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    H.E.R. Still Finds Inspiration in Prince and ‘Martin’

    The Grammy- and Oscar-winning performer talks about her new album, the moment she knew she wanted to be a rock star and why R&B isn’t dead.H.E.R. doesn’t want her music to be boxed in.“When I was creating it, I wasn’t really aiming for anything,” the singer-songwriter-instrumentalist said of “Back of My Mind,” her new 21-track album. “But when I started sequencing it and putting it together, I realized that a lot of the songs that I created were different moods of R&B.”The album was her playground, with references to early projects as well as those she hadn’t yet put out; featured vocals by Ty Dolla Sign, Cordae, Lil Baby and Chris Brown; reverb-y Dave Grohl-esque drums and trap beats; and “a bunch of really dope women working with me behind the scenes,” she said. “And all of those sounds turned into a celebration of all the things that R&B could be.”It has been a heady few months, even for H.E.R. (Gabriella Sarmiento Wilson), who as a child prodigy practiced acceptance speeches. In February, she performed “America the Beautiful” at the Super Bowl kickoff show before winning, in March, a song of the year Grammy for “I Can’t Breathe” and, in April, a best original song Oscar for “Fight for You.” She was only 23. Now comes the three-part “Prime Day Show” on Amazon, set in a reimagined Dunbar Hotel in Los Angeles, which was a hub of Black culture in the 1930s and ’40s. And in August, she’ll take the stage at the Hollywood Bowl, while squeezing in work on a reggae EP that she hopes to release later this year.As H.E.R.’s star rises, so has her awareness as a role model.“Now I have this thing that I have to take care of and cherish, this ability to inspire and encourage women who are trying to figure out who they want to become, or who don’t want to fit into social norms,” she said.“I think anybody should want to think outside the box and be who they are, truly,” she added. “That’s what my album is about. And that’s the message that I carry with me in everything that I do.”In a call from Brooklyn, where she was rehearsing before heading to Los Angeles (“I live everywhere,” she said), H.E.R. spoke about a few of her own inspirations. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Fender Stratocaster Black and White GuitarThe first guitar my dad bought me was like a mini one for kids, and I learned to play the blues pentatonic scale. I want to say I was seven years old. I’ve been a Fender fan since then, and we had been having conversations about making my own guitar ever since I performed at the 2019 Grammys, and they created an acrylic Strat for me that was clear. I decided to make it chrome, and it also matches the holographic chrome design that I like to put on my nails sometimes. I designed it and picked all the effects and noiseless pickups. And I became the first Black woman to do a collaboration with Fender.2. Her Signature EyeglassesMost of the time people don’t recognize me [without my glasses on]. I’m like the female reverse Clark Kent. My favorite pair are these black frames that I actually designed in collaboration with DIFF eyewear, and they’re clear, and they’re blue-light glasses so they protect from you looking at screens.I’ve always loved glasses, but I started to be more intentional about wearing them when I started doing shows in 2017 after I dropped my first project, “Volume 1.” And I thought, let’s obscure the lights and I’ll wear glasses — because my music is the window to my soul, and not my eyes.3. “Rave Un2 the Year 2000”That’s a Prince concert DVD that I watched growing up. It was on every single weekend in my house, and it inspired me a lot. The moment with him and Lenny Kravitz performing — they did “American Woman” and “Fly Away” together — I was just so, like, “Man, I want to be a rock star.”4. Her Mom’s Filipino DishesLumpia is like a roll. There’s meat and vegetables in it, and it’s very delicious. It’s a long process to make but it’s what I grew up eating in my Filipino household. Halo-halo means “mix-mix” in Tagalog. I grew up eating it every day after school. There’s jellies and shaved ice and evaporated milk and ice cream and jackfruit and sweet beans and all kinds of stuff. My mom made it, and she taught me how to make it.5. And Her Dad’s Fried ChickenI don’t eat