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The Playlist: Nicki Minaj Is Ready to Rumble, and 11 More New Songs

The tracks you need to hear from Kamasi Washington, Florence and the Machine, Carrie Underwood and more.

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Nicki Minaj returned this week, throwing jabs on two new tracks, “Barbie Tingz” and “Chun-Li.”Credit...Taylor Hill/Getty Images

Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos — and anything else that strikes them as intriguing. This week, Kamasi Washington previews “The Epic” follow-up, Carrie Underwood embraces an imperfection and Florence and the Machine show there’s beauty in restraint.

Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.

Timing, huh? For the last week, it’s been Cardi, Cardi, Cardi — the saturation is real. For Nicki Minaj, who’s released new music sparingly of late, this hip-hop realignment might be fraught. But rather than keep her distance, she’s instead leaned into the moment, or perhaps stepped on it, with a pair of new songs, “Barbie Tingz” and “Chun-Li.” Perhaps appropriately, these are sparring records — loose, pugnacious, a little uncentered. “Barbie Tingz” has the cold snap of early ’80s hip-hop and electro, and “Chun-Li” swaggers with the authority of the mid-90s. As is the norm, Ms. Minaj aims shots at unnamed antagonists, but in the past, that bluster felt truly targetless. But now, for the first time since the beginning of her career, there’s someone who might plausibly shoot back, and win. JON CARAMANICA

When Kamasi Washington released “The Epic” in 2015, the country was being scarred on what felt like a daily basis by images of black people being killed at the hands of police. Mr. Washington’s triple album was a bursting, grandiose statement that, though recorded years earlier, seemed to speak directly to the needs of the moment: His scorching tenor saxophone and orchestral backing represented both the enormity of fury and the magnitude of a healer’s ambition. This week Mr. Washington announced a double-disc follow-up titled “Heaven and Earth.” Its first two singles bear a lot of the previous release’s markings: tons of horns, voices and strings; lengthy tunes, often in minor keys. But while “The Epic” delivered music of spiritual regeneration and self-affirmation, this new thing is a call to arms. On “Fists of Fury,” over a familiar Washington rhythm of Latin-tinged funk, the voices of Patrice Quinn and Dwight Trible declare, “We will no longer ask for justice. Instead, we will take our retribution.” GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO

Once again, Celtic-rooted melody carries outsize emotion for Florence Welch in her band’s Record Store Day single, “Sky Full of Song.” She’s singing about tricky long-distance relationships and about the euphoria and exhaustion of losing herself in music: “Grab me by my ankles/I’ve been flying for too long.” But she and the band resist their longstanding tendency to head straight into chiming-anthem mode; the first verse is a cappella, and much of her accompaniment throughout is just a sparse bass line. Though the orchestra and choir do eventually arrive, the song backs away from its peak, as if it’s questioning easy grandiosity. JON PARELES

Late last year, Carrie Underwood took a spill at her home, causing injuries to her wrist and face; she’s barely been spotted in public since. On Sunday she’ll perform at the ACM Awards, and has just released a new song, “Cry Pretty,” that smuggles an allusion to the incident into a message: “I apologize if you don’t like what you see/but sometimes my emotions get the best of me/And falling apart is as human as it gets.” Like the best Underwood songs, it swells mightily, but unfortunately, it never quite crests. But for an artist who has long thrived on extreme polish, the acceptance of imperfection is welcome. J.C.

A breezy house beat (from Junior Sanchez) is the springboard for Azealia Banks in a slew of different voices that are all hers: a smoky-voiced soul chanteuse and a gospel-charged belter, a rapper who can scream her way to distortion or calmly rattle off designer boasts. She’s breaking up, she’s celebrating love, she’s dismissing rivals, she’s conflating “diamonds and dreams,” she’s declaring, “I’m penthouse, you’re trap house.” The beat keeps those multiple personalities on the same dance floor. The unexplained title? Search engine optimization, perhaps. J.P.

