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      Adele Returns With Power and Restraint, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear new tracks by serpentwithfeet, Blackstarkids, Stromae 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.Adele, ‘Easy on Me’Six years have passed since Adele released “25,” her diamond-certified third studio album. In that time, just about everything in the music business has changed: Streaming is firmly the default distribution option, sing-rapping and pop-punk are the most popular stylistic frameworks and TikTok has essentially stripped down songcraft for parts.But no one’s told Adele, who was a nuclear-class warhead vocalist then, and remains one now, and whose approach to making music hasn’t changed at all. “Easy on Me” is the first single from “30,” her fourth studio album, which will be released next month. It was shaped, she’s said, by the tumult in her personal life. Adele is a singer whose most joyous songs are laden with the same damp melancholy as her most wounded ones.Her true gift, though, is restraint — knowing just how patiently to dole out her voice, hovering over each syllable as if slowly laying cinder blocks, methodically robbing her targets of air. That’s captured in the song’s opening lines: “There ain’t no gold in this river/That I’ve been washing my hands in forever,” a straightforward record of a baptism that turns to drowning. Abetted by a piano, she continues apace, detailing a relationship to which she gave all, until she didn’t. It is a deft and almost soothing dismissal, made even more tense by the feeling that even at her most pointed, she’s holding a little something back. JON CARAMANICAFinneas, ‘Love Is Pain’For once, Finneas matches the glum, whispery insights of his sister, Billie Eilish, in a song that recognizes where real life falls short of romantic fantasy. It’s from his debut album, “Optimist,” released on Friday. Over plain piano chords, he sings about moments like “That hollow feeling in your chest/as you both wordlessly undress after a fight,” without any easy consolation. JON PARELESserpentwithfeet, ‘Down Nuh River’“Down Nuh River” is equal parts down-home and cryptic. It’s rooted in the task-oriented rhythms of work song and playground chant: “Go go go go on swim on down nuh river now/oh you tryna get me in trouble now.” The beat syncopates an octave-hopping bass line against a muffled thump and one-handed piano chords. But it’s not so simple: serpentwithfeet — Josiah Wise — keeps shifting and multiplying his layers of vocals and effects, hinting at hallucinations and revelations if someone will “swim to the deepest part/that’s where all the wishes are.” PARELESStromae, ‘Santé’Breaking an uncharacteristically long public silence, the Belgian songwriter, singer, rapper and producer Stromae (Paul van Haver) has reappeared with “Santé,” which celebrates everyday people — Rosa, Albert, Celine, Arlette — doing their jobs. The track feels electro-Andean, matching the strumming of a small guitar to one of Stromae’s irresistible whistling synthesizer hooks. PARELESJuls featuring Fireboy DML, ‘Intentionally’Juls’s beats possess a textured softness, like a satin slip dress. And frankly, that’s probably what you should be wearing when listening to “Intentionally,” a new track from the British-Ghanian producer and Fireboy DML. “Just love me intentionally/I don’t want no temporary,” purrs the Nigerian vocalist. The song, from Juls’s first studio album, is sweet, simple desire, a lilting promise of mutuality and tenderness. ISABELIA HERRERANikara Warren, ‘Run Ricky’“Run Ricky” is the lead single from “Black Wall Street,” the debut album from the young vibraphonist Nikara Warren. The track shows off her skills as an instrumentalist, bandleader and rapper, starting with an insinuating bass line from Parker McAllister and some light boom-bap from David Frazier Jr. on drums. Horns, keyboards, guitar and Warren’s vibraphone fill in around them, and she rattles off a rap about Ricky, a young Black artist felled by violence. “Damn Ricky, you should’ve done the impossible,” she says as the verse closes. But this doesn’t bring the tune to its climax; the group continues for another three minutes, Hailey Niswanger’s tenor saxophone and Stephen Fowler’s trumpet stay melded as the groove shifts, inflected with funk and then rock and then Afro-Cuban clave. