Kane Brown and Jelly Roll, ‘Haunted’
“They say I’m a superstar / But oh, I still got this feeling in my bones,” Kane Brown sings, going on to admit that success has pushed him nearly too far: “I wanted too many times to jump off the edge / Thinkin’ I was better off dead.” Jelly Roll replies with similar sentiments, in triplets: “I think I was happier when I couldn’t pay the bills.” The music escalates from banjo picking to hard rock with a shredding lead guitar, as the woes of fame scale up. PARELES
Sexyy Red and Bruno Mars, ‘Fat Juicy & Wet’
A rather astonishing number of things happen in the 140 or so seconds of this summer anthem released in the dead of winter. Bruno Mars, creeping back to the spotlight, says to hell with eerily precise declarations of love — let’s get lewd. The beat nods to hyphy, electro-funk and Kanye West’s chipmunk soul era. Sexyy Red arrives with a highly proscriptive verse, a litany of sexual instructions so specific they make “WAP” sound like a Susan Boyle song. Toward the end of the video, there are walk-on cameos from Lady Gaga and Rosé, the far more conventional duet partners with whom Mars has a pair of recent smashes, but who clearly want some of this refracted salaciousness for themselves. By the end of the song, Mars’s excursion into sleaze-funk becomes into a full-on Sexyy Red chant-along, with the whole crew turned into a louche league of lip-licking libertines. JON CARAMANICA
1900Rugrat featuring Kodak Black, ‘One Take Freestyle Remix’
The breakout single from the Florida rapper 1900Rugrat is doing a speed run — from TikTok freestyle in September to finished song later that month to viral On the Radar performance in October to this remix with the dystopian shape-shifter Kodak Black. 1900Rugrat has a spookily raspy voice, a willingness to play with funny rhymes (see: tuba/scuba) and a fully formed sense of character, both gritty and suave. Kodak Black, a rapper he’s clearly indebted to, joins him here and rather than approach the sleepy blare of a beat with the same pattern as the host, he begins dismantling it, rapping in almost inscrutable double time, a troublemaker adding a new layer of mischief. CARAMANICA
Central Cee featuring Young Miko, ‘Gata’
The British rap star Central Cee has a way of making extremely literal sentences and sentiments sound nimble, fresh and dexterous. Take the opening couplet of “Gata,” a standout from his long-awaited debut studio album, “Can’t Rush Greatness”: “Is it me or the GBP, I don’t know if she really want Cee for Cee / It could be the GIAs or the G5 plane, I don’t know what the reason be.” Tossed-off triple-syllable rhymes delivered like casual chitchat are just part of what makes Central Cee so effective. This song, about the pleasures that come with fame and the more pleasurable pleasures fame makes you leave behind, show a rapper with a pulsing heart, a sense of regret, and the drive to succeed even when those things tug hard at him. CARAMANICA
Lord Huron featuring Kristen Stewart, ‘Who Laughs Last’
In a canny collaboration, Lord Huron enlisted Kristen Stewart to deliver a monologue about a surreal, existential road trip. “Above me shone a terrifying number of stars, spelling out the cold indifference of the universe,” she narrates matter-of-factly. “I tried to stare at the road ahead. I saw a huge storm far-off on the horizon.” Behind her, the band jams on a riff and a drone and eventually offers a chorus, but it wisely cedes the last, deadpan words to Stewart. PARELES
