Takeoff (Rapper)

Subterms

    Latest story

    100 Shares119 Views

    Beyoncé Makes History at a Star-Powered Grammy Ceremony

    by

    LOS ANGELES — Beyoncé made Grammy history on Sunday night, setting a record at the awards’ 65th annual ceremony for the most career wins by any artist, after picking up a string of trophies for “Renaissance,” her hit album that mined decades of dance music.But she was once again shut out of the major categories, winning all four of her prizes for the night in down-ballot genre categories. Harry Styles took album of the year for “Harry’s House,” Lizzo won record of the year for her retro dance anthem “About Damn Time,” and song of the year went to Bonnie Raitt for “Just Like That.” It was Beyoncé’s fourth career loss for album of the year.Styles seemed at a loss for words as he accepted his Grammy, opening his remarks with a stunned profanity.Still, Beyoncé’s accomplishment resonated throughout the evening. Accepting her 32nd career award, Beyoncé thanked God and her family, and honored her “Uncle Jonny,” a gay relative whom she has described in the past as her “godmother” and as the person who exposed her to L.G.B.T.Q. culture.“I’d like thank the queer community for your love, and for inventing the genre,” she said to roars of applause from the crowd at the Crypto.com Arena as she won best dance/electronic music album for “Renaissance,” which was widely seen as a love letter to gay culture. (Even so, Beyoncé faced a backlash recently when she performed a private concert in Dubai, in United Arab Emirates, where homosexuality is illegal.)With her latest wins, Beyoncé surpassed Georg Solti, the Hungarian-born classical conductor who died in 1997 and had long held the title of the most career wins by any artist.Even Beyoncé’s competitors cheered her on. Accepting record of the year, Lizzo told a story of being inspired by seeing Beyoncé in concert (while skipping school).“You clearly are the artist of our lives!” she shouted. (In 2017, when Adele beat Beyoncé for album of the year, she said almost the same thing.)Beyoncé also won best dance/electronic recording (“Break My Soul”), traditional R&B performance (“Plastic Off the Sofa”) and best R&B song (“Cuff It”). She had been the most nominated artist of the evening, with nine nods.Gender freedom was a theme running through the night. Not long before Beyoncé’s win, Sam Smith, a nonbinary singer, and Kim Petras, a trans woman, won the award for pop/duo group performance for “Unholy,” and Petras drew cheers when she said she was “the first transgender woman to win this award.”“I hope that there’s a future where gender and identity and all these labels don’t matter that much,” Petras told reporters backstage. “Where people can just be themselves, and not get judged so hard and not be labeled so hard.”Gender freedom was a theme running through this year’s Grammys, as Kim Petras, a trans woman, and Sam Smith, a nonbinary singer, were among the night’s winners. Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for The Recording AcademyAfter two years of shows that were disrupted and delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the annual Grammy ceremony returned in full swing to its home court in Los Angeles (Crypto.com is the renamed Staples Center), bringing the music world together for glitz, competition and, behind the scenes, plenty of business schmoozing.“We made it!” exclaimed its host, Trevor Noah. “We’re back!”The power of stardom was another of the night’s major underlying themes. The show opened with a blast of brass and the hip-swaying rhythms of Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican superstar who represents the music industry’s hopes — he is a young celebrity with global appeal and massive numbers, both on streaming services and on the road.Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican superstar who opened the show on Sunday night, represents the music industry’s hopes: a young celebrity with global appeal and the numbers to match.Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated PressWalking through the aisles of the arena flanked by dancers in festive dress, he played two songs from his blockbuster album “Un Verano Sin Ti,” bringing both social commentary and party vibes, and getting stars like Taylor Swift dancing amid the bistro-style seating in front of the stage.Accepting the award for best música urbana album for “Un Verano,” Bad Bunny gave his speech in Spanish and English.“I just made this album with love and passion,” he said. “When you do things with love and passion, everything is easier.”Old-fashioned song craft remains a key touchstone for Grammy voters. Raitt, 73, was the surprise winner of song of the year — beating Adele, Beyoncé, Swift, Lizzo and Styles, whose songs were huge hits — for “Just Like That,” a tender meditation about an organ donation that had only modest commercial success. She accepted it as a recognition of the job of songwriting itself, and thanked other writers for providing her with material throughout her career.“I would not be up here tonight,” Raitt said, “if it wasn’t for the great soul-digging, hard-working people that put these songs and ideas to music.”Samara Joy, a singer who brought fresh interpretations to jazz classics, and began her career posting them online, won best new artist.In classic Grammy fashion, the ceremony also included some loving nods to the past.Stevie Wonder led a Motown revue that included Smokey Robinson and the country songwriter Chris Stapleton. One of the highlights of the night was a 12-minute celebration of the 50th anniversary of hip-hop — the genre’s origin is tied to a birthday party in the Bronx in 1973 — that featured LL Cool J, Busta Rhymes, Salt-N-Pepa, Method Man, Chuck D and Flavor Flav of Public Enemy, Missy Elliott, Future, Grandmaster Flash and many others.A somber, multipart “In Memoriam” segment included the country singer Kacey Musgraves singing Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter” barefoot in a blood-red dress; a tribute to Takeoff of the Atlanta rap trio Migos led by his bandmate Quavo; and Raitt, Sheryl Crow and Mick Fleetwood singing “Songbird,” one of the signature compositions by Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie, with Fleetwood tapping a drum like it was a gently beating heart.Kacey Musgraves singing Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter” as part of a somber “In Memoriam” segment.Mario Anzuoni/ReutersStyles performed his bubbly, pensive hit “As It Was” in a silvery sequined suit with tassels that shook as he danced. “Harry’s House” also won Styles the award for pop vocal album.Kendrick Lamar won three rap prizes: best performance and best song, for “The Heart Part 5,” and best album, for “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.” Accepting the album award, he thanked his family “for giving me the courage and giving me the vulnerability to share my truth and share these stories.”Brandi Carlile, a Grammy darling in recent years, won best rock performance and best rock song for “Broken Horses,” as well as best Americana album for “In These Silent Days.”The 89-year-old Willie Nelson, who was not present, won for best country album for “A Beautiful Time,” and best country solo performance for the song “Live Forever.”Swift ended the night with one victory, best music video for “All Too Well: The Short Film,” but lost her three other nods — including her sixth career loss in song of the year for “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” an extended remake of a song she first released in 2012.The first lady, Jill Biden, announced the winner of a new award, best song for social change, which went to the 25-year-old Iranian songwriter Shervin Hajipour, whose song “Baraye” became an anthem for the women’s rights protests there last year. The prize was chosen by what the academy described as a “blue-ribbon committee.”For an industry that has lately gotten worried about the difficulty minting stars amid the fire hose of content in the age of streaming and social media, this year’s list of nominations was about as good as it gets. It guaranteed plenty of star power and some drama over winners and losers. On Grammy night, drama is a good thing.As much as the Recording Academy, the nonprofit institution behind the Grammys, promotes its mission of celebrating artistic excellence and being a supportive home for creators year-round, the Grammys is also a television show that needs to attract a large audience.As they have for all major awards shows, ratings for the Grammys have been slipping for years. But the past two years have been brutal. In 2021, when the Grammys put on an outdoor show with no audience, its viewership fell to 8.8 million, the lowest ever; last year, when the show was delayed by the spread of the Omicron variant and held for the first time in Las Vegas, the number was only marginally better, at 8.9 million.This year’s awards recognized music released between Oct. 1, 2021, and Sept. 30, 2022, and were selected by the 11,000-member voting body of the Recording Academy, which includes artists, songwriters, producers and other music professionals.Of the 91 awards this year, all but a dozen were given out in a nontelevised ceremony on Sunday afternoon.Viola Davis’s Grammy win makes her the newest EGOT — the coveted acronym for the winner of an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images for The Recording AcademyThe actress Viola Davis won best audiobook, narration and storytelling recording for her memoir “Finding Me,” making her the newest EGOT — the coveted acronym for the winner of an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.Among the new categories this year was songwriter of the year (non-classical), intended to recognize the writers who work behind the scenes. It was won by Tobias Jesso Jr., who has written songs for Adele, Styles and others. Stephanie Economou was the first winner for best score soundtrack for video games and other interactive media for her work on the game Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok.Below the superstar level, the Grammys have the power to transform artists’ careers. The Tennessee State University Marching Band was the first college marching band ever nominated for best roots gospel album, and it won with “The Urban Hymnal.”Accepting that award, Sir the Baptist, one of the album’s producers, addressed the straitened finances of historically Black colleges and universities. “HBCUs are so grossly underfunded to where I had to put my last dime in order to get us across the line,” he said. “We’re here with our pockets empty but our hands aren’t.” More

