over a breakbeat. The film immerses us in this world, rendering a loving, tender homage to the city’s street culture before it went global.Ultimately, “All the Streets Are Silent” has little more to give than nostalgia. An ending that considers the mainstream explosion of these subcultures is ambiguous and offers surface-level analysis. The film excels when it harnesses the wistful thrill of a bygone era, reminding us of a rich, creative past that deserves ample recognition.All the Streets Are SilentNot Rated. Running time: 1 hour and 29 minutes. In theaters. More

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      When Pop Music Trolls Grow Up

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      Over the past month, the Top 5 of the Billboard 200 featured debuts by Tyler, the Creator and Doja Cat, two artists who, early in their careers, sometimes functioned as trolls. They are children of the internet with a taste for friction — Tyler as the leader of the raucous, parent-unsettling Odd Future crew, and Doja as an absurdist with a reckless streak.Now they’re at the center of pop, and their new albums represent different ways of maturing in the spotlight. Doja is a musical centrist, but imbues her songs with sexual friskiness and light camp. Tyler, eager to show off his gift for straight-ahead hip-hop (a world he’s still somewhat excluded from), has moved on from trolling outsiders to trolling insiders.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about how these two musicians have navigated paths from the margins to the center, and about whether, in order to be an effective 2020s pop star, you need to have a little bit of troll in you after all.Guest:Justin Charity, staff writer at The Ringer and co-host of the “Sound Only” podcast More

