LL Cool J, 56, and Eminem, 51, show off old-school, high-speed, crisply articulated rhyme technique in “Murdergram Deux,” nominally a sequel to “Murdergram” from LL Cool J’s 1990 album “Mama Said Knock You Out.” It’s all boasts, threats, wordplay and similes — “’bout to finish you like polyurethane,” Eminem raps — set to a jaunty, changeable track produced by Eminem and none other than Q-Tip. Eminem has the slightly higher syllable count, while LL Cool J gets the last word, a cheerful callback to his commercial peak. JON PARELES
The hyperpop visionary Sophie had mapped out a full album before she died in an accident in 2021; “Sophie,” completed by her brother and other collaborators, is due in September. “Exhilarate” takes the conventions of a big-room trance anthem — four chords, sumptuously reverberating synthesizer tones, a stately underlying beat — and warps them from the bottom up. Bibi Bourelly sings euphoric layered harmonies, proclaiming, “Got my foot on the gas/And I won’t stop for no one.” But the drumbeat leaves spaces instead of thumping four on the floor, while bass tones wriggle and melt and the midrange gets zapped with buzzy tones. The track’s entire last minute is a slow-motion collapse into entropy and silence. PARELES
Kim Deal, ‘Crystal Breath’
Kim Deal, from the Breeders and Pixies, swerves into unexpected territory with “Crystal Breath,” an echoey, electronics-dominated drone and stomp that urges, “Let’s start a new life” leading to two possibilities: “Beat’s gonna lead us” and “Beast gonna lead us.” The cheerful vocals and terse guitar hooks of her past indie-rock are now supported by a near-constant drone and a hefty programmed beat. It’s from her first solo album, “Nobody Loves You More,” that’s due in November and likely to hold more surprises. PARELES
Shemekia Copeland, ‘Blame It on Eve’
The blues songwriter Shemekia Copeland’s new album, “Blame It on Eve,” takes on the devil, loneliness, wine, politics and more, with a clarion voice and a vociferous band — including the guitarist Luther Dickinson from the North Mississippi All-Stars. “Blame It on Eve” is a sax-honking feminist blues that reaches back to the Bible and into the post-Dobbs present: “Wanna know what it feels to have the blues?/Just try losing your right to choose,” Copeland sings. PARELES
A modal web of picked string instruments, high and low, hints at both jazz and Arabic music in “Old Life.” The Sudanese-Canadian songwriter Mustafa sings, to a former confidant who’s grown distant, “I’m not yours but there’s a part of your life that is mine.” Later he wonders if “I told you too much.” It’s a reckoning with an unsettled past that stays unresolved. PARELES
Paris Paloma, ‘Boys, Bugs and Men’
“Cacophony,” the striking debut album by the English songwriter Paris Paloma, has towering ambitions. Its songs delve into scenarios from domestic squabbles to deep-space journeys as she dissects the power differential that persists between men and women. The folk-rock of “Boys, Bugs and Men” connects the idle violence of boys killing bugs for fun to men oppressing women: “It fills you with light/To take away mine,” she sings, clearheaded and calmly resentful. PARELES
Kate Bollinger, ‘Lonely’
The indie-folk singer Kate Bollinger finds the silver lining in loneliness on this melancholy but ultimately hopeful piano ballad from her upcoming debut album, “Songs From a Thousand Frames of Mind.” Bollinger’s sweet, plaintive voice sounds muffled, as if enveloped in a gray cloud that, by the end of the song, has begun to dissipate. “Lonely, let it hurt you,” she sings. “But be the one to make it quit.” LINDSAY ZOLADZ
“Girl, does he know you’re yearning, yearning for me?” That’s what Kehlani asks an occasional lover who’s usually with “that boy you call a man.” Making things more complicated, Lucky Daye shows up in the third verse as yet another paramour: “We’re having our fun and games and they ain’t gotta know.” All the intrigue plays out over gauzy, pillowy synthesizer chords, beckoning toward the next liaison. PARELES
Tommy Richman, ‘Thought You Were the One’
Tommy Richman, the Virginia-born electro-R&B artist who came out of nowhere with this summer’s densely atmospheric hit “Million Dollar Baby,” reveals another side of his style on “Thought You Were the One,” a keyboard-driven slow jam from his forthcoming debut album, “Coyote.” Channeling the smoldering romanticism of Prince and the lo-fi mystery of early Weeknd releases, Richman harnesses the power of his falsetto to narrate a tale of lingering heartbreak: “I dreamed last night, you’re in my head,” he sings. “You’re always sticking with me even when I don’t want you.” ZOLADZ
Immanuel Wilkins, ‘Afterlife Residence Time’
“These are my dreams” is a refrain in “Afterlife Residence Time,” from “Blues Blood,” a concept double album by the saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins that’s due in October. Four singers — sometimes with lyrics, sometimes wordless — contemplate love, parenthood and the fate of the next generations. It’s a suitelike, nearly nine-minute track that morphs from brisk and harmonically mobile to a contemplative vamp that envisions a long road ahead. PARELES
Read More: Eminem and LL Cool J Duel in Speedy Raps, and 9 More New Songs