    More stories

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Loretta Lynn, Takeoff and Christine McVie Receive Tributes at the Grammys

      by

      Singing “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” Kacey Musgraves honored the country music star Loretta Lynn, who wrote the song as the story of her hardscrabble upbringing in Kentucky coal country. Lynn was among the notable musicians and industry fixtures who died over the past year and were celebrated on Sunday at the Grammys.Takeoff, the 28-year-old rapper who was fatally shot at a Houston bowling alley last year, was memorialized with “Without You,” a song that Quavo, his uncle and a member of their rap trio, Migos, released earlier this year to mourn his nephew. Quavo was joined by Maverick City Music, a worship group that originated in Atlanta, where Migos helped define the most recent incarnation of the city’s influential rap sound.Christine McVie, the Fleetwood Mac hitmaker, was honored by a musical power trio: Bonnie Raitt, Sheryl Crow and Mick Fleetwood, who performed “Songbird,” a McVie composition and one of the band’s most beloved songs. McVie, who made a name for herself as a singer, songwriter and keyboardist, died last year at 79.With those songs as a backdrop, Jeff Beck and David Crosby, two musical luminaries who died earlier this year, received video tributes. Beck, one of the most influential guitarists in rock history, died at 78. Crosby, who helped create two of the most influential and beloved American bands of the classic-rock era — the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young — died at 81.The awards show acknowledged a long list of industry veterans lost in the past year, including Naomi Judd, the chart-topping country music star; Jerry Lee Lewis, the rockabilly artist who helped define the sound of rock ’n’ roll; Anita Pointer, the lead vocalist of the family bad the Pointer Sisters; Pharoah Sanders, the prolific saxophonist and composer; Lisa Marie Presley, the singer-songwriter and only child of Elvis Presley; Olivia Newton-John, the pop singer and star of “Grease”; Coolio, the 1990s hip-hop star behind “Gangsta’s Paradise”; and Pablo Milanés, a socially and politically conscious Cuban musician. More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Theater