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLODos Santos, ‘Alma Cósmica’Like a spaghetti western from the ’60s, Dos Santos’s “Alma Cósmica” is a burst of narrative mystery. “¿Adónde voy? ¿De dónde soy?” wonders bandleader Alex Chavez. We may not know where he’s going or where he’s from, but the production keeps us going: a twanging guitar and an insistent shaker curl together, twisting into mutant chicha. HERRERAWalker Hayes, ‘U Gurl’Walker Hayes’s country hit “Fancy Like” is an advertisement masquerading as a song that has been now fully repurposed as an advertisement. It is a happenstance smash, and also lightly craven — lightly because Hayes never fully commits to the bit; at times he seems to be singing a parody of advertising jingles. He’s a little wry, but not so much that it derails the pitch. That tenor is deployed, too, on Hayes’s new single, “U Gurl,” a kind of faint caricature of hypermasculine country talk-singing: “So the way you walk is suggestive/strip-mall-town impressive/Girl, I hate to see you go, but I love to watch you exit.” It’s familiar text, delivered with a mildly arched eyebrow. And it’s effective — a “can you believe I’m doing this?” scorcher to follow the “can you believe we got away with that?” smash. CARAMANICABlackstarkids, ‘Piss Drunk Kids’#dreampop #hiphop #Y2K #Tumblr #skaterat #shoegaze #kawaii #emo. CARAMANICAEels, ‘Good Night on Earth’A fuzz-toned guitar riff and a snappy beat carry “Good Night on Earth,” a quintessential Eels song: hoarse, succinct, dry-eyed and well aware of life’s ironies. PARELESCamilo and Evaluna Montaner, ‘Índigo’The cheerfully, even relentlessly wholesome Colombian songwriter Camilo and his wife (as of 2020), Evaluna Montaner, have copiously documented their romance on social media as well as in songs. “Índigo” continues to merge those content streams in a breezy, hand-clapping, yacht-rock duet, all strumming guitars and close harmonies, that exults in amorous bliss — “I won without playing the lottery,” they sing — as the video flaunts a positive pregnancy test and a baby bump. PARELESEdward Simon, ‘Country’Not a note goes to waste in the translucent playing of Edward Simon, a Venezuelan pianist who is now the longest-serving member of the esteemed SFJAZZ Collective. He recorded “Solo Live” in Oakland, during a 2019 concert at the Piedmont Piano Company, on his 50th birthday. On “Country,” the album’s lone original, a rolling melody over a repeated pattern of farseeing chords gives way to a long, looping improvisation that culminates in chunky, rhythmic cross-talk between Simon’s left and right hands. RUSSONELLO More

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      The Music Lost to Coronavirus, Part 3

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherThis past summer, it briefly seemed as if the worst of the coronavirus might be behind us. But despite some encouraging signs — like the concert business amping up again — the pandemic’s landscape continued to shift; the Delta variant spread widely, and deaths rose again. Many musicians and people integral to the music business have been lost to Covid-19.On this week’s Popcast, the third in a recurring series, a handful of remembrances of musicians who died during the pandemic:Jacob Desvarieux, one of the founders and the core arranger of Kassav’, the band that pioneered zouk music, who died at 65.John Davis, one of the actual singing voices behind the façade-pop supernova act Milli Vanilli, who died at 66.Chucky Thompson, a hip-hop and R&B producer responsible for hits by Mary J. Blige, the Notorious B.I.G. and others, who died at 53.Guests:Doreen St. Felix, television critic at The New YorkerGil Kaufman, senior writer and editor at BillboardJeff Mao, longtime music journalist and D.J.Connect 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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      A Polish Rapper Goes From Scandal to Superstar

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      Michal Matczak, better known as Mata, has been called the voice of Polish youth for songs about teen struggles that have grabbed the attention of his politically divided country.WARSAW — The vast fields of Warsaw’s Bemowo airport have hosted concerts by some of the world’s biggest stars. Michael Jackson played there. So did Madonna. Metallica, too.But last Saturday more than 30,000 people — many young teenagers, with their parents acting as chaperones — crowded together next to the runway waiting for a new star to get onstage: Michal Matczak, a 21-year-old rapper with bleached-blond hair and a constant grin, better known as Mata.