other people’s fried chicken. He grew up in Arkansas, and he brought Southern cooking into our house in the Bay Area in California.6. Prince’s “Purple Rain”I got to watch the movie when I was a kid, and my dad kind of skipped over the bad parts. It’s iconic — Prince absolutely killed that whole movie. I’ve played a lot of songs, but “Purple Rain” is one of those songs I definitely studied and covered. I wish, I wish [I would have met Prince]. I did get to see him live, though.7. Apollo TheaterI performed at the Apollo when I was 9 years old. I performed “Freeway of Love” by Aretha Franklin, and it was my first time in New York City, and my family came. They actually threw a little concert in our hometown so that we could afford to stay in New York for days. And then fast forward to early this year. I had the opportunity to go to D’Angelo’s Verzuz that he did on Instagram Live, and he sang “Best Part” with me.It’s just such a legendary place. Freshly coming from California, for me it just seemed like a world away. And so to be able to go there and perform — and then perform again with one of my favorite artists and a legend, D’Angelo — it just made the place even more special.8. Golden State WarriorsI used to love going to Warriors games when I was a kid. When I was 10 or 11, I sang the national anthem at a Warriors and Lakers game. And I got to see Baron Davis and Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes. They were all on the Warriors at that time of the “We Believe” era. I haven’t been to a Warriors game in a really long time. But I was at a Nets game the other day, and it was fun. Go-go Nets.9. “Martin,” starring Martin LawrenceIt’s one of those late-night shows for when you can’t sleep. If I’m having a bad day and that comes on, like that, I forget. [Martin plays a D.J. and talk-show host], and it’s about his relationship with his girlfriend’s best friend. And he also plays the Sheneneh character and then he plays a pimp, and it’s hilarious. I still watch it. It’s timeless.10. Lights On FestivalIt’s something that I started in 2019, and obviously I couldn’t do in 2020, but it was a huge success and I didn’t expect it — 14,000 people at the Concord Pavilion [in Concord, Calif.], and the whole lineup was R&B artists.That proved to me that R&B is still alive, and that people love it and they need it. So I’m bringing my festival back in September. We’re going to keep the music going. More

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    H.E.R.’s Soulful Suspicions, and 11 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Yves Tumor, Brittney Spencer, Tyler, the Creator 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.H.E.R., ‘Cheat Code’H.E.R. (Gabriella Sarmiento Wilson) has a rich grasp of soul and R&B history backed by her old-school musicianship as a singer, guitarist and keyboardist. There are 21 songs on her new album “Back of My Mind,” but most of them cling to a narrow palette: ballad tempos, two-chord vamps, constricted melody lines. “Cheat Code” is still a ballad, but a little more expansive. Its narrator is coming to grips with a partner’s infidelity — “What you’ve been doing’s probably something I ain’t cool with” — and warning, “You need to get your story straight.” The arrangement blossoms from acoustic guitar to quiet-storm studio band, with wind chimes and horns, only to thin out again, leaving her with just backup voices and a few piano notes, alone again with all her misgivings. JON PARELESBrittney Spencer, ‘Sober & Skinny’An insightful take on the way some relationships become sites of push and pull, one promise traded for another, one letdown making room for the next. “Sober & Skinny” is lonesome and doleful (some light melodic borrowing from Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” notwithstanding), the story of two people bound by their habits, and to each other, and how that can be the same thing: “I empty the fridge, you empty the bottle/we’re stacking up a mountain of hard pills we’ll have to swallow.” JON CARAMANICAAldous Harding, ‘Old Peel’The music is methodical and transparent: steady-ticking percussion, grumbling piano chords, spindly high guitar interjections, a melody line that barely budges. But Aldous Harding’s intent and attitude stay cheerfully, stubbornly, intriguingly opaque. “Old peel, no deal/I won’t speak if you call me baby,” she