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      J Balvin Attempts to Reintroduce Himself on ‘Jose’

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      The Colombian star skips innovation and presents an impressionistic inventory of the sounds that established him as a global force on his sixth studio album.If there is one figure in pop music who has perfected the language of feel-good cultural affirmation, it is J Balvin. For over a decade, the 36-year-old Colombian star has claimed he is on a mission to “change the perception of Latinos in music,” using his rainbow aesthetics, smooth reggaeton textures and radio-ready trap hits as ammunition.There have been plenty of milestones, including “Mi Gente” and “I Like It”: his chart-crushing collaborations with Willy William and Beyoncé, and Bad Bunny and Cardi B. Both tracks have become flash points for jejune narratives about “booming” Latino cultural representation: a tale that flattens differences among people of distinct races, languages and countries — and suggests this music is influential only when the Anglo mainstream is paying attention.There was his performance at Coachella 2019, when Balvin became the first reggaeton artist to play the festival’s main stage. There are his cartoonish visuals, leopard-print hairstyles and flowery album covers designed by the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. And there are his ad-libs — “J Balvin, man,” “Leggo” and “Latino gang!” — signature catchphrases that have become so trite, they’re essentially begging for meme-ification.“Jose,” his sixth studio album, arrives at a moment when Balvin has finally established himself as a global celebrity. The record considers what is possible when a pop idol, especially one from Latin America, no longer needs to prove himself.At the end of “Jose,” Balvin takes a true gamble. For what may be the first time in his career, he gets deeply personal.So, allow J Balvin to reintroduce himself. “Jose,” Balvin’s first name, is a 24-track behemoth that follows in the vein of other playlists-as-albums — the kind of project intended to dominate streaming platforms, like the recent supersized releases from Kanye West and Drake. But the album struggles to truly innovate: “Jose” is an itinerant, unfocused effort that offers an impressionistic inventory of the sounds that have established him as a force: pop-reggaeton, trap and EDM.The majority of the album (about 13 of its tracks) — like “Bebé Que Bien Te Ves,” “Lo Que Dios Quiera” and “Fantasías” — falls firmly within the sphere of ultrapolished, creamy popetón. It is an unimaginative formula, and one that Balvin has mastered: blend a lilting dembow beat, a candy-coated melody and lyrics about the gushy soap opera of a dance-floor courtship or a sexual fantasy for maximum streams. Elsewhere, Balvin returns to Top 40 trap, another style he’s known for: On “Billetes de 100,” featuring the Puerto Rican star Myke Towers, Balvin offers a self-mythologizing reminder that he can actually rap. “In da Getto,” a resort-ready EDM track produced by Skrillex, elaborates on yet another sound that has helped catapult Balvin to international stardom.Some songs aim for novelty. The opener, “F40,” is a self-assured blast of reggaeton bombast that shifts tempos, slowing to an irresistible, carnal crawl. And “Perra,” a collaboration with Tokischa, is an audacious, X-rated venture into dembow, a street sound born in the barrios of the Dominican Republic that has recently caught the attention of the wider Latin music industry, despite its longtime grasp on popular music in the Caribbean country.It is only in the last third of “Jose” that Balvin takes a true gamble: For what may be the first time in his career, he gets vulnerable and deeply personal. “7 de Mayo,” named for Balvin’s birthday, is a chronicle of his rise from the streets of Medellín to eminence, featuring spoken samples of his mother, Alba, and an awards-show thank you from the reggaeton forefather Daddy Yankee. “In a barrio in the middle of Medallo, this one was born/With sweat on my forehead/Calluses on my hands,” Balvin reminisces in Spanish. While the intimacy is new for Balvin, the song follows the formula of hip-hop origin stories too closely (nearly mimicking Jay-Z’s “December 4th”). It feels like Balvin is being forced to complete a tedious homework assignment, rather than reflecting earnestly on his personal hardships.“Querido Rio,” a soft guitar ballad dedicated to his newborn son with echoes of Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven,” similarly falls flat. Its shallow lyrics and syrupy delivery land with cloying sentimentality: “I don’t just want to be your father/I also want to be your best friend,” Balvin croons in Spanish.For an artist who paints himself as pathbreaking, “Jose” feels remarkably safe. At this point, Balvin does have the power to nuke expectations — those of his own career trajectory, his imagined community and the genres he operates within. Instead, “Jose” colors inside the lines, safeguarding Balvin’s reign by reveling in the familiar.J Balvin“Jose”(Universal Music Latino) More

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      On 'Certified Lover Boy,' Drake Seeks an Enemy Besides Himself

