Review: Gracie Abrams gets romantic advice from Taylor Swift on ‘Us’

POP/ROCK

Gracie Abrams featuring Taylor Swift, “Us”

The title of the singer-songwriter Abrams’ second album, “The Secret of Us,” comes from this feverish duet with her friend and onetime tour mate Swift. “If history’s clear, someone always ends up in ruins,” Abrams, 24, sings breathily through a thicket of fingerpicked notes, the signature sound of her and Swift’s mutual collaborator Aaron Dessner, who co-produced the track with Jack Antonoff. (Dessner’s band the National gets a shoutout toward the end of the song, when Abrams sings of being “mistaken for strangers.”) Midway through, the wise elder Swift swoops in to put Abrams’ youthful heartbreak in perspective. “If history’s clear, the flames always end up in ashes,” she sings. “And what seemed like fate, give it 10 months and you’ll be past it.”

LINDSAY ZOLADZ, New York Times

Jamie xx featuring Robyn, “Life”

The latest single from Jamie xx’s long-awaited second album, “In Waves,” pairs playful and effortlessly cool vocals from Robyn with a thumping, skittish beat intercut with lively horn samples. Her personality shines brightest on the bridge, when she throws out some vampy nonsequiturs and dissolves into giggles at one of them: “You’re giving me strong torso.” Whatever you say, Robyn!

LINDSAY ZOLADZ, New York Times

Staples preaches self-affirmation in “Worthy”: “When they try to kick you, don’t let yourself get down,” she urges. Written and produced by a team including Amanda Warner, aka MNDR, “Worthy” has Staples bouncing her inimitably husky voice against a soul horn section and a funk beat that heads toward James Brown territory, with just a few electronic tweaks to place the song in the 21st century.

JON PARELES, New York Times

R&B/HIP-HOP

Rakim, Kurupt and Masta Killa, “Be Ill”

Rakim, the grandmaster of multileveled wordplay and internal rhymes since the 1980s, has re-emerged to preview his first album since 2009, “G.O.D.S Network (Reb7rth).” In “Be Ill,” a brooding, midtempo track that he produced, he’s joined by two of his many admirers, Kurupt and Masta Killa, and he calmly and efficiently raps about being “a conscious lyricist, atom splitter/complex as quantum physics is.”

Kehlani, “Next 2 U”

“I never, never, no no, thought I could put anybody before me,” Kehlani sings in “Next 2 U,” sounding both astonished and pugnacious; it’s from her new album, “Crash.” The song is an onrush of shifting moods — devotion, gratitude, protectiveness, intimacy, possessiveness, wonder — mirrored by a quick-changing structure. In under three minutes, the track moves through choral harmonies, brittle programmed beats, meter changes and vocals that veer from ethereal to aggressive: all the euphoria and uncertainty of new love.

JON PARELES, New York Times

LATIN

Peso Pluma and Cardi B, “Put Em in the Fridge”

JON PARELES, New York Times

New releases

• Megan Thee Stallion, “Megan”

• Camila Cabello, “C, XOXO”

• Imagine Dragons, “Loom”

• Lil Yachty & James Blake, “Bad Cameo”

• Wilco, “Hot Sun Cool Shroud”

• Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, “South of Here”

• Johnny Cash, “Songwriter”

• Jxdn, “When the Music Stops”