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Dear listeners,
It’s Jon — I’m filling in for Lindsay today for a very special installment of The Amplifier. By way of introduction, I’ve been a pop music critic at the Times for … around 15 years? (Let us not speak of that further.) I am also the host of Popcast, our weekly music podcast, and the co-host, with Joe Coscarelli, of Popcast (Deluxe), our YouTube conversation show. Like and subscribe!
The primary reason I’ve enjoyed this job for so long is that it’s never boring. Surprise lurks around every corner and in every online wormhole. New artists with novel twists on old ideas — or, from time to time, wholly new ideas — emerge constantly. Pop is centerless and ambitious and forever mutating. If you think things are stagnant, you’re not listening hard enough.
And so here’s a list of seven emerging artists who I think have real potential, from a range of genres and styles: People you might want to pay attention to in order to get a taste of what this year, and probably the coming ones too, will sound like.
Listen along while you read.
1. Tanner Adell: “FU-150”
There’s about to be a tremendous amount of discourse about Black inclusion and exclusion from country music, owing to Beyoncé’s forthcoming album, “Cowboy Carter.” But there are countless Black artists who have been working on the front lines of Nashville for years. For a taste of someone with an extremely modern approach to country hybridity, try Tanner Adell’s “FU-150,” a startling blend of rural flexing, hip-hop production flourishes, R&B harmony and pop certainty.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
2. Nettspend: “We Not Like You”
In the emerging scene of post-post-rage rappers who are riling up SoundCloud and TikTok, the teen rapper Nettspend stands out for a flow that’s cheerily slurry, rapping over beats that convey both exuberance and disorder.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
3. Xavi: “La Diabla”
The young singer Xavi is part of the surge of Mexican and Mexican American music that’s been making its way into global pop over the last couple of years. Of all his generational peers, he’s perhaps the biggest sentimentalist, singing with desperation and conviction on “La Diabla,” which has gone to No. 20 on the Billboard Hot 100.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. That Mexican OT: “Glocks & Hammers”
When Houston rap was thriving and gaining long-overdue attention in the late 1990s into the 2000s, it was notable for the way that it deployed slowness. The current rising Houston star That Mexican OT is a clear inheritor of that style, and matches it with a high degree of lyrical dexterity, like tap dancing in molasses.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. Bizarrap and Young Miko: “Young Miko: BZRP Music Sessions, Vol. 58”
One of last year’s breakout performances came from Young Miko, a Puerto Rican singer and rapper so casually gifted at both of those skills that she effectively stole “Fina,” her collaboration with Bad Bunny, from the host. This subsequent collaboration, with the relentless Argentine hitmaker Bizarrap, is futuristically sensual, a sound of breakouts yet to come.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. Buggin: “All Eyes on You”
Hardcore has been thriving and expanding for the past few years, with numerous utterly neck-snapping bands working sweaty house-show and D.I.Y.-festival circuits. But few of these bands are as limber and loose as Chicago’s Buggin, which makes music that’s testy, gritty, funky and, somehow, refreshingly airy.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
Come widdit,
Jon
The Amplifier Playlist
“7 Artists Shaping the Sound of 2024” track list
Track 1: Tanner Adell, “FU-150”
Track 2: Nettspend, “We Not Like You”
Track 3: Xavi, “La Diabla”
Track 4: That Mexican OT, “Glocks & Hammers”
Track 5: Bizarrap and Young Miko, “Young Miko: BZRP Music Sessions, Vol. 58”
Track 6: Buggin, “All Eyes on You”