      The Artists We Lost in 2022, in Their Words

      by

      Music innovators who sang of coal country and “Great Balls of Fire.” An actress who made a signature role out of a devilish baker who meets a fiery end. The trailblazing heart of “In the Heat of the Night.”The creative people who died this year include many whose lives helped shape our own — through the art they made, and through the words they said. Here is a tribute to just some of them, in their own voices.Sidney Poitier.Sam Falk/The New York Times“Life offered no auditions for the many roles I had to play.”— Sidney Poitier, actor, born 1927 (Read the obituary.)“People in the past have done what we’re trying to do infinitely better. That’s why, for one’s own sanity, to keep one’s own sense of proportion, one must regularly go back to them.”— Peter Brook, director, born 1925 (Read the obituary.)Ronnie Spector.Art Zelin/Getty Images“Every song is a little piece of my life.”— Ronnie Spector, singer, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)Yuriko.Jack Mitchell/Getty Images“Dance is living. Dance is, for me, it’s survival.”— Yuriko, dancer, born 1920 (Read the obituary.)Kirstie Alley.Vinnie Zuffante/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty Images“The question is, how do you create with what you have?”— Kirstie Alley, actress, born 1951 (Read the obituary.)Carmen Herrera.Todd Heisler/The New York Times“Every painting has been a fight between the painting and me. I tend to win. But you know how many paintings I threw in the garbage?”— Carmen Herrera, artist, born 1915 (Read the obituary.)“I decided that in every scene, you’re naked. If you’re dressed in a parka, what’s the difference if you’re dressed in nothing at all, if you’re exploring yourself?”— William Hurt, actor, born 1950 (Read the obituary.)Takeoff.Rich Fury/Getty Images For Global Citizen“You gotta have fun with a song, make somebody laugh. You gotta have character. A hard punchline can make you laugh, but you gotta know how to say it.”— Takeoff, rapper, born 1994 (Read the obituary.)“I love watching people get hit in the crotch. But only if they get back up.”— Bob Saget, comedian and actor, born 1956 (Read the obituary.)Olivia Newton-John.Las Vegas News Bureau/EPA, via Shutterstock“I do like to be alone at times, just to breathe.”— Olivia Newton-John, singer, born 1948 (Read the obituary.)“Movies are like clouds that sit over reality: If I do cinema well, I can uncover what is beneath, my friends, my allies, what I am, where I come from.”— Jean-Luc Godard, director, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)Sam Gilliam.Anthony Barboza/Getty Images“The expressive act of making a mark and hanging it in space is always political.”— Sam Gilliam, artist, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)“Everyone says that I was a role model. But I never thought of it when I was doing the music and when I was performing. I just wanted to make good music.”— Betty Davis, singer-songwriter, born 1944 (Read the obituary.)Nichelle Nichols.Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images“The next Einstein might have a Black face — and she’s female.”— Nichelle Nichols, actress, born 1932 (Read the obituary.)“If I could have dinner with anyone, dead or alive, it would be with Albert Einstein at Panzanella.”— Judy Tenuta, comedian, born 1949 (Read the obituary.)“In time, writers learn that good fiction editors care as much about the story as the writer does, or almost, anyway. And you really often end up, the three of you — the writer, and the editor, and the story — working on this obdurate, beautiful thing, this brand-new creation.”— Roger Angell, writer and editor, born 1920 (Read the obituary.)Jennifer Bartlett.Susan Wood/Getty Images“I spent 30 years trying to convince people and myself that I was smart, that I was a good painter, that I was this or that. It’s not going to happen. The only person that it should happen for is me. This is what I was meant to do.”— Jennifer Bartlett, artist, born 1941 (Read the obituary.)Christine McVie.P. Floyd/Daily Express, via Hulton Archive and Getty Images“I didn’t aspire to be on the stage playing piano, let alone singing, because I never thought I had much of a voice. But my option was window-dresser or jump off the cliff and try this. So I jumped off the cliff.”— Christine McVie, musician and songwriter, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)“Sometimes you have to put yourself on the edge. You go to the precipice and lean over it.”— Maria Ewing, opera singer, born 1950 (Read the obituary.)Taylor Hawkins.John Atashian/Getty Images“There’s so much in what I do that is beyond hard work — there’s luck and timing and just being in the right place at the right time with the right hairdo.”— Taylor Hawkins, drummer, born 1972 (Read the obituary.)“I was primarily an actress and not a pretty face.”— Angela Lansbury, actress, born 1925 (Read the obituary.)“I always try to improve upon what I’ve done. If something’s not working, I’ll change it to make it better. I’m an artist and a performer above all, and I don’t limit myself.”— Elza Soares, singer, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)Leslie Jordan.Fred Prouser/Reuters“I’m always working, always. I got to keep the ship afloat.”— Leslie Jordan, actor, born 1955 (Read the obituary.)“The reward of the work has always been the work itself.”— David McCullough, historian and author, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)“To me, sitting at a desk all day was not only a privilege but a duty: something I owed to all those people in my life, living and dead, who’d had so much more to say than anyone ever got to hear.”