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      Punk-Rock Teens’ Anti-Hate Anthem, and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Blk Jks, Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen, City Girls 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.The Linda Lindas, ‘Racist, Sexist Boy’Don’t mess with The Linda Lindas.Watch the full concert: https://t.co/Usv7HJ1lLR pic.twitter.com/pKZ5TKDdiA— L.A. Public Library (@LAPublicLibrary) May 20, 2021
      It can be comforting, in times like these, to be slapped cold by undeniable truth. And so it is with the Linda Lindas, a band made up of four Asian and Latina teens and tweens — Bela, Eloise, Lucia, Mila — who this week had a clip of a recent performance at the Cypress Park branch of the Los Angeles Public Library go viral. The song is “Racist, Sexist Boy,” and it pulls no punches, switching back and forth between Eloise, 13, singing in an urgently aggrieved fashion (“You have racist, sexist joys/We rebuild what you destroy”) and the drummer, Mila, who is 10, whose sections are quick and finger-waving (“You turn away from what you don’t wanna hear”). The Linda Lindas have generated a significant wave of attention in the three years since the band was founded. A couple of the members’ parents are culture luminaries: Martin Wong, a founder of the tastemaking Asian-American cultural magazine Giant Robot; and Carlos de la Garza, a mixer and engineer for bands including Paramore and Best Coast. The band is beloved by Kathleen Hanna, who selected it to open one of Bikini Kill’s reunion shows; and it has appeared in the recent Netflix film “Moxie.” The band’s self-titled 2020 EP is sharp punk-inflected indie pop. And this new song, which Eloise said was inspired by a real-life experience, is a needs-no-explanation distillation of righteous anger. It’s severely relatable, so shout along with the band: “Poser! Blockhead! Riffraff! Jerk face!” JON CARAMANICABlk Jks, ‘Yoyo! — The Mandela Effect/Black Aurora Cusp Druids Ascending’It has been 12 years since the far-reaching South African band Blk Jks released its debut album, “After Robots”; it has returned with “Abantu/Before Humans,” which it describes, in part, as an “Obsidian Rock Audio Anthology chronicling the ancient spiritual technologies and exploits of prehistoric, post-revolutionary Afro bionics and sacred texts from The Great Book on Arcanum.” Blk Jks draw on music from across Africa, including South African choral traditions and West African guitar licks, along with psychedelia, funk, jazz and a fierce sense of political urgency. “They’ll never give you power/You’ll have to take the power” they chant to open the song, heralded by a barrage of drums and pushing into a syncopated thicket of horns and voices with a burst of acceleration at the end. JON PARELESAngelique Kidjo featuring Mr Eazi and Salif Keita, ‘Africa, One of a Kind’On Angelique Kidjo’s next album, “Mother Nature,” she collaborates across boundaries and generations. Kidjo — who is from Benin — shares “Africa, One of a Kind,” with Salif Keita, from Mali, and Mr Eazi, from Nigeria. The lyrics are multilingual, and the rhythmic mesh, with little guitar lines tickling against crisp percussion and choral affirmations, is joyfully Pan-African. PARELESSharon Van Etten & Angel Olsen, ‘Like I Used To’A full-scale Wall of Sound — by way of the glockenspiel-topped “Born to Run” — pumps through “Like I Used To” as Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen grapple with prospects of post-pandemic reopening and reconnecting. The sound and voices are heroic; the lyrics are more hesitant, but hopeful. PARELESCarsie Blanton, ‘Party at the End of the World’“It’s too late now to fix this mess,” Carsie Blanton observes, “So honey put on that party dress.” Blanton shrugs off impending doom in a broad-shouldered Southern rock track slathered with guitars, allowing that she’s going to miss “snow in winter, rain in summer” as well as “banging drums and banging drummers.” PARELESLil Baby and Kirk Franklin, ‘We Win (Space Jam: A New Legacy)’Three types of not wholly compatible ecstasy commingle on the first single from the forthcoming soundtrack to “Space Jam: A New Legacy.” Just Blaze’s triumphalist production finds an optimal partner in Kirk Franklin’s exhortations. Lil Baby’s sinuous, reedy raps are perhaps not as sturdy, though — they feel like light filigree atop an arresting mountain peak. CARAMANICAJaimie Branch, ‘Theme 001’“Fly or Die Live” feels of a piece with the two studio recordings that Jaimie Branch — a trumpeter and composer, loosely definable as jazz, but with a punk musician’s disregard for musical pleasantry — has released in the past few years with Fly or Die, her cello-bass-drums quartet. That’s mostly because those records already had a rich, gritty, textural, semi-ambient vibe: They felt pretty much live already. But “Fly or Die Live,” which is full of long excursions by individual band members and intense, forward-pushing sections driven forward by Chad Taylor’s drums, finds the band clicking in and lifting off in a way that feels different. It’s especially palpable on “Theme 001,” originally a highlight from the band’s debut record, this time with new textures thanks to Lester St. Louis’s reverb-drenched cello. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOCity Girls, ‘Twerkulator’Look, it’s just TikTok-era sweaty talk over “Planet Rock,” which is, in the current pop ecosystem, is really all it takes. CARAMANICAOneohtrix Point Never & Rosalía, ‘Nothing’s Special’Daniel Lopatin, a.k.a. Oneohtrix Point Never, traded up with his new remake of “Nothing’s Special,” the closing track from his 2020 album “Magic Oneohtrix Point Never.” He replaced his own processed vocal, which blurred into the track, with Rosalía in her latest unexpected collaboration. She sings a Spanish translation of the lyrics, with thoughts about staring into nothingness after losing one’s best friend. The original electronic track has been tweaked and transposed upward, with its misty descending chords, sampled voices and a hammered dulcimer. Rosalía’s voice is fully upfront: gentle, mournful, tremulous and humbled by grief. Now the song is unmistakably an elegy. PARELESLil Nas X, ‘Sun Goes Down’Less than two months after gleefully stirring up a moral panic with “Montero (Call Me by Your Name),” Lil Nas X returns in an unassailably benevolent guise: fighting off suicidal thoughts in “Sun Goes Down.” In a reassuring low purr of a melody, cushioned by kindly guitars, voluminous bass tones and a string section, he acknowledges old wounds and self-destructive impulses, and then determinedly rises above them: “I know that you want to cry/But there’s much more to life than dying over your past mistakes.” PARELESRalph Peterson Jr. featuring Jazzmeia Horn, ‘Tears I Cannot Hide’The drummer Ralph Peterson Jr., who would have turned 59 on Thursday but died earlier this year, was known for the propulsion of his swing feel, and the sheer power of his playing. But he was given to forbearance and tenderness, too, when the circumstances called for it, and on “Raise Up Off Me,” his final studio album, it’s his subtlety that sends the album’s message of frustration and dignity home. That’s true on the semiabstract title track, which opens the album, and on “Tears I Cannot Hide,” a contemplative Peterson-penned ballad, to which the rising star Jazzmeia Horn adds lyrics and vocals. RUSSONELLO More

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      Silk Sonic or J. Cole Has the No. 1 Song, Depending on the Chart

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      In a rare but not unheard-of discrepancy, Billboard and Rolling Stone named two different singles as the week’s biggest.What is the No. 1 song in the country? These days, it depends on the chart.On Wednesday, Billboard announced, after a two-day delay, that “Leave the Door Open” by Silk Sonic, the new retro-soul project of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, reached the top spot on the Hot 100, the magazine’s singles chart and the industry standard since 1958.But days earlier, the competing Rolling Stone 100 crowned J. Cole’s new “Interlude” as its No. 1, with “Leave the Door Open” just No. 10. On Billboard’s latest chart, “Interlude” reached only as high as No. 8.Even more strange, both charts are now owned by the same company. When Rolling Stone introduced its rankings in 2019, they were positioned as competitors to Billboard’s, with different data sources and methodologies. Rolling Stone chart positions are often hyped by fans and press agents, but have not proved a major challenge to Billboard’s authority.Last year, a deal between the publishers of Rolling Stone and Billboard brought both companies under a new joint venture, P-MRC. Jay Penske, the young media entrepreneur who represents half that deal, controls those publications as part of a portfolio that now also includes The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Deadline, WWD and Vibe. P-MRC also has a 50 percent stake in the South by Southwest festivals.A spokeswoman for MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm, said the delay in the magazine’s Hot 100 was a result of data anomalies that were being investigated by its chart experts, and was not related to Rolling Stone having a conflicting song at No. 1. It is also not the first discrepancy: Early this year, Olivia Rodrigo’s blockbuster “Drivers License” topped the Billboard chart for eight weeks, but Rolling Stone’s for only five.Rolling Stone looks at songs’ sales and popularity on audio streaming services, but not radio; for the Hot 100, Billboard considers sales, audio and video streams, along with radio spins. Still a persistent head-scratcher in the music world is why the same company maintains two separate and competing charts.In a slow week for albums, the Memphis rapper Moneybagg Yo reclaims the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 chart with “A Gangsta’s Pain.” It had the equivalent of 61,000 sales in the United States, mostly from streaming, according to MRC Data. “A Gangsta’s Pain,” which had opened at the top two weeks ago, then dipped to No. 2, had the lowest sales number for a No. 1 album since early January, when Taylor Swift’s “Evermore” notched its third time at the top with 56,000 sales in the post-holiday doldrums.Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is in second place, while last week’s top seller, DJ Khaled’s “Khaled Khaled,” falls to No. 3 in its second week out. Justin Bieber’s “Justice” is No. 4.Dua Lipa is in fifth place with her album “Future Nostalgia.” Lipa’s song “Levitating,” featuring the rapper DaBaby, is No. 2 on Billboard’s singles chart thanks in part to its popularity on TikTok. More

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      T.I. and Tiny Under Investigation by Los Angeles Police

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      The Atlanta rapper and his wife, a singer, have faced accusations from multiple women who said that they were drugged and sexually assaulted by the couple. T.I. and Tameka Harris have denied the allegations.The multiplatinum rapper T.I., born Clifford Harris, and his wife, Tameka Harris, an R&B singer known as Tiny, are the subjects of an active criminal investigation in Los Angeles following claims that they drugged and sexually assaulted women there, authorities said on Tuesday.Tyrone A. Blackburn, a lawyer representing multiple women who have made accusations against the Harrises in several states, said that one of his clients had met virtually last month with detectives for the Los Angeles Police Department regarding an incident that occurred in 2005. A police spokesman, Officer Jader Chaves, confirmed that the investigation into T.I. and Ms. Harris was active.The woman, a military veteran who requested anonymity to protect her family, said in an earlier interview with The New York Times that she met the famous couple in the V.I.P. section of a Los Angeles club. Ms. Harris offered her a sip of a drink that