Joe Coscarelli

First, there was the Gmail account her parents started for her when she was 9, after she returned from camp feeling left out because she had to give new friends her mother’s email. A couple years later, there was a YouTube channel where she attempted to mimic the vloggers who had become her celebrities. Most formative was probably the Instagram account @mxmtoon, where Maia was commissioned (for free; she was 11) to do cartoon drawings for strangers on the internet. “I think I got up to, like, 500 followers on Instagram,” she recalled, before the demand got too overwhelming and she let the account fizzle out.

In the time since, Maia, now 19, has tried it all, and stuck with most of it: Tumblr. SoundCloud. Facebook. Vine. Twitter. Snapchat. Bandcamp. Pinterest. Twitch. TikTok. And so on.

Along the way, her parents, both tech-savvy educators, warned of the obvious perils of living publicly. “We were really very clear about wanting to make sure that our kids understood their footprint,” said Maia’s father, Cameron, in the family’s kitchen, before Maia chimed in, mocking in a singsong voice a line she’d obviously heard dozens of times: “Everything you put online is online forever.”

What her parents didn’t know, until things got too big to hide, was that their daughter was not only living a huge portion of her life online, but she was becoming kind of famous for it. Under the name mxmtoon (pronounced em-ex-em-toon), Maia — who keeps her last name private — began secretly posting ukulele songs she recorded in her bedroom, beginning with simple covers before finding a gushing audience of international peers for her diaristic original songs with titles like “1-800-DATEME” (sample lyrics: “I prefer Netflix over everyone/I’m so Tumblr/hashtag relatable”), “Life Online” and “Feelings Are Fatal.”

In barely two years, as her music has ricocheted around platforms, bringing new followers every day, Maia, who overflows with earnestness and giggles, has assembled an independent, DIY mini-empire almost by accident. Rather than viewing each social network as an after-the-fact marketing arm for her music, she has taken to each on its own terms, creating a constellation of content that has made her not only an emerging pop star, but an unintentional — or at least innate — influencer fluent in short-form comedy clips (TikTok), video game streaming (Twitch), instructional ukulele videos (YouTube) and more.

“I never approached the internet as a branding tool — it was always a place of self-expression,” Maia explained sincerely in the basement guest room of her parents’ house that has since become her recording studio. “When it became this thing where I had to understand that I am the brand, that was really confusing and it still is.”

On a drive around her hometown later, Maia added out of nowhere: “I definitely just thought I was going to go to college on the West Coast and move back here to be a teacher. That was the life plan, until all of a sudden it wasn’t at all.”

Because true online purity is all but extinct, mxmtoon has instead become a full-fledged business. A gap year after high school became a longer pause as Maia took on managers, a touring agent, a publicist and a lawyer, and has commenced agreeing to every kind of entertainment-industry meeting imaginable. In September, as mxmtoon, she released her debut album, “The Masquerade,” which did not have the backing of a proper label but received a heavy push (and an original podcast) from Spotify, an eager supporter since the company noticed the high levels of organic interest in her music.

Rosa Asciolla, the head of North American artist and label marketing for Spotify, said the company differentiated between plays that come from its own editorial pushes, like putting an artist on an official playlist, and those that originate from a user’s own saved songs. With mxmtoon, “We could see that people were listening from their own libraries, which is a high indicator of engagement for us,” she said, crediting Maia’s emotional honesty. (For a time, mxmtoon released music as part of Spotify’s since-shuttered direct distribution service for artists.)

Now, many microgenerations after the first young musicians went viral online, there exist plenty of blueprints for success as well as cautionary tales. The mxmtoon team has opted for the complicated tactic of hitting the gas and holding back at the same time, with her manager, Max Gredinger, noting that they have conversations about avoiding burnout for Maia “every day.”

While mxmtoon’s music has the intimate, conversational folk-pop simplicity of the Moldy Peaches or Regina Spektor, mixed with the Gen-Z, postgenre bedroom instincts of Clairo, girl in red and Beabadoobee, Gredinger pointed to new megastars like Shawn Mendes and Billie Eilish as models.

“Those artists had years of genuine discovery and building brand equity and brand awareness — it’s not a flash-in-the-pan type thing,” he said. “We’re not looking at a two-, three-year plan, we’re looking at a 10-, 20-year plan.”

Putting that into practice meant not trying to push a song like “Prom Dress,” mxmtoon’s most undeniable account of high school angst, to pop radio for fear it might blow up too fast and too fleetingly. “To pigeonhole her with a song would be selling ourselves short, even if it is leaving money on the table in the short term,” Gredinger said.

Instead, Maia, who released every song on her album in two versions — an acoustic one, true to her online beginnings, and one with full studio production — is embarking on a carefully planned tour to build her grassroots fan base. Though the arrangement is far from economical, the dates and locations are booked in a way that allows Maia to have about a week on, followed by a week off at home — “for my mental health and my stamina,” she said.

Raised in a warm cocoon of liberal Northern California values, Maia has a highly developed emotional intelligence and interpersonal acuity, though she can sometimes sound like the type of eager teenager who is echoing the grown-ups around her. A self-described “spastic and kind of quirky” nerd who got teary-eyed after getting a C on a math test, she studied architecture, dance and circuitry, learned ukulele in class and even played in a school rock band, singing songs like Jimmy Eat World’s “The Middle,” which came out the year after she was born.

“I just kind of did everything everybody told me to do,” Maia said — that is, until she found a freer version of herself online. “Social media was the way of me understanding who I was outside of the format of school.”

Still, her solid foundation of familial trust and high-achievement came in handy after she gained an audience. Maia — and by extension, mxmtoon — exists as a kind of poster child for an extremely online youth who is not a shallow zombie, but rather, has brought a broad-tent sense of empathy to her creative endeavors and attracted others like her.

Maia, who is bisexual, described her fans as “very respectful,” often “young women of color or young people that are LGBTQ or sharing a lot of the same identifiers that I do.” And though she admits to spending too much time on her apps, she has developed a sense of perspective when it comes to learning how to be a role model and a public figure.

“There’s no guidebook on how to deal with the amount of scrutiny that you might face on a day-to-day basis as an artist, especially as a young woman of color,” she said, adding: “Oh, to be a teenager on the internet!”