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      His new album “Certified Lover Boy” is full of familiar anxieties and sounds, and barbed words for Kanye West, a mentor turned nemesis.At this point in Drake’s career, there are songs about the throne, and songs about the bed. Each milieu comes with a price. The first is about hard power: Remaining at the top means outmaneuvering enemies, building up an invulnerable enterprise. The other, in Drake’s hands at least, is about soft power — most often, the path to conquest is through humility, and sometimes awe. Rarely do the two modes meet.Which is what makes the concluding verse of “Race My Mind,” from Drake’s new album “Certified Lover Boy,” such a jolt. In the first half of the song, he’s singing, but his affection is starting to curdle; it’s a serenade to a woman who’s listening to other things. Midway through, the song shifts away from sweet plea to indignation, and Drake turns to rapping.He sounds frustrated, dismissive, a little anxious: “Don’t you dare hit me back with no ‘k, sure’/Soon as I tell you that you the one I would wait for/You too saucy, too flossy, you moved in and moved off me.” The woman he’s craving is spending time with lesser competitors, and it’s scrambling Drake’s two vectors of control: “Know who you be around, I know that they teaming up/Telling you you better off leaving me in the dust.”It’s a fevered rush of affront, and by far the most alert Drake sounds on “Certified Lover Boy,” his sixth studio album, and first in three years. Historically, his approaches have been hard to argue with — he has fundamentally rewritten the template for pop music over the last decade. But on “Certified Lover Boy” they have been polished smooth, become maybe a little shopworn. This album is better in the dark. Better in the car. It demonstrates how sonically rigorous even the most casual, tossed-off Drake songs are. But its storytelling doesn’t always hold up to strict scrutiny.This is particularly true in the songs about women: the silly “Girls Want Girls” with Lil Baby, “Get Along Better” with Ty Dolla Sign, the lightly grim “___ Fans.” Rather, what really gets Drake steaming on this album are naysayers and adversaries, especially evident in the 11th-hour rhymes about Kanye West, with whom Drake has been lately — and historically, and forevermore — locked in a tangle. (More on these Oedipal shenanigans later.) “Certified Lover Boy” will make its debut at No. 1 next week with the biggest opening-week numbers for any album this year, replacing West’s “Donda,” which just did the same.Throughout his career, Drake’s nimbleness has made him one of pop’s most consistently inventive stars, willing to absorb and reinterpret any number of regional and global styles. There are sonic bright spots when he nods to Houston (the OG Ron C intro on “TSU” and the sample of Bun B’s “Get Throwed” on “N 2 Deep”) and Memphis (the sampled Project Pat verse on “Knife Talk,” its elastically chewy flow pattern ably mimicked by 21 Savage), both long-running fonts of inspiration. And sometimes Drake calls back to older versions of himself — the piano motifs at the beginning and end of “The Remorse,” the album closer, directly nod to “Marvin’s Room,” the ne plus ultra of Drake’s magnetic toxicity.But “Certified Lover Boy” is his least musically imaginative album, the one where he pushes himself the least in terms of method and pattern. Apart from the lite Afrobeats number “Fountains,” with the feathery Nigerian singer Tems, most songs here hew to the familiar narcotic synths and claustrophobic samples that underlie much of his music. This album might mark something like the beginning of the end of the Drake era, except that the Drake era is simply all of pop music now, and his innovations have become the work of, well, everyone else.Drake is aware of this, of course — no one both performs, and watches himself perform, with the same intensity. Some of this album’s sharpest lines are about how Drake, the entity, functions out in the rest of the world. “Under a picture lives some of the greatest quotes from me,” he raps on “Champagne Poetry,” about your Instagram captions. “I apologize for my absence, I know I left you without a name to drop/I don’t know how I expected you to get your clout up and get your money up,” he taunts on “Papi’s Home.”But also Drake is the primary engineer — his image is not happenstance. Which is why the video for “Way 2 Sexy” (which samples Right Said Fred) is designed for memes, though it feels halfhearted. And his deep-sigh line about being a lesbian on “Girls Want Girls” is aimed not at the progressives who have lambasted it, but those in search of a cheap wink.The way Drake steadily manicures his public image couldn’t stand in more stark contrast to how West manages his, and that’s the primary reason the current tension between them feels so asymmetric. West’s lashings — including leaking Drake’s alleged home address — have been primal, broadsides against an impertinent child. But Drake is a father, too, and there’s been something chillier and more strategic about how he’s handled the recent back and forth. “Give that address to your driver, make it your destination/’Stead of just a post out of desperation,” he raps on “7am on Bridle Path,” a lightly deflated but acutely barbed accounting of learning to fall out of love with your mentor.The day after “Certified Lover Boy” was released, Drake leaked “Life of the Party,” an unheard song by West that included some ranting lines aimed at Drake. But the song, which features a majestic verse from the rarely heard Andre 3000, was something approaching spectacular, and also profoundly emotional — in trying to paint his nemesis as hubristic, Drake instead painted him as vulnerable, the good kind.The truth is that this isn’t really a battle, at least not one fellow artists feel compelled to take sides in — several appear on both “Donda” and “Certified Lover Boy.” And that’s not the only thing these two albums have in common: they’re summary statements of a once forward-thinking but now widely accepted worldview, not wild reinventions. Perhaps bored with battling themselves, the two superstars have turned to battling each other. But that won’t heal what’s within.Drake“Certified Lover Boy”(Republic) More

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      Miss the Old Kanye? Try the New Kanye.

