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Chad Hugo featuring Tierra Whack and Leikeli47, ‘Jumpupwinya’
Chad Hugo, the lesser-known member of the Neptunes and N.E.R.D., has re-emerged on his own with a snappy, squealing, keyboard-pumping production behind two hardheaded female rappers. In under two minutes, they boast without competing: “Risk and reward, I’m-a always take a chance/Betting on myself is the way I enhance,” Leikeli47 declares, while Tierra Whack announces, “Call PETA ’cause I’m about to go animal.”
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Nia Archives, ‘Tha Darkest Hour’
Nia Archives — the English songwriter, singer, D.J. and producer Dehaney Nia Lishahn Hunt — spells out her musical mission with the title of her second album: “Emotional Junglist.” She prizes the computerized, looped, superhuman beats of the 1990s jungle (and trip-hop) that conquered British clubs before she was born. She also wants those beats to carry clear-cut pop songs. “Tha Darkest Hour” is a forlorn breakup ballad. “What did I do so wrong?” she wonders, over echoey guitar lines and shadowy sustained chords, while trip-hop undertow and flickers of fast breakbeats suggest the agitation behind the tears.
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What’s New on the Charts
pupsies, ‘Misery’
Ella Kamgaing, who records as pupsies, was 16 when they started releasing homemade hyper-pop on SoundCloud in 2023, venting everyday teenage angst in warped lo-fi productions. “Misery,” now No. 62 on the Hot 100, complains about seemingly unrequited love: “I miss that kind of misery / The kind where you are nice to me.” Its singsong, nursery-rhyme melody — mostly three notes, down and up — repeats as the unhappiness and the arrangement both thicken — from buzzy, perky keyboard countermelodies to distorted guitar blasts. The last verse seeks healing, but only halfheartedly.
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What’s New in Instrumental Music
Colin Stetson and Brìghde Chaimbeul, ‘Dirt Dance’
Colin Stetson, a saxophonist who uses circular breathing to perform his strenuous, perpetual-motion solo compositions, found a like-minded collaborator in Brìghde Chaimbeul, who plays the Scottish smallpipes, a kind of bagpipe. Their two kinds of reedy tone pair well. Stetson plays an F mezzo soprano saxophone with Chaimbeul in “Dirt Dance,” a single from their album, due in September. Over the drone of the pipes, Stetson races nonstop through circular motifs and arpeggios, as Chaimbeul tilts the piece toward Celtic tradition — a reel — and offers a long-lined melody before a final, mutual, intertwined sprint.
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What Happened 30 Years Ago
Fiona Apple, ‘Criminal’
Fiona Apple was 18 when she released “Tidal “on July 23, 1996. It was a startling debut album, musically accomplished and psychologically acute, with a lasting influence across generations of songwriters. In “Criminal,” its Grammy-winning hit single, Apple pounded bluesy piano chords and sang in a mature, melancholy alto about feeling manipulative, guilty and repentant: “It’s a sad, sad world / When a girl will break a boy just because she can.” The video, which included scenes of Apple in lingerie, stirred up discussions of sexuality and exploitation, supercharging the song’s murky emotions. Apple herself came to regret those images, but later endorsed them again.