— Barbara Ehrenreich, author, born 1941 (Read the obituary.)James Caan.Jack Robinson/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“Passion is such an important thing to have in life because it ends so soon, and my passion was to grow up with my son.”— James Caan, actor, born 1940 (Read the obituary.)Tina Ramirez.Michael Falco for The New York Times“Words are unnecessary when movement and feeling and expression can say it all.”— Tina Ramirez, dancer and founder of Ballet Hispánico, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)Claes Oldenburg.Tony Evans/Getty Images“I haven’t done anything on the subject of flies. It’s the sort of thing that could interest me. Anything could interest me, actually.”— Claes Oldenburg, artist, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)“A skull is a beautiful thing.”— Lee Bontecou, artist, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)“I like to write strong characters who are no better or worse than anybody else on earth.”— Charles Fuller, playwright, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)Ray Liotta.Aaron Rapoport/Corbis, via Getty Images“One review said I played a sleazy, heartless, cold person who you don’t really care about. Great! I love it; that’s what I played.”— Ray Liotta, actor, born around 1954 (Read the obituary.)Jerry Lee Lewis.Thomas S. England/Getty Images“There’s a difference between a phenomenon and a stylist. I’m a stylist, Elvis was the phenomenon, and don’t you forget it.”— Jerry Lee Lewis, musician, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)“All of us have something built into our ears that comes from the place where we grow up and where we were as children.”— George Crumb, composer, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)Anne Heche. SGranitz/WireImage, via Getty Images“People wonder why I am so forthcoming with the truths that have happened in my life, and it’s because the lies that I have been surrounded with and the denial that I was raised in, for better or worse, bore a child of truth and love.”— Anne Heche, actress, born 1969 (Read the obituary.)Louie Anderson.Gary Null/NBCUniversal, via Getty Images“That’s my goal every night: Hopefully at some point in my act, you have forgotten whatever trouble you had when you came in.”— Louie Anderson, comedian and actor, born 1953 (Read the obituary.)“Adult human beings live with the certainty of grief, which deepens us and opens us to other people, who have been there, too.”— Peter Straub, author, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)Ned Rorem.Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times“I believe in the importance of the unimportant — in the quotidian pathos.”— Ned Rorem, composer, born 1923 (Read the obituary.)Gilbert Gottfried.Fred Hermansky/NBC, via Getty Images“I don’t always mean to offend. I only sometimes mean to offend.”— Gilbert Gottfried, comedian, born 1955 (Read the obituary.)“Merce Cunningham is quoted somewhere as saying he wanted a company that danced the way he danced. I kept doing the same thing. And I began to wonder why I was insisting that they be as limited as I am.”— David Gordon, choreographer, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)Hilary Mantel.Ellie Smith for The New York Times“The universe is not limited by what I can imagine.”— Hilary Mantel, author, born 1952 (Read the obituary.)“Getting the right people with a shared vision is three-quarters of the battle.”— Anne Parsons, arts administrator, born 1957 (Read the obituary.)Paula Rego.Rita Barros/Getty Images“My paintings are stories, but they are not narratives, in that they have no past and future.”— Paula Rego, artist, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)Javier Marías.Quim Llenas/Getty Images“When you are addressing your fellow citizens, you have to give some hope sometimes, even if you want to say that everything is terrible, that we are governed by a bunch of gangsters. In a novel, you can be much more pessimistic. You are more savage, you are wilder, you are freer, you think truer, you think better.”— Javier Marías, author, born 1951 (Read the obituary.)“Art is not blameless. Art can inflict harm.”— Richard Taruskin, musicologist, born 1945 (Read the obituary.)“I am a worker who labors with songs, doing in my own way what I know best, like any other Cuban worker. I am faithful to my reality, to my revolution and the way in which I have been brought up.”— Pablo Milanés, musician, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)Peter Bogdanovich.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“Success is very hard. Nobody prepares you for it. You think you’re infallible. You pretend you know more than you do.”— Peter Bogdanovich, director, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)Loretta Lynn.CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images“I think the highest point of my career was in the late ’70s. I had No. 1 songs, a best-selling book and a movie made about my life. But I think it was also the lowest point for me as well. Life gets away from you so fast when you move fast.”— Loretta Lynn, singer-songwriter, born 1932 (Read the obituary.)Thich Nhat Hanh.Golding/Fairfax Media, via Getty Images“Many of us have been running all our lives. Practice stopping.”— Thich Nhat Hanh, monk and author, born 1926 (Read the obituary.)Photographs at top via CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images; Anthony Barboza/Getty Images; Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images; Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Suspect in Shooting of Rapper Takeoff Arrested on Murder Charge in Houston