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      Kanye West’s 10th album, “Donda,” just had the biggest opening week of the year (though that mark is about to be eclipsed by Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy”). The success of “Donda” on the Billboard chart and on streaming services wasn’t guaranteed, given how West has receded from the center of hip-hop in recent years. But with an album rollout that grew increasingly rococo over several weeks, he displayed his true gift for garnering attention.Which, as it happens, isn’t much different from his old methods. Each new microgeneration is shocked anew by West’s antics, but since the beginning of his career, he has been dreaming big, speaking loudly, courting controversy and channeling all of that into music.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about how West has remained steadfast in his roller-coaster approach to celebrity, and how perhaps the primary difference between West’s agitations 15 years ago and today is the financial power he is able to wield in the service of his goals.Guests:Datwon Thomas, the editor in chief of VibeJustin Charity, a staff writer at The Ringer and co-host of the “Sound Only” podcast More

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      Kanye West’s ‘Donda’ Is No. 1, but Drake Waits in the Wings

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      The total for “Donda” includes 357 million streams in the United States, the most in a week so far this year.Kanye West’s long-delayed new album, “Donda,” starts at No. 1 on Billboard’s new chart with the biggest opening of the year so far. But its reign at the top may be brief, with Drake’s latest LP lining up huge numbers for next week.“Donda,” West’s 10th solo studio album (and his 10th title overall to reach the top, including “Watch the Throne,” his 2011 album with Jay-Z), had the equivalent of 309,000 sales in the United States in its first week out, more than any other album in 2021, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm. (Its closest competitor, Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour,” racked up 295,000 in May.) The total for “Donda” includes 357 million streams, a weekly record for the year, and 37,000 copies sold as a complete package.According to West’s label, Def Jam, the album has reached No. 1 in 11 countries and had more than 775 million streams around the world. The label even broke down those streams by outlet: 442 million on Spotify and 242 million on Apple Music, which would mean those services accounted for about 88 percent of all opening-week streams for the album.Teased for more than a year — including at three stadium-size listening events in recent weeks, which were livestreamed by Apple Music — the 27-track “Donda” was finally released on Aug. 29, a Sunday. Since albums usually come out on a Friday, that gave “Donda” just five days of public availability before Billboard’s accounting week ended.Its time at No. 1 may be brief. In a classic monster-movie clash, “Donda” was released just days before Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy,” another long-anticipated LP hyped for months. Last week, “Donda” broke daily streaming records at Apple and Spotify, but then “Certified Lover Boy” quickly broke them again.Also this week, Halsey’s latest album, “If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power” — made with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails — opens at No. 2 with the equivalent of 98,000 sales, including 35 million streams and 70,500 copies sold as a complete package.Rodrigo’s “Sour” is No. 3, Doja Cat’s “Planet Her” is No. 4 and the Kid Laroi’s “____ Love” is No. 5. More

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      Drake et Kanye West, géants du rap plus rivaux que jamais

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      Leurs nouveaux albums ‘‘Certified Lover Boy’’ et ‘‘Donda’’, blockbusters potentiels qui viennent de sortir à cinq jours d’intervalle, relancent la vive rivalité entre les deux géants du rap.The New York Times traduit en français une sélection de ses meilleurs articles. Retrouvez-les ici.Depuis plus de dix ans, Drake et Kanye West se livrent un duel à fleurets non mouchetés au sommet du hip-hop — collaborateurs occasionnels, rivaux amicaux puis concurrents acharnés, quand ce n’est pas les trois à la fois.Pourtant, rarement les destins musicaux de ces deux stars générationnelles n’ont été si étroitement liés que cette semaine. À cinq jours seulement d’intervalle, leurs nouveaux albums très attendus et longtemps repoussés viennent de sortir. Avec toutefois des stratégies de lancement très différentes.‘‘Certified Lover Boy”, sixième album studio de Drake, est paru vendredi peu avant une heure du matin après presque un an de teasing, de singles promotionnels et de faux départs. Le disque — dont la sortie prévue en janvier avait été évoquée indirectement dès 2019 — compte 21 titres et une batterie d’invités prestigieux tels Jay-Z, Travis Scott, Lil Baby, Future, Young Thug, Rick Ross et Lil Wayne.Le dixième album de Kanye West, ‘‘Donda’’, est sorti 5 jours plus tôt, avec davantage de couacs, ce qui a pour le moins bénéficié à sa médiatisation. Initialement annoncé pour juillet 2020 — puis le 23 juillet, puis le 6 août de cette année -– l’album de 27 titres a été précédé de trois concerts hors-normes tenus dans des stades où West a présenté un travail en cours ; construit une réplique de sa maison d’enfance ; monté un simulacre de cérémonie de mariage avec son ex-épouse Kim Kardashian West ; invité des musiciens controversés comme DaBaby et Marilyn Manson; et refusé de prononcer le moindre mot.