the veteran later came to believe was spiked with a drug that left her incapacitated. T.I. and Ms. Harris then raped her in a hotel room, the woman said, calling the incident a life-altering trauma. The couple has denied any instances of non-consensual sex.The statute of limitations for most rape cases in Los Angeles before 2017 is typically 10 years. But Mr. Blackburn noted that there are exceptions allowing the authorities to pursue older cases, as they did recently when they brought charges against Harvey Weinstein related to an incident that took place more than a decade ago.The Los Angeles police declined to discuss the investigation except to confirm that it was active. News of the investigation was first published by The Daily Beast.Steve Sadow, a lawyer for T.I. and Ms. Harris, said that they had not been contacted by the Los Angeles police or “any member of law enforcement from any other jurisdiction in the country.” Mr. Sadow added that the woman’s anonymity was “preventing us from being in a position to disprove or refute her allegations — or even examine them.”In February, Mr. Blackburn sent letters to law enforcement authorities in Georgia and California calling for criminal inquiries on behalf of 11 people who said they had been victimized by the Atlanta-based couple or members of their entourage. The letters described “eerily similar” experiences of “sexual abuse, forced ingestion of illegal narcotics, kidnapping, terroristic threats and false imprisonment” at the hands of T.I., Ms. Harris and their associates.At the time, representatives for the couple called the claims “a sordid shakedown campaign.”In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Blackburn said he was pleased by the progress of the investigation in Los Angeles. The identities of the women “are known to law enforcement, and that’s what matters,” he said. “We await further updates from the L.A.P.D.”In addition to the military veteran who spoke with investigators, Mr. Blackburn said in an interview that he represented at least two additional clients who wished to speak with the Los Angeles police.One woman, Rachelle Jenks, originally met T.I. and Ms. Harris in Las Vegas in 2010, when she said she was drugged and sexually assaulted, according to a police report filed there this month. Ms. Jenks said she was then transported to Los Angeles by the couple and again forced to engage in sex acts. Mr. Blackburn said that he expected her case to be referred to the Los Angeles police.The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department confirmed in a statement that it had received a claim of sexual assault involving the couple, but said that the incident fell outside of the statute of limitations for the crime. “Based on this, the case was closed, which is standard procedure for crimes reported outside of the statute,” the Las Vegas police said.A third woman, referred to anonymously in Mr. Blackburn’s letters to law enforcement, was an old friend of Ms. Harris who started working for the celebrity couple in 2005, traveling with them from Atlanta to Los Angeles as part of their entourage. Mr. Blackburn wrote in the letters that the couple had “forced her to engage in sexual acts with different women against her will,” and the woman confirmed that account in interviews with The Times.In addition to his success in music, T.I., 40, has reinvented himself as a businessman and community leader in Atlanta, and he has starred in reality shows that focus on his parenting of a blended family with Ms. Harris, 45. Production of the show “T.I. & Tiny: Friends & Family Hustle” was postponed by VH1 and MTV Entertainment following the sexual assault allegations earlier this year. More

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      Nicki Minaj Reunites With Lil Wayne and Drake, and 13 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Olivia Rodrigo, Tony Allen, L’Rain 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.Nicki Minaj with Drake and Lil Wayne, ‘Seeing Green’In honor of Nicki Minaj’s still-incendiary 2009 debut mixtape “Beam Me Up Scotty” finally arriving on streaming services, she’s organized a little YMCMB family reunion. “Seeing Green” is more of a status update than a club banger à la the trio’s classic “Truffle Butter,” but everyone is still in fine form. Wayne, as usual, plays the gonzo court jester, and he seizes the opportunity to unload all of those pandemic-related rhymes he’s been holding onto for the last year (“I put you six feet deep, I’m being socially distant”). Nicki locks back into her standard eviscerate-the-haters flow, and Drake continues to rap with a precision and bite that suggests, as did the recent “Scary Hours 2,” that whenever his promised “Certified Lover Boy” arrives, it might actually be worth the wait. “I played 48 minutes on a torn meniscus,” he boasts, “who’s subbing?” (But maybe see a doctor about that, Drake — it’s serious!) LINDSAY ZOLADZOlivia Rodrigo, ‘Good 4 U’The third single from Olivia Rodrigo’s forthcoming debut album, “Sour,” tells a story that will be familiar to anyone who’s heard her first single, “Driver’s License”: A former flame moves on too quickly after a breakup, leaving Rodrigo alone with all her feelings. But this time the 18-year-old Disney actress refracts it through a different lens and a whole new sonic palette. Though it starts off quiet, by the chorus “Good 4 U” explodes into a kind of “You Oughta Know” for the TikTok era, all righteous anger and pop-punky, primal-scream rage: “Good for you, you’re doing great out there without me — like a damn sociopath!” ZOLADZTorres, ‘Don’t Go Puttin Wishes in My Head’The new song from Mackenzie Scott — who makes brooding, searching indie-rock under the name Torres — might be the most accessible thing she’s ever released. And she knows it: She’s wryly described “Don’t Go Putting Wishes in My Head,” the first single from her forthcoming album “Thirstier,” as “my relentless arena country star moment.” More than anything, though, with its buzzing synths and