      by

      The Houston Police said that Patrick Xavier Clark, 33, was being charged with murder, and that Takeoff had been an “innocent bystander.”A 33-year-old man has been arrested on a murder charge in the fatal shooting of the rapper Takeoff outside a bowling alley in Houston last month, the city’s police chief said Friday.The police described Takeoff as an innocent bystander, saying that he had been killed after an argument, which had not involved him, led to gunfire.Chief Troy Finner of the Houston Police Department announced in a news conference that the man, Patrick Xavier Clark, was arrested in eastern Houston on Thursday evening. Another man, Cameron Joshua, 22, who was at the scene, was arrested last month and charged with unlawful carrying of a weapon.Takeoff, the 28-year-old rapper who had been one-third of the chart-topping group Migos, was shot and killed on Nov. 1 after a private party at 810 Billiards & Bowling in downtown Houston, as a group of more than 30 people gathered near the front door, the police said. Shots were fired from at least two weapons, they said. Takeoff, who was born Kirsnick Khari Ball, was killed.The police said that the shooting occurred after some at the party played a dice game, and an argument broke out.“I can tell you that Takeoff was not involved in playing in the dice game, he was not involved in the argument that happened outside, he was not armed,” said Sgt. Michael Burrow of the Houston Police. “He was an innocent bystander.”Chief Finner said that Takeoff had been in the “wrong place at the wrong time.”Of the people present when the shooting occurred, no one stayed on the scene to give a statement to police, Sergeant Burrow said, urging those who were there to come forward. Investigators determined through video surveillance, cellphone footage and other physical evidence that Mr. Clark fired the lethal shot, he said.“It certainly, I think, will bring some comfort to the family, though it does not bring Takeoff back,” said Mayor Sylvester Turner of Houston, who spoke of the importance of stopping gun violence at the news conference announcing the arrest.The Harris County District Attorney’s Office, which is prosecuting the case, has asked for Mr. Clark’s bail to be set at $1 million, asserting in court documents that he had been making plans after the fatal shooting to travel to Mexico and should be considered a flight risk. It was not immediately clear if Mr. Clark had a lawyer representing him.Migos helped define the most recent incarnation of Atlanta’s influential rap sound, and Takeoff was mourned by thousands there at a funeral last month.In a speech at the funeral, Quavo, Takeoff’s uncle and a member of Migos, credited Takeoff with having the dream that helped make the group one of the biggest rap acts of the last decade.“He never worried about titles, credit or what man got the most shine, that wasn’t him,” Quavo said, according to a copy of his speech that he posted to Instagram.Known for hits like “Versace” and “Bad and Boujee,” Migos earned two Grammy nominations and helped usher in a new period of dominance for Atlanta music. The group’s punchy style brought the trio the top of the charts and influenced other artists.Offset, the third Migos member, wrote in an Instagram post that Takeoff’s death had “left a hole in my heart that will never be filled.” More