“He’s like the representative of our generation,” said Joseph Altass, 20, a student who’d traveled from Gdynia, more than 200 miles north of Warsaw, for the concert.Zuzia Waskiewicz, 19, sharing a bottle of flavored vodka with a friend, agreed: “He’s the first person talking about real things about us.”More than 30,000 people wait for Mata to take the stage at Warsaw’s Bemowo airport. Anna Liminowicz for The New York TimesMata staged the show with the help of a theater director. Anna Liminowicz for The New York TimesWhen Mata appeared at 8 p.m., it was clear he was speaking to the younger generation in the audience: One of the night’s first tracks, “Blok,” was about moving out from his parents’ home and annoying his new neighbors by partying. Then Mata played an ode to marijuana, followed by a tune about drinking on the concrete steps that line the Vistula River in Warsaw. The crowd rapped along to every word.Mata’s impact in Poland has been inescapable. Earlier this year, one of his tracks, “Kiss Cam,” was streamed so frequently, it appeared on one of Billboard’s global charts — a first for a Polish act. When last Friday he released “Mlody Matczak” (“Young Matczak”), his second album focused on his early adulthood, it instantly topped the country’s Spotify chart. Several of his songs have over 50 million views on YouTube.But one specific track marked Mata’s explosive entrance into Polish cultural life two years ago: “Patointeligencja” (an amalgam of the Polish words for pathology, and intelligentsia). Over spare production, Mata paints a picture of life as a student at Batory, an elite high school in Warsaw where many students are expected to push for admission to the world’s best universities. In his telling, few of the students are quietly studying for their final exams. Instead, they’re using drugs, alcohol and sex to deal with the pressure. “My friend wanted to spend his father’s whole salary on drugs,” Mata raps, “but his old man was making so much he would have killed himself trying.”“Patointeligencja” was a sensation almost as soon as it appeared on YouTube in December 2019. Cyryl Rozwadowski, an editor at Newonce, a popular Polish-language culture website, said “it was such a groundbreaking event, I hardly think of it as a song anymore.”Newspapers and TV shows started using the track to debate both the pressures on Polish youth and issues of privilege, like whether an apparently rich kid like Mata should be rapping at all. Their takes often reflected political divides in the country. Poland has for years been in a culture war, with liberals on one side and the ruling populist Law and Justice Party and its conservative supporters on the other, facing off over issues like gay rights, abortion and even the rule of law.Some conservative sections of the media, including the country’s main government-run TV station, presented Mata’s track as showing the dysfunctions of the liberal elite. They regularly pointed out that Mata’s father is Marcin Matczak, a lawyer and academic known for his fierce opposition to the ruling party’s policies.On his new album, Mata has a tribute to him called “Papuga,” or “Parrot,” slang for lawyer in Poland. His father has welcomed the association, this year releasing a book called “How to Raise a Rapper.”Mata said he was enjoying fame in Poland, but hoped to find success outside the country, too.Anna Liminowicz for The New York TimesA few hours before the airport concert, Mata said in an interview at his record label’s plush office that he liked causing scandal. “I’m a bit addicted to adrenaline,” he said, adding that as an only child he craved attention. Sometimes, he feels “like an internet troll more than a rapper,” he said.But he insisted he hadn’t written “Patointeligencja” when he was 18 to cause a stir. He typed it on his phone during his final year at Batory when he’d “just had a big breakdown.” A three-year relationship had ended, he said, and he was overwhelmed with stress about exams and his teachers saying he was heading for failure.One day, he skipped class and went to a Caffe Nero, where he poured alcohol into a coffee while searching for a beat on YouTube. When he found the music for “Patointeligencja,” the lyrics angrily spilled out of him. “It was just stream of consciousness, all these bad emotions coming out of me,” he said. “Even now, I’m excited when I think about that moment. I felt alive.”When his father picked him up later, Mata rapped the tune to him. He said the song was like “the cure” for his breakdown. Soon he was writing his debut album, “100 Dni Do Matury” (“100 Days to Finals”), which reviewers later called a farewell to his childhood. He managed to graduate.“Mlody Matczak” — released last Friday — is mainly about his new life as an adult, he said, but it also includes a track cursing Polish political figures who’d criticized him and his father. There’s a song about his grandfathers, who both died this year, one of complications from Covid-19. At one of their funerals, Mata got up to sing, and the piano player asked for his autograph, he said.The crowd — many of whom were teenagers with their parents as chaperones — rapped along to Mata’s songs. Anna Liminowicz for The New York Times“I want to go global,” Mata said, “but I believe it’s easier to do this by getting inspirations from my own culture than trying to fit into global pop.”Anna Liminowicz for The New York TimesCritics in Poland are talking about his new album as being far more than scandal mongering. Bart