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      Taylor Swift Earns Her Fourth No. 1 in 16 Months With New ‘Red’

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      “Red (Taylor’s Version)” had the equivalent of 605,000 sales in the United States. On next week’s album chart, Adele’s “30” may reach one million sales.At the start of 2020, Taylor Swift’s itinerary for the near future looked simple enough.She planned to tour that summer to support her latest No. 1 album, “Lover.” And although Swift had said she would be rerecording her old albums after the sale of her former record company, she gave no indication of when. So there was little reason to expect any imminent new music from Swift, who had long stuck to a regimen of one studio album every few years.But 2020 and 2021 have seen a remarkable flurry of recording activity from Swift, and record-breaking chart success. Last year came two quarantine albums, “Folklore” and “Evermore,” and this year she has been focused on her rerecordings — meticulous re-creations of her earlier work, casting the act as empowering business move, retribution against the investors that now control some of her original recordings, and an opportunity to revisit youthful themes with a more mature eye.“Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” came in April, and now “Red (Taylor’s Version)” has become Swift’s fourth No. 1 album in 16 months, which Billboard says is the fastest run in the 65-year history of its album chart. Since “Folklore” came out in July 2020, Swift has held the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s album chart a total of 15 times.“Red (Taylor’s Version)” had the equivalent of 605,000 sales in the United States in its first week, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm. That total includes 303 million streams and 369,000 copies sold as a complete package. It sold 114,000 copies on vinyl LP — which Swift released as a $50 set of four discs at 45 r.p.m. — which is the most that any album has sold on vinyl since at least 1991, when SoundScan, MRC’s predecessor, began reporting reliable data on record sales.Among the highlights of the new “Red” is a 10-minute version of her song “All Too Well,” with added lyrics that give more depth to the story of a failed romance. Swift made a short film of this long version, performed it on “Saturday Night Live” and released two additional recordings of it last week.The new “All Too Well” also becomes Swift’s eighth No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart, with multiple new recordings of the song — but not its 2012 original — counting toward its total of 54 million streams, in addition to downloads and radio plays.Swift now has 10 LPs that have gone to No. 1, tying her with Elvis Presley, Eminem, Drake and Kanye West. The Beatles still rule that list with 19 chart-topping titles, followed by Jay-Z with 14 and Bruce Springsteen and Barbra Streisand with 11 each.The 605,000 sales of Swift’s new “Red” is the second-biggest opening for any album this year, after 613,000 for Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy” in September. But both are expected to be dwarfed by the arrival of Adele’s “30” on next week’s chart, a ready-made blockbuster that may reach or even exceed one million sales in its opening week, something that no album has done since Swift’s “Reputation” four years ago.Little official data has been released about the initial success of “30,” which came out on Friday. But as a sign of Adele’s clout in the music industry, she announced over the weekend that, apparently at the singer’s request, Spotify had removed “shuffle” as the default playback mode for albums, making it easier for fans to hear an album from beginning to end, as the artist intended.“Thank you Spotify for listening,” Adele tweeted on Saturday, and the service responded: “Anything for you.”Also on this week’s chart, Silk Sonic, the retro-soul project of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, opens at No. 2 with “An Evening With Silk Sonic,” which had the equivalent of 104,000 sales, and the K-pop girl group Twice is at No. 3 with its new “Formula of Love: O+T= More

