‘Fidelity’ by Yaya Bey
★★★
“Whether the subject is her people, herself, or a loved one,” Yaya Bey is “one of the most thoughtful, incisive, and witty lyricists of her generation,” said Andy Kellman in AllMusic. On a record that “caps a three-album/three-year streak for the ages,” the Queens-born singer, songwriter, and producer is once again synthesizing soul, funk, hip-hop, reggae, and electronic dance music “with buoyant facility.” While she lamented her late father on 2024’s Ten Fold, the mourning she does on Fidelity is more expansive, addressing losses suffered by the Black community, from gentrification to the abbreviated lives of great artists. Despite the focus on weighty subjects, the artist, at 35, “still finds ways to inject some humor,” said Grant Sharples in Paste. On “Simp Daddy Line Dance,” she chides a deadbeat lover while playfully interpolating dance commands from DJ Casper’s “Cha-Cha Slide.” She’s at her best on “Blue,” with her rhythm section entwined “like slow dancers in a tight embrace” before Bey’s “mesmerizing” voice “emerges like a light in thick fog,” singing about a new day. “Life is far too short, she tells us, to not lay it all out there.”
‘Nine Inch Noize’ by Nine Inch Nails & Boys Noize
★★★
“Ever wondered what Trent Reznor would be like with a couple of glow sticks and a string vest?” asked Rich Hobson in Louder. “That’s effectively the question Nine Inch Noize answers,” memorializing the recent rave-tent collaborations between the industrial-rock legend and German-Iraqi DJ Alex Ridha, aka Boys Noize. The pair’s remixes feature “some brilliant reinterpretations of classic Nine Inch Nails cuts,” including of “Heresy,” which here becomes “a cross between Purple Rain–era Prince and Godflesh.” All that’s missing is “the full sensory experience” of the act’s live show, so don’t miss the videos from Coachella posted online. While Nine Inch Noize is “essentially an EDM album,” said Kory Grow in Rolling Stone, it’s also “a full-circle moment” for Reznor. From NIN’s earliest days, he put out multiple mixes of the band’s singles “in hopes of filling smoky dance floors at Midwestern goth nights.” Aside from “Closer,” Reznor and Ridha avoided obvious NIN hits. “Instead, they chose songs that could benefit from head-imploding electronic bass drums and a little TB-303 squelch.” The most unexpected track: a cover of Soft Cell’s “Memorabilia” that ends with a big house beat.