Strowski, the co-author of a series of books on Polish rap, said he liked Mata’s duality. On one hand, he “is an angry young rapper filled with booze and weed.” On the other, Strowski said, he’s “a soulful and sensitive kid” writing unusual songs filled with “incredible sociological detail.”Mata said he was enjoying fame in Poland, but hoped to find success outside the country, too. He’d been thinking about whether to try rapping in English, he said, but if he did, would keep a “hard Polish accent” to stand out.At the concert on Saturday, Mata’s ambition was clear, with the show staged with the help of a theater director. During one song, he was joined by about 20 dancers in Polish folk costumes and red balaclavas. For another about submissive sex, he stood in the middle of a huge block of lights while a group of dancers took his top off and sprayed him with cream.After almost two hours, it seemed there was little spectacle left, and the only hit left to play was “Patointeligencja.” But instead of performing the song, Mata ran offstage, jumped into a blue helicopter and flew away. The crowd waited around for 10 minutes, asking whether he’d really gone, but Mata had left to find his next controversy. More

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      Mitski’s Sharp Take on a Creative Life, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Arca featuring Sia, Kelis, Tambino 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.Mitski, ‘Working for the Knife’Mitski monumentalizes an artist’s self-doubts — the creative impulse versus the editorial knife — in “Working for the Knife.” The track begins as a trudging march with stark, droning synthesizer tones, but Patrick Hyland’s production expands into ever-wider spaces with lofty, reverberating guitars. Mitski sings about missteps and rejections at first, but her imagination perseveres: “I start the day lying and end with the truth.” JON PARELESArca featuring Sia, ‘Born Yesterday’This unexpected collaboration just had to happen. Sia has a memorably broken voice and a songwriting strategy of victim-to-victory that has brought her million-selling hits, both on her own and behind the scenes. Arca, who has made music with Björk and Kanye West, has an operatic voice and a mastery of disorienting electronics from eerie atmospherics to brutal beats. In “Born Yesterday,” Sia wails, “You took my heart and now it’s broken,” confronting a partner’s betrayal. Arca twists the electronic track all over the place, bringing in and warping and subtracting a four-on-the-floor beat, pumping up the drama as Sia decides whether she’ll be “your baby any more.” The twists never stop. PARELESTainy with Bad Bunny and Julieta Venegas, ‘Lo Siento BB:/’Cynics might see a Tainy-produced track featuring Bad Bunny and the beloved pop-rock icon Julieta Venegas as the type of collaboration engineered in major label conference rooms. But “Lo Siento BB:/” is a seamless matchup that leverages both artists’ capacities for pointed vocal drama. Venegas’s sky-high melodies and funereal piano transition into El Conejo Malo’s signature baritone. Sad boys, sad girls and sad people, consider this your new anthem. ISABELIA HERRERARobert Glasper featuring D Smoke & Tiffany Gouché, ‘Shine’The Black church has been close to the center or at the very root of many big changes in American popular music; and over in the jazz world recently, gospel has been reasserting its influence. The pianist and bandleader Robert Glasper is a main driver of the trend, and this week he released “Shine,” an early single from the forthcoming “Black Radio 3,” featuring the rising M.C. D Smoke and the vocalist Tiffany Gouché. Glasper gifts the session with a signature sparkly harmonic vamp, and D Smoke projects farsighted conviction on his verses; Gouché’s vocals are beatific. This is the trinity that made the first “Black Radio” a smash, and has fed Glasper’s star formula: a gospel core, backpack-generation rap wisdom and bravado performances from female singers. But the track’s low-key showstopper is the bassist Burniss Travis, who’s doing more here than you might at first realize, which is exactly the intent. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOglaive and ericdoa, ‘Mental Anguish’This is one of the standout tracks on “Then I’ll Be Happy,” the new collaborative EP from the rising hyperpop stars glaive and ericdoa. At the beginning, it has some of the parchedness of early emo, but then lightning-bolt squelchy synths arrive, and fraught vocals that sound like they’re being microwaved in real time. JON CARAMANICAJames Blake featuring SZA, ‘Coming Back’James Blake is smart to let SZA upstage him in “Coming Back.” It starts as one more slice of his usual keyboard-and-falsetto melancholy, but when SZA arrives she challenges both his morose narrative — “Don’t you have a clue about where my mind is right now?” — and his stolid music, as she bounces syllables around the beat and brings new zigzags to the melody. Blake rises to the competition, chopping up the production and pepping up his tune. Even so, the song may not convince her to come back. PARELESJustin Bieber featuring TroyBoi, ‘Red Eye’It has been clear for a long time, but just to spell it out: Justin Bieber is the world’s savviest beat-shopper. While the lyrics of “Red Eye” flaunt the prerogatives of glamorous bicoastal American living — “You should be hopping on a redeye”— the track, by the British producer TroyBoi, plays with electronics, reggaeton, Afrobeats, dubstep and dembow: so digital, so professional, so perky, so slick. PARELESC. Tangana and Nathy Peluso, ‘Ateo’Latin pop’s geographical borders are dissolving. C. Tangana, a rapper turned singer from Spain, and Nathy Peluso, an R&B-loving singer from Argentina, find a meeting place amid the light-fingered guitar syncopations of bachata, a style from the Dominican Republic. “Ateo” translates as “atheist,” but the song quickly makes clear that desire and bachata add up to “a miracle come down from heaven”; now they’re believers. PARELESKelis, ‘Midnight Snacks’Kelis’s first new song in seven years sneaks up on you. Full of whispered astral funk and understated steaminess, it’s a welcome return for one of R&B’s left-field luminaries. CARAMANICATambino, ‘Estos Días’Tambino lets genres slip through his fingers like fine grains of white sand. On “Estos Días,” a sliced-up baile funk rhythm blends into dance-punk verve, only to burst into the soaring drama of a pop ballad. The track is a meditation on the protests that spread across the world last year, and the police violence that continues to plague marginalized communities. “Nos mata la policía,” he intones. “The police kill us.” But in the trembling fragility of the Peruvian-born artist’s voice, there lies a kind of radical hope. “Yo voy hacer mejor/Dejar todo el dolor,” it quivers. “I’m going to do better/Leave behind all the pain.” HERRERASusana Baca, ‘Negra del Alma’Susana Baca, the Afro-Peruvian songwriter and folklorist who has also served as Peru’s Minister of Culture, marks the 50th year of her career with her new album “Palabras Urgentes” (“Urgent Words”), connecting age-old injustices to the present. “Negro del Alma” is a traditional Andean song commemorating a complicated past, when Andean natives met Afro-Peruvians and fell in love. Baca complicates it further, meshing disparate Peruvian traditions of marimbas, hand percussion and horns. But her voice carries through the song’s anguish and determination. PARELESSuzanne Ciani, ‘Morning Spring’Suzanne Ciani’s “Morning Spring” is the first taste of “@0,” a new charity compilation showcasing the works of ambient creators past and present. Here, orbs of synth bubbles float to the surface like a cool carbonated drink, while others wash beneath, ebbing and flowing like the low tide. Ciani — a synth pioneer recently celebrated in the documentary “Sisters With Transistors: Electronic Music’s Unsung Heroines” — renders an aquatic concerto, its symphonic movements receding and transforming at every turn, like the curling crests of ocean waves. HERRERAKenny Garrett, ‘Joe Hen’s Waltz’As his contribution to “Relief,” a forthcoming compilation benefiting the Jazz Foundation of America’s Musicians’ Emergency Fund, the esteemed alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett provided an unreleased outtake from the sessions for his standout 2012 album, “Seeds From the Underground.” With a teetering melody and a swaggering mid-tempo swing feel, “Joe Hen’s Waltz” pays homage to the saxophonist Joe Henderson, nodding to his knack for slippery melodies that seem to move through a house of mirrors. In Garrett’s quartet at the time, much of the energy was being generated by his partnership with the pianist Benito Gonzalez, whose playing is rooted in Afro-Latin clave and the influence of McCoy Tyner, but has an effervescent phrasing style of its own. RUSSONELLO More

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      Aneesa Folds, Back on Broadway, Is Still Getting Used to This