‘‘Donda’’ figure sa propre palette de featurings prestigieux, dont The Weeknd, Lil Baby, Pop Smoke et Roddy Ricch. Certains d’entre eux, comme Scott, Jay-Z et Young Thug, apparaissent d’ailleurs sur les deux albums. (Il y a peu de femmes parmi les invités de l’un ou de l’autre.) Leurs listes de titres pleines à craquer — une stratégie devenue courante dans l’industrie musicale pour maximiser les écoutes en streaming — pourraient être des armes clés dans la course aux meilleures ventes que vont se livrer ‘‘Donda’’ et ‘‘Certified Lover Boy’’.Si Kanye West fait des thèmes culturellement sensibles une part importante de sa stratégie marketing, Drake se distingue plutôt par son recours à un sample de R. Kelly dans le morceau “TSU”. “Half on a Baby”, un titre de Kelly de 1998, s’ouvre — dans sa version intégrale, pas celle plus accessible destinée aux radios — sur un prologue au synthétiseur aux sonorités symphoniques. Drake le reprend dans “TSU”, également en guise d’ouverture.Mais Kelly fait face depuis longtemps à des accusations d’abus sexuels, et est actuellement jugé devant le tribunal fédéral de Brooklyn pour racket et violation de la loi Mann interdisant le transport d’une personne au-delà des frontières d’un État à des fins de prostitution. Sur les réseaux sociaux, nombre de voix se sont élevées pour désapprouver sa participation au projet. (John Lennon et Paul McCartney sont également crédités pour ‘‘Michelle’’ des Beatles, repris dans la chanson qui ouvre l’album, ‘‘Champagne Poetry’’.)Kanye West, qui a pris l’habitude de se couvrir le visage en public, a choisi le noir pour la pochette de son album ‘‘Donda’’. Drake, en revanche, a opté pour plus tape-à-l’oeil. ‘‘Certified Lover Boy’’ arbore la reproduction d’un tableau prêt à être décliné en mème, signé de l’artiste britannique Damien Hirst, constitué d’émojis de 12 femmes enceintes de différentes couleurs de peau.Mais si Kanye West a dégainé le premier, ‘‘Donda’’, du nom de la mère décédée du rappeur, n’était pas encore finalisé le matin même de sa sortie, des versions supplémentaires de plusieurs titres étant rajoutées à la liste des morceaux. Sur Instagram, West a accusé sa maison de disques d’avoir ‘‘sorti mon album sans mon approbation’’ et d’avoir initialement bloqué un morceau auquel participaient Marilyn Manson et DaBaby. (‘‘Jail Pt. 2’’ figure les deux artistes et est désormais inclus dans l’album. Def Jam, son label, n’a pas souhaité commenter.) D’autres collaborateurs pressentis pour l’album, dont Chris Brown et Soulja Boy, ont exprimé leur mécontentement devant le résultat final.En dépit de problèmes de planning, de critiques mitigées et de sa sortie inhabituelle un weekend — qui l’a privé de deux jours de ventes et d’écoutes en streaming par rapport à une sortie traditionnelle le vendredi — ‘‘Donda’’ est sur le point de prendre la tête du classement Billboard, avec une des semaines de lancement les plus rentables de l’année. Selon Def Jam, ‘‘Donda’’ a bénéficié de 180 millions écoutes sur les plateformes de streaming au cours des seules premières 24 heures.La pochette de “Certified Lover Boy”, le dernier album de Drake.Au vu de la domination de Drake sur ces plateformes — il a été le premier artiste à atteindre 50 milliards d’écoutes sur Spotify, d’après au moins un décompte — ‘‘Certified Lover Boy’’ est pratiquement assuré de devenir l’une des plus grosses sorties de l’année. Et si les ventes en première semaine de Drake ne seront connues que le 13 septembre — écartant l’éventualité d’un replay du face-à-face de 2007 entre West et 50 Cent — leurs fans sont impatients de comparer les deux nouvelles œuvres, tant du point de vue artistique que commercial, faisant écho à la longue rivalité que les deux rappeurs viennent de raviver. (Leurs maisons de disques respectives partagent une même société mère, Universal Music.)Drake a paru ironiser sur l’âge de West dans un titre de Trippie Redd où il avait un featuring le mois dernier — Drake a 34 ans, West dix de plus. Kanye West a répliqué en mettant en ligne un échange de SMS dans lequel il écrit : ‘‘Tu ne t’en remettras jamais. Je te le promets’’, accompagné d’une photo de Joaquin Phoenix en Joker. (West a également posté une capture d’écran de ce qui semble être l’adresse de Drake à Toronto, avant de la retirer. Drake a riposté, semble-t-il, avec plusieurs photos de lui en train de rire.)Vendredi, les auditeurs ont rapidement remarqué ce qui semble être un message de Drake à Kanye West. ‘‘Donne cette adresse à ton chauffeur, fais-en ta destination/Au lieu d’un simple post désespéré’’, rappe-t-il sur le morceau ‘‘7am on Bridle Path’’.Les défis lancés par titres et réseaux sociaux interposés relancent un long cycle de provocations mesquines directes et indirectes: leur relation s’est envenimée de manière semble-t-il irrémédiable suite à une querelle musicale entre Drake et Pusha-T, un protégé de Kanye West, en 2018.Depuis lors, les deux artistes ont pris des chemins séparés, même si les chamailleries continuent parfois en ligne ou par albums interposés. Kanye West a soutenu l’ancien président Donald J. Trump, s’est lancé dans une course malheureuse à l’élection présidentielle et s’est tourné vers le gospel avec ‘‘Jesus Is King”, un album sur le thème chrétien sorti en octobre 2019. Il s’est engagé à ne plus jurer dans ses titres — promesse tenue sur ‘‘Donda’’, y compris pour ses invités.Drake, quant à lui, a sorti des titres à flux régulier, même si ses apparitions se font plus rares. Au printemps 2020, après le single ‘‘Toosie Slide’’, qui a atteint la deuxième place du Billboard Hot 100, le rappeur a publié une mixtape imprévue, ‘‘Dark Lane Demo Tapes’’, compilation de titres qui avaient fuité en ligne. Il a promis de sortir un album studio cet été-là , et un premier single, ‘‘Laugh Now Cry Later’’, s’est classé numéro 2 en août. L’album n’est pas arrivé, mais un maxi de trois titres intitulé ‘‘Scary Hours 2’’, est sorti en mars, dont un des singles se classe numéro 1 (‘‘What’s Next’’).Après des mois d’allusions énigmatiques quant au statut de l’album, alors que l’été touchait à sa fin et que les deux mastodontes du rap refaisaient surface, une confrontation avec Kanye West paraissait devenir inévitable. Alors que Kany West était en tournée avec ‘‘Donda’’, toujours en cours de réalisation, Drake, lors de l’émission ‘‘SportsCenter’’ sur la chaîne ESPN, a sorti un clip bricolé et non conventionnel dans lequel il semblait annoncer une date de sortie le 3 septembre.Et sur un titre de Trippie Redd intitulé ‘‘Betrayal’’, le rappeur clamait que le tapage autour du ‘‘Donda’’ de Kanye West n’affecterait pas la date de sortie définitive de son propre album. Cette fois-ci, rappait Drake: ‘‘C’est gravé dans le marbre’’. More

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      Drake's 'Certified Lover Boy' Arrives, as Chart Battle With Kanye West Continues

