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The Short Life and Long Legacy of Hip-Hop Tastemaker A$AP Yams
Illustration by Meaghan GarveySteven Rodriguez, better known as Eastside Stevie or A$AP Yams, was a brash, larger-than-life presence in the hip-hop world. Though invariably compared with Murder Inc.'s...
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No One Sees The Barn: Musicians Discuss Don DeLillo’s White Noise
Near the beginning of White Noise, first published 30 years ago this week, Don DeLillo describes a bizarre tourist spot just outside of Blacksmith, the hometown of protagonist Jack Gladney and his...
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Invisible Hits: The Tangled Tale of Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks
They don’t agree on much, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a Bob Dylan fanatic out there who doesn’t place Blood on the Tracks somewhere in the upper echelons of the songwriter’s finest works....
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Synth Sorcerer: Eight Essentials by the Late Tangerine Dream Founder Edgar...
Born on D-Day in East Prussia, Edgar Froese was one of the most important German musicians of the post-war era. Inspired by an encounter with Salvador Dali in the late ‘60s, Froese’s visionary...
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Shake Appeal: Crime, Gooch Palms, Thee Mighty Fevers, Cal and the Calories,...
This time on Shake Appeal, Evan Minsker's garage/punk/psychedelic/etc. music round-up, it's nothing but singles. Take a look at a new 7" box set collecting the work of San Francisco punk heroes Crime,...
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Footwork's Forgotten Archives Are Making The Best Compilations You've Never...
Footwork lives in Chicago, even when it doesn’t. The movement—bleeding-edge club tunes fragmented from house, high-speed dance battles, and most crucially, the community of people who make it and party...
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The Myth and the Reality of the $43 Download
If nothing else, the introduction of Neil Young’s Pono has gotten people talking about sound quality. The triumph of the mp3 has seemed a foregone conclusion; no one was bothering to ask at what...
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We're Cancelling New York
Population of New York,Pursuant our new citywide policy of cancelling everything based on the idea of weather, the following theoretical disasters will now result in immediate cessation of the...
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If This Aphex Twin Archive Is Fake, We Don't Want to Know What Real Is
Make all the jobs, hope, and cash jokes you want, but nothing can take away the fact that it's 2015 and we have new Aphex Twin music. That's right, again! After James returned to his primary alias for...
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A History of Famous White Guys in Public Enemy T-Shirts, or Stories of How a...
In preparation for this weekend’s Super Bowl, NBC has been running a promo soundtracked by the instrumental of Public Enemy’s "Harder Than You Think", while the trailer for the Academy Award...
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Queering the Pitch: On J.D.s and the Roots of Queercore
In Toronto in the mid-'80s, two queer kids Xeroxed together a DIY vision of a punk scene that didn’t yet exist. Filled with heavy-handed gay erotica, illustrations of leather dykes, homoerotic snaps of...
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The Next Generation of Western Massachusetts Indie Rock
Photo by Joanna ChattmanWestern Massachusetts is having another moment. Long known in indie circles as the birthplace of Dinosaur Jr., where Black Francis met Joey Santiago before starting the Pixies,...
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A History of Digital Album Leaks, 1993-2015
The biggest music stories of last week felt like they were pulled straight out of last decade. Björk’s new album Vulnicura, announced on January 13, had leaked in full, two months before it was set to...
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A Brief History of Cash Money Artists Suing Cash Money
After twenty years under the wing of Bryan "Birdman" Williams and Ronald "Slim" Williams, Lil Wayne asked the question that has become a common one for Cash Money artists : "Where is my money?" The...
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Music on Film: Movies About The Ramones
Music On Film is a column from The Dissolve recommending movies fans of music should make a point of checking out.Hi, and greetings from The Dissolve, Pitchfork’s film-obsessed sister site. We’ll be...
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Jay Reatard's Lost Legacy, Five Years After His Death
Five years ago last month, Jimmie Lee Lindsey, best known as Jay Reatard, succumbed to an accidental drug overdose in his sleep. Expectedly, things have gone a little quiet regarding the music and...
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Jacking Into the Past with the Vintage Synth Revival
Given the endless stream of reunions of beloved bygone bands, is it any surprise that similar nostalgia is afoot in recording studios and technology labs? The big news at this year's National...
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The Jacka: An Interview
Last night, news broke of the tragic killing of Bay Area legend The Jacka. Although beloved in a circle of hip-hop aficionados for the past decade—particularly in the multi-regional network of cities...
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Lupe Fiasco Is Not Crazy
There's an adjective we ascribe to people, artists in particular, when we don't understand them. It's a dangerous word, albeit a colorful one, often reeking of extreme disregard on the part of the...
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Struggle Rap and the Lie of the Internet
SHIRT, a Queens, N.Y.-based rapper who just dropped his latest album Museum, is not what would be described as struggle rapper, but he is one—on paper, at least. He's an unsigned rapper, whom you've...
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