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      Pop Smoke’s Memory Lives On, and 14 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Xenia Rubinos, Swedish House Mafia, Soccer Mommy 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.Pop Smoke, ‘More Time’“Faith,” the second posthumous album from Pop Smoke, includes collaborations with Kanye West, Dua Lipa, 42 Dugg, Future and others. But this track, early in the album, is jarring and stark. Not simply because it’s still eerie to hear Pop Smoke rapping with a blend of menace and joy, but because of its chilling beat — produced in part by the rapper’s longtime collaborator Rico Beats, but also in part by Nicholas Britell, who has scored “Moonlight” and “Succession.” It is a familiar trick, these reverberating keys that stand stern sentry, but no less effective for it. Here is a splash of theater more visceral than any radio hit, any pop crossover. JON CARAMANICAXenia Rubinos, ‘Working All the Time’Xenia Rubinos’s “Working All the Time” is only two minutes long, but it’s as intricate as an arduous jigsaw puzzle. There are waves of skittish synths, air horns straight out of a Funk Flex set on Hot 97, a bridge that sounds like the glitchy maximalism of hyperpop, and last but not least, an interpolation of the traditional rumba “Ave María Morena.” Somehow, Rubinos makes sense of all these disparate pieces using her brassy, featherlight voice. Blink and you’ll miss that it’s a workers’ anthem, too: In one verse, Rubinos sings, “You better keep me poor and busy or I’d be a danger.” It’s a warning for those who try to crush the power of the people. ISABELIA HERRERASwedish House Mafia, ‘It Gets Better’I suppose you can absorb this song on the internet, where it is currently available. But the slick return of Swedish House Mafia — the Brobdingnagian kings of mainstream EDM, the clout champions of biggest-room house music — cries out for an open field, a dizzying laser show, a loss of sense of time and place. Hug a friend; the soundtrack of shared mayhem is upon us. CARAMANICAMahalia, ‘Whenever You’re Ready’A brisk, ratcheting, evolving ska-meets-trap beat carries “Whenever You’re Ready” by Mahalia, a British singer whose mother is Jamaican. It’s a semi-breakup song that flaunts confidence instead of pain. The singer is letting him go because he’s angry at her now, but she’s sure he’ll be back: “You won’t be gone for good,” she sings. “No, I’m not worried.” JON PARELESCaroline Polachek, ‘Bunny Is a Rider’Singing about a woman so elusive that a “satellite can’t find her,” Caroline Polachek makes staccato syllables and short phrases bounce all around the beat, working equally as percussion and melody. They’re just a few of the syncopated layers in a playful yet strategic production — by Polachek and her frequent collaborator, Danny L. Harle from the PC Music circle — that juggles whistling, triangle, birdsong and the giggles and gurgles of Harle’s baby daughter. “I’m so nonphysical,” Polachek exults, over the sustained bass tone that cushions the chorus. Nonsense: The song is built for dancing. PARELESSoccer Mommy, ‘Rom Com 2004’“Rom Com 2004” could have been a straightforward indie-rock love song, vowing “Just let me be yours like no one else before” over a march beat, guitar chords and a chorus with a proud leap in the melody. But Soccer Mommy — Sophie Allison — handed over her demo to the producer BJ Burton with instructions, she has said, to “destroy it.” He obliged with glitches, distortion, speed variations and exposed moments — making the song more appealing because it plays hard to get. PARELESTurnstile featuring Blood Orange, ‘Alien Love Call’From the forthcoming Turnstile album, “Glow On,” comes this shoegaze space-soul collaboration with Blood Orange (Dev Hynes). The video compiles mayhem-esque live footage more in keeping with the hardcore band’s usual rhythms, but perhaps this is the meditation before the rage. CARAMANICADave McMurray, ‘Dark Star’Dave McMurray is a longtime Detroit tenor saxophonist with decades of experience in rock, jazz, pop and R&B, mostly as a side musician. But he’s just released his second album for Blue Note as a leader: “Grateful Deadication,” a tribute to the Grateful Dead songbook. His cover of the classic “Dark Star” channels the epically trippy M.O. of a Dead performance: McMurray declares the melody over Wayne Gerard’s twinkling, distorted guitar; eventually, a dug-in backbeat sets in. Then a coolly grooving section opens up, and the saxophonist dishes out a solo that’s laced with greasy Motor City attitude but still takes its time, as if to bask in the California sun. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOHalf Waif, ‘Swimmer’The songs on “Mythopoetics,” Nandi Rose Plunkett’s new album as Half Waif, suffer and exult in all-consuming love. As “Swimmer” leaps from everyday sensation to all-out devotion and need — “I want to know they can’t take this away from me” — synthesizer arpeggios and vocal harmonies swarm around Plunkett’s ardent voice, like a suddenly racing heartbeat and an uncontainable obsession. PARELESYas, ‘Idea of You’A viscous tar pit of a track — slow, oozing bass tones, sparse drum-machine taps and gaping silences — hints at the difficulty of pulling free from an increasingly destructive relationship. Yas (the songwriter, singer, producer and violinist Yasmeen Al-Mazeedi) sings about being “in love with the idea of you” amid details of mental and physical abuse. The negotiations aren’t quite over; her voice rises to a fragile soprano as she decides, “You think that I want you back — I don’t.” PARELESKoreless, ‘White Picket Fence’Koreless — the Welsh producer Lewis Roberts — swerves between pastorale and rave on “White Picket Fence.” A keening female voice, uncredited and possibly built from samples, floats at first over a stately harpsichord; then fuzzy synthesizers arrive with a pulsing beat under that vocal melody, before it gets stretched and chopped up; then it’s sent back to harpsichord territory. In the video, directed by FKA twigs, club creatures climb out of a futuristic green car alongside a bucolic creek, where fishing ensues; urban artifice meets Nature. PARELESKarol G, ‘200 Copas’To a friend who’s still tearful about her ex, the Colombian songwriter Karol G (Carolina Giraldo Navarro) doesn’t mince words in “200 Copas” (“200 Drinks”); she dismisses the guy with profanities after all the suffering he caused. Yet her 21st-century bluntness gets a traditionalist backing; while the rest of her album, “KG0516,” traverses modern Pan-American pop with all its technological tricks, “200 Copas” is an old-fashioned waltz backed by a few acoustic instruments, nothing more. The lyrics are decidedly impolite, but the predicament she sings about is not new. The new video has her leading a beach-bonfire singalong: solidarity against undeserving men. PARELESTainy and Yandel, ‘El Plan’“Dynasty” is a new collaborative album from Tainy and Yandel, two titans of reggaeton celebrating 16 years of eminence. With its sinister harpsichord, muted marimbas and a piercing dembow riddim, “El Plan” recalls the mid-00s reggaeton that required listeners practice dancing in front of the mirror. It’s all about the thrill of an after-hours dance-floor chase — the electrifying, will-it-or-won’t-it-happen energy of a night at the club. “Estoy esperándote y tú perreando sola,” Yandel says. “I’m waiting for you and you’re dancing alone.” Luckily, he knows he’s at the whim of his partner: “Pero tú dime cuál e’ el plan.” You tell me what the plan is. HERRERAMas Aya, ‘Momento Presente’It is easy to reference folkloric sounds, but have little to offer other than mere nostalgia. The instrumentalist Brandon Valdivia, better known as Mas Aya, escapes this fate masterfully on “Momento Presente.” More than a mere collision of past and present, the track is a study in the power of harnessing ancestral knowledge. Over six and a half minutes, Valdivia braids a skittish footwork beat with a flurry of Andean pan flutes, arpeggiated synths and polyrhythms. Halfway through, the voice of an elder reflects on centuries of protest, a reminder that the work of liberation is part of a continuum. One moment the song is celestial, transporting the listener 40,000 feet into the air. In another it is meditative, urging us into quiet introspection. HERRERAMatt Mitchell and Kate Gentile, ‘Trapezoids | Matching Tickles’In recent years the pianist Matt Mitchell and the drummer Kate Gentile have developed a book of pithy, one-bar-long compositions, which they play with small ensembles under the name Snark Horse. Through intense improvisation, taking equal cues from free jazz and metal, they morph and distend and scramble these little melodic fragments. On Friday, Snark Horse released its first album — a boxed set spanning no fewer than 49 tracks and five-and-a-half hours, mostly recorded at a three-day session in late 2019. “Trapezoids” is a Gentile composition, a crooked and incessant spray of notes, with Jon Irabagon’s saxophone further destabilizing the mix. It’s paired on this track with “Matching Tickles,” a Mitchell piece, which he plays more softly and abstractedly, as if it were the echo of another idea. RUSSONELLO More