For now, Maia said she was happy as just that, though she can be ambivalent when it comes to her longer-term ambitions. “Because I’m so young and because everything has happened at such a rapid pace, I’m still understanding what I want my artist project to be,” she said. “Everything gets increasingly more intense as I go along.”

There are moments that she feels ready to conquer, like the day she got her first professional in-ear monitors for performing live. “I was wearing them and looking in the mirror, and I was like, ‘I’m a damn pop star!’” she said, collapsing into laughter. “Ariana Grande has these!” She plans to meet with labels after playing New York shows in November.

Other times, Maia wants an expiration date on her life as a performer. “Do I see myself attending the Grammys?” she wondered. “I guess ... yes? But I don’t want to be in my 30s and still doing that,” she added, as if her 30s were her 80s. She recently had her first studio sessions as a songwriter, and could see falling into the background by composing for others in the future.

“It’s so cool, of course, to exist with such a big audience,” Maia continued. “But I also know myself and know that it’s not something I want to be doing my whole life.”

Soon, she will move out of her parents’ house and head to New York, to room with her younger brother, who recently started college in Brooklyn. They already have plans to get matching tattoos, to go with the ones she has with her father (cornflower and thistle, for her German and Scottish heritage) and with her mother, Cheryl (cherry blossoms, for her Chinese side).

Back at home in California, Maia’s parents will keep up with her adventures through social media. “I’m absolutely worried to death for her,” said her father, Cameron, who is still coming to terms with the effects of her internet fame and has taken to reading books like “All You Need to Know About the Music Business.” But he’s also seen the allure, and he rattled off statistics about mxmtoon’s listeners across platforms. “I’m probably more obsessed with it than she is,” he admitted.

Using his own facility with DIY technology, he even built a digital counter that connects via Wi-Fi to the mxmtoon accounts on Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Spotify, and now sits on the kitchen windowsill. As Maia forges on, posting her music, microthoughts and inside jokes along the way, her parents can watch the numbers creep upward with every new follower.

This article originally appeared in

A Teenager, Her Ukulele and a Bedroom Pop Empire-in-the-Making

OAKLAND, Calif. — Like many of today’s post-Y2K teenagers, Maia, a preternaturally composed and thoughtful young woman from the San Francisco Bay Area, can rattle off her old screen names and social media accounts as easily as her birth date.

Rather than getting him help, the suit says, those who were meant to guide him instead pushed Lil Peep “onto stage after stage in city after city, plying and propping” him up with illegal drugs and unprescribed controlled substances as he spiraled further.

These were the explosive claims filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court by Liza Womack, the rapper’s mother and the administrator of his estate, against First Access Entertainment, the talent agency and label that oversaw Lil Peep’s career after signing him to a three-year deal beginning when he was 19.

The suit, which seeks unspecified damages for negligence, breach of contract and wrongful death, also named as defendants Bryant Ortega, known as Chase, a member of Lil Peep’s management team; and Belinda Mercer, who was hired as a tour manager for Lil Peep’s final tour in the fall of 2017. The suit also raises allegations about Sarah Stennett, First Access’s chief executive and a music industry power broker who has worked with pop singers Ellie Goulding, Rita Ora and Zayn Malik.

The defendants, including First Access, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lil Peep (born Gustav Ahr) was on the forefront of a genre-bending movement and seemed on the verge of mainstream fame when he died at 21 in November 2017, making him just one in a handful of notable musicians who have overdosed on opioids in recent years; the synthetic drug fentanylwas also cited in the deaths of Prince, Tom Petty and Mac Miller. But Lil Peep’s is the first recent case in which an artist’s family has attempted to hold the music business itself responsible. There have been no criminal charges in connection to his death.

“This is something that I must do as a mother,” Womack said, citing her ongoing worry for young artists. “I feel very concerned that they not be exploited,” she said. “What Gus had to live through is actually horrifying to me, and I’m sure he’s not the only person his age in this situation.”

The suit contends that the defendants “fostered, promoted and encouraged” drug use as a way to maintain control over Lil Peep and his tours. It paints the musician as an impressionable young man with no entertainment industry experience, who had put his trust in FAE “to guide him through this journey in a reasonable, ethical, and safe manner.” The company, the suit says, treated Lil Peep “as a commodity rather than as a human being” and pushed him “to the extreme bounds of what somebody of his age and maturity level could handle emotionally, mentally, and physically.”

Detailing specific incidents, the suit claims that Stennett gifted Lil Peep a bottle of pills at a group dinner in early 2017, and cites text messages in which she contacted him about drugs, writing, “I’m about to land at JFK. I have one 2m x and 4 x .25,” referring to two different doses of Xanax pills.

Mercer, the suit says, was in a sexual relationship with Lil Peep while working as his tour manager and provided him drugs, including ketamine. The lawsuit also describes an event on Oct. 25, 2017, a few weeks before Lil Peep’s death, in which Mercer was detained at the Canadian border after a search by drug-sniffing dogs. The suit alleges that Stennett was made aware of the incident and the potentially dangerous environment on tour but allowed the behavior to persist.

On the night Lil Peep died, Mercer and others associated with FAE saw him on the bus and noted “that he looked alarmingly unwell, but rather than seeking help or contacting authorities, Mercer instead elected to run a personal errand,” the suit claims.

Much of what was included in the lawsuit was previously reported by David Peisner in a Rolling Stone story about Lil Peep’s last days, published in March. In the article, Stennett denied through a lawyer that she had ever given Lil Peep any drug, and said she was merely trying to comfort him by offering pills that she had no intention of delivering. She also denied that she was aware of what drugs people were doing on the tour bus.

“I wasn’t there,” Stennett told Rolling Stone. “Anybody who takes drugs makes a decision to take a risk.” She and Ortega repeatedly told Lil Peep to seek counseling for his dependency, she said.

In an interview last year, Stennett told The New York Times that her work with Lil Peep had “restored my faith in a higher power,” adding that their relationship “made me understand there is a purpose to what I’m doing. It’s not just music, it’s a much bigger responsibility.”

Beyond the issue of whether his management team facilitated his drug use, to win the case Womack may need to convince a jury that the team did so purposefully, or at least that it had a duty to look out for his welfare and did not adequately do so.

