It’s Friday

And it’s about damn time that LIZZO’s followup to “Cuz I Love You,” her 2019 breakthrough, arrived. Her collaborators on SPECIAL, which she began working on even before the last album came out, include Benny Blanco, Max Martin and Terrace Martin, and it is, she told Variety a few months back, “one of the most musically badass, daring and sophisticated bodies of work I’ve done to date.” That’s the kind of self-congratulations one should normally ignore, but this is Lizzo, so. “I am not done,” she added... “Comparisons to early 70s Stevie Wonder or early 80s Prince are valid.” Comparisons to Harry Nilsson and Randy Newman are in print, too. That’s the early critical word on GEMINI RIGHTS, the second album by the Internet’s (the band, not the platform) psychedelic guitar hero, STEVE LACY. It’s a breakup album (“so many perspectives of a breakup,” he told GQ, even though it was inspired by one particular ex), and quite possibly a breakout album...

Barreling through jazz, post-punk, prog, funk and seemingly whatever else crosses the three bandmembers’ minds, if only for a moment—“We have a flamenco tune,” frontman Geordie Greep notes—BLACK MIDI “sound like a troupe of Gen Z Frank Zappas trying to make the best of a bad trip,” the Ringer’s Justin Sayles writes, approvingly. HELLFIRE, the group’s third album, is bleak, jarring, fractured, cerebral, visceral and “a masterpiece,” says the New York Times’ Jon Pareles... There have been solo offerings from members of BTS before, but J-HOPE’s JACK IN THE BOX is the first proper full-length album and, more important, the first release of any kind to show up during the group’s non-hiatus hiatus. And the group’s lead dancer and most perpetual smiling countenance has gone a little dark, in both his themes and his sonics. When his bandmate RM heard the album, J-Hope tells Rolling Stone, “he said, ‘Wow, I didn’t think you’d do music like this. I have a bit of a brain freeze.’” A certain restaurant chain did not have a brain freeze when it heard the title; it got right to work...

22-year-old BEABADOOBEE’s debut album came out during the pandemic; her second, which features a song “where she befriends the spiders living in her attic bedroom,” was made during it. BEATOPIA, which features assists from PinkPantheress and the 1975’s Matty Healy and George Daniel, also finds her experimenting with sounds and styles beyond the ‘90s indie guitar-pop obsessions of the debut. This time beabadoobee delivers “a warm sonic bath full of blurry guitars and muffled drum machines and sleepily murmured hooks,” says Stereogum... REBOOT is jazz/funk organist RONNIE FOSTER’s first album in 36 years. He’s best known for the five albums he recorded for Blue Note in the 1970s, as well as his work accompanying George Benson, Grover Washington Jr., Stevie Wonder and others... EARL’S CLOSET: THE LOST ARCHIVE OF EARL MCGRATH, 1970-1980 collects recordings literally rescued from the closet of EARL MCGRATH, a well-connected New York and LA raconteur who had his own Atlantic Records imprint, Clean Records, and later ran Rolling Stone Records. The album features unreleased recordings by Hall & Oates (who McGrath signed under the name Whole Oates before Atlantic’s Ahmet Ertegun, sensing their commercial potential, stole them for the parent label) as well as David Johansen, the Jim Carroll Band, Terry Allen, Norma Jean Bell and many more...

Also today: new music from DJ Premier, Rowdy Rebel, Noah Cyrus, Itzy, Ne-Yo, Interpol, ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Lera Lynn, Zach Bryan, Arlo McKinley, Rexx Life Raj, LMD (LMNO, MED and Declaime), Lloyd Banks, Sheff G, Sabrina Carpenter, Christina Perri, Mabel, Arp, Cheri Knight, Madeleine Cocolas, M. Geddes Gengras, Lynyn, Kode9, Vladislav Delay, Ozomatli, Travie McCoy, Priest, Scarcity, Deaf Havana, Senses Fail, Miszczyk, Nick Dunston, Sachal Vasandani & Romain Collin, the A’s, Launder, Superorganism, Goon, Lil Silva, Belief (Warpaint's Stella Mozgawa and Boom Bip), Irreal, Richard Reed Parry & Susie Ibarra, Nightlands (aka Dave Hartley of the War on Drugs), Tami Neilson, Willi Carlisle, Local Honeys, Ty Herndon, the Broken Spokes, the Gabbard Brothers, Lawn, Elf Power, Alan Parsons, Stephen Mallinder (of Cabaret Voltaire)... And the CMG/YO GOTTI label comp GANGSTA ART, featuring MONEYBAGG YO, 42 DUGG and others.

Etc Etc Etc

Streaming TV may be in a bit of a slump, but through the first half of 2022, the music business is continuing to boom, with streaming figures and total album consumption showing healthy increases in the US and globally, LUMINATE reports. Latin (thank you, BAD BUNNY) and country enjoyed an especially healthy half-year. The top labels, based on market share, were INTERSCOPE/GEFFEN/A&M, ATLANTIC and REPUBLIC... Drummer LOUIS HAYES, saxophonist KENNY GARRETT, violinist REGINA CARTER and producer/manager/author SUE MINGUS are the 2023 class of NEA JAZZ MASTERS... The GRAMMY AWARDS will return to CRYPTO.COM ARENA in Los Angeles on Feb. 5, 2023. (And here’s the somewhat complicated process by which the nominees for the first Songwriter of the Year award, intended for those who write for other people, not themselves, will be chosen)... BEYONCÉ joins TIKTOK... In Thursday’s newsletter, I used JACK HARLOW as a hypothetical example of a pop star who might want SPOTIFY to maintain its current royalties model rather than switch to a user-centric system, which has been shown to benefit music’s middle class at the expense of its biggest stars. I could have researched that one better. Apologies to Harlow and his manager, CHRIS THOMAS, who responded on his Instagram story, saying he found that example “funny... as I’ve been a huge proponent of [user-centric royalties] for the better part of a decade.”

Rest in Peace

Houston DJ D BABY.