A few years ago the Robert Glasper Experiment gained a huge following and two Grammys with its “Black Radio” albums, which featured a different vocalist on almost every track. The quartet retrenched on “ArtScience,” a no-guests-allowed record from 2016. That’s out the window on “The ArtScience Remixes,” out Friday. The band invited Kaytranada — an experimental producer with debts to classic house and early-2000s hip-hop — to rework its originals from the album, and Kaytranada brought along some guests of his own. On his remix of “No One Like You,” over a Mark Colenburg drumbeat fortified by gallons of extra bass, the vocalist Alex Isley lays down some sleepy vocals. We miss out on Casey Benjamin’s alto saxophone solo (consult the “ArtScience” version for that), but all told, this cut provides more satisfaction than the original. G.R.

Austerity turns slyly insinuating in “Wish You Would” by Marian Hill, the Philadelphia duo of the singer Samantha Gongol and the producer Jeremy Lloyd. Percussive snaps and ticks, clipped arpeggios and a lot of silence back Ms. Gongol’s whispery tease of a vocal, as she flirts with temptation and infidelity. There’s so much space that a single tap of a bongo can arrive like an explosion. J.P.

Much of Nels Cline’s playing is about sleight of hand and anti-gravity: This guitarist uses effects and delay to envelop you, lift you up, upset your sense of time. But Mr. Cline is also an irrepressible improviser, with straightforwardly dazzling guitar chops. And in the Nels Cline 4 — a new band that’s just released its debut album, “Currents, Constellations” — his sterling fretwork is the big attraction. That, and the way it tangles with the equally fluent playing of Julian Lage, a wunderkind guitarist one generation Mr. Cline’s junior. Together with the bassist Scott Colley and the drummer Tom Rainey, the guitarists toggle on “Amenette” between speedy swing and tinkering rubato. The piece has an oscillating logic unrelated to any typical song form; it finally climaxes in a rough crumple, before the playful melody leaps forth one final time. G.R.

A self-indictment delivered like an R&B love song, “Stolen Moments” itemizes a lot of good reasons to back out of a romance with the singer: “I’m so afraid of intimacy.” “Don’t trust me in me.” “I don’t want to tell you that I love you.” “No love is perfect for me.” Josh Karpeh, who records as Cautious Clay, croons those and more over cozy acoustic guitar chords and a creeping bass line, with wisps of falsetto vocals and saxophone in the background. “I think that loneliness would serve us well,” he concludes, hoping not to be believed. J.P.

“Mama Proud” takes its time as it poses questions it doesn’t answer: questions about heartache, faith, loss and destiny. Jess Williamson, a songwriter from Austin, wafts her voice into a hypnotic waltz that floats on slow guitar picking and a lingering drone, eventually gathering a ghostly choir around her, never puncturing the enigma. J.P.

It’s been more than 20 years since Eliane Elias, an esteemed Brazilian pianist, was commissioned to record her take on the songs from “Man of La Mancha,” a Broadway musical based on the tale of Don Quixote. The commission was provided by Mitch Leigh, the music’s composer. Those recordings are finally seeing the light of day thanks to Concord Records, which just released Ms. Elias’s “Music From Man of La Mancha.” On the title track, she’s joined by the bassist Eddie Gomez and the drummer Jack DeJohnette, and the trio creates a flamenco-like flow, moving comfortably from major to minor as Ms. Elias’s elegant solo gives way to a rumbling, extended statement from Mr. DeJohnette, forceful but not overpowering. G.R.

Jon Pareles has been The Times's chief pop music critic since 1988. A musician, he has played in rock bands, jazz groups and classical ensembles. He majored in music at Yale University. More about Jon Pareles

Jon Caramanica is a pop music critic for The Times and the host of the Popcast. He also writes the men's Critical Shopper column for Styles. He previously worked for Vibe magazine, and has written for the Village Voice, Spin, XXL and more. More about Jon Caramanica

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 5 of the New York edition with the headline: Nicki Minaj Is Ready to Rumble in a Hip-Hop Realignment. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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