soaring chorus, “Wishes” recalls the Killers at their most fist-clenchingly anthemic. “Just when I thought that it was over, it was only just beginning,” Scott sings, her voice trembling with intensity. She seems to understand that accepting joy can sometimes be an even more vulnerable act than confessing pain, but by the end of the song she sounds fearless, and ready to move toward the light. ZOLADZTony Allen, ‘Mau Mau’The drummer Tony Allen supplied the rhythmic foundation for Fela Kuti’s Nigerian Afrobeat in the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on West African traditions, jazz and funk, he built an architecture of unpredictable offbeats, unhurried but kinetic. Before his death in 2020, he had started a hip-hop project, creating beats and synthesizer bass lines and lining up vocalists. Allen’s new album, “There Is No End,” was completed posthumously by the producers Vincent Taeger and Vincent Taurelle. “Mau Mau” features Nah Eeto, a rapper from Kenya, with multitracked vocals that calmly bounce around the syllables of her lyrics — some in English, some not — to highlight all the ways Allen could dodge the downbeat while constantly flicking the music onward. JON PARELESMaría Grand, ‘Now, Take, Your, Day’The rising tenor saxophonist María Grand wrote the tunes that appear on “Reciprocity,” her new LP, in the middle of a pregnancy, while reading spiritual texts and paying close attention to the bond she was building with her not-yet-born child. (The album’s liner notes include her written reflections on becoming a mother, and how this found its way into the music.) The album, featuring Kanoa Mendenhall on bass and Savannah Harris on drums, is also a testament to the constant regeneration that becomes possible within a close musical partnership; on track after track, Grand dances nimbly over Harris’s subtly shifting patterns, and Mendenhall stubbornly insists on never repeating herself. “Now, Take, Your, Day” begins with all three members singing the song’s title in harmony, before the rhythm section lays down a loosely funky beat and Grand introduces the song’s downward-slanting melody on saxophone. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOBella Poarch, ‘Build a Bitch’Like many TikTok stars, Bella Poarch is making a move into her own music. “Build a Bitch” comes across cute and furious. Tinkly toy-piano sounds and perky la-las accompany her as she points out that women aren’t consumer products. “You don’t get to pick and choose/Different ass and bigger boobs,” she coos. “If you need perfect, I’m not built for you.” A post-“Westworld” video set in an android factory ends, inevitably, in mayhem. PARELESSleater-Kinney, ‘Worry With You’The forthcoming, self-produced Sleater-Kinney album “Path of Wellness” will be the first the Portland band releases as a duo, since its longtime power-drummer Janet Weiss departed in 2019, and her absence certainly makes the song feel a bit muted and minor. But there’s still a familiar pleasure in hearing Carrie Brownstein’s snaking guitar riffs and staccato vocals intertwine with Corin Tucker’s, as they sing of a long-term togetherness that’s provided comfort in good times and bad: “If I’m gonna mess up,” they avow, “I’m gonna mess up with you.” ZOLADZMartin Garrix featuring Bono & The Edge, ‘We Are the People’The official 2020 UEFA European Football Championship song is exactly what you’d expect from a soccer anthem by a big-room EDM D.J. collaborating with half of U2: a grand, thumping march with pinging guitars, vast synthesizer swells and determinedly inspirational lyrics. “You’ve faith and no fear for the fight,” Bono sings, “You pull hope from defeat in the night.” The song uses familiar tools for stadium-scale uplift, but they can still work. PARELESHolly Macve, ‘You Can Do Better’Regrets and reverb both loom large on Holly Macve’s second album, “Not the Girl,” a set of country-rooted ballads that place her reedy voice — determinedly sustained through countless breaks and quavers — in wide-screen, retro arrangements. “You Can Do Better” is a stately, swaying waltz, a breakup-and-makeup scenario that builds up to dramatic questions, swirling across voices and strings: “Is it so wrong to love you?/Is it so wrong to care?” PARELESL’Rain, ‘Blame Me’L’Rain — the songwriter, musician and producer Taja Cheek — opens an ever-widening, ever more disorienting sonic vortex in “Blame Me,” from her second album, “Fatigue,” due June 25. Sparse guitars pick fragments of chords that fall, then rise, as L’Rain muses cryptically on mortality and remorse. Soon, they’re enveloped by a ghostly orchestra and distant voices intoning, “Waste away now, make my way down”; as the track ends, she’s still in a lush harmonic and emotional limbo. PARELESElaine, ‘Right Now’Elaine is from South Africa, where she already has a large audience. But her sound bespeaks international R&B ambitions, with programmed trap drum sounds and an American accent. In “Right Now,” she tries to juggle a damaged relationship against a burgeoning career. “I cannot continue carrying all your insecurities/I got more priorities,” she sings, quietly but adamantly. Her alto is low, intimate and flexible; with her priorities, she’s not about to indulge a cheating ex, even if she’s tempted. PARELESAlan Jackson, ‘Where Have You Gone’“Where Have You Gone,” the title song of Alan Jackson’s new, 21-song album, starts off like a lonely lament for someone who’s left him: “It’s been way too long since you slipped away.” But it turns out he’s lamenting the way “sweet country music” used to sound: steel guitar, fiddle, “words from the heart.” It’s the style Jackson has upheld through his career, looking back to Merle Haggard and George Jones, only to see it supplanted lately by arena-country and infiltrations of hip-hop. “The airwaves are waiting,” he insists; current country radio says otherwise. PARELESSons of Kemet featuring Moor Mother and Angel Bat Dawid, ‘Pick Up Your Burning Cross’Over the rough rhythmic onrush of this United Kingdom-based quartet — featuring