    • 75 Shares109 Views

      in Music

      2022: The Year in Atlanta Rap

      by

      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicIt has been a transformational year in Atlanta, with its hip-hop scene suffering from a series of crises. Last month, Takeoff, of the influential trio Migos, was killed in Houston. In May, Young Thug and Gunna were arrested as part of a sweeping RICO investigation.These are some of the city’s biggest stylistic and artistic innovators, and their absence has left a hole in Atlanta’s chain of artistic continuity. Lil Baby remains the city’s biggest star, but all around him, there is instability.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the disruptive year in Atlanta’s rap circles, the speed with which the city’s sound evolves, and the artists hovering in the wings and waiting for the spotlight.Guest:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporter and author of “Rap Capital: An Atlanta Story”Connect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Takeoff, of Atlanta Rap Trio Migos, Shot Dead at 28 in Houston

      by

      The rapper was killed in a shooting at a bowling alley in Houston overnight.The 28-year-old rapper, whose real name is Kirsnick Khari Ball, was killed in a shooting at a bowling alley in Houston.Rich Fury/Getty Images For Global CitizenThe rapper known as Takeoff, a subtle vocal technician and one-third of the chart-topping group Migos, whose singsong flow helped define Atlanta’s ever-evolving, influential rap sound, was shot and killed overnight outside a Houston bowling alley, the authorities said. He was 28.Chief Troy Finner of the Houston Police Department confirmed the rapper’s death at a news conference on Tuesday afternoon. A 24-year-old woman and a 23-year-old man were taken to local hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries, the police said.The police said the shooting occurred after a private party had ended at 810 Billiards & Bowling, as a large group of about 40 people gathered near the front door on the third level. An argument ensued and shots were fired from at least two weapons, they said, leading to many people fleeing.“We have no reason to believe that he was involved in anything criminal at the time,” Chief Finner said of Takeoff.No suspects have been arrested, the authorities said, and they requested that any witnesses who left the scene come forward with additional information.“Sometimes the hip-hop community gets a bad name,” Chief Finner said. “I’m calling up on everybody — our hip-hop artists in Houston and around the nation — we’ve got to police ourselves. There are so many talented individuals, men and women, in that community, who again I love and I respect, and we all need to stand together and make sure no one tears down that industry.”The commercial area where Takeoff was killed was quiet on a rainy Tuesday evening, with some young fans trickling past a few bouquets of roses and lit candles.“When I heard the news it got me to tears,” Tatiana Battle, 23, said. “Migos’s music got me through breakups, graduation, celebrations. And now I can’t listen to them anymore because it will never be the same.”It was Takeoff’s childhood obsession with Southern hip-hop that first inspired Migos as young teenagers in the Atlanta suburbs of Gwinnett County, on its way to becoming one of the biggest rap acts of the last decade, known for hits like “Versace” and “Bad and Boujee.”Even as he dodged celebrity and maintained almost no public profile, Takeoff became a connoisseur’s fan favorite of the trio, and was credited with initiating the stuttering, triplet delivery that came to infiltrate hip-hop and trickle into the pop sphere.Drew Findling, a lawyer for Takeoff and confidant to many rap stars, called his death “a devastating loss, particularly for Atlanta.”“When you’re around Takeoff, there’s a sense of peacefulness about his aura,” Mr. Findling said. “He listens to you, he looks at you, he’s more focused on what you have to say than what he has to say. The world was starting to learn about Takeoff. It was his time to shine.”Before becoming international rap superstars — and ushering in a new period of dominance for Atlanta music in the streaming era — Migos, which also included the rappers Offset and Quavo, was founded as a family bedroom act northeast of the city, in an area that Migos came to brand as the “Nawfside.”After releasing its first independent mixtape as Migos, “Juug Season,” in 2011, and then gaining local buzz and tastemaker attention with the track “Bando,” the trio rose to national prominence with the single “Versace” in 2013. The remix, though never commercially released, featured an appearance by Drake, who mimicked the group’s burgeoning signature pattern of rapid-fire, rollicking raps, known as a triplet flow, in which three syllables are piled rhythmically onto one beat to hypnotic effect.A New York Times review of Migos’s 2013 mixtape, “Y.R.N.,” called the group “insistent, noisy and chaotic” and “perpetually in fifth gear.”Pairing a punchy rap style that could sound broody or elated with sticky, repetitive hooks — like Takeoff’s defining choruses on “Fight Night” and “T-Shirt” — Migos’s trademark delivery would go on to become a go-to mode for popular music throughout the 2010s, as used by artists including Travis Scott and Ariana Grande. In 2021, former President Barack Obama put “Straightenin,” from Migos’s album “Culture III,” on his summer playlist, alongside songs by Rihanna, Joni Mitchell and Stevie Wonder.In late 2016 and early 2017, the group soared to A-list fame around the world thanks to “Bad and Boujee,” a spare, uncompromising track featuring Lil Uzi Vert — but not Takeoff, who was absent from the song — that spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.In what may be Takeoff’s defining moment outside of the recording studio, he was once asked in a red carpet interview about being left off the track, drawing the visible ire of the entire group.