sings, utterly deadpan, enjoying the standoff. PARELESYves Tumor, ‘Jackie’Yves Tumor, the ineffable and audacious experimentalist, once again brandishes a reverence for Prince on “Jackie,” another venture into magisterial rock that clings to devastating grandeur. Tumor, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, assumes the role of a tortured ringleader, shepherding listeners into their surreal world of sexual and musical provocation. It’s almost easy to miss the song’s reality: a lament for the end of the relationship, in which Tumor’s anguish makes it difficult to eat and sleep. “These days have been tragic,” they wail, yearning for the possibility of a return of their body’s biological rhythms, and a promise that they will one day be whole again. ISABELIA HERRERATyler, the Creator, ‘Lumberjack’A return to croaky bragging for Tyler, the Creator, over a beat that heavily samples “2 Cups of Blood,” from the Gothically gloomy debut album by the Gravediggaz. Tyler’s boasts take the gleaming aesthete excess Pharrell once celebrated and gives it a tart edge: “Rolls-Royce pull up, Black boy hop out”; “Salad-colored emerald on finger, the size of croutons”; a credit card that “really can’t max out.” It’s a posture he’s earned:That’s my nuance, used to be the weirdoUsed to laugh at me, listen to me with their ears closedUsed to treat me like that boy Malcolm in the MiddleNow I’m zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zeroCARAMANICAStiff Pap featuring BCUC, ‘Riders on the Storm’Stiff Pap is an electronic duo from Johannesburg: the producer Jakinda and the rapper and singer Ayema Probllem. For “Riders on the Storm,” they’re joined by the Soweto band BCUC (Bantu Continua Uhuru Consciousness), adding gritty voices and salvos of percussion to both deepen and destabilize a track that’s already skewed and wily. Amid buzzing, hopscotching keyboard lines and fitful drumming, the song addresses, among other things, perpetual striving and social-media anxiety, doubled down by music that keeps shifting underfoot. PARELESChucky73, ‘Diri’A false start, a tiptoeing piano hook, a video featuring a golf course invasion: with “Diri,” the Bronx rapper Chucky73 has assembled an easy home run. The chubby-cheeked, beaming Lothario dazzles here, his slap-happy persona only amplified by his self-assured, nimble baritone and punch lines about the spoils of his success: “En do’ año’ me hice rico/El dinero me tiene bonito.” “In two years, I got rich,” he says. “The money’s got me looking cute.” HERRERAYoung Devyn, ‘Like This’Elsewhere on her debut EP, “Baby Goat,” Young Devyn leans into her Trinidadian roots and her past as a soca singer, and also toys with Brooklyn drill music. But on “Like This,” she’s just rapping — pointedly, nimbly, eye-rollingly: “I don’t even speak to my pops /How the hell would you think I would speak to my exes?” CARAMANICACochemea, ‘Mimbreños’Cochemea Gastelum, the saxophonist for the Dap-Kings soul and funk band, claims his heritage for “Baca Sewa Vol II,” his coming solo album. “Mimbreños” is named after his ancestors from the Mimbres Valley in New Mexico. It’s a call-and-response, his saxophone tune answered by vocal la-las, carried by calm, six-beat percussion. Then a marimba, hitting offbeats, supplies a vamp for Cochemea’s saxophone improvisations, abetted by biting electronic timbres. It’s untraditional, yet it feels deeply rooted. PARELESLeon Bridges, ‘Why Don’t You Touch Me’Leon Bridges, the Texas-based singer whose voice harks back to Sam Cooke, probes his unhappiness as a lover’s desire wanes in “Why Don’t You Touch Me.” A patient beat and lean electric-guitar chords accompany him as he questions, apologizes, complains and begs. “Don’t leave me out here unfulfilled/’Cause we’re slowly getting disconnected,” he reproaches, desperately longing to get physical. PARELESHarold Land, ‘Happily Dancing/Deep Harmonies Falling’“Westward Bound!”, a collection of never-before-released concert recordings from the early-to-mid-1960s at Seattle’s Penthouse club, offers a chance to revisit the overlooked career of Harold Land. A coolly expressive tenor saxophonist, Land left his mark in bands led by Max Roach and Clifford Brown and by the vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, but his own career as a bandleader never rose fully above the fray. In ways, “Happily Dancing/Deep Harmonies Falling,” a Land original, is quintessential hard-bop: the waltz-time swing feel, caught between elegance and heft; the cooperation between Land and the trumpeter Carmell Jones; the commingling of hard blues playing and balladic lyricism. But what sets this recording apart is Land, and his way of articulating each note with just enough restraint and sly timing to pull you in close. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOBen Goldberg, ‘Everything Happens to Be.’The clarinetist Ben Goldberg arranged “Everything Happens to Be.,” the title track from his rewarding new album (its name riffs on a jazz standard), in such a way that everyone in his quintet has a load-bearing role to play. The guitarist Mary Halvorson, the bassist Michael Formanek and the saxophonist Ellery Eskelin all carry different melodic parts, as the drummer Tomas Fujiwara employs a light touch to push things ahead, mirroring Formanek’s cadence without bearing down on him. RUSSONELLO More

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    History Meets the Present on the ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’ Album

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s PickHistory Meets the Present on the ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’ AlbumThe songs inspired by Shaka King’s film about the 1969 police killing of the Illinois Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton mostly don’t appear in the movie, but they expand its story.“Judas and the Black Messiah” arrived with an ambitious soundtrack stocked with songs featuring a soulful, somber and retro aesthetic.Credit…Glen Wilson/Warner BrosFeb. 24, 2021, 12:10 p.m. ETJudas and the Black Messiah: The Inspired AlbumNYT Critic’s PickA movie’s message doesn’t have to end with the closing credits. Black filmmakers and musicians have been making the most of “inspired by” albums that are anything but afterthoughts; they boldly extrapolate from the story told onscreen. “Black Panther,” “The Lion King” and now “Judas and the Black Messiah” — the director Shaka King’s film about the 1969 police killing of the Illinois Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton — arrived with companion albums that connect fantasy and history to their repercussions in the here and now.“Judas and the Black Messiah: The Inspired Album” overflows with music and ideas: 22 tracks, many of them collaborative. With Hit-Boy as one of the executive producers (and the rapper on a track of his own), the album gathers past and current hip-hop hitmakers, with Nas, Jay-Z and the Roots’ Black Thought alongside Pooh Shiesty, Polo G, Lil Durk and BJ the Chicago Kid.Although the album is a compilation from dozens of rappers, singers, producers and songwriters, it has a coherent sound: soulful, somber and retro like the film’s closing song, H.E.R.’s “Fight for You,” which is steeped in Marvin Gaye’s mournful determination. Much of the album looks back toward 1990s hip-hop: relying on instruments and samples of full bands, laced with melodic hooks and firmly enunciating the lyrics.H.E.R. provides the movie’s closing song, “Fight for You.”Credit…Amy Harris/Invision, via Associated PressSome tracks directly address the film’s particulars. The album opens with an appearance by Fred Hampton Jr. in “Cointelpro/Dec. 4”: memorializing his father, reminding listers about Cointelpro (the F.B.I.’s illegal covert 1960s Counterintelligence Program aimed at civil rights groups and other perceived subversives) and firmly connecting political oratory to hip-hop; the track ends with a loop of the elder Hampton proclaiming, “I am a revolutionary!”Rakim’s “Black Messiah” delivers a terse, magisterial biography of Hampton over samples of a 1967 soul single, Them Two’s “Am I a Good Man.” In “Somethin’ Ain’t Right,” over bluesy guitar chords, Masego sings about corruption and Rapsody vows, “Cointelpro got the target on me/But we don’t stand down till the people all free.”But the focus inevitably widens to encompass the present. Polo G’s “Last Man Standing” — with bleak piano chords and a shivery vocal sample — bitterly connects thoughts of Hampton and the Black Panthers to deep-seated systemic racism, police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement. Smino and Saba collaborate on “Plead the .45th,” sketching paranoia and resentment in brisk, jazzy phrases. Black Thought’s “Welcome to America,” with gritty vocal choruses from C.S. Armstrong and flashes of a gospel choir, is a vehement reminder of centuries of exploitation, remembering “every lost body crossed, tarred, feathered and tossed” and insisting, “This American cloth has never been soft/while history was running its course.”Memorial and news flash combine in “What It Feels Like” by Nipsey Hussle — who was killed in 2019 — and Jay-Z, a hip-hop march with foreboding piano, horn-section chords and hovering choral vocals. The song warns that success turns Blacks into targets: “You get successful, then it get stressful,” Hussle rapped. Then Jay-Z’s verse pivots from similar ideas — “You know they hate when you become more than they expect” — to the inadequate police response to the insurrection on Jan. 6: “You let them crackers storm your Capitol, put they feet up on your desk/And yet you talkin’ tough to me, I lost all my little respect.” Jay-Z was born December 4, 1969, the day Hampton was killed in a police raid. The history sounds personal.Various Artists“Judas and the Black Messiah: The Inspired Album”(Six Course Music Group/RCA)AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    5 Songs to Listen to Right Now

    5 Songs to Listen to Right NowDua Lipa.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesI write about pop music for The New York Times. Here are five new and notable songs, including Taylor Swift’s first rerecorded back-catalog hit and Dua Lipa at her cheekiest → More

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    Cardi B’s Gleefully Relentless ‘Up,’ and 12 More New Songs

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe PlaylistCardi B’s Gleefully Relentless ‘Up,’ and 12 More New SongsHear tracks by Bomba Estéreo, SG Lewis, Flock of Dimes and others.Cardi B barely offers listeners a chance to catch their breath on her new solo single, “Up.”Credit…YouTubeJon Pareles, Giovanni Russonello and Feb. 5, 2021, 11:48 a.m. ETEvery 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.Cardi B, ‘Up’[embedded content]On “Up,” her first solo single in several years, Cardi B’s preferred method of annihilating the haters is oxygen deprivation — her flow is so relentless that for nearly three minutes she doesn’t offer listeners a single moment to catch their breath. “Big bag bussin’ out the Bentley Bentayga/Man, Balenciaga Bardi back,” she raps with rapturous alliteration, before running that tongue twister back again, in case you didn’t catch it all the first time. “Up” is a homage to the steely Chicago drill sound that Cardi grew up on, and it also finds her reuniting with DJ SwanQo, who worked with her on the hardest-hitting song on “Invasion of Privacy,” “Get Up 10.” (He co-produced “Up” with Yung Dza.) Her tone is a bit more gleeful than the drill influence would suggest, and there are of course some classically comedic Cardi punch lines here, but the ravenous way she digs into this beat is serious business. LINDSAY ZOLADZSG Lewis featuring Nile Rodgers, ‘One More’Choices, chances. SG Lewis sings about the ways an encounter at a party could go: Will it evaporate amid distractions, or will continuing the conversation for just one more song and lead to romance? Either way, it’s a dance party, and the guitar scrubbing away at complex chords over the neo-disco beat belongs to the disco and dance-pop wizard Nile Rodgers. JON PARELESSia and David Guetta, ‘Floating Through Space’How far has the pandemic lowered the bar for triumph over adversity? “You made it another day, made it alive,” Sia sings over David Guetta’s echoey, synthetic adaptations of a Caribbean soca beat. It’s computerized happiness for a worldwide predicament. PARELESMiss Grit, ‘Grow Up To’Miss Grit is the alias of Margaret Sohn, a Michigan-born New York transplant who, like St. Vincent, is equally enamored of both textured guitar distortion and crisp, clean melody. (When Sohn was a student in NYU’s music technology program, she briefly considered a career in making effects pedals.) Miss Grit’s self-produced second EP, “Impostor,” is a confident and searching meditation on that psychological scourge Impostor Syndrome and her outsider status as a Korean-American growing up in the Midwest. But the single “Grow Up To” is more of an abstraction — albeit a hypnotically catchy one. Beneath a vocal with a hazy, deadpan cool that recalls Mary