Theon Cross’s pulsing tuba, Shabaka Hutchings’s roof-raising saxophone and the interlocked drumming of Edward Wakili-Hick and Tom Skinner — a voice hovers, singing and speaking and laughing. It belongs to Angel Bat Dawid, and it’s soon joined by that of Moor Mother, another revolutionary poet and musician from this side of the Atlantic. “I don’t think you remember me/I was in last place,” Moor Mother begins, serving notice as the band presses ahead. The piece is on “Black to the Future,” Sons of Kemet’s fourth album. RUSSONELLOErika Dohi, ‘Particle Of …’Erika Dohi, a Japanese keyboardist and composer now based in New York City, is one of the musicians affiliated with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver’s label 37d03d (“people” upside-down). “Particle Of …” comes from her new album “I, Castorpollux,” and while it was composed by Andy Akiho (who also directed her music video), it fits the album’s aesthetic of Minimalistic repetitions and startling fractures. It uses percussive, single-note patterns on piano and prepared piano, played live and then computer manipulated, equally virtuosic and digitally skewed. Chords arrive at the end, like a surprise visit from 20th-century modernism. PARELES More

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      Tina Turner and Jay-Z Lead Rock Hall of Fame’s 2021 Inductees

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      Foo Fighters, the Go-Go’s, Carole King and Todd Rundgren were also voted in, meaning nearly half of the 15 individuals in this year’s class are women.For years, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has been pummeled by criticism that its inductees — the marble busts in the pantheon of rock — were too homogeneous, and that the secretive insiders who create the ballots showed a troubling pattern of excluding women.This year the voters seem to have listened: The class of 2021 features Jay-Z, Foo Fighters, the Go-Go’s, Carole King, Tina Turner and Todd Rundgren — a collection of 15 individuals that includes seven women.That ratio alone should lend a new energy to the 36th annual induction ceremony, planned for Oct. 30 at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland.In past years, when women have been inducted, they have been far outnumbered by men. In 2019, for example, Stevie Nicks and Janet Jackson may have stood triumphant, but their earnest speeches — Jackson: “Please induct more women” — did not seem to last as long as it took to name every male bass player of the rock bands that joined alongside them.Dave Grohl, center, and the members of Foo Fighters. Grohl is already in the hall as a member of Nirvana.Magdalena Wosinska for The New York TimesThe latest inductees show a balance of genre and generation that has come to be a feature of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s expanding tent. Foo Fighters, led by Dave Grohl, represent the cream of 1990s-vintage alternative rock. Jay-Z is rap incarnate. And the Go-Go’s stand for joyful, upbeat 1980s power-pop.Each of those acts was a first-time nominee, although the Go-Go’s — the first and only all-woman rock band to score a No. 1 album on Billboard’s chart — have been eligible since 2006. (Artists can be nominated 25 years after the release of their first recording.)The Go-Go’s in the early 1980s: from left, Kathy Valentine, Jane Wiedlin, Gina Schock, Charlotte Caffey and Belinda Carlisle.Paul Natkin/WireImageRundgren, the prolific producer and multi-instrumentalist, occupies the role of the auteur from classic rock’s flowering in the late 1960s and early ’70s; Turner is a force of nature whose career has stretched from old-school R&B to MTV-era pop; and King is the singer-songwriter and conscience who brings gravitas to the proceedings.Three of this year’s inductees were already in the hall: Grohl as a member of Nirvana, Turner with Ike and Tina Turner, and King as a nonperformer, with her songwriting partner and former husband Gerry Goffin.The story of the inductions is also told by who didn’t make the cut. The voters — a group of more than 1,000 artists, journalists and industry veterans — decided against the bands Iron Maiden, Devo, New York Dolls and Rage Against the Machine, as well as Kate Bush, Mary J. Blige, Chaka Khan and Dionne Warwick.The Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti would have been the first Black musician from Africa to join the hall, but was not voted in this year. Leni Sinclair/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesFela Kuti, the Nigerian-born pioneer of Afrobeat, had been the surprise nominee this year, and was one of the artists chosen in the Hall of Fame’s fan vote — an online public poll that creates a single official ballot — thanks in part to support from African stars like Burna Boy. Kuti would have been the first Black artist from Africa to join the hall, but he failed in his first time on the ballot. (Trevor Rabin of Yes is from South Africa, and Freddie Mercury of Queen was born in Zanzibar, now part of Tanzania; both bands are in the Hall of Fame.)And LL Cool J, a titan of hip-hop who also received high-profile support this year, lost after a sixth nomination. But he has been given a musical excellence award, for people “whose originality and influence creating music have had a dramatic impact on music.” This category was once known as the sidemen award, but it is also something of a consolation prize: The producer and guitarist Nile Rodgers won it in 2017 after Chic, his band, was passed over 11 times.The other musical excellence recipients this year include Billy Preston, the keyboardist who was a frequent collaborator of the Beatles, and Randy Rhoads, a guitarist with Ozzy Osbourne.Also this year, the Ahmet Ertegun Award, for nonperformers, will go to the record executive Clarence Avant, and “early influence” trophies will go to Gil Scott-Heron, Charley Patton and Kraftwerk, the German electronic pioneers who had been nominated for induction six times.The induction ceremony is to be broadcast later on HBO and streamed on HBO Max. More