“Do it look like I’m left off ‘Bad and Boujee’?” Takeoff responded, referring to sharing the financial windfall and fame with Quavo and Offset.The track became one of the first megahits of the streaming era, and has been streamed more than 1.5 billion times in the United States alone. The group’s subsequent 2017 album, “Culture,” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard chart and earned Migos one of its two Grammy nominations.In an interview with The New York Times ahead of the album’s release, Takeoff compared the moment to Christmas Eve. “You just know that everything you asked for is going to be there up under that Christmas tree,” he said, his often-downcast eyes lighting up. “It’s our time now.”In the years since, Migos has released two sequels to “Culture,” and singles including “MotorSport,” “I Get the Bag” and “Walk It Talk It,” also with Drake. Takeoff’s solo album, “The Last Rocket,” came out in 2018, and debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200. Last month, Takeoff and Quavo — without the third Migos member, Offset — released the album “Only Built for Infinity Links,” which went to No. 7.Takeoff, whose real name is Kirsnick Khari Ball, was born on June 18, 1994, and grew up in Lawrenceville, Ga. He “always wanted to rap,” he told The Fader, a music magazine, in a 2013 interview, and found his group mates close to home: Takeoff and Quavo, his uncle, were raised by Quavo’s mother, Edna, a hairstylist. She is frequently shouted out in Migos songs as “Mama!”The first of the group to fall hard for rap music while the others played football, Takeoff soaked up music that he discovered online and bought at the flea market, particularly Southern rappers like Gucci Mane, T.I., Lil Wayne and his early group the Hot Boys, which provided a blueprint for Migos’s later success.As a duo initially called Polo Club, Takeoff and Quavo began performing music in their teens at the local skating rink, and released a mixtape when Takeoff was still middle-school age. Offset began spending time at Edna’s house and considered Takeoff and Quavo his cousins. Together, they started to map out a sound — waterfalls of rolling verses, ecstatic chanted phrases, jabbing background ad-libs — that was catchy and distinctive.The trio came to the notice of the local executives Pierre Thomas (known as P) and Kevin Lee (Coach K), who founded a label, Quality Control, around the trio in 2013. Already, Migos had fallen under the tutelage of the local rapper and talent scout Gucci Mane, who had heard the group’s early track “Bando,” and signed them to a cash deal.But with Gucci Mane in prison, P and Coach K became the group’s primary boosters, developing a grass-roots artist development strategy that they would later employ with other breakout acts like Lil Yachty and Lil Baby.Musically, it was Takeoff who first drew P’s attention with his bouncy, melodic triplet raps that the executive said reminded him of the ’90s group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. “The music was crazy,” P later said, “but what made me really want to go hard for them is that they packed all their clothes and moved into the studio — literally lived there, sleeping on reclining chairs and making music all day.”P had long heralded Takeoff as an unsung talent, given his reserved mien and lack of self-aggrandizing. “If he cared more about this rap game he would definitely be stepping on y’all,” the executive wrote on Twitter in May, “but unfortunately he don’t.”He added that he’d been that way since they first met. “Nothing has changed with him.”Describing Migos’s maximalist approach to music in The Fader, Takeoff said the group would make about “seven songs a day,” spending no more than 15 minutes on each track. Working on a song for any longer “kills the vibe,” Takeoff said. “You gotta have fun with a song, make somebody laugh,” he added. “You gotta have character.”In the summer of 2020, Takeoff was accused of rape in a lawsuit by a woman who said she was assaulted at a house party in Encino, Calif. A lawyer representing the rapper called the claims “patently and provably false” and said Takeoff was known for his “quiet, reserved and peaceful personality.” The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute the case because of a lack of evidence, according to Pitchfork.Recently, Migos had been coy about its future as a group as Offset battled in court with the trio’s label. But in interviews, Quavo emphasized familial loyalty and said that he and Takeoff would continue as a duo, which they sometimes referred to as Unc’ and ’Phew.“We don’t know all the answers,” Takeoff, always a man of few words, said last month on the “Big Facts” podcast. “God knows. And we pray, so only time will tell.”Reporting was contributed by More