Paul A. Matiasic, a lawyer for Womack, Lil Peep’s mother, said, “We acknowledge, obviously, that Gus had a role” in his own death. However, “In evaluating the legal responsibility for someone’s untimely death, it is not a binary decision,” he added, noting that juries in California could assign fault as they see appropriate. (For example, if a plaintiff is 50% responsible for their own injury, but the defendant is 50% responsible, the plaintiff can recover 50% of their damages from the defendant.)

FAE “had the power, they had the influence and control over Gus’s career, and specifically this tour,” Matiasic said. “There are duties associated with having that type of control.”

Gregory C. Keating, a torts professor at the University of Southern California, said that while allegations of record companies providing drugs to rock stars date back decades, and could be seen as a “common practice in a freewheeling industry,” that doesn’t mean an entertainment company could not be held liable.

“It’s a plausible complaint, because a court could reasonably decide that by providing a person with an addiction with prescription medication and illegal substances, they endangered his life, and that brought responsibility upon themselves,” he said.

“They would argue that they had no duty to protect him,” he continued, “but if you supply him and you know he’s got an addiction problem, that could trigger the application of a duty. This person is under your control to some extent, and you’re actually enabling them by doing things that you’re not authorized to do.”

Columbia Records, which released Lil Peep’s first posthumous album, “Come Over When You’re Sober, Pt. 2,” declined to comment.

“Everybody’s Everything,” a documentary about Lil Peep’s life and death, is scheduled for release on Nov. 15, the second anniversary of his fatal overdose. The film, which bears the stamp of First Access Entertainment, includes Womack, the filmmaker Terrence Malick and Stennett as executive producers.

Lil Peep's Mother Sues Managers Over His Death

Before the rising emo-rapper Lil Peep was pronounced dead from an overdose on a tour bus in Tucson, Arizona, almost two years ago, he was “stressed, overwhelmed, burnt out, exhausted and physically unwell,” according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

First came the news that his father had died suddenly in Nashville. Stunned and full of questions, DaBaby, born Jonathan Kirk, could hardly grasp the gut-punch of the tragedy, in part because someone wouldn’t stop calling him on the other line.

When the rapper finally answered, it was his road manager. “‘You No. 1 — you did it!’ He’s screaming — it sounded like he was doing back-flips, ecstatic, just going crazy,” DaBaby recalled. “Baby on Baby,” his major-label debut, had hit the very top of the Apple Music albums chart, setting him on a path to becoming perhaps the year’s premier breakout rap star.

The emotional whiplash of that moment, DaBaby explained coolly, was something he has gotten more used to in the last year, as his exponential ascent has been repeatedly interrupted by flashes of harsh reality, including his involvement in a fatal shooting and numerous alleged assaults.

“I’ve had to process it all on the go,” said DaBaby, 27, who interrupted a sold-out tour to bury his father and then flew back out that night, all while recording a new album on the road.

“Kirk,” his third project in 12 months and second album this year, was released Sept. 27 via Interscope, with features from Migos, Chance the Rapper and Gucci Mane, and is expected to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard chart. The 13 tracks begin with “Intro,” the most personal song of DaBaby’s career, which touches on his father’s death and the upheaval of his new reality. But the tenderness is short-lived as DaBaby gets right back to the things that have quickly become his trademark: bouncy, jabbing beats with a rapid, percussive tumble of cartoonishly menacing punch lines and audacious, uniquely blush-inducing sex raps.

But while his musical formula is dominating streaming services, making DaBaby the most inescapable, in-demand collaborator of the summer (see: Megan Thee Stallion’s “Cash ___,” Post Malone’s “Enemies” and many more), he must also quickly level out into a reliable brand and businessman to solidify his arrival into hip-hop’s fickle top tier. Though DaBaby’s rise has felt more organic — and for rap, nearly old-fashioned, based largely on undeniable verses, beats and outlandish videos — compared with the meme-driven phenomena of a 6ix9ine or Lil Nas X, it has not been without its extracurricular viral moments, most of them controversial at minimum.

In videos that have proliferated across local news stations and the rap internet alike, DaBaby has beaten the literal pants off an aspiring artist who was harassing him in a Louis Vuitton store (and then made a T-shirt out of it); punched a handsy fan who reached for his chain at a show; and become a defendant in an ongoing lawsuit after members of his team attacked another aspiring rapper who had been badgering him for a photo in Boston, among other violent incidents. And while the chaos of his climb has done nothing to slow his momentum or entree into the pop mainstream — in fact, it may have even helped — it definitely feels unsustainable.

“As my circumstances have changed, I’ve had to move in a different way and make some adjustments,” said DaBaby, who along with his team declined to address specific occurrences, but has insisted that he has only ever been protecting himself. His manager, Arnold Taylor, added, “He’s street, but we ain’t thugs — that’s the difference,” and echoed the need for more discretion and security as DaBaby’s notoriety has increased.

“We just need to move different and evolve,” Taylor repeated as a general refrain.

Across two days in Los Angeles the week of his album release, DaBaby, who is compact like a cannonball, with an alpha manner and deep dimples, only ever seemed professional and locked-in, fully aware that stardom was his for the securing.

Repeatedly, he flexed his prodigious work ethic and people-pleasing skills, crisscrossing the city for a nonstop slate of performances, interviews, handshakes and other obligations that come with the social-media-soaked music industry of today. With a crew of about a dozen at all times — including a relatively new security guard who resembles an oak tree built out of multiple smaller oak trees — the rapper was punctual and accommodating, hitting all of his marks while sneaking FaceTime kisses to his 2-year-old daughter.

In less than 24 hours, DaBaby managed to accomplish a blur of tasks including: a college show for some 10,000 undergrads interested in moshing; a 6 a.m. wake-up to announce “Kirk” via social channels; a dance session in an Airbnb to tease a new song on the video platform Triller; back-to-back radio station interviews; a promo shoot for a streaming service (“Alexa, play DaBaby”); a multiple-hour taping for a web series; another one-on-one interview; two more radio station sit-downs; and a club appearance, all of which, of course, was documented for Instagram.