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      There has been an am-I-dreaming quality to Aneesa Folds’s life lately. That much she wanted to make clear.Yes, that was her in the glittering gold jumpsuit at the Tony Awards, performing in knockout voice with the troupe Freestyle Love Supreme. But a few mornings later, sitting in a booth at a hotel restaurant in Manhattan’s theater district, she was still doing a mental double take at the memory of Broadway stars saying hello to her backstage “as if I wasn’t a pedestrian.” And meeting a reporter for a profile interview? That wasn’t normal either.“I love that you’re talking to me as if this is regular for me,” she said, and laughed.On the other hand, she is on her way back to Broadway with Freestyle Love Supreme. Founded by Thomas Kail, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Anthony Veneziale, the longstanding hip-hop improv comedy troupe got fresh attention with the rise of “Hamilton,” which led to a Broadway run two years ago. Now, it’s back for a limited encore engagement that starts previews on Thursday and opens Oct. 19.Folds, who even offstage has an easy charisma, is a relative newcomer to the group. When she and Kaila Mullady joined in 2019, they were entering what had been all-male territory. Then, as now, they had only a week’s worth of rehearsals to acclimate before stepping in front of the first audience.At the Tony Awards, from left: James Monroe Iglehart, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr., Wayne Brady and Folds.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“You’re going into this space with all of these people that have been doing a show for 18, 19 years,” said Folds, 28. “They know each other like the back of their hands, and they’re like, ‘OK, we’re just going to improvise.’ And then you go to Broadway the next week and they put you onstage.”In 2019, she spent rehearsals in survival mode, trying to soak up as much knowledge as she could about the mechanics of the show. This time feels different — more like “playing with your friends,” she said.But to Kail, the show’s director, it was obvious even in the jam-session audition ahead of the original Broadway run that Folds, with her boldness and talent, belonged.“I was in the session with Chris Jackson and James Iglehart, who have both been in the group for a long time and have both been on Broadway for a long time,” he said in a phone interview. “She was doing her thing, like full Aneesa, and they looked at me and they were like: ‘Bro. Bro.’ I was like: ‘I know! Like, try to be cool. She’s still in the room.’”If Folds could turn back time — the way Freestyle Love Supreme does in one of its signature bits — and tell her child self what she is up to now, it might come as something of a shock. Growing up in Jamaica, Queens, she loved singing and felt safe blending in with a choir, but she was mortified whenever her talent was singled out for praise.“I was afraid of my voice,” she said. “I just was very insecure.”She had teachers who pushed and prodded her, though, and a mother who agreed when they encouraged her to do things like perform in the school musical. Her mother also found programs that helped her daughter blossom, like the Wingspan Arts theater conservatory in Manhattan and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City.From left, Chris Sullivan, Christopher Jackson, Andrew Bancroft, Folds and Iglehart during Freestyle Love Supreme’s Broadway run in 2019.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesStill, musical theater — which, when you get right down to it, is what Freestyle Love Supreme does — was a tough sell for Folds as a child, partly because, she said, “it felt very white to me.”“I didn’t really see myself,” she added. “I just didn’t know if I could be in that world, if I was allowed to be in that world, to take up space in that world. And I was a very, very shy kid. I didn’t really speak much.”At Repertory Company High School for Theater Arts, in the Town Hall building on West 43rd Street, Folds emerged from her shell, making jokes and rapping in the cafeteria. (That’s also when she came up with the rapper name Young Nees, which she uses in Freestyle Love Supreme.) And thanks to Miranda’s “In the Heights,” a show she first listened to on a Young People’s Chorus trip to Austria, then saw repeatedly on Broadway, she thought there might be a place for her after all.“That was the show that made me feel like, OK, they’re changing musical theater,” she said.But not nearly fast enough. This spring, Folds told Playbill that most of the racist encounters she has had in her life have been in theater.“When I wasn’t doing Broadway,” she said, “I was doing a lot of regional shows. I’ve been in a lot of spaces where I was the only person of color, so as you can imagine, I’ve heard all sorts of things.”Like comments from wig designers who didn’t know how to work with Black hair — remarks so painful and common that Folds pulled in her shoulders to make herself smaller as she spoke of them.“When I get into a wig chair, I start apologizing,” she said. “Like: ‘I have a lot of hair, this is all mine, I have locs. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’”Once, she said, she was assigned to actor housing in a home whose white owner had a collection of mammy dolls, and took them out to show her.This season, productions by Black artists are abundant on Broadway, but Folds said she feared those higher numbers will be a mere blip before the industry reverts to its old ways.