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Sleater-Kinney Drop Rip City Queens Mixtape in Advance of Album
The iconic Portland-based trio Sleater Kinney are dropping a surprise sixteen song mixtape on 12/7 in advance of their forthcoming No Cities To Love (Sub Pop), which is due out early 2015. Rip City...
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We Are All Accountable
Last week, people around the world took the streets in order to protest a Ferguson, MO grand jury's decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson on criminal charges in relation to the shooting of Mike...
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Cara Delevingne and A$AP Ferg Are Having a Walk-Off
A$AP Ferg has a song called "Dope Walk" that makes reference to Cara Delevingne, and thus, the two went straight for the Walk-Off earlier today. It's gripping stuff. A quick recap of what's gone down...
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Op-Ed: 2014: The Year That Cyberpunk Broke
My most recent album, The Future’s Void, deals with topics such as corporate data mining and surveillance, feeling vulnerable and estranged by my feminized online self, and an examination of...
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In Like a Taylor Swift Out Like a Sun Kil Moon: 16 Suggestions for End of The...
January 1st descends on us like the Ghost of Media Future. Let a new media savvy dude like myself do the heavy new media lifting so you don’t new media have to. Like pup-pup used to say, "Make click...
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2014: The Year the Full Length Rap Full Length Unofficially Died
Rappers continue to put out mixtapes in 2014, but the stuffed to the gills CDs and DJ (Drama) shouting over every single track variety appears to be increasingly fading away. Artist co-signs, Drake...
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What Does the Return of Divine Styler Mean?
This week, the oracle of hip-hop, Divine Styler, issues Def Mask, his first album in fourteen years. After a such a long and lamented absence from hip-hop, one that inspired conspiracy theories and...
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Cretin's Music Gets Even Stranger Than Before
In 2014, we should consider it a minor miracle when a grindcore or death/black metal band can manage to strike us as provocative; it's all too rare. Cretin manages just that on their new sophomore...
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Best of 2014: A Very Shake Appeal Guest List
Shake Appeal is a column that highlights new garage and garage-adjacent releases. To celebrate the end of the year, Evan Minsker has once again asked some of his favorite artists to share their "Best...
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Why Is Taylor Swift Still #1? Interpreting the Revamped Billboard 200 Album...
All that fanfare, and Taylor Swift is still No. 1?!That’s an understandable reaction to the new Billboard 200 album chart, the first under the new Billboard and Nielsen SoundScan rules that now count...
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Minnesota Weird: The Best MN Hip-Hop Releases of 2014
Minnesota Nice is well established, but 2014 was the year for Minnesota Weird in the Minneapolis-St. Paul hip-hop scene. Maybe you only got the merest glimpse via Lizzo’s incandescent "Letterman" spot,...
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Op-Ed: Do You Owe Us a Living?
We talk about the labor practices and economics behind making music every day, but we don’t often recognize it as such. The Pomplamoose-inspired Big Tour Debate and the conversation around recent...
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How to Raise Hell in Three Steps: on RUN-D.M.C, Parliament, Blackness and...
1. In 1987, in a small Southwestern Pennsylvania steel town, I was the only black kid I knew.I was also the only kid with a copy of Run-D.M.C.’s Raising Hell. At the time those two facts seemed to be...
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The Year in WTF
The day-to-day music news cycle can be a bit of a slog. Artist announces album, artist premieres track, artist premieres video, artist announces tour, artist streams album, blah blah blah, over and...
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Natural State of the Art: The Unlikely Lessons of Harvard's Restored Rothkos...
At 4 o’clock on a gloomy November afternoon in Cambridge, a small group stood in a gallery of the newly renovated Harvard Art Museum, waiting for the lights to be turned off. An official appeared with...
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Pop Dat Dyck Up: D'Angelo, Sissy Nobby, Hammer and Sexual Dance in...
This essay originally appeared in issue #3 of The Pitchfork Review, the 180-page, full color quarterly magazine of music journalism that is published by Pitchfork. A gift pack of the magazine's first...
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The Five Best Songs of 2014 That Originated on Vine
Social media has been a godsend for amateur musicians. Vine, the app where users can share six-second clips, has been a tremendous aid for acts who used the platform to achieve mainstream success. The...
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Twice as Good: Beyoncé's Yours and Mine
There’s a scene in the premiere episode of the third season of "Scandal" that I often replay in my head: cruel, maniacal Rowan Pope (Joe Morton) towers over his daughter Olivia (Kerry Washington) in an...
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The Best Hanukkah Albums of 2014
Each December, every place imaginable seems to scream with Christmas music. And every time, Jews are left in the dust when it comes to music that celebrates their dueling December holiday: Hanukkah....
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2014's Best Music Moments on TV
Even though the traditional television establishment becomes less and less powerful with each passing year, it's easier than ever for a great TV performance to grab the attention of a sizable audience....
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