“I’ve been a machine for a while now,” said DaBaby, nearly hoarse from the marathon of self-promotion, though it was not even half-done and would continue into the next week and beyond. But more work, after all, was what he had been working toward.

DaBaby, who was born in Cleveland but raised in Charlotte, started rapping only as an adult about five years ago, and initially under the name Baby Jesus, which he eventually changed out of concern that it had become a distraction. At the same time, distractions designed to go viral were part of his early blueprint, like the time he walked around the South by Southwest festival in Austin wearing only an adult diaper and jewelry.

For a time, “My internet presence was definitely bigger than the music,” DaBaby said. “I’m so good at marketing, so once I knew I had them looking, I turned up with the music. I knew what I was doing — it was premeditated.”

Taylor, his manager and a former radio and promotions executive at major record companies, recalled seeing DaBaby in North Carolina clubs around the time he was launching his own South Coast Music Group label. “I didn’t even know if he was a rapper, I just knew he had a big entourage with him and was moving like a rapper,” he said.

Once the pair teamed up, they focused on a well-worn path: building buzz around the South with mixtapes and club shows, while DaBaby found his sound. Though he initially futzed with Auto-Tuned vocals and repetitive melodies, à la Travis Scott and Migos, the rapper started finding more traction with ferociously rapped freestyles over existing hits, a somewhat lost art that he said he learned from Lil Wayne.

Now, with years of melody dominating the upper echelons of rap, DaBaby’s throwback dedication to mostly just rapping helps to set him apart. “When I started coming on my music the way I was coming on freestyles — just relentless, at your neck, as soon as the beat starts, that’s when everything really clicked,” he said, adding that he has now worked with many of the artists whose songs he was unofficially remixing, including Lil Baby and Offset.

Through his deal with Taylor’s South Coast Music Group, DaBaby signed a short-lived distribution deal with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation for the “Blank Blank” mixtape that would prove to be his breakout last fall. But like 50 Cent and Gucci Mane before him, DaBaby’s climb to name recognition was attached to a shooting — a tragedy that was gossiped about until it took on the near-mythic weight of a superhero origin story, while also carrying real-life consequences.

In November 2018, just days after the release of “Blank Blank,” DaBaby was shopping with his daughter, her mother and another child at a Walmart in Huntersville, North Carolina, when he has said two men threatened him with a gun. During an altercation, he fired a shot that left a 19-year-old man dead. DaBaby was eventually found guilty of a misdemeanor — carrying a concealed weapon — but was not charged in the death.

The Mecklenburg County district attorney’s office said in a statement to The New York Times that it had “reviewed the police investigative file and agreed with the Huntersville Police Department’s decision not to charge Kirk further as prosecutors could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not act in self-defense.”

DaBaby would only say that he was “blessed,” and that his close calls in life were motivation to keep achieving more. Since the shooting and the release of his “Baby on Baby” in March, his profile has even expanded to the Top 40 sphere, where he has added guest verses to hits like Lizzo’s No. 1 smash “Truth Hurts” and Lil Nas X’s “Panini.”

Caroline Diaz, an A&amp;R; executive at Interscope who is assigned to DaBaby’s musical development, said it was important to maintain a careful balance between crossover moments and content true to the rapper’s base, with his own albums remaining pure. “He could’ve thrown a Lizzo or a Post Malone on there — that’s what everyone expects — but it’s still a hood album,” she said of “Kirk.” “His project is so street, but then when you look at his features, he’s able to do everything.”

Still, despite the rapid professionalization of DaBaby’s career, an air of unpredictability and easily raised hackles mingled with celebratory moments in Los Angeles.

At his UCLA student concert, security was tight and the rules were explicit — no smoking, no drinking, no jumping in the crowd — but DaBaby tested the limits, getting as close as possible to an audience that seemed to be teetering on the edge of mayhem. “Don’t go out there?” he triple-checked with his manager onstage during the performance, gesturing to the crowd. He flashed a mischievous grin, but held back.

“They would’ve kept my money,” he said after. “It would’ve been bad business.”

The next day, on a busy stretch of Fairfax Avenue, DaBaby soaked up the attention that came with sitting, door open, in the back seat of a parked SUV as shoppers and pedestrians passed. He was noticeable, if not exactly approachable, when at one point, a young, sweaty man whose car had broken down only feet away began rather loudly, and rudely, requesting a photo with the rapper.

DaBaby stayed silent, shaking his head, as his team encouraged the increasingly agitated man to mind his business and walk away, but the growing tension was incontrovertible. “I’m never listening to him again,” the man said, before miraculously getting his beat-up car to start and driving away.

Moments later, a group of nine children with backpacks and headphones noticed the rising star in their midst, and began murmuring, eyes wide. They lurked and gawked, tentatively pulling their cellphones out before one got up the nerve to ask for a photo. DaBaby, his grin gleaming with diamonds, hesitated for a second before agreeing to a single group shot with the now-joyous crew.

As they all parted, DaBaby slipped one boy a crisp $100 bill and told the group to split it, slipping back into the relative safety of the SUV as they sprinted down the block squealing.

LOS ANGELES — Earlier this year, just as the North Carolina rapper DaBaby was hurtling into the hip-hop stratosphere with his hit single “Suge,” he was resting for a rare minute at home in Charlotte when he was awakened by a stream of calls and messages.

Can This Rapper Settle Into Stardom?

An early sacrifice to the music-blog gods and a bloodthirsty thing called social media, the singer and songwriter born Elizabeth Grant could have been a footnote after loaded speculation about her artifice and upbringing collided with a shaky “Saturday Night Live” debut in early 2012.

Instead of self-immolating, Del Rey exploded into one of the most consistent album artists and world-builders of this decade, aesthetically presaging pop music’s — and the world’s — turn toward opiates and apocalypse.

“Norman ____ Rockwell!,” her fifth major-label album out Friday, is packed with fiery and profane lyrics (along with an obscene title) that again explore iconographic versions of masculinity and femininity — dismantling one and fortifying the other, beginning with the opening lyric, “Goddamn, man-child.” The aggressively midtempo music is a tribute to Laurel Canyon folk and rock.

Though the album was written and produced with the pop it-man Jack Antonoff, Del Rey, who has not had a Top 40 hit in the last five years, leans into languid ballads and a humorously straight-faced Sublime cover after flirting with contemporary sounds on “Lust for Life” in 2017.