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      The rappers’ anticipated albums, “Certified Lover Boy” and “Donda” — both potential streaming blockbusters — arrived within five days of each other, with very different rollouts.For more than a decade, Drake and Kanye West have been locked in a dialogue at the top of the hip-hop heap — occasional collaborators turned friendly competitors turned bitter rivals, and sometimes all three at once.Yet rarely have the two generation-defining stars so closely intertwined their musical fates as this week, when they released highly anticipated, long-delayed albums within five days of each other, with very different rollout strategies.“Certified Lover Boy,” Drake’s sixth studio album, came out just before 1 a.m. Eastern time on Friday, the culmination of nearly a year of teases, promotional singles and false starts. The album — which had been scheduled for release in January but was mentioned obliquely as early as 2019 — features 21 tracks and a huge complement of guest stars, including Jay-Z, Travis Scott, Lil Baby, Future, Young Thug, Rick Ross and Lil Wayne.West’s 10th album, “Donda,” arrived on Sunday with considerably more friction, which may have only fed its hype. Originally slated for July 2020 — and then July 23 of this year, then Aug. 6 — the 27-track LP came in the wake of three stadium-size listening events, during which West played the work-in-progress; built a replica of his childhood home; staged a mock wedding ceremony with his estranged wife, Kim Kardashian West; welcomed polarizing guests like DaBaby and Marilyn Manson; and declined to speak a word.“Donda” has its own deep bench of superstar guests, including the Weeknd, Lil Baby, Pop Smoke and Roddy Ricch. A handful, like Scott, Jay-Z and Young Thug, appear on both LPs. (Few women appear on either release.) Their stuffed track lists have become a standard industry strategy to maximize streams, and may be a key weapon in the chart contest between “Donda” and “Certified Lover Boy.”While pushing cultural buttons was a significant part of West’s release strategy, Drake invited some scrutiny too, by sampling R. Kelly in his new track “TSU.” Kelly’s “Half on a Baby” (1998) — in its full version, not the more easily accessible radio edit — has a symphonic-sounding synthesizer preamble. Drake used that for “TSU,” also for an introductory segment.Kelly, who has long faced accusations of sexual abuse, is currently on trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn for racketeering and violating the Mann Act, which prohibits transporting anyone across state lines for prostitution, and many people on social media took offense. (John Lennon and Paul McCartney also have a credit, for the Beatles’ “Michelle,” which is used in the album’s opening track, “Champagne Poetry.”)West, who has taken to covering his face in public, opted for a plain black cover for “Donda,” while Drake went splashier. “Certified Lover Boy” uses readily meme-able album art from the British contemporary artist Damien Hirst that depicts emojis of 12 pregnant women of various skin tones.But even as West struck first, “Donda,” named for the rapper’s late mother, was still being updated the morning of its release, with additional versions of multiple songs added to the track list. West claimed on Instagram that his record company had “put my album out without my approval” and that it had initially blocked a track featuring Manson and DaBaby. (“Jail Pt. 2,” with appearances by both, is now included on the album. Def Jam, his label, declined to comment.) Additional collaborators slated to be on the album, including Chris Brown and Soulja Boy, expressed their own discontent with the finished product.Yet even amid the scheduling bumps, mixed reviews and nontraditional weekend release — which left West two fewer days of sales and streams than a standard Friday drop — “Donda” is on pace to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard chart with one of the biggest opening weeks of the year. According to Def Jam, “Donda” had 180 million streams in its first 24 hours.The cover of Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy.”Based on Drake’s streaming dominance — he was the first artist to hit 50 billion streams on Spotify, by at least one count — “Certified Lover Boy” is all but certain to reign as one of the year’s biggest releases. And although Drake’s first-week sales will not be finalized until Sept. 13, precluding a direct repeat of the West vs. 50 Cent chart face-off of 2007, fans have been eager to compare the two new works, commercially and artistically, in line with the pair’s latest stoking of their own long-simmering rivalry. (The rappers’ record labels share a parent company in Universal Music Group.)After Drake appeared to poke fun at West’s age on a guest verse for a Trippie Redd track last month — Drake is 34 and West a decade older — West posted a text exchange online in which he wrote, “You will never recover. I promise you,” and included an image of Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker. (West also uploaded a screenshot of what appeared to be Drake’s Toronto address before deleting it. Drake seemed to respond with multiple photos of himself laughing.)Listeners on Friday were quick to notice Drake’s apparent ripostes to West. “Give that address to your driver, make it your destination/’Stead of just a post out of desperation,” he raps on the track “7am on Bridle Path.”The digs, in song and on social media, continued a pattern of petty slights, direct and indirect, between the two that dates back years, with the relationship having seemingly curdled irrevocably around Drake’s musical beef with Pusha-T, a West affiliate, in 2018.In the years since, the artists’ paths diverged, even as they occasionally butted heads online and on record. West embraced former President Donald J. Trump, embarked on an ill-fated run for president and turned toward gospel, releasing a Christian-themed album, “Jesus Is King,” in October 2019. He vowed to stop cursing in his music, a promise he upheld on “Donda,” even censoring his guests.Drake, meanwhile, released a steady stream of music even as he made himself more scarce. In the spring of 2020, the rapper followed the single “Toosie Slide,” which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, with a surprise mixtape, “Dark Lane Demo Tapes,” featuring songs that had leaked online. He promised a studio album that summer, and the would-be lead single, “Laugh Now Cry Later,” hit No. 2 in August. But the album never came; another holdover, the three-song EP “Scary Hours 2,” followed in March and resulted in another No. 1 single (“What’s Next”).After months of only cryptic updates on the album’s status, a collision course with West began to seem inevitable as the summer wound down and the two A-list rappers resurfaced. As West toured a still-in-progress “Donda,” Drake appeared to stake a claim to a Sept. 3 release date late last month with a lo-fi, guerrilla-looking ad that cut in during an ESPN “SportsCenter” broadcast.And on a Trippie Redd track titled “Betrayal,” the rapper indicated that the hubbub surrounding West’s “Donda” would not affect his final release date. This time, Drake rapped, “it’s set in stone.” More