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      DJ Khaled Reaches No. 1 With ‘Khaled Khaled’

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      The album, titled after the star’s full name, has guest appearances by Drake, Megan Thee Stallion, Justin Bieber and more than a dozen others.Two years ago, a pair of hip-hop luminaries, DJ Khaled and Tyler, the Creator, faced off on the Billboard album chart, hawking not just music but also T-shirts, lawn signs and energy drinks.The contest between them — Tyler won, Khaled came in second — stirred up long-simmering frustrations in the industry over the use of retail bundles to increase music sales and goose artists’ chart positions. The fallout from that chart battle, and others like it, led to Billboard tightening its rules late last year.This week, with bundling largely banished to the dustbin of industry sales gimmicks — a very crowded dustbin — DJ Khaled took No. 1 with his latest release, “Khaled Khaled,” which had the equivalent of 93,000 sales in the United States, including 107 million streams and 14,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to MRC Data. It is DJ Khaled’s third time at No. 1.The album, titled after the star’s full name, is a textbook example of DJ Khaled’s style: hyper-pumped affirmations of glory and humility (“Thankful” is the first track, not to be confused with “Grateful” a couple albums ago), delivered with a deep bench of guest stars — this one features Drake, Megan Thee Stallion, Lil Wayne, Nas, Justin Bieber, Justin Timberlake, Post Malone, Jay-Z and more than a dozen others. In addition to DJ Khaled, the album’s credited executive producers include his two young sons, Asahd and Aalam.Also this week, “A Gangsta’s Pain” by the Memphis rapper Moneybagg Yo fell to No. 2 in its second week out. Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” holds at No. 3; Bieber’s “Justice” is in fourth place; and “Slime Language 2,” the project led by the rapper Young Thug, is No. 5. More

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      E-40, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg and Too Short Form New Rap Group

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      Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, E-40 and Too Short — the old school titans in this new supergroup — made their live debut at an event featuring pop stars and TikTok influencers.ATLANTA — Many people have reconnected with old friends and undertaken new projects during the pandemic. On a Friday night in April, in a large, brightly lit room deep in the bowels of Mercedes-Benz stadium in downtown Atlanta, four of them gathered to introduce their new venture to the world.The voluble E-40, who has released more than 25 albums of distinctive, loquacious street rap, gingerly removed his face mask and offered Tycoon cognac, a product of his own spirits company, to the 20 or so others present, including his old friends Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg and Too Short.“You got a cup?” Ice Cube asked, shooting a withering glance at E-40. “What, you gonna pour it in my hand?” Cube is a bullish figure whose blunt, confrontational bearing has made him an intimidating presence as an M.C., a comic one in films like “Friday” and “21 Jump Street” and the object of occasional good-natured mockery among this cohort.Clear plastic cups were located. E-40 poured the liquor, then dipped his nose into his cup before tossing back a shot.Snoop cackled from behind a black face mask he’d yet to remove. “You made the drink and you’re sniffing it like you’ve got to check it?” he said. “It’s your drink!”E-40 shook his head. “You’re supposed to. It’s the same with wine. Cognac is a grape.” He began to expound on his beverage’s fragrant qualities before Cube cut him off.“Save the commercial until after the photo shoot.”The four rap veterans bantered and bickered — about baby powder, about Ric Flair, about the correct amount of time to microwave shrimp fried rice — the way you’d expect from guys who’ve known each other for 30 years. Despite their long, often intertwined histories, it took a global crisis to clear enough time in their schedules to form the supergroup that Cube christened Mount Westmore, a nod to the members’ stature in rap and their West Coast roots.Clockwise from top left: Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Too Short and E-40, a few decades ago. “We can hang with the youngsters or take you back down memory lane,” Ice Cube said.Top l-r: Brian Rasic/Getty Images; Al Pereira/Getty Images, via, Michael Ochs Archives Bottom l-r: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images; Toby Canham/Getty ImagesThe four were at the stadium to do their first interview and photo shoot together, followed by a rehearsal and taping of Mount Westmore’s first performance, which was broadcast the next night as part of a pay-per-view package featuring pop stars and TikTok influencers, headlined by a live boxing match between the YouTuber Jake Paul and the retired MMA fighter Ben Askren. (Snoop is an investor in Triller, the social media platform that promoted the event, and a partner in its Fight Club series.)The collaboration initially took root early in the pandemic at E-40’s initiative. By last summer, the four were recording vocals in their home studios and dropping them into a group chat. Although rapping separately deprived them of some creative friction, it allowed everyone to work on their own schedule.“I can’t rap in the daytime,” Snoop said.“And I can’t rap late at night,” Too Short replied.Nonetheless, competition was fierce. “We come from that school of being around dope people that push us,” Snoop explained.Ice Cube nodded. “Working with Dre back in the day, if your verse wasn’t tight, you weren’t getting on the song.”Deep friendships fostered frank dialogue. “One of the earliest conversations was, ‘If something you do is wack, I’m going to tell you,’” said Too Short, who got his start selling tapes of his gleefully lascivious rhymes from the trunk of his car around the Bay Area in the mid-1980s.