Providing a good idea of where her head is at these days, Del Rey, in song, also references John Lennon, Led Zeppelin, the Beach Boys, David Bowie and Crosby, Stills &amp; Nash, while maintaining flashes of Fiona Apple and Cat Power, a spiritual forebear and recent collaborator.

Over the phone from a friend’s house in California, where she finds it easier to get things done, Del Rey, 34, spoke easily, with sly humor and many giggles, about a range of subjects, from her creative process and Antonoff to Kanye West, Donald Trump and the dearth of protest music. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q: You’ve become a pop star without interacting with or sounding much like your contemporaries, but on your last album, you worked with ASAP Rocky, the Weeknd and Max Martin. Did you consciously want to pull back again?

A: No, but honestly, inside the room, with Jack, he’s so much of a large presence that he took up as much of the space as I did. It was very collaborative. The only thing I really thought about, toward the end, was that I’d like to have a woman from the ’60s just to add a little good luck magic. But I didn’t even ask.

Q: What did you get out of working with Jack that you haven’t with others?

A: It’s kind of like a romance in a way, where things work out best when you really are not looking for it. I was at a party and I met him and I didn’t even really want to go down to the studio, because it was winter and I was chilling. But then we wrote a song in about 40 minutes — “Love Song” — and I was like, “You are so good, would you mind recording me live, to no track, singing this song that I’ve journaled called ‘Hope Is a Dangerous Thing’?” And I really liked how he captured my voice without instruments. I thought, [expletive] it, let’s make an album.

Q: Do you have a theory as to why so many female artists are drawn to working with him?

A: I think it’s his musicianship. I know a lot of producers who can’t play. He plays the sitar on one of the last things we did! I feel like what I can do in terms of grabbing a melody out of the air, he can do with a very minor chord progression and just like, mmm, magical.

Q: Is there anything intimidating about putting out a Jack-produced album at the same time as Taylor Swift?

A: Oooh. Well, it certainly makes me think more about what the [expletive] I’m doing with my life. [Laughs]

Q: In what way?

A: I’m mostly at the beach! So, yeah, I was like, I better leave the house and go do something. I mean [long pause, followed by a sigh]. My plan is having no plan, pretty much all the time, which actually works out very well for me. But I do have to sometimes snap out of it and be like, oh, music changes, culture changes. Sometimes people want more from you than what you are giving, so let me step up to the plate a little bit and show up for my songs. I wasn’t really thinking about the Taylor album and then it came out and then I was like, “Oh wow.” I didn’t really realize these were a week apart.

Q: You dabble in pop, but at the same time, aren’t really a part of it. How do you decide when you want to dip in, like doing the “Charlie’s Angels” song with Miley Cyrus and Ariana Grande?

First of all, I really, really like Ariana. I had been listening to “Dangerous Woman” a lot. I got her number at some point and we would chat. And then “Thank U, Next” came out and I freaking loved that record. Every song, I was like, how did she write that? So when she asked me to do the “Charlie’s Angels” feature, I was like, “All right, if you really want me to!”

Q: How do you feel about the state of mainstream pop right now? Is that something you keep up with — the radio, Spotify, Billboard?

A: Yeah, I love it. I don’t keep up with the charts, but do I have the radio on? Ehhh. It’s more like on Instagram, I’ll see someone have a clip of a song and then I’ll go on YouTube.

I love Billie Eilish, and I feel like I’ve been waiting for this time in pop-music culture. I personally am very discerning. I can tell if a female pop singer, for instance, has a generosity of spirit or a playful fire in her heart. With Billie, she’s prodigious. I needed to hear one line of one melody and I just know. And then Ariana’s choices of intonation, it might not be traditional, but it’s very good. I also really love hip-hop, so seeing such an influx of little mumble rappers coming out and being so sexy and authentic — one of the little dudes wants to wear a dress onstage and everyone’s clapping their hands like, “Bravo!”

Q: Do you see a generation of younger women making music who feel influenced by you?

Q: Does that make you feel good?

Q: Or do you feel like you started something and people are biting you?

A: I feel more good than the other way. Uh [long pause]. I just notice it and I like it. Because I like my own music. [Laughs]

Q: On “The Greatest,” you sing about missing rock ’n’ roll. Do you think rock is dead or dying?

A: It’s more about the concept of actually just chilling and listening to music for no reason. I was thinking of when I was 19, 20, 21 and had my first real boyfriends in this [expletive] apartment and just listening to Kings of Leon, that song “Milk,” or like White Stripes and the Strokes. We were trying to get into this secret bar they had on the East Side and no one would ever let us in. It was so fun. Maybe I should’ve said indie rock.

Q: You have the line “Kanye West is blond and gone,” which is tinged with a similar nostalgia. You performed at his wedding and also called him out for his support of President Trump on Twitter. Have you heard anything in response?

A: No. Gratefully, no. Here’s the thing: I don’t want to elicit a response. You never feel better for having written something like that. But Kanye just means so much to us. And by the way, I’m grateful to be in a country where everyone can have their own political views. I’m really not more of a liberal than I am a Republican — I’m in the middle. But it was more like the mood and the vibe around, Yo, this man is the greatest! Really? The greatest? It hurt me. Did I have to say anything? No. But it’s more just a line that represents a lot of things.

Q: You also recorded and released the song “Looking for America” in response to a recent spate of mass shootings. What felt so urgent about it?

A: The back-to-back shootings, within 24 hours of each other. I’m always upset when I hear about anything remotely violent. But I was extremely upset. Every now and then, like for instance with the Amazon burning, people wake up and they’re like, wow, this is not just a passing phase. There’s something extremely wrong. I like to stay on the periphery, but when you have back-to-back shootings like that — should I say that’s when it’s time to say something? It certainly was for me.

Q: Do you think we’re missing protest music from this moment?

A: I do now. I think there was a great period of not being sure what was going on. I was there when Obama got elected in Union Square. Under that administration, it felt like a dream had come true-ish and we could focus on the arts and it was a time of reprieve and we didn’t have to talk about certain things. But of course there was a lot going on.