    • 125 Shares109 Views

      in Music

      Hear How Takeoff and the Migos Flow Changed Atlanta Rap

      by

      Quick-jabbing triplets had been a staple of rap, but the trio made the style sound fresh, thanks in large part to Takeoff, its master of syncopation. The rapper was shot and killed at 28 on Tuesday.The Atlanta trio Migos’ 2013 breakout hit “Versace” represented a clear demarcation line between the city’s older generation of rappers and its new vanguard. The rapping — much of it delivered in triplets — was a glittery stomp. Tightly clustered syllables that landed like quick jabs.“Versace” was such an immediate sensation that Drake, at the time the genre’s most important ascendant superstar, volunteered his services for a remix, mimicking the group’s peppery flow and, by extension, introducing it to the rest of the world.By all accounts, Takeoff — who was shot and killed in Houston early Tuesday morning — was the primary engine of what came to be dubbed the Migos flow.The rapper, who was 28, was one of three people who were shot around 2:30 a.m. after a private gathering at 810 Billiards & Bowling ended in an argument. (The other two victims are expected to survive. No arrests have been made, the authorities said.)The triplet pattern that became a Migos signature wasn’t new to hip-hop: It was a fixture in Memphis rap for years, in the work of Three 6 Mafia and others, and it was part of the cadence-bending arsenal of the Cleveland sing-rap pioneers Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. But Migos made the style sound fresh, less performative and more glossy. It had a hurried urgency and also the briskness of rough-and-tumble triumph.Such is the nature of hip-hop innovation — sometimes it’s about what is said, but just as often, it’s about how it’s said. And the triplet flow that Migos popularized in the mid-2010s became a standard-bearer for the genre, setting a generation of Atlanta rap afloat.Atlanta was already the center of hip-hop innovation when Migos arrived, but the trio was primed for streaming-era success — pulsing with youthful energy, leaning heavily on catchy choruses, collaborating widely. After the viral success of its 2016 hit “Bad and Boujee,” Migos released a pair of albums, “Culture” and “Culture II,” that each debuted at the top of the Billboard albums chart and spawned several hits, including “MotorSport,” “Stir Fry” and “Walk It Talk It.”The prior wave of Atlanta stars like Gucci Mane and Young Jeezy captured ears with imagistic storytelling and signature vocal texture. By comparison, Migos sounded addled, anxious, pugnacious. They were untethered from earlier rap conventions. As the rest of Atlanta rap leaned toward the psychedelic — beginning with Future, then pivoting to Young Thug, and eventually the more commercially minded Gunna and Lil Baby — Migos, and Takeoff especially, held fast to its mechanistic idiosyncrasies.Takeoff was by far the most reserved figure in Migos, which also featured Quavo and Offset. But he was deeply technically gifted, a master of syncopation, with a deftness that could render even the toughest talk exuberantly.That talent shone on the group’s earliest songs, catching the ear of Pierre Thomas, known to most as P, one of the founders of Quality Control Music, the dominant Atlanta rap label of the past decade. In 2017, Thomas recalled to Rap Radar how Gucci Mane had introduced him to Migos’ music, and how Takeoff stood out.“Gucci sent me the song. He sent me the video. I was like, ‘Man, the dude with the long dreads’ — it was Takeoff — I was like, ‘That dude there is crazy.’ The way he was spitting it reminded me of Bone Thugs, like how they used to be rapping back in the day.”“Versace” appeared on the third Migos mixtape, “Y.R.N.,” which was released in 2013 and remains one of the decade’s defining rap albums. Over the next couple of years, which would see the ascendance of Migos to hip-hop superstardom, the Migos flow expanded past triplets to a broader umbrella that emphasized the staccato.Even as the group moved in a more melodic direction through the 2010s, Takeoff remained resolute in his commitment to innovative rhyme patterns. He set the tempo of “Fight Night,” one of the group’s signature early hits featuring perhaps its most pointedly rhythmic rapping. On “Cross the Country,” from 2014, he opened with a dizzying verse, switching patterns several times. And last year, on a punishing freestyle on the Los Angeles radio station Power 106, Takeoff delivered a verse that took the group’s classic triplet flow as a starting point and thickened it, demonstrating how on top of one novel idea, a whole mansion could be built. More