Timony, Sohn retraces the melody line with her guitar, snaking and sparking like a lit fuse. ZOLADZBomba Estéreo featuring Okan and Lido Pimienta, ‘Agua’Folklore, mysticism, nature and electronics converge in “Agua,” the first single from an album due in April by the Colombian group Bomba Estéreo, joined by Toronto-based expatriates: the Colombian singer Lido Pimienta and the Afro-Cuban vocal duo Okan. Voices harmonize to chant the four ancient elements — “Agua, tierra, aire, fuego” (“water, earth, air, fire”) — over traditional-sounding drums, handclaps and bird calls; then the synthesizers appear, blipping and arpeggiating, as Pimienta and Bomba Estéreo’s Li Saumet sing and rap about being inseparable from the natural world. PARELESFlock of Dimes, ‘Two’“Can I be one? Can we be two?” Jenn Wasner asks on her stirring new single “Two.” The song — and its colorful, playfully choreographed video, directed by Lola B. Pierson and Cricket Arrison — is an exploration of the simultaneous needs for individuality and intimacy within a romantic relationship, but it also reflects the multiplicity of Wasner’s musical output. With her collaborator Andy Stack, she’s one-half of the band Wye Oak, while as a solo artist she releases music under the name Flock of Dimes. “Two” is driven by an irregular beat (Wasner recently joked on Twitter about her penchant for “odd time signatures”), as if to mirror the hesitant questioning of its lyrics. Even when she’s being somber or ruminative, Wasner has a touch of gallows humor, as when she muses memorably, “We’re all just wearing bodies like a costume til we die.” ZOLADZAlan Braufman (Angel Bat Dawid remix), ‘Sunrise’A slow, billowing, rafters-raising saxophone melody — distinctly in the spiritualist free-jazz tradition of Albert Ayler — becomes just one element in a digital swarm in this remix of a tune by the saxophonist Alan Braufman, from his 2020 quintet album, “The Fire Still Burns.” With the young multi-instrumentalist and composer Angel Bat Dawid at the controls, the track begins as a saxophone reflected upon itself, bouncing around the walls of an electronic prism; that leads into a steady, clipped, electronic beat, somewhere between deep house and ambient music. A veteran of New York’s jazz loft scene of the 1970s, Braufman only recently resuscitated his public career as a musician. “The Fire Still Burns,” featuring an intergenerational cast of side musicians, was a triumphant claim to artistic vitality, at age 69. This Dawid remix is another indication of what it means to stay engaged decades on, bringing the tradition ahead. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOVic Mensa featuring Wyclef Jean and Chance the Rapper, ‘Shelter’“I’ll be your shelter,” Wyclef Jean promises, sometimes in a sweet falsetto and sometimes with hoarse vehemence, over mournful, syncopated guitar chords. But the track, even with hints of hope at the end, is an elegy, and raps by Vic Mensa and Chance the Rapper matter-of-factly set out how many people aren’t sheltered from disease, poverty and racism: “Hospital workers in scrubs with no PPE/But they got money for riot gear,” Mensa observes. PARELESH.E.R., ‘Fight for You’How’s this for building anticipation: H.E.R.’s new song was nominated for a Golden Globe a day before it was even released! The soulful “Fight for You,” from the soundtrack of the upcoming Black Panther drama “Judas and the Black Messiah,” strikes an appropriate balance between period-pic scene-setting and up-to-date cool, as lyrics like “all the smoke in the air, feel the hate when they stare” draw unfortunate parallels between past and present. ZOLADZJimmy Edgar featuring 24hrs, ‘Notice’The producer Jimmy Edgar has far-flung connections. He has collaborated with producers including Sophie and Hudson Mohawk and rappers like Danny Brown. The Atlanta rapper 24hrs sing-raps assorted phrases in “Notice,” but all the action is in the track: viscous bass tones stopping and starting, little whistling interjections, double-time boings and swoops and tinkles. There’s a slow, determined push forward, but at any given moment, it’s impossible to predict where it will land. PARELESArchie Shepp and Jason Moran, ‘Wise One’You can hear history coursing both ways, future sloshing up against past, as the pianist Jason Moran and the saxophonist Archie Shepp revisit John Coltrane’s “Wise One.” When