One portion of the dots that people are connecting is: “Is it possible that this presidency is engendering this idea that it’s OK to be more violent?” And a lot of people are saying yes. Someone who says “grab ’em by the pussy,” that does make someone else feel a little bit more entitled to bring his rifle to school. If there wasn’t a time for protest music, there absolutely is now.

Q: At a few points on the album, you seem to be alluding to #MeToo. Do you think it hit the music industry like the rest of culture?

A: Well if it hasn’t, it certainly applies to it. It hit it equally as far as people being able to evaluate where they stood, in terms of being neglected or abused in that way. It doesn’t matter if you’re a doctor or a janitor, you know where you fall on the spectrum of “Have people totally [expletive] me over?”

Q: Did you read the chapter in Moby’s memoir about taking you on a date? He says you told him that he was in line for the guillotine because of his ridiculous penthouse apartment.

Q: Did it ring true to you?

A: Pretty much! I don’t know how he [expletive] remembers … He must have a mind like a steel trap. I don’t even remember what was going on. I think I was a backup singer and I was opening for people and yeah, we went on a date. [Laughs]

Q: Do you allow yourself to think about the dark days of 2012, when you were something of an internet punching bag? Do you ever let yourself feel smug about what you’ve accomplished?

A: I rarely feel feelings like smugness. But of course it’s very fresh in my mind because it was so unusual and unexpected. Mostly with stuff like that I look back on it and think, “Well, that was weird!” I’m just glad it’s better than it was.

I always thought that if you were going to become successful, it would be because things were going very well. I didn’t have a point of reference for things being really, really big, but not necessarily having an overtone of it being good. It’s certainly soul-strengthening because you have to really turn inward and ask, “Do I like what I do?” And it’s like, yeah, very much.

Q: This album comes out right at the Grammys deadline. Do you care about the Grammys?

A: Uhhh ... yes, I care. But I’m better staying in the process of things. What day is the Grammys deadline?

Q: The day after your album comes out.

A: Hm! Yeah, I mean ... Well ... Yeah, I care. [Laughs]

Q: You said in December that your New Year’s resolution was to live “more like an Instagram baddie/YouTube vlogger.” How’s that going?

A: It is going swimmingly. For as much time as I’m able to spend on my craft of songwriting, I’ve also been having fun and being a little badass. Motorcycling, surfing, wearing more neon. What’s funny is that post was a complete joke. But actually I have been having a lot of fun. So I guess there really is a true magic to the written word.

Fiery Songs, Released at Just the Right Time

Lana Del Rey was never supposed to make it this far.

Lana Del Rey on Trump, Kanye and the Right Time for a Protest Song

No new albums reached the Top 150 this week, leaving the streaming success of “Death Race” (Grade A/Interscope) in the No. 1 spot with a total of 74,000 units by the industry’s math, combining streams and sales.

In Juice WRLD’s case, just 3,800 album sales were lifted by 106 million song streams, according to Nielsen, outpacing the runner-up, Ariana Grande’s “Thank U, Next” (Republic). In its sixth week on the chart, Grande’s second album in six months added another 78 million streams and 6,400 in sales, for a total of 66,000 units.

The rest of the Top 5 has been hanging around for some time. Though it had the highest sales total of the week (about 16,000), the soundtrack to “A Star Is Born” (Interscope) held steady at No. 3 with 40,000 units in its 24th go-round on the Billboard chart. A Boogie Wit da Hoodie’s “Hoodie SZN” was carried to the No. 4 spot by 50 million streams in its 13th week, while Queen soundtrack to the biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” is No. 5 in its 22nd week.

The highest-ranking debut came from rapper Chief Keef, whose “GloToven” mixtape, with Atlanta producer Zaytoven, lands at No. 153 with 8 million streams and 491 albums sold.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/arts/music/juice-wrld-ariana-grande-billboard.html" id="6743c7c6-ccfb-3821-a88c-a58a86604797">The New York Times</a>.

Juice WRLD, the 20-year-old singing rapper of the moment, is spending a second straight week atop the Billboard 200 chart with his new album, “Death Race for Love,” thanks to a slow period for major music releases.

With No Major New Releases, Juice WRLD Repeats at No. 1

The rapper, born Robert Rihmeek Williams, was initially found guilty more than a decade ago of possessing drugs and a firearm, with a detective testifying at trial that Williams, then 19, pointed a gun at him during a 2007 arrest. Williams served eight months in prison before being placed on probation for 10 years.

In 2017, after two arrests that did not lead to convictions, a Philadelphia judge, Genece Brinkley, sentenced Williams to up to four years in prison for violating his parole, leading to an outcry by celebrities and advocates of criminal justice reform. The rapper served five months before he was granted bail.

Since then, as the rapper has become a cause célèbre and outspoken reformer himself, Williams’ legal team has argued that Brinkley had become overly involved in the case and was no longer impartial. In calling for a new trial, they also pointed to the fact that the only witness to testify against Williams at trial was a former Philadelphia police officer, Reginald Graham, who has since resigned from the department after an internal investigation found him guilty of theft and lying.

In a rare twist, prosecutors for the district attorney’s office backed Williams’ request for a new trial, acknowledging that it would never again call Graham to testify.

In its decision Wednesday, a three-judge appeals panel reversed a lower court’s ruling and granted Williams a new trial, noting that “Graham was the only witness to incriminate Williams at trial.” The decision added that “reassignment to a different trial judge is necessary to avoid appearances of unfairness and partiality.”

In a statement, Meek Mill said, “The past 11 years have been mentally and emotionally challenging, but I’m ecstatic that justice prevailed.” He added: “Unfortunately, millions of people are dealing with similar issues in our country and don’t have the resources to fight back like I did. We need to continue supporting them.” (The rapper previously wrote about the “arrest-jail-probation cycle” in an Op-Ed for The New York Times.)

Prosecutors could now choose to drop the case against Williams altogether. As part of its appeal, the rapper’s legal team included a sworn affidavit from another officer present at Williams’ 2007 arrest, who said he did not see Williams point his gun but rather attempt to discard it.

The district attorney’s office said in a statement that it was “pleased that the Pennsylvania Superior Court has validated our position that Robert Rihmeek Williams deserves a new trial before a court that has no appearance of partiality,” adding that it would review the court’s opinion and “begin to review options.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/arts/music/meek-mill-new-trial.html" id="459a9ada-0b36-343d-ae7c-f13144528e5c">The New York Times</a>.

