Pop Culture Happy Hour NPR

It's been 20 years since the untimely passing of Aaliyah in a plane crash when she was just 22. In that time, her influence has been felt everywhere in music and pop culture, even though the bulk of her catalog has been notably inaccessible to fans — until now. Aaliyah's second studio album One In A Million finally became available on Spotify for the first time, and more of her discography will be released in the coming weeks. And today, we're looking back at some of Aaliyah's essential tracks.

In the Netflix show The Chair, Ji-Yoon Kim (played by Sandra Oh) has just become the first woman to chair the English department at the fictional Pembroke University. Ji-Yoon is determined to usher in a new era, but is immediately saddled with unexpected challenges, most notably the tensions between an older, whiter faculty and a younger, multicultural student body.

The new series Reservation Dogs follows four Indigenous teenagers who live in Oklahoma, but are scheming and saving to get to California. It's a loose and dry-witted comedy that has notes of countless teenager hangout stories. And it's made by an entirely Indigenous group of writers, directors, and actors, who bring a level of detail and specificity to these kids and their experience that American television has practically never had.

Lorde became a pop superstar at 16 with her hit single "Royals" — winning two Grammy Awards and following up with her second album, Melodrama. The New Zealand singer's third album Solar Power finds the artist reflecting on stardom, boredom and the aftermath of a youth filled with debauchery. Reunited with Melodrama producer Jack Antonoff, Lorde brings a more subdued sound, positioning her as a worldly 24-year-old who's found peace with herself, while wondering what's next.

The new Netflix series Brand New Cherry Flavor is weird. It starts off pretty straightforward: A student filmmaker played by Rosa Salazar heads to Hollywood, hoping to direct her first feature, and gets screwed over by a sleazy producer. But when she enlists a witch played by the fabulous Catherine Keener to place a curse on that producer, things get creepy. And slimy. And bloody. And trippy. And kinda funny. It's not for everyone — but is it for you?

In the Netflix film Beckett, John David Washington plays an American tourist who gets in way over his head in an action thriller that skips over the mountains and through the streets of Greece.