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Time and Genre Warping, From 1999 to Disco Ukes

The electronic music producers Lunice, left, and Hudson Mohawke unite for the TNGHT debut, which crosses already blurred lines between forms.Credit...Christina Kernohan

Joey Badass

The young Brooklyn rapper Joey Badass wears his influences on his sleeve, and in his mixtape title, too. “1999” is what it’s called, and 1999 is what it evokes, so faithfully that it doesn’t grate, particularly because the narrative of that year he’s partial to isn’t the glossy success but the underground countermovement it necessitated. Many of the beats here are borrowed from songs of that day — MF Doom, Lord Finesse, even the British melancholic Lewis Parker — that are full of warm keyboards, turntable scratches and tart snares. Downtempo and downtrodden, “1999” is casual in presentation but complex in execution, full of offhand assonance that’s hypnotic: “Used to beg mom dukes for lunch money/Honeys used to run from me/when pockets was dust bunnies.”

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Joey Badass. His latest, “1999,” revives the past.Credit...Chad Batka for The New York Times

Harry Fraud

Speaking of 1999, that was a time when New York hip-hop demanded that one take a stand, not just on cultural politics, but also on sonics. The flashier the mainstream got, the more skeletal and dark the underground became. No producer in hip-hop apart from Harry Fraud has figured out how to revisit both the lushness of that era and also its melancholy. Mr. Fraud has worked with everyone from Rick Ross to Das Racist and is best known for resuscitating Lords of the Underground via French Montana’s hit “Shot Caller.” So specific is his sound, suffused with warmth and still sinister, that it has inspired rappers to team with him for whole projects. “Cigarette Boats,” a free EP with the lethargic but prolific Currensy, is full of pensive soft rock and soul, long sighs for Currensy to lazily rap over. Smoke DZA works harder, to less effect, on “Rugby Thompson” (High Times/Cinematic). Mr. Fraud’s beats here are slightly more taut and quick: even if his partner isn’t always having fun, Mr. Fraud certainly is.

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Friends, from left, Matthew Molnar, Lesley Hann, Nikki Shapiro, Samantha Urbani and Oliver Duncan.Credit...Fat Possum

Friends

Friends has a great frontwoman, Samantha Urbani, a vibrating ball of sass and backtalk who sings in a tone that’s never hot and bothered, always cool. She’s hurt, but she’s cool. She’s sweating, but she’s cool. She’s ice-cold, and also cool. For plenty of bands that would be enough, an encouragement to get out of the way and let her cast her spells. But on “Manifest!” (Fat Possum), Friends does one better: it keeps up with Ms. Urbani on what is, in its best moments, one of the year’s most breathless debuts. Friends — which also includes Lesley Hann, Matthew Molnar, Nikki Shapiro and Oliver Duncan — revisits the gamut of early-’80s New York styles and forebears: no wave, punk-funk, ESG, spartan hip-hop, postdisco club music, early Madonna. When some of those styles were first revived a decade ago, it was soberly and faithfully, but Ms. Urbani and her compatriots treat them like new discoveries, tugging and poking at them until they sound alive again.

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Wade Bowen, the Texas country singer-songwriter.Credit...Rick Diamond/Getty Images for Country Thunder

Dent May

Because where else would a disco revival come but from a Mississippi-born singer-songwriter best known for repopularizing the ukulele? “Do Things” (Paw Tracks) is the second album by Dent May, who hides seriousness underneath his stunts. He’s a slick, accessible songwriter with a sense of humor and a wry approach to emotional transparency. Mr. May’s disco, as re-envisioned on this album, isn’t quite ecstatic, his wobbly falsetto notwithstanding. “Rent Money” balances a search for love with anxiety about stability; “Parents” agonizes over the wages of aging. But even when Mr. May is stressing, his music isn’t. This album — especially songs like “Best Friend” and “Don’t Wait Too Long” — is full of dreamy lite-funk, like the Average White Band on muscle relaxers.

TNGHT

The constituent parts are the thing on “TNGHT” (Warp/LuckyMe), the bombastic self-titled debut EP by the union of the electronic music producers Hudson Mohawke and Lunice. The line between hip-hop production and tough electronic music has been all but eradicated in recent years, thanks in part to musicians like these, who play with reference points that are all over the place — Trick Daddy’s “Shut Up,” two-step garage, dancehall, the Atlanta-via-Virginia maximalist Lex Luger. What sets this release apart, though, is its clarity: the hard bass and cheeky synths on “Goooo” hit with vigor, and the water drops on “Bugg’n” practically leave a stain.

Wade Bowen

Modesty is a virtue in the music of Wade Bowen, and it’s all over “The Given” (Sea Gayle/BNA), his most polished album — in a hands-off way, of course. A Texas country stalwart who’s been releasing albums for a decade, he’s a little beefier than his scene colleague Pat Green and less gritty than, say, the scene paterfamilias Robert Earl Keen. Instead, he’s an earnest and direct singer who wrings feeling from small vocal gestures and whose songwriting — he contributed to 9 of the 10 songs here — is graceful, with twists like small sighs. “Saturday Night” isn’t about revelry but about hiding from it. “A Battle Won” is pyrrhic through and through: “The things I do to prove I’m right/Break her heart just to watch her cry.” But even in these resigned moments, Mr. Bowen is level. The lone note of dissent comes from the Texas country don Guy Clark, who joins Mr. Bowen on the Townes Van Zandt song “To Live Is to Fly,” his weariness oozing through. Mr. Bowen is the counterweight, a few decades of life lessons behind.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section AR, Page 17 of the New York edition with the headline: Time and Genre Warping, From 1999 to Disco Ukes. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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