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      Abba Previews First Album in 40 Years, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Charli XCX, Bobby Shmurda, Japanese Breakfast 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.Abba, ‘Don’t Shut Me Down’Before Max Martin’s hit factory ruled radio playlists, another Swedish pop phenomenon had its run: Abba, which is reuniting after nearly 40 years. A new album, “Voyage,” is due on Nov. 5 and quasi-concert dates are scheduled in London in May; the singers will be digitized images backed by a live band. Though the verses of “Don’t Shut Me Down” are about a woman surprising an ex with her return, the choruses also recognize the strangeness of Abba’s reappearance: “I’m not the one you know/I’m now and then combined,” Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad sing, backed and produced by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson. “And I’m asking you to have an open mind.” Meanwhile, the music reclaims familiar ground: a strutting march with gleaming orchestration and scrubbing disco guitars, stolid and earnestly tuneful. JON PARELESCharli XCX, ‘Good Ones’Charli XCX oscillates between big-gesture pop and artier impulses, but “Good Ones” swings the pendulum back to pop. It’s produced by Oscar Holter, from the Max Martin stable that also concocted the Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights,” and it looks back directly to the 8th-note synthesizers of the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).” Hopping between registers, Charli XCX indicts herself — “I always let the good ones go” — neatly and decisively. PARELESJuls featuring Niniola, ‘Love Me’Everything is rhythm in “Love Me”: the shakers and hand drums, the squiggles of electric guitar, the overlapping call-and-response of the blithely syncopated Nigerian singer Niniola and a saxophone that eventually claims the last word. Juls, a Ghanaian-British producer, neatly balances 1970s Afrobeat, the hand-played, steady-state funk perfected by Fela Anikulapo Kuti, with the multitrack transparency of 20th-century Afrobeats. Even after the song erupts midway through, the groove keeps its sly composure. PARELESFred again.., ‘Billie (Loving Arms)’Sonically rich, big-tent-pop ambitious, soulful house music from Fred again.., a singer and songwriter who has worked with Ed Sheeran and Stormzy, was mentored by Brian Eno and has a soft spot for bright dance music that’s almost physically cheerful. JON CARAMANICATokischa and Rosalía, ‘Linda’On “Linda,” Rosalía — a white European woman who has dominated Spanish-language pop over the last few years — turns to the Dominican musician Tokischa and dembow for street cred. Tokischa is the genre’s resident insurgent, an iconoclast who makes government officials, homophobes and upper-class puritans clutch their pearls. It’s no surprise that “Linda” runs like a sexed-up playground chant; over a dembow-flamenco concoction, the two stars trill, “Nos besamo’, pero somo’ homie’” (“We kiss each other, but we’re homies”). This is the kind of song that sparks necessary reflection about race, power and collaboration — conversations about who these cross-cultural team-ups are designed to make rich, and who, if anyone, they intend to liberate. ISABELIA HERRERABobby Shmurda, ‘No Time for Sleep (Freestyle)’Bobby Shmurda’s first post-prison song — seven years after his breakout single “Hot ___” made him a star — feels like burning off excess energy. This six-minute freestyle is a workout; it’s delivered with a doggedness reminiscent of the fervor of Meek Mill, but leaves little room to breathe. The stakes here are purposely low. Releasing a song like this — no chorus, intense rhymes, cluttered flow — lightens the pressure that would come with seeking to score another hit as massive as his first. For now, he just wants to rhyme. CARAMANICAMartox featuring Gian Rojas, ‘Pausa’All cool grooves and saccharine strings, Martox’s “Pausa” is best enjoyed with a spiked seltzer. The Dominican duo, alongside the producer and vocalist Gian Rojas, collage disco grooves and syncopated bass lines into a prismatic beachfront boogie. HERRERAJhay Cortez, ‘Tokyo’The second track on Jhay Cortez’s new album, “Timelezz,” exemplifies a small rebellion happening in Spanish-language pop. At times, the production is aquatic; at others, its twinkling synths resemble a midnight drive through the streets of the Japanese capital. With a thumping four-on-the-floor rhythm, the track is another sign that reggaeton’s major players are embracing the textures of house music, and stretching the genre’s boundaries beyond the realm of stale pop. HERRERAJapanese Breakfast, ‘Glider’In “Glider,” a song she wrote for the video game Sable, keyboard patterns enfold Michelle Zauner, the singer, musician and producer who records as Japanese Breakfast. There’s wonderment in her voice as she sings about an excursion into the unknown: “It feels like everything is moving/Around me.” The keyboards start out plinking like music boxes, soon to be joined by sustained, cascading chords, an ever-thickening structure that can’t constrain her delight. PARELESAoife O’Donovan, ‘Reason to Believe’In a live-streamed home performance last year, the virtuoso folk singer Aoife O’Donovan played the 10 songs on Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska,” front to back. She accompanied herself alone on acoustic guitar, as Springsteen had on the original album in the early 1980s, but that’s about where the similarity ends. The original album was desperate and dark, with doubt coursing through its tracks like murky blood; O’Donovan treats them as canon, saluting Springsteen’s songcraft with clear, pitch-perfect articulation and affable delivery. The approach is suited best to “Reason to Believe,” the finale, a Springsteen classic that contemplates the mysterious pull of resilience. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLORuby Landen, ‘Pt. 1’Ruby Landen’s blend of Celtic-tinged acoustic-guitar fingerpicking and bowed strings — cello and fiddle — echoes the introspection of songwriters like Nick Drake. But she has her own story to tell, with an unassuming but pointed voice, in songs like “Pt. 1.” It’s an anatomy of a failed relationship — “Was it the safety of my presence that made you come undone?” — that she relays patiently and quietly. Then she segues into a modal, accelerating instrumental coda, picking behind fiddle and steel guitar, that needs no words to capture the underlying pain. PARELESNate Smith featuring Joel Ross and Michael Mayo, ‘Altitude’On drums, Nate Smith is in the business of inspiriting. Far from flashy, he’s an ebullient technician who keys into the subtleties of his bandmates’ playing and laces joie de vivre into his own. Smith, 46, just released “Altitude,” a breezy original and the latest single from a forthcoming album, “Kinfolk 2: See the Birds.” His band, Kinfolk, is joined here by a pair of young and prodigious improvisers: the vibraphonist Joel Ross and the vocalist Michael Mayo. The music video captures the group recording the song in the studio, just before the coronavirus pandemic struck; when Mayo digs into a short scat solo, improvising flawlessly in little rhythmic zags in the lower register and high-flying longer notes, you can see — and hear — him passing inspiration back and forth with the drummer. RUSSONELLO More

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      Kanye West’s ‘Donda’ Era, on a Chaotic Stage

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      West is still one of the most influential pop stars of the century, but multidisciplinary spectacle is more his goal than music now, and he isn’t the star of his own 10th album.For the last few years, Kanye West — perhaps tired of the insufficiency of the album, or music-making in general — has been seeking increasingly grand canvases for his various projects. There was the 2016 Yeezy Season 3 fashion show and album debut held at Madison Square Garden. His Imax film, “Jesus Is King,” filmed in James Turrell’s land art installation Roden Crater, in Arizona. A domed prototype for affordable housing built on his property in Calabasas, Calif. A vast expanse of ranch outside Cody, Wyo., annexed for work and play.And now, for the rollout of his 10th album, “Donda,” stadiums — two listening sessions cum performance pieces in Atlanta starting in July, and a third last week in Chicago. New music may have been the raison d’être for these events, but it is not his sole goal, not anymore, not really.Instead, these last few weeks have been album rollout as multimedia soap opera. The music itself has been in flux — the version of “Donda” played at each event has been different — and West’s refining of it in public, a method he introduced with “The Life of Pablo,” is his true artistic project now.It is an ideal strategy for West, still among the most influential pop stars of the 21st century, an artist who is almost incalculably popular and yet almost wholly removed from the pop music mainstream. Gathering tens of thousands of people on short notice and engaging in a public conversation about what his music might sound like may be the purest expression of his fame now.“Donda” is an album dedicated to the memory of West’s mother, who died in 2007, but the LP is only intermittently emotional.Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Universal Music GroupBut crucially, big stages are easy places to hide. They are terrific distractions. And as West has cycled through periods of public tumult in recent years — his hospitalization, his assertion that slavery was a choice, his embrace of Donald Trump, his fitful 2020 run for president — he has simultaneously been orchestrating ever more complex creative projects while slowly removing himself from their emotional center.That is a challenging place from which to launch “Donda” — named for West’s mother, who died in 2007 following a cosmetic surgery procedure — an urgent but sometimes center-less album that finds common ground between the scabrousness of “Yeezus” and the ethereality of his recent gospel turn. Given that it is an album dedicated to his mother’s memory, “Donda” is only intermittently emotional — more an achievement of texture and logistics than catharsis.West remains capable of orchestrating impressive pop music. “Hurricane,” with sweet vocals from the Weeknd, is disarmingly pretty. “Junya” pulses with church organ and SoundCloud rap puckishness. “Believe What I Say,” which samples Lauryn Hill — one of the few times you hear a woman’s voice on this album — is among the most easeful songs West has made in a decade.Several songs, including “No Child Left Behind,” “Jesus Lord” and “24,” sound like kin to the music West was making during his embrace of gospel. (He excised all cursing from this album, even bleeping out his guests.) But there are songs, like the recycled Pop Smoke collaboration “Tell the Vision” and the drowsy “Moon,” that feel purely decorative. As a Kanye West album, it feels more like a stabilization than an innovation.Once a wordplay-obsessed, self-aware lyricist, West has shifted in the last decade to a more terse and immediate approach, one that complements his musical shifts toward the industrial and the spiritual. His late-period music makes a trade-off between complexity and directness. His songs pound and annihilate now. They’re corporeal studies of psychological hurt.That approach went hand in hand with how West channeled his angst at last week’s Chicago listening event. He had a faithful re-creation of his childhood home built on a hilltop at the center of the stadium, then encircled it with rows of sentry dancers and black vehicles driving in concentric circles. This was a phalanx of protection, a way