It’s Friday

And everyone’s breaking out of one kind of jail or another. Colombian reggaeton star KAROL G is back with her fourth album, MAÑANA SERÁ BONITO, on which she transcends a pop-star relationship that was making her secretly miserable, and reggaeton, too. The album opens with an a cappella choir inspired by a trip to Kenya and, writes Variety’s Thania Garcia, dips into styles from “pop, rock and reggaeton to música Méxicana and electronica.” As the singer/songwriter told us on her 2021 single “Sejodioto,” “I don’t want any more prisons”... The guest list on ALGIERS’ SHOOK reads like it was randomly pulled from the credits of albums in that one crate near the front of your favorite used record store: Big Rube from Atlanta’s Dungeon Family, Mark Stewart from English post-punks the Pop Group, Zack de la Rocha from Rage Against the Machine, the guy from Future Islands, Canadian indie rapper Backxwash. “Algiers doesn’t really have a genre,” Stereogum matter-of-factly notes, while taking a stab at assigning one to the Atlanta group anyway: “right-now blues”... Four years in the making, SoCal rapper MAXO’s second album for Def Jam, EVEN GOD HAS A SENSE OF HUMOR (released earlier this week), features Pink Siifu, Liv.e, keiyaA and, he says, a bunch of “feelings that I need to leave behind.” Also possibly a label he needs to leave behind. “I just use [Def Jam] so I could make the music I imagined making, so I could almost connect history a little bit,” Maxo tells Fader. “I wouldn’t recommend anybody to sign to a label,” he adds in a Rolling Stone interview while mentioning he doesn’t expect there to be a third Def Jam album... CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE’S PRIME, made with his band NEW JAWN, is the venerated jazz bassist’s 18th album as a leader. It features Josh Evans on trumpet, Marcus Strickland on saxophone and bass clarinet and Nasheet Waits on drums. “A quartet without a chordal instrument,” the New York Times notes, and “one of [his] most satisfying bands”... On COOKUP, LA jazz multi-instrumentalist SAM GENDEL and friends reinterpret ‘90s and ‘00s R&B hits by Aaliyah, Ginuwine, 112, Boyz II Men and others. “Jams that we grew up with,” Gendel says.

Also today: Albums from Gorillaz (feat. Bad Bunny, Stevie Nicks and Beck), Key Glock, Yeat, Don Toliver, Logic, Tink, Gracie Abrams, Dierks Bentley, Iris DeMent, Gina Birch (of the Raincoats), U.S. Girls, Adam Lambert, Braxton Cook, Joe Westerlund, the Necks, Buster Williams, Tha God Fahim, Allblack, Payroll Giovanni, Russ Millions, Heinali, Godsmack, Steel Panther, Dope, Big|Brave, Venomous Concept, Shame, Model/Actriz, Miss Grit, mui zyu, Philip Selway (of Radiohead), David Brewis (of Field Music), John Bence, Unloved, the Church, Rick Wakeman & the English Rock Ensemble, Jenny O., Death Valley Girls, Channing Wilson, Lucero, Muscadine Bloodline, Dougie Poole, Rusty Truck, the Shootouts, Quinnie, En Attendant Ana, Begonia and Amanda DeBoer Bartlett.

Industry-Free Baby

Completing our week of catching up on the lost month of February, today’s mix highlights art and artists and nothing else. MusicREDEF is industry-free for the day. Because without art and artists (take it away, ChatGPT), “we would lose an essential part of our cultural heritage and be deprived of the joy, wonder, and inspiration that they bring to our lives.” I was trying to get my AI friend to say without art and artists, there would be no music industry, but ChatGPT took the wider, less jaded view. I am not complaining. Read on below for stories of KELELA, SKRILLEX, SZA, KING BRITT, LIL YACHTY, HAYLEY WILLIAMS, ELVIS COSTELLO, MORTON SUBOTNICK and more.

Plus Also Too

MARVIN GAYE, boxing manager... The return of trance... The Ukrainian rave scene in wartime... The Nintendo-fication of jazz... The Chinatown punk wars... History of battle rap... GUSTAVO DUDAMEL in New York... A quarter-dollar’s worth of CELIA CRUZ.

Rest in Peace

DEM HOPKINS, a crucial patron of Chicago’s punk rock scene, which found an early home at Oz, the gay bar he owned and operated at several locations. Click on that link for a beautiful and lengthy remembrance/profile by Chicago Reader’s Leor Galil. “He was a righteous dude,” Naked Raygun singer Jeff Pezzati tells Galil. “Without him, I don’t think we’d be where we’re at today with punk rock in Chicago”... JESSE GRESS, longtime guitarist for Todd Rundgren and author of several guitar reference books.