“I really pray and hope that it doesn’t,” she said. “So that the little girl that’s sitting in Queens, New York, who maybe wants to do musical theater, does see herself.”It was during a visit home, when Folds was a college student at the Hartt School at the University of Hartford, that she first saw Freestyle Love Supreme. An instant fan, she wanted to do what they did. “It felt like everything I was good at,” she said.Freestyle Love Supreme, Folds said, “felt like everything I was good at.”Lia Clay Miller for The New York TimesSo in 2019, the year after the troupe started an academy, she applied. And while Kail said the program is not meant to be a training ground for new members, people there quickly told him they had found someone.With the addition of women, Folds said, suddenly the group had a wider pool of topics to talk about onstage. She particularly relishes the memory of a woman shouting “period cramps” when Veneziale was collecting audience pet peeves for the cast to rap about.“He didn’t hear her,” Folds said. “Which men often don’t. And I was like, ‘I’ll take period cramps.’”She did her rap, the crowd screamed with delight, and women came to the stage door and raved about it.“It’s awesome to be one of the women in the group,” Folds said. “We’re here and we’re switching it up.”Freestyle Love Supreme has led to work for her on other projects, including Miranda’s recent animated musical for children, “Vivo,” and his film adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s “Tick, Tick … Boom!,” out next month in theaters and on Netflix. In that movie’s recently released trailer, she is in the opening shot.All this contributes to Folds’s pinch-me feeling. A small, doubting part of her wonders if she is where she is because her higher-profile colleagues are also her friends. A more brisk and confident part knows that she didn’t fall into any of her success — though if she’s a pleasure to be around, that doesn’t hurt.“My name does mean friendly and well-liked,” she said. “I try to live up to it. Be nice: That’s the first rule of theater.” More

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      Youngboy Edges Past Drake for Billboard No. 1 Album Slot

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      “Sincerely, Kentrell” narrowly beat Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy” to earn this Louisiana rapper his fourth Billboard chart-topping album in two years.In a close race for No. 1 on the Billboard album chart, the new release by YoungBoy Never Broke Again, a 21-year-old from Baton Rouge, La., narrowly beat fourth-week sales for “Certified Lover Boy,” the streaming smash by Drake, who was dethroned after three straight weeks on top.YoungBoy’s “Sincerely, Kentrell” tallied 137,000 album units in total (including 186 million streams and 10,000 in traditional sales), enough to squeak by the 135,000 overall sales units for “Certified Lover Boy,” according to Billboard.“Sincerely, Kentrell” becomes the fourth No. 1 album in less than two years for YoungBoy, who is incarcerated awaiting trial in Louisiana, where he faces federal charges that he possessed an unlicensed gun as a felon. YoungBoy was among 16 people arrested in Baton Rouge in September 2020 on drug and firearm charges, not long after his album “Top” became his third No. 1 in less than a year.YoungBoy — among the most popular musicians on YouTube — has been dogged by legal problems since signing with Atlantic Records as a teenager in 2016. In the current case, his lawyers have said he did not possess any of the contraband himself and are seeking to suppress evidence they say was unconstitutionally obtained, according to court filings.In its first month out, Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy” earned the equivalent of over 1 million sales in the United States, including more than one billion streams, and it held off a formidable challenger in Lil Nas X’s debut album, “Montero,” last week. This time, “Certified Lover Boy” settled for No. 2, although it is expected to contend for the top spot again next week.The rest of the Top 5 is rounded out by “Montero,” at No. 3; Kanye West’s “Donda,” repeating its position at No. 4; and Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour,” which also held steady at No. 5. More

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      Kendrick Lamar, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg to Share Super Bowl Halftime