“What did you say?” Snoop asked, nodding toward Cube then lowering his voice an octave in a spot-on imitation of his friend’s trademark snarl. “‘I ain’t getting on that love song!’” The quartet recorded 50-plus songs, which they plan to spread across multiple releases, with the first planned for later this year.At the photo shoot, Cube suggested playing tracks from the upcoming album. A member of the group’s road crew fiddled with Snoop’s branded Bumpboxx, a digital boombox wrapped with the cover artwork from his classic 1992 debut, “Doggystyle,” but music was not immediately forthcoming. Snoop, tall and lean with long, dark hair that’s graying near his temples, walked over to investigate.“Turn the power off, then back on,” yelled Too Short. “That always fixes that.”E-40 sighed loudly. “Man, am I going to have to do this? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out.”Finally, the Bumpboxx sparked to life, playing Freddie Jackson’s 1986 R&B slow jam “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love.”“Well, that’s music,” said Cube. “It ain’t the right music, but it’s music.”Attention turned back to the camera. Too Short, who was wearing a colorful Versace T-shirt and dark jeans over his compact frame, had a suggestion. “Let’s make it look like some old New Edition pictures,” he said. “Or like the Temptations, how they line up the four dudes.”Cube balked at profile shots. “I don’t want to show the Volkswagen,” he said, putting his hands on his belly.E-40 turned sideways and twisted his third and fourth fingers to form a “W” with his left hand. “That hurts my fingers though,” he said. “I had surgery on those fingers.”Mount Westmore performing “Big Subwoofer” as part of a pay-per-view  event presented in Atlanta that included a live boxing match.Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images for TrillerAging can be a humbling process, but it’s especially fraught in hip-hop. The inevitable march of time has generally been treated as an unforgivable weakness in a culture that often celebrates a particular masculine idea of strength. As a then-26-year-old Compton rapper the Game once put it in a presumed shot at Jay-Z: “You 38 and you still rapping? Ugh.” (The Game is now 41 and reportedly preparing to release a new album this year.) The mid-to-late-30s has long been viewed as retirement age for rappers despite the fact so many qualities required of the job — sharp mind, quick tongue, storytelling acumen, life wisdom — are as likely to be growing as diminishing in middle age.So where does that leave Mount Westmore? At 49, Snoop is, in his words, “the baby of the bunch.” Ice Cube is 51, E-40 is 53 and Too Short is 55.“People have their hangups about it,” said Cube, “but if people love what’s coming out of the speakers, they’ll tolerate some gray hairs.”Snoop noted that the Rolling Stones are in their late 70s, and that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards don’t always seem to get along. “You’ve got that being praised and we’re being questioned,” he said. “We should be praised because we’re in our right mind, we love each other, we’re family men, we’re business men, and we’re Black men. If you look at the Cubes, the Will Smiths, the Jay-Zs, the Puffys, the Snoops, the Dr. Dres, the E-40s, whoever — they all flipped from rap to other businesses to show that if you close that door, we’ve got seven or eight other doors we’ve opened up.”Accordingly, music is only a part of the Mount Westmore plan. There’s talk of brand partnerships with Monster energy drink and the Cash app, a documentary, a scripted movie, podcasts and NFTs. As such, introducing the project during a social media-focused, music-heavy event spotlighting a former star of “Bizaardvark” boxing against a guy who’d never boxed before has a certain kind of insane logic to it.At 1 a.m., the four rappers were onstage, sitting side-by-side on large black thrones a few feet from a boxing ring on the stadium’s main floor. About 75 people gathered around, some working, many others just perched on a catwalk between the ring and a large camera crane, watching. The floor rumbled a little underfoot as the bass from the group’s song “Big Subwoofer” boomed from the sound system.The track, which they plan to release as an NFT, is a bouncy, trunk-rattling party anthem that feels like a not-too-distant-cousin of Snoop’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” as well as a pretty precise sum of its parts. The foursome rehearsed the song three times, trading playful verses over the spare, thumping beat, growing more confident and animated with each run through. Then, after Cube gave the group some final instructions — “Shut up and sit down. Let’s do this.” — they performed the song twice more as the cameras rolled. Job done.“We have all kinds of different songs,” said Cube. “We’ve got a mixture of what you always love from us as individuals but also records that show our range. We can hang with the youngsters or take you back down memory lane.”As Too Short had explained while the four friends huddled together after the photo shoot, “The hip-hop spirit doesn’t really age. It’s like a little kid thing you’ve got that’s your spark of life.”“What do we call ourselves?” E-40 asked him.“Old-ass youngsters,” Too Short replied. “That’s what it is.” More