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      Earl Sweatshirt Exhibits His Evolution, and 14 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by FKA twigs, Makaya McCraven, Hazel English 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.Earl Sweatshirt, ‘2010’In 2010, Earl Sweatshirt released his debut mixtape, “Earl,” and his new song titled for that moment in time shows how much he’s evolved while still retaining his sagely iconoclastic spirit. Earl’s more recent releases — “Some Rap Songs” from 2018; “Feet of Clay” from 2019 — have represented his music at its most avant-garde, moving through murky, collagelike atmospheres in a constant state of transformation. “2010,” though, is more straightforward and sustained, with an understated beat from the producer Black Noise that allows Earl to lock into a hypnotic flow. The succinctly poetic imagery (“crescent moon wink, when I blinked it was gone”) and strangely satisfying plain-spoken admissions (“walked outside, it was still gorgeous”) pour out of him as steadily as water from a tap. LINDSAY ZOLADZFKA twigs featuring Central Cee, ‘Measure of a Man’This song’s distinctive descending chord progression, dramatic swells and even its lyrics — “the measure of a hero is the measure of a man” — could make it a James Bond theme. That’s a sign of FKA twigs’s overarching ambitions, her willingness to engage carnality and idealism, and how carefully she gauges the gradations of her voice in every phrase. JON PARELESHazel English, ‘Nine Stories’Call it a meet twee: “You lent me ‘Nine Stories,’ while you starred in mine,” the Australian-born, California-based musician Hazel English sings at the beginning of her ode to every artsy teen’s favorite J.D. Salinger book. The track is a three-minute dream-pop reverie, obscuring lyrics wryly bookish enough for a Belle & Sebastian song beneath a swirl of jangly guitars and shyly murmured vocals. It’s also something of an act of nostalgia, finding the 30-year-old conjuring the sounds and memories of her high school days: “Now that I’m falling, I can’t ignore it,” she sings sweetly, sounding as blissfully crush-struck as a teenager. ZOLADZHorsegirl, ‘Billy’The young Chicago trio Horsegirl is proof that the shaggy-dog spirit of Gen X indie rock is alive and well within a certain subset of Gen Z. Nora Cheng and Penelope Lowenstein’s overlapping vocals are buried beneath a dissonant avalanche of “Daydream Nation”-esque guitars, but enough lyrical imagery comes to the surface to create a strangely poetic impression of their titular character on this stand-alone single, their first release since signing to Matador Records. “He washes off his robes in preparation to be crucified,” Cheng intones, while Lowenstein’s more melodic vocal line adds additional texture to the song’s enveloping, shoegaze-y atmosphere. ZOLADZBen LaMar Gay featuring Ayanna Woods, ‘Touch. Don’t Scroll’On “Touch. Don’t Scroll,” Ben LaMar Gay and Ayanna Woods, two musical polymaths from Chicago, sing about trying to stay connected to each other in an overcorrected world. “Now, baby, I will never leave you ’lone/Oh, can you hear me or are you on your phone?” they drone in unison, an octave apart, over a syncopated beat and lightly twinkling electronics. The track is nestled deep within “Open Arms to Open Us,” Gay’s latest album and probably his most broadly appealing, pulling together influences from country blues, Afro-Brazilian percussion, puckish Chicago free jazz and 2000s indie-rock. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOCardi B, ‘Bet It’“Bet It,” from the soundtrack to Halle Berry’s directorial debut “Bruised,” is only the second solo single Cardi B has released this year. And while it’s nowhere near as fun or inspired than that previous hit, “Up,” “Bet It” is more like a braggadocios status update on Cardi’s recent past, taking in her Grammy wins and her memorable Met Gala appearance in a dress with a “tail so long it drag 30 minutes after.” ZOLADZMorray featuring Benny the Butcher, ‘Never Fail’An impressively feverish turn from Morray, whose 2020 breakout single “Quicksand” leaned toward the spiritual. Here, though, he’s ferocious, rapping with a scratchy yelp and a sense of defiance. He’s accompanied by Benny the Butcher, who is among the calmest-sounding boasters in hip-hop. An unexpected and unexpectedly effective pairing. JON CARAMANICAFrank Dukes, ‘Likkle Prince’The producer Frank Dukes — who’s made understated, hauntingly melodic work with Frank Ocean, the Weeknd, Rihanna and many others — is releasing “The Way of Ging,” his first project under his own name. It’s an album of beats — a beat tape, as they used to say — that’s available for a limited time online, and will eventually be removed from the internet and available only as a set of NFTs. “Likkle Prince” channels early ’80s electro along with some squelched disco majesty. It’s spooky and propulsive. CARAMANICAunderscores, ‘Everybody’s Dead!’A rousing and trippy burst of hyperpop mayhem, “Everybody’s Dead!” is a new single from underscores, who earlier this year released “Fishmonger,” an excellent, scrappy, and puckish debut album. CARAMANICAMicrohm, ‘Spooky Actions’The Mexico City sound artist Microhm, born Leslie Garcia, produced “Spooky Actions” and its accompanying EP using only modular synths. The result feels like hurtling through a Black Hole, where sound and time warp into quantum dislocation. Ambient textures swirl over the lurch of steady drum kicks, as the moments drip into oblivion. ISABELIA HERRERALeon Bridges featuring Jazmine Sullivan, ‘Summer Rain’Leon Bridges looks back to Sam Cooke’s soul; Jazmine Sullivan can go back to the scat-singing of bebop. They trade verses over a slow-motion beat and rhythm guitar in “Summer Rain” to evoke endless conjugal bliss, urging each other “don’t stop now,” for less under minutes of suspended time meant to play on repeat. PARELESIbeyi featuring Pa Salieu, ‘Made of Gold’Ibeyi’s music has always harnessed a sense of ancestral knowledge: The Afro-Cuban French twins grew up listening to Yoruba folk songs that channel the spirit of enslaved people brought to the Caribbean over the middle passage. But their new single, “Made of Gold,” featuring the Ghanian British rapper Pa Salieu, trades the simple but potent piano and cajón for a celestial, spectral otherworldliness. Culling references to the Yoruba deities Shango and Yemaya, as well as Frida Kahlo and the ancient Egyptian “Book of the Dead,” the duo summons power from intergenerational sources to shield them. “Oh you with a spine, who would work your mouth against this Magic of mine,” they intone. “It has been handed down in an unbroken line.” HERRERASting, ‘Loving You’Sting’s new album, “The Bridge,” often harks back to the jazz-folk-Celtic-pop hybrids he forged on his first solo albums in the 1980s; one song, “Harmony Road,” even features a saxophone solo from Branford Marsalis, who was central to “The Dream of the Blue Turtles” in 1985. Many of the new songs lean toward parable and metaphor, but not “Loving You,” a husband’s confrontation with the cheating wife he still loves: “We made vows inside the church to forgive each others’ sins,” he sings. “But there are things I have to endure like the smell of another man’s skin.” Written with the British electronic musician Maya Jane Coles, the track confines itself to two chords and a brittle beat, punctuated by faraway arpeggios and tones that emerge like unwanted memories; it’s memorably bleak. PARELESSingle Girl, Married Girl, ‘Scared to Move’With patient arpeggios and soothing bass notes, the harpist and composer Mary Lattimore builds a grandly meditative edifice behind Chelsey Coy, the songwriter and singer at the core of Single Girl, Married Girl, in “Scared to Move.” It’s from the new album “Three Generations of Leaving.” Cale’s multitracked harmonies promise, “In a strange new half-light, I will be your guide” as Lattimore’s harp patterns construct a glimmering path forward. PARELESMakaya McCraven, ‘Tranquillity’“Deciphering the Message,” Makaya McCraven’s first LP for Blue Note Records, could easily get you thinking of “Shades of Blue,” Madlib’s classic 2003 album remixing old tracks from that label’s jazz archive. On “Deciphering,” McCraven — a drummer, producer and beat dissector — digs through 13 tracks from the label’s catalog and attacks them through his personal method of remixing and pastiche. “Deciphering” crackles with McCraven’s sonic signatures: viscid ambience, restlessly energetic drumming, the recognizable sounds of his longtime collaborators (Marquis Hill on trumpet, Matt Gold on guitar, Joel Ross on vibraphone, et al). “Tranquillity” stems from a track by the vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, from his 1966 album “Components,” and McCraven’s intervention is two-pronged: He doubles down on the original’s curved-glass effect, adding whispery trumpet and fluttering flute atop the original track, but his own drums — kinetic, unrelenting — keep the energy at a rolling boil. RUSSONELLO More