Meek Mill, the platinum-selling Philadelphia rapper, was granted a new trial and a new judge by a Pennsylvania appeals court Wednesday, after fighting a 2008 drug and gun conviction that his lawyers have argued should be overturned.

Meek Mill Granted New Trial and New Judge in 2008 Conviction

“The Race,” a song McIntyre released online the same day he was apprehended by U.S. marshals after three months on the lam in 2017, included boasts from the rapper about violent crime and eluding law enforcement. The video, which has been viewed more than 173 million times on YouTube, featured a baby-faced Tay-K posing with a handgun next to his own wanted poster, and caused a stir online for its unabashed muddying of the line between art and life.

The track was remixed widely by artists including 21 Savage, Lil Yachty and Fetty Wap as #FreeTayK became an online rallying cry, and “The Race” was eventually certified platinum, reaching No. 44 on the Billboard Hot 100.

McIntyre, now 19, faces between five and 99 years in prison, though he was found not guilty of capital murder, which would have carried a mandatory sentence of 40 years without parole. The jury had begun deliberating Thursday afternoon when the defense opted not to call a single witness. Tarrant County prosecutors moved immediately into the sentencing phase of the trial after the verdict Friday, with a decision expected next week.

McIntyre had already pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated robbery and was found guilty of a third count tied to the incident, but his lawyers argued that he should not be convicted of murder because he was not the gunman in the killing. Six others were charged in the robbery that left Ethan Walker, 21, dead in July 2016. Prosecutors argued that McIntyre knew a shooting would occur when he and the others agreed to commit a robbery in hopes of finding drugs and money.

The rapper, who was 16 at the time, was certified as an adult to stand trial. He had been placed on house arrest with an ankle monitor when he escaped in the spring of 2017, setting off a manhunt for what the U.S. Marshals Service deemed a “violent fugitive.”

According to prosecutors, McIntyre committed a separate murder in San Antonio while on the run, and he has also been charged with beating and robbing a 65-year-old man in an Arlington park. Both trials are forthcoming.

Brian Butcher, a lawyer representing the families of Walker and two other alleged victims of McIntyre, said in a statement that lawsuits against the rapper were ongoing. “I am glad a Fort Worth jury delivered justice,” he said, but added that “justice will not be fully complete until every penny of profit from McIntyre’s music is awarded as compensation to his victims.”

Representatives for Tay-K declined to comment Friday.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/arts/music/tay-k-guilty.html" id="9e7b3f8c-87b4-35ad-a8f8-9bbd7c4d1e51">The New York Times</a>.

Tay-K, Rapper Who Went Viral With 'The Race,' Is Found Guilty of Murder

Taymor McIntyre, a Texas teenager best known as rapper Tay-K (or Tay-K 47), was found guilty of murder Friday for his role in a 2016 armed robbery that left one man dead and, in a controversial series of events, helped to kick-start Tay-K’s brief, viral rise in hip-hop.

Famously private and often inscrutable, the singer, who died of an accidental opioid overdose at the age of 57, had announced the project just weeks before he was found dead at his Paisley Park estate in Chanhassen, Minnesota.

“We’re starting right at the beginning — my first memory — and hopefully we can move all the way to the Super Bowl,” Prince, who played the halftime show in 2007, told a small crowd at a mini-concert to celebrate news of the book in March 2016.

“The good people of Random House have made me an offer that I can’t refuse,” he added. “You all still read books, right?”

Prince had enlisted writer Dan Piepenbring, an editor at the Paris Review, as a collaborator on the autobiography, calling him “not a yes man at all.” The re-envisioned version, a partnership with the Prince estate, will feature the “early pages” of the memoir, along with an introduction by Piepenbring, who briefly collaborated with the singer at “a time when Prince was thinking deeply about how to reveal more of himself and his ideas to the world, while retaining the mystery and mystique he’d so carefully cultivated,” the publisher said.

The book was originally acquired by Random House nonfiction imprint Spiegel &amp; Grau, which closed this year, and will now be released by the larger company. Editor Chris Jackson said of Prince: “His death was an unfathomable loss, but this book — full of writing from his own hand and images that he carefully preserved at Paisley Park — is a beautiful tribute to his life.”

Along with the lyrics and “never-before-seen photos,” “The Beautiful Ones” will include original scrapbook material from the singer, including the original handwritten treatment for “Purple Rain,” the 1984 film and album, and other behind-the-scenes material that was preserved at Paisley Park.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/22/arts/music/prince-memoir-beautiful-ones.html" id="6da9354f-7c7c-3946-a834-c64260eddf7b">The New York Times</a>.

“The Beautiful Ones,” a memoir that Prince started not long before his death in 2016, will be released in October as a “newly envisioned” book featuring rare photographs and handwritten lyrics, publisher Random House announced Monday.

Prince's Unfinished Memoir Will Be Released After All

The singer — who perfected the secret album drop in 2013, and has since toyed with the tactic for releases like “Lemonade” and “Everything Is Love,” with her husband Jay-Z — did it again in the early morning hours Wednesday, one-upping the arrival of her own Netflix documentary, “Homecoming,” with a previously unannounced live-album version of the same concert.

Both the film and the album, also titled “Homecoming,” capture Beyoncé’s performance at last year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, in which the singer — the first black woman to headline the event — was backed by dozens of dancers and an elaborate marching band for a set that nodded to the musical legacy of historically black colleges.

“There’s not likely to be a more meaningful, absorbing, forceful and radical performance by an American musician this year, or any year soon,” critic Jon Caramanica wrote of the show in The New York Times. “It was rich with history, potently political and visually grand. By turns uproarious, rowdy, and lush. A gobsmacking marvel of choreography and musical direction.”

Now, the concert — which was live-streamed at the time and recreated for Coachella’s second weekend, but has existed only in bootleg form since — has been preserved for history in multiple mediums. The documentary, a Netflix exclusive billed as “a film by Beyoncé,” features footage from rehearsals and quieter backstage moments — “the emotional road from creative concept to cultural movement,” Netflix said.