to consecrate and protect the place he was raised.He also presented the home as a safe harbor. At the beginning of the show, he was almost immediately joined on the porch by Marilyn Manson and DaBaby — a Kanye’s Ark of the canceled and disbarred. Onstage, the guests looked bored, purposefully bored, above-reproach bored. (Manson is facing accusations of sexual abuse. DaBaby recently made homophobic statements during a festival performance.) West’s choice to include these widely derided figures exists somewhere between empathy for those who have been shunned for their misdeeds (suggesting that even those who have sinned are worthy of love) and aligning with the maligned for easy outrage.If that is a coherent politics, it is animated by West’s longstanding sense of grievance that he is misunderstood, but it was ultimately a distraction from the album’s intended tribute. Also, even though the scale of the event was overwhelming, it was less elegant than earlier concert performances where he communed with his mother’s spirit.DaBaby and Marilyn Manson joined West onstage in Chicago.Joshua MellinThis continues on the album itself, which is 27 tracks long, nearly two hours of music; it is sonically cohesive but also overlong and full of heavily assembled songs — multiple producers and writers, a bounty of male guests. West has long been shifting into conductor mode, and on several songs here, he is the ballast but not the focus.Jay Electronica has a commanding verse on “Donda.” Fivio Foreign has a great verse on “Donda.” Lil Baby has a very good verse on “Donda.” Lil Durk has a striking verse on “Donda.” Sheek Louch, who sounds like he’s been mainlining Ka records, has an excellent verse on “Donda.” Jay-Z has a decent verse on “Donda.” Westside Gunn has a lovely verse on “Donda.”West, though? Fewer than you’d think. The more you listen for West on “Donda,” the less you really hear him. The more fragmentary the lyrics are, the less satisfying they are.But what keeps him from being a shadow presence on his own album is his ear for hooks, the way he can distill one quick phrase — be it a goof, a talking-to or an exultation — into something utterly sticky. “I know God breathed on this.” “He’s done miracles on me.” “Is to lay me or play me a bigger flex though?”West has long wielded the voices of others to amplify his own — this has been true at least since the Hawaii sessions that birthed “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” one of his essential albums. As he’s become less of a full-time musician and more of a polymath who sometimes makes music, that tendency has grown, getting perhaps its purest expression just before the start of the pandemic, when the majority of his music-making came in the form of live performances of the Sunday Service Choir, a gospel troupe he assembled and directed but rarely contributed vocals to. At that point, it seemed as if West might be permanently decentering himself, or at least using his success primarily as a launching platform for others.The “Donda” era realigns things, more in keeping with how West released “The Life of Pablo” and “Ye,” his last pre-gospel albums. There are, at the moment, at least four versions of “Donda” — the official one released on streaming services (though there’s no guarantee that one’s not in flux), and the ones West played at each of his listening events.Instead of focusing on “Donda” as an album, or a playlist version of an album, it’s helpful to think of it more like theater, an iterative affair that evolves a little each time you encounter it. In the last few weeks, it has gone from regional company to Off Broadway to the Great White Way — each stop on that journey matters.West encircled the re-creation of his childhood home with rows of sentry dancers and black vehicles, a way to consecrate and protect the place he was raised.Joshua MellinTypically, musicians keep listeners walled off from their process (at least until the 50th anniversary boxed set), but West has been contending that the assembly is part of the art. Not sure which version of a song is better? Include both, as West does with four different titles here. Not sure if your album is complete? Play it for fans and get feedback in real time. (Online chatter suggested he was paying attention to fan reactions to help shape what he would tweak or adjust.)And why not monetize the uncertainty? West thrives in an attention economy, and with these live events, has found a way to make this interstitial period revenue-generating and curiosity-piquing.This structurelessness allows “Donda” to function not simply as an album but also a marker of time. The day after the Lox dominated Dipset at Verzuz, they took a private jet to Atlanta, where they laid down verses that became part of “Jesus Lord Pt 2.” The two versions of “Jail” on the album capture the surprise rapprochement between West and his old friend and mentor Jay-Z, as captured in the second “Donda” listening, and also the head-scratcher of the third session, when fans heard a version of that song which scrapped Jay-Z in favor of DaBaby. Both takes survive here.If little else, the “Donda” rollout has served as a demonstration that West can take scrambled eggs and, with a few weeks’ effort, make them something like whole. And, perhaps something of a surprise given the ire he inspires in some circles, he can still corral chart-topping levels of attention. “Donda” is expected to have one of the biggest opening weeks of the year.That is a big victory for spectacle. And yet the most striking jolt on “Donda” — indeed, in this whole rollout cycle — comes in an exceedingly rare moment of intimacy, when West raps about his disintegrating marriage on “Lord I Need You.” Despite how intensely you can hear West throughout “Donda,” you almost never really see him; this is one of those moments, though.“Too many complaints made it hard for me to think/Would you shut up? I can’t hear myself drink,” he raps, with patience and regret and a tinge of the absurd twists he favors in his lyrics whenever they threaten to get too serious. But when he raps “God got us, baby/God got the children,” it’s hard to hear something other than bare exhaustion and sadness — it’s pure surrender. “Donda” is a huge stage, but this is the only moment West stands at its center, undisturbed, raw. More