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      ‘Patria y Vida’: How a Cuban Rap Song Became a Protest Anthem

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      MEXICO CITY — As thousands marched across Cuba last July in an astonishing protest against the Communist regime, many shouted and sang a common refrain: “Patria y vida!” or “Homeland and life!”The phrase comes from a rap song of the same name, which has become an anthem for a burgeoning movement of young people taking to the internet and to the streets, demanding an end to political oppression and economic misery.The song, written by Yotuel Romero, Descemer Bueno, Maykel Osorbo, Eliecer “el Funky” Márquez Duany and the reggaeton pair Gente de Zona, is nominated for two Latin Grammys, including song of the year, and will be performed on the show Thursday night.“These are the first Grammy Awards for the people of Cuba, the first Grammys for freedom,” Romero said in a phone interview from Miami. “These are the first Grammys where it’s not Yotuel nor Gente Zona that are nominated, it’s patria y vida, it’s Cuba.”The song is a rare instance of Cuban artists directly taking on the regime: The title is a twist on one of the most iconic slogans of the Cuban revolution, patria o muerte, (homeland or death), a phrase that Fidel Castro often used to end his speeches.“It was the antithesis of homeland or death — homeland and life,” Romero said. “I knew that phrase was going to bring a lot of controversy.”And generate controversy it did.After it was released in February, the song was heavily criticized by government figures like President Miguel Díaz-Canel and former culture minister Abel Prieto, who called the track a “musical pamphlet.” and wrote, “There’s nothing more sad than a chorus of annexationists attacking their homeland” on Twitter.But the official criticism did little to stem the song’s popularity. After decades of isolation, internet use became widespread in Cuba in 2018 — many young Cubans are now highly active on social media, where the anthem spread like wildfire. The accompanying video has been viewed more than 9 million times on YouTube.The song’s release came just a few months after hundreds of artists, intellectuals and others demonstrated outside the Ministry of Culture in Havana to protest a slew of recent arrests, including that of the rapper Denis Solís.“That protest transformed the narrative of the opposition in Cuba,” said Rafael Escalona, the director of the Cuban music magazine AM:PM. “There was fertile ground for someone to reap the fruits and create a protest anthem.”On July 11, “Patria y Vida” was transformed into a rallying cry, when Cuba witnessed its largest protests in decades, with Cubans protesting over power outages, food shortages and a lack of medicines.“This is my way of telling you, my people are crying out and I feel their voice,” the song says. “No more lies, my people ask for freedom. No more doctrines, let’s not sing of homeland or death but homeland and life.”Hundreds of people were jailed after the July demonstrations, and at least 40 more were detained on Monday as the regime moved to stifle another planned march.The risks extended to the songwriters too.While most of the artists who collaborated on the song were well known internationally before the track’s release and were also living outside of Cuba, Maykel Osorbo and El Funky still lived on the island: Both were arrested earlier this year, and Osorbo remains in jail. Romero, who lives in Miami, said that he cannot return to the island for fear of arrest.But despite the crackdown, Romero said he is confident that the emerging movement fomented by Cuba’s youth and given a soundtrack by “Patria y Vida” is only just getting started.“This is no longer a movement, it’s generation. It’s the generation patria y vida,” he said. “The generation patria y vida has come to bury the generation patria o muerte.”Carlos Melián Moreno contributed reporting from Santiago, Cuba. More

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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