Prince, "HitNRun Phase Two"

Prince

“HITNRUN PHASE TWO”

NPG Records

Is this becoming a habit?

That’s the question Prince raised Dec. 12 when, without warning, he released a new album, “HitNRun Phase Two,” on the streaming-music service Tidal. As its title suggests, the 12-track set follows an earlier album, “HitNRun Phase One,” which Prince had made available in similar fashion in September.

Taken together, the “HitNRun” records represent a larger echo of the two albums Prince put out in 2014, one mostly electronic (“Art Official Age”), the other rawer and more guitar-based (“PlectrumElectrum”).

A proudly organic companion to the EDM-inflected “Phase One,” Prince’s latest album shows that he hasn’t lost his interest in (or his knack for) the creeping funk and lush R&B balladry he was making in the early 1990s on records like the great “Diamonds and Pearls.” That set inaugurated his on-again/off-again relationship with the elaborate backup band he calls the New Power Generation, and the group returns for “HitNRun Phase Two.”

But one reason the album has the vitality it does is Prince’s determination to look outward even as he pulls from within. “Baltimore,” the album’s powerful opening cut, first appeared on Soundcloud in May in response to the death of Freddie Gray, who suffered a fatal injury while in police custody.

Other tracks signal Prince’s engagement in the modern world in more lighthearted ways, as in the springy “2 Y. 2 D.” about a fellow performer “too fine for ‘Idol,’ too smart for ‘The X Factor.’”

Coming from the guy who wrote “Nothing Compares 2 U,” that’s a throwaway line, no doubt about it; perhaps that’s what happens when you start pumping out two albums every year. Yet Prince sings it with real spirit, an artist freshly charged up four decades into his career.

His habit is clearly feeding him.

— Mikael Wood,

Los Angeles Times

Willow

“ARDIPITHECUS”

Roc Nation

“What the heck is happening?” Willow Smith sings in “Cycles,” a song from “Ardipithecus,” her first full album. “Why am I here?”

There’s a lot of that in “Ardipithecus,” released Dec. 11 as a sudden digital drop: common youthful dissociative feelings, sudden long-view glimpses of the self. For Smith, the 15-year-old daughter of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, it’s a really long view.

“Ardipithecus” is a little under an hour of homemade neo-neo soul and spartan vanguardist pop fed by occult teen-speak and, seemingly, the television cartoon “Adventure Time.” It has little regard for a marketplace: It’s essentially a Bandcamp record released by Roc Nation.

Smith has written and produced almost the whole album herself, and she keeps it simple: She organizes her free-associative words into melodic lines over two chords and midtempo beats. This is a record that never stops threatening to be dull — in the way that Miley Cyrus’ record of mind-blurt autonomy from this year was dull — but rarely is, except when others try to streamline a lumpy aesthetic.

The two chords in “Natives of the Windy Forest” sound rough and scratchy, as if strummed on a viola, over intermittent snare-drum rolls; “F Q-C #8” is arranged sparsely for harp, xylophone, electric guitar and drips of drums. (It changes to a dance-floor beat halfway through, when Smith murmurs “grab your neighbor’s hand” and then chants “Om.”) It is the only track for which she has written a note of explanation: “I have an on going list of F Q-C songs. These songs were created through characters I have developed within my mind.” Fair enough.

— Ben Ratliff,

New York Times

Jim Lauderdale

“SOUL SEARCHING”

Sky Crunch Records

Known primarily as a songwriter — and an exceedingly prolific one — Jim Lauderdale is also an engaging and versatile performer. This two-disc set of all-original material puts his stylistic diversity in sharp relief.

Vol. 1, subtitled “Memphis,” where it was cut, features all R&B. It’s a style that proves tailor-made for the North Carolina native, whose honeyed drawl swoops, soars, and seduces over arrangements flush with horns, keyboards, and female backup singers.

Vol. 2 shifts the scene to “Nashville,” and all it shares with Vol. 1 are producer-guitarist Luther Dickinson and drummer Cody Dickinson. The collection ranges from atmospheric reveries to taut rockers and elegant country-soul. Also, compared with Vol. 1, more of the songs here look outward.

— Nick Cristiano,

The Philadelphia Inquirer