This week in music: Lorde continued to prove her dominance with her new track “Yellow Flicker Beat” and some epic covers, Eminem released a freestyle rap with offensive lyrics and Nicki Minaj apologized for her new music video that features Nazi imagery. What else is new?

Lorde, the pop songstress from New Zealand who dominated radio waves with her hit “Royals” in 2013, isn’t going away anytime soon. In addition to “Yellow Flicker Beat,” her first new track since her inaugural studio album, Pure Heroine, last September, three cover tracks of Kings of Leon, Jeremih and Bright Eyes are keeping Lorde a buzz-worthy artist. 

She has two tracks on the Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 soundtrack, which will be released today. “Yellow Flicker Beat,” already released, is the first single and features the singer’s signature dark beats and poetic lyrics. “This is the start of how it all ends,” she sings fittingly, as the film is the first of the series’ two-part finale. 

Incidentally, Lorde curated the songs for the entire soundtrack. She also gets a second track on the album: a cover of Bright Eyes’ “Ladder Song,” off of their 2011 album The People’s Key. The melancholy song fits both the film’s somber tone and Lorde’s own style, as it sounds like it could have easily been a track off of her own album.

Covers seem to be the teen’s theme of the week: on BBC Radio 1, promoting the Mockingjay soundtrack, she sang Jeremih’s current radio hit “Don’t Tell ’Em.” She stuck to the rhythm and blues song’s roots but lent her own synth-pop tinge to it.

Not everyone has had as good of a week as Lorde. Promoting his upcoming compilation album Shady XV, rapper Eminem released a freestyle rap video in which his explicit lyrics have garnered some criticism. However, Eminem having offensive lyrics is nothing new. After all, the album is rapped by one of Eminem’s alter-egos, Slim Shady, whose songs have similarly vulgar lyrics. 

This time, the rapper aims his vocal canon at singer and professed fan Lana Del Rey, as well as the Ray Rice domestic violence controversy. “Bitch I’ll punch Lana Del Rey right in the face twice, like Ray Rice in broad daylight in the plain site of the elevator surveillance / Till her head is banging on the railing, then celebrate with the Ravens,” he raps.

Of course, it is natural that he will reference current controversial issues, but making light of the football player’s violence has generated negativity. This might have been the publicity plan all along, as he has not released any apologies or statements as of this week.

Nicki Minaj, on the other hand, has publicly apologized for the music video for her latest single, “Only.” The clip’s black-and-white cartoon images have generated comparison to Nazi propaganda films from World War II, and its armbands and gas masks also recall Nazi imagery. Following criticism from the Anti-Defamation League, Minaj apologized to fans via Twitter on Tuesday. “I didn’t come up [with] the concept, but I’m very sorry and take full responsibility if it has offended anyone. I’d never condone Nazism in my art,” the R&B artist wrote. 

The visual artist and creator of the video, Jeff Osborne, acknowledged that aspects of the video are “representative of Nazism,” but did not apologize. He wrote on Myspace that the video emphasized the importance of remembering our history. The actual meaning of the video, then, it seems, is up to interpretation.