“Homecoming: The Live Album” is a more straightforward recreation of the concert that became known as Beychella. It breaks the more than two-hour performance into 40 tracks, many of which are packed with multiple musical references and sections of other songs.

Beyoncé’s set list, which varied slightly over the two Coachella performances, included solo hits like “Get Me Bodied,” “Baby Boy” and “Formation,” the Destiny’s Child songs “Say My Name” and “Soldier” (with her former group mates Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams) and various interludes with titles here such as “So Much Damn Swag” and “The Bzzzz Drumline.” She also included a rendition of the hymn “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” a song often referred to as the black national anthem.

The album also includes an a cappella version of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” by Blue Ivy, Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s oldest daughter, and two bonus tracks: a new cover of “Before I Let Go,” the 1981 song by Maze featuring Frankie Beverly, which appears in the end credits of the documentary, and an alternate version of “I Been On.”

While some recent Beyoncé releases have been available, at least for a time, only on Tidal, the streaming service owned by Jay-Z, the live album was released across all major streaming platforms, including Apple Music, Spotify and Google Play.

Since Coachella, Beyoncé has been largely quiet professionally, though she toured with Jay-Z last summer, surprising fans with the nine-track collaborative effort “Everything Is Love” along the way. She has not announced a follow-up.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/arts/music/beyonce-netflix-homecoming.html" id="94805bab-2f34-35f5-a2dd-9b832b137364">The New York Times</a>.

When it comes to Beyoncé releases, there is usually an element of surprise.

Beyoncé Surprises With a Live Album to Go With Her Netflix Documentary

The mysterious project, which has been teased for months, features Glover as Deni, a singer hoping to bring the mystical island of Guava together with a music festival, while Rihanna plays his girlfriend, Kofi, and provides voice-over during a fairy-tale-like animated introduction about the fictional location and its valuable blue silk. Nonso Anozie (“Game of Thrones”) and Letitia Wright (“Black Panther”) also appear.

With a plot involving exploited workers, the struggles of musicians and a society divided between red and blue, the film incorporates themes present in much of Glover’s recent work, from the hit FX series “Atlanta”to his viral, Grammy-winning song and video for “This Is America,” which is interpolated in “Guava Island.”

The film was written by Glover’s brother Stephen and directed by his longtime collaborator Hiro Murai, who was also behind the camera for much of “Atlanta” and “This Is America.” Following its premiere on the grounds of Coachella on Thursday, and the Childish Gambino show on Friday night, “Guava Island” was made available for anyone to watch on Amazon for 18 hours starting Saturday at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time; it will then be available exclusively to Amazon Prime subscribers.

Shot in Cuba and inspired by the Brazilian crime epic “City of God” and Prince’s “Purple Rain,” “Guava Island” does not ultimately feature much new music from Childish Gambino — or any singing from Rihanna. The movie opens with a breezy unreleased number from Glover (“If the world ends/I think I wanna die with you”) and has elements of another song with the lyrics, “Maybe the sky will fall down on tomorrow/but one thing’s for certain baby/we’re running out of time.”

It also incorporates alternate versions of recent Childish Gambino singles like “Summertime Magic” and “Feels Like Summer,” along with “Saturday,” which Glover debuted on “Saturday Night Live” last year (“God, this 9 to 5 just keep on killing me,” he sings). In one scene set in a factory, another character tells Deni that he hopes to save enough money to make it to America. “It’s different there,” the man says. “I heard people are their own bosses.”

Deni responds: “This is America. Guava’s no different than any other country,” adding, “America is a concept. Anywhere where in order to make yourself rich, you have to make someone else richer is America.” He then leads a choreographed dance to the song that mirrors some of the music video.

At Coachella on Friday night, Glover — who has thrown his own festival, Pharos — did not make a show of plugging “Guava Island,” though he did incorporate tropical imagery and sounds into his set. For one unreleased song, he cleared a section in the crowd to scream over a cacophonous burst of complex drum rhythms, bathed in almost-apocalyptic red lights. He also performed the still-unreleased track “Human Sacrifice,” which debuted in a Google ad during the Grammy Awards in February.

Glover was overcome by emotion onstage while discussing the deaths of his father and rappers Mac Miller and Nipsey Hussle. “What I’m starting to realize is all we really have is memories at the end of the day,” he told the crowd. “All we are really is like, data — you pass it on to your kids, you pass it on to your friends, your family.”

“While we’re here,” Glover added, “feel something and pass it on.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/13/arts/music/coachella-guava-island-donald-glover.html" id="978d585f-6d84-358b-a46d-b225d6d5062e">The New York Times</a>.

“Guava Island,” a new 55-minute film starring Donald Glover and Rihanna, was released as a limited-time free stream on Amazon overnight Saturday, during Glover’s headlining set as Childish Gambino at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

Donald Glover's 'Guava Island' Debuts After Coachella Set as Childish Gambino

That winsome formula, although particularly compelling from Grande, can be traced back through recent pop history on a global scale: There are elements of the sound in a K-pop track by the girl group Red Velvet from 2015; a JoJo kiss-off from 2016; a Fifth Harmony single from 2017; and a Grammy-nominated Christina Aguilera number from last year. Even “High Hopes,” the sugary comeback hit from pop-punk survivors Panic! at the Disco, which peaked at No. 4 in January, shares some of that DNA in its ecstatic vocal runs and melodic precision.

The common link comes via songwriter Taylor Parks, an ebullient 25-year-old former child actress with a brightly dyed bob and an air of benevolent mischief, who was credited on each. Known in the industry as a top-liner, Parks, who performs as Tayla Parx, contributes melodic and lyrical ideas to some of the biggest artists in the world, and those aspiring to be.

For the past few years, she has done so quietly, cutting a meticulous yet low-key warpath through popular music on a personal quest to land a No. 1 single on every genre chart — a lofty goal that’s no longer far-fetched.

For 15 weeks since fall, the top spot on the Billboard singles chart was occupied by one of two Ariana Grande mega-smashes — “Thank U, Next” and “7 Rings” — that drip with the mettle and coquettish swagger of a pop diva, while borrowing from hip-hop beats and cadences.

Joe Coscarelli

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Donald Glover's 'Guava Island' Debuts After Coachella Set as Childish Gambino

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