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      The N.F.L. announced the three Southern California natives will share billing with Mary J. Blige and Eminem at Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles.The N.F.L. announced Thursday that five performers would share headlining duties at the Super Bowl, with a distinct nod to West Coast hip-hop given the game’s location at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif. Three Southern California natives and rap titans — Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar — will take the stage alongside Mary J. Blige and Eminem during the halftime show scheduled for Feb. 13, 2022. The game will air on NBC.“The opportunity to perform at the Super Bowl Halftime show, and to do it in my own backyard, will be one of the biggest thrills of my career,” Dr. Dre said in a statement.The halftime show for Super Bowl 56 will be the third produced by Roc Nation, the entertainment and sports company started by the music impresario Jay-Z, as the N.F.L. pushes to modernize the show and appeal to a more diverse audience. Jennifer Lopez and Shakira were dual headliners of the 2020 performance in Miami Gardens, Fla. The Canadian pop superstar the Weeknd performed at halftime of February’s Super Bowl in Tampa, Fla., before a crowd limited by coronavirus pandemic restrictions. He reportedly spent $7 million of his own money on the production, in part to ensure that the spectacle would wow TV audiences.Organizers said the expected return of the Super Bowl’s usual capacity crowd at SoFi Stadium, the $5 billion venue near Los Angeles International Airport that opened in 2020, would restore energy to the festivities.“This year we are blowing the roof off the concept of collaboration,” said Adam Harter, the senior vice president of media, sports and entertainment at PepsiCo, which sponsors the show. “Along with the N.F.L. and Roc Nation, we continue to try and push the limits on what fans can expect during the most exciting 12 minutes in music.”The Super Bowl is typically the most watched broadcast of the year, despite ratings declining in five of the past six years, notably among the advertiser-coveted demographic of people aged between 18 and 49. In February, 96 million people watched the Super Bowl between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Kansas City Chiefs, the game’s smallest audience in 15 years, despite the N.F.L.’s biggest star, quarterback Tom Brady, leading Tampa to victory. That decrease was in line with overall drops in viewership for sporting events held amid the pandemic.If advertiser interest is any indication, though, this season’s Super Bowl could mark a resurgence. NBC said earlier this month that it had nearly sold out of Super Bowl advertising spots, which cost a record $6.5 million for 30 seconds.Kevin Draper contributed reporting. More

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      Lil Nas X’s ‘Montero’ Debuts at No. 2, While Drake Holds at the Top

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      Over its three weeks out, Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy” has logged the equivalent of just over 1 million sales in the United States.Drake holds the top spot on the Billboard album chart for a third week with “Certified Lover Boy,” while Lil Nas X starts at No. 2.“Certified Lover Boy,” which had arrived on the chart with the biggest opening-week numbers in over a year, has since cooled down a little. In its third week out, it had 222 million streams in the United States and sold about 4,000 copies as a complete package; altogether, it was credited with the equivalent of 171,000 sales, according to MRC Data, a tracking service owned by Billboard’s parent company.Those numbers let “Certified Lover Boy” hold the top spot by a comfortable margin. Over its three weeks out, the album has logged the equivalent of just over 1 million sales in the United States, including nearly 1.3 billion streams. Since the arrival of “Thank Me Later” in 2010, a Drake title has been No. 1 on the weekly Billboard 200 album chart 30 times.Drake’s closest competitor this week was “Montero” by Lil Nas X, the rapper and meme virtuoso whose “country-trap” song “Old Town Road” was a chart-busting phenomenon two years ago, notching a record 19 weeks at No. 1. In its opening week, “Montero” had the equivalent of 126,000 sales, including 147 million streams, landing at second place.With 15 songs, “Montero” — which features guest spots by Elton John, Megan Thee Stallion, Doja Cat and Miley Cyrus — is Lil Nas X’s first official LP, after “7,” an eight-track EP released in 2019, at the height of the “Old Town Road” craze. (Still, it was nominated for album of the year at the Grammys.) “7” also peaked at No. 2 on the album chart.The other big debut this week is “Sticker” by NCT 127, a “sub-unit” of the 23-man K-pop group NCT. “Sticker” opens at No. 3 with the equivalent of 62,000 sales, mostly from copies sold as a complete package, like CD boxed sets. Its 11 songs had 4.7 million streams in the United States.Kanye West’s “Donda” is No. 4 and Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour” is No. 5. More