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      An Anthem About Hugging Your Friends Again, and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Rostam, Marcellus Juvann, Gogo Penguin 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.Frank Turner, ‘The Gathering’Who better than Frank Turner, the punk-intense British folk singer, to underscore the imminent joy of reconnecting with others? Turner is barking on “The Gathering” — which casually features Dom Howard (from Muse, on drums) and an inquisitive guitar solo from Jason Isbell — and fully in pulpit mode: “I’ve been missing the feeling when we close up the gaps between us/It’s better than the best benediction, more bracing than blood lust.” Generally, this sort of earnestness can be wearying (even after a very wearying year-plus of isolation), but Turner succeeds because he sounds like he’s just stomped out of a stuffy meeting to go yell on a street corner, frantic with euphoria. JON CARAMANICALump, ‘Animal’In Lump, which releases an album called “Animal” in July, Laura Marling sets aside her virtuosic acoustic guitar to collaborate with Mike Lindsay, the electronics wizard from the folktronica group Tunng. For the album’s title song, she gives herself terse syllable counts — “All that you want/Is to be heard” — as Lindsay supplies steady pulses and blips. But midway through, the metronomic pulse breaks down and Marling leaves her deadpan monotone to wail, “I need more.” Then she submits once again to the digital grid. JON PARELESKhaira Arby, ‘Ferene’The Malian singer Khaira Arby, who died in 2018, was a clarion vocalist who led an incendiary band, fusing Malian modes and rhythms and combining traditional string instruments — the tehardant and ngoni — with a psychedelic electric-guitar attack. “New York Live,” a newly released recording from her first concert in North America, magnificently captures the spiraling energy of her concerts. Listen to the whole remarkable set, or jump in near the peak with “Ferene,” with its intricate cymbal cross-rhythms, its exultant call-and-response vocals and its bursts of fuzz-toned guitar frenzy. PARELESRostam, ‘From the Back of a Cab’Rostam, formerly of Vampire Weekend, zeros in on the awkward intimacy of a particular moment: the cab ride to the airport, a last bit of togetherness before a strictly defined parting. “I am happy you and I got this hour,” he croons, over a nervous six-beat rhythm and echoey piano chords and guitar tones; the relationship stays tentative, conditional. PARELESRodrigo Amarante, ‘Maré’“Maré” means tide, and in his new single, the Brazilian songwriter Rodrigo Amarante compares destiny to a tidal ebb and flow, singing with a tone of weary acceptance. His music has its own push and pull, with three-against-two rhythms and a tangle of instrumental lines — guitars, percussion, a nasal synthesizer, a horn section, some whistling — that interlock but sound like they might collide at any moment. It sounds charmingly ramshackle; it’s not. PARELESGogo Penguin featuring Cornelius, ‘Kora (Cornelius Remix)’Gogo Penguin looks like a jazz trio — piano, bass and drums — but its music also has plenty in common with the repetition, terse motifs and inexorable evolution of electronica. Its new album, “Gogo Penguin Remixes,” hands over tracks from the 2020 “Gogo Penguin” to electronica wizards like Squarepusher, Machinedrum, 808 State and, on “Kora,” the Japanese producer Cornelius. The original’s pecking, stop-start piano theme hints at the plucking of an African kora; Cornelius extrapolates the implied harmonies of that theme to build a sustained, whooshing, buzzing, superstructure, as if he’s unveiling the tune’s futuristic inner life. PARELESJoe Lovano and Dave Douglas, ‘Life on Earth’The saxophonist Joe Lovano and the trumpeter Dave Douglas recorded the tracks that would become “Other Worlds,” the new album from their quintet, Sound Prints, in January 2020, just weeks ahead of a global shutdown. Most of the tunes on the album were done in just one take, and the band’s natural comfort comes through here. On “Life on Earth,” a swiftly shuffling Douglas tune, the pianist Lawrence Fields plays less and less as the trumpeter’s solo develops, moving from a colorist’s role to that of a jagged percussion instrument. Lovano’s tenor saxophone solo brings a sluice of energy flooding back in, until Fields and the bassist Linda May Han Oh finish off the solo section with briefly suspenseful, dashing statements of their own. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOMarcellus Juvann, ‘Wrong’“Hardheaded,” the fascinating new self-produced EP from the Houston rapper Marcellus Juvann, is full of clever, quirky, urgent and oddball beats. They’re uniformly potent, and a strong match for Juvann’s rapping, which he delivers in a lightly croaky, lightly stumbling, lightly swinging voice that telegraphs confidence and disaffection all at once. CARAMANICATrippie Redd featuring Playboi Carti, ‘Miss the Rage’A fan edit of this track has been making the rounds on TikTok, but this version is different, with a new Playboi Carti verse. Trippie Redd remains underappreciated and committed to SoundCloud rap staccato, and Carti sticks with his mewling yelps, all over a beat that suggests a starship shifting into warp gear. CARAMANICAElohim and Big Freedia, ‘Strut’As if 21st-century life weren’t surveilled enough, the Los Angeles producer and songwriter Elohim has enlisted the New Orleans bounce icon Big Freedia to join her in saying that even a sidewalk is a runway, a place to perform and be judged. The beat is downright perky, even if the message is oppressive. Still, sometimes a sidewalk is just a sidewalk. PARELESCarlos Niño, ‘Ripples, Reflection, Loop’Ambient music is having a moment, fed partly by our urge for peace amid the anxiety of a pandemic, but also by a need for contact with the outside world — for physicality and touch. A lot of the quiet-seeking, time-stretching music that’s coming out from artists like Claire Rousay, Lea Bertucci and Ben Seretan isn’t primarily electronic; it lives up to the “ambient” designation more literally, ensconcing voices or instrumentals in the sounds of the outdoors. The Los Angeles-based percussionist and producer Carlos Niño’s new album, “More Energy Fields, Current,” places him and a small coterie of musician friends inside a wider environment, playing loops and gentle improvisations and long synthesizer chords. On “Ripples, Reflection, Loop,” he’s joined by the New Age pioneer Laraaji, the pianist Jamael Dean and the vocalist Sharada, who’s heard from what feels like a distance — and then startlingly, comfortingly up close. RUSSONELLO More