Moran pulls an arpeggiated rumble into a rhythmic flow, or splashes a fistful of high notes onto the keyboard behind Shepp’s high warbling cry, it’s almost impossible to say whether the younger pianist is guiding his elder down a new path, or following his lead. Shepp became a Coltrane apostle more than half a century ago, and it was Trane who brought Shepp to Impulse! Records, helping him build a reputation as one of the leading jazz innovators of the 1960s. Moran came up decades later, idolizing them both. Shepp and Moran’s album, “Let My People Go,” is out now — only the latest in a long history of memorable piano-sax duet albums by Shepp, including ones with Mal Waldron and Horace Parlan. RUSSONELLOVampire Weekend, ‘40:42’ remade by Goose and Sam GendelEver conceptual, Vampire Weekend called on musician-fans to remake “2021,” a minute-and-a-half ditty about relationships and the passage of time (“Copper goes green, steel beams go rust”) from its 2019 album “Father of the Bride.” There were conditions: Each remake was to last exactly 20 minutes and 21 seconds, to be combined for an EP entitled (do the math) “40:42.” Both acts rose to the occasion. Goose, a methodical jam band from Connecticut, did a live jam, on video, with clear landmarks of Minimalistic stasis, playful crosscurrents and dramatic, attentive buildups. Sam Gendel, a saxophonist who has worked with Ry Cooder, Perfume Genius and Moses Sumney, came up with multiple, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure scenarios: breathy woodwind chorales, abstract modal drones, electronic meditations and loops, cozy fireside acoustic session, raucous jazz finale. Musicians delight in working with limited parameters and leaping beyond them. PARELESAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    The Weeknd’s Super Bowl Halftime Show Breaks With Tradition

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Weeknd’s Super Bowl Halftime Show Breaks With TraditionThis time, the field won’t be swarming with fans crowding the stage. In fact, the stage won’t be on the field at all, but in the stands.The Weeknd in concert. He will be headlining the Super Bowl halftime show in Tampa on Sunday.Credit…Hayoung Jeon/EPA, via ShutterstockJulia Jacobs and Feb. 4, 2021, 3:09 p.m. ETWhether it stars Al Hirt, Michael Jackson or Beyoncé, the Super Bowl halftime show has always taken center stage on the field.But for the first time in the 55-year history of the game, the Weeknd, who is headlining this Sunday in Tampa, Fla., will perform on a stage set up in the stands in keeping with strict coronavirus protocols intended to limit contact with the players and coaches; his act may, however, include a brief interlude on the field.In a typical year, a massive stage is rolled onto the field and hundreds of fans pour out to surround it; this year only about 1,050 people are expected to work to put on the show, compared with 2,000 to 3,000 most years. Performers and crew members will receive Covid-19 tests before rehearsals and before the performance.When he strode to the microphone Thursday at a news conference, the Weeknd took in the room and noted, “It’s kind of empty.” His words were perhaps a preview of how the stadium might look to people watching from home. (About 25,000 fans will be in the stadium — less than half its 65,000-person capacity — joined by thousands of two-dimensional cardboard cutouts of fans provided by the N.F.L.)The Weeknd (Abel Tesfaye), is a 30-year-old Canadian pop star known for hits including “Can’t Feel My Face” and “Starboy.” His concerts often have a brooding feel and a dark, avant-garde edge. (The music video for his latest hit, “Blinding Lights,” opens with the Weeknd laughing maniacally, his face covered in blood.) He said that his halftime show would incorporate some of his trademark artistic themes but that he plans to be “respectful to the viewers at home.”“The story will continue,” he said, “but definitely we’ll keep it PG for the families.”This will be the second Super Bowl halftime show produced in part by Jay-Z and his entertainment company, Roc Nation, who were recruited by the N.F.L. in 2019. At the time, performers were refusing to work with the league, in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who began kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial injustice.The Coronavirus Outbreak More