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That Thin, Wild Mercury Sound: Bob Johnston's Work With Dylan, Cohen, Cash...
"Johnston had fire in his eyes. He had that thing that some people call 'Momentum.' You could see it in his face and he shared that fire, that spirit." - Bob Dylan"He created an atmosphere in the...
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A Rough Guide to Fictional Rappers in Film and TV
In the wake of Straight Outta Compton's excellent reviews and seemingly huge box office potential, I was going to write about hip-hop and R&B biopics. But, unfortunately, there are only really four...
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The Essential Recordings From Bruce Springsteen’s Live Archive
Bruce Springsteen’s studio output between 1973 and 1987 marks one of the most celebrated runs from the classic rock era, but it only tells part of his story. Coupled with his enormous catalog of...
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He the Best: An Interview With DJ Khaled About Basketball
DJ Khaled, impresario and bon vivant, has attached his name to some of the biggest hip-hop hits of the past decade. Thing is, it’s often unclear what he actually does. He’s a producer, but rarely...
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Four Rappers Giving Us Reasons to Watch Charlotte, NC's Rap Scene
Charlotte, N.C. is a banking city. If there is anything less exciting to be the identity for a city, @ me. Charlotte, for a while, was another place where rappers played catch-up or completely forewent...
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The Tide Is High: 10 Records from the Balearic Revival
Photo by Luis MedinaReporting from Ibiza last summer, Andy Beta wisely skipped the superclubs and focused instead on the legacy of the so-called "Balearic" style, a hippie-dippie, candy-flipping fusion...
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11 Eleventh Dream Day Songs From 11 Eleventh Dream Day Records
Photo via FacebookShall we compare Eleventh Dream Day to Neil Young and Crazy Horse? Of course. The influence of Young’s great guitar albums on EDD—filtered through Television, the Gun Club, and the...
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Five Women in Hip-Hop That Deserve Their Own Biopics
Nearly two weeks after the release of Straight Outta Compton, we’re still trying to understand what its success means for hip-hop. There are now 111 million reasons why we should be paying attention to...
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Remembering the Real Lessons of 2 Tone Ska
The end of the summer of 1995 marked a new beginning for dad’s old formalwear."Black coat, white shoes, black hat, Cadillac—yeah!" sing the boys from Rancid on "Time Bomb", a standout track from their...
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Pop Music, Teenage Girls and the Legitimacy of Fandom
Photo via InstagramThere is no greater cultural crime a young girl can commit than loving pop music without apology. Forever marginalized as the screaming, crying Beatlemaniac, Directioner, or Swiftie,...
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Op-Ed: On Kanye West and Black Humility
Whether or not the MTV Video Music Awards truly "matter" to you (or anyone), whether or not it was a next-level shitshow (‘twas)—what’s not up for debate is that that if Kanye is there, something...
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Why "Don’t Stop Believin’" Is Never Going Away
Analyzing data to find patterns can be tricky. This past week, the Internet has been obsessing on a project by Polygraph, in which Matt Daniels analyzed the top played tracks on Spotify versus the...
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A Weekend at Afropunk
Commodore Barry Park, the oldest park in the borough of Brooklyn, is encompassed by a fence that wraps around the roughly 10 acres of green pasture, baseball dugouts, basketball courts, playgrounds,...
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Mac DeMarco, Lana Del Rey, and the Fading Ideal of a Forever Love
It’s never been easier to be in a casual relationship with music. In the age of "try-before-you-buy", when almost every new release is at our fingertips to stream in full, we’re able to consume music...
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Inside Hardcore Architecture
There was no more expansive chronicle of hardcore and punk in the 1980s than the San Francisco-based, political punk monthly Maximum Rocknroll. For punk and hardcore fans, MRR was an international...
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Scene Report: New Orleans Music and Activism 10 Years After Hurricane Katrina
Photo by MuzikAnimalThere’s no single word that can sum up a complicated city like New Orleans. Even less, its horrifying, solemn, and troubled saga with Hurricane Katrina, the 10th anniversary of...
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The Drugged Out Drag of Miley’s New Divadom
Will anyone else besides Miley Cyrus and the drove of drag divas flanking her every side remain visible in our memories of the 2015 VMAs one, two—20 years down the line? Forget Nicki Minaj’s...
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The 13 Best Pop Songs About Women Masturbating
On New York radio show Zach Sang & the Gang, Carly Rae Jepsen recently admitted rather sheepishly that she wrote a song about "...it rhymes with contemplation" for her new album E•MO•TION, but...
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Geto Boy: An Interview with Bushwick Bill
The Geto Boys put Houston on rap’s map back when L.A. and NYC were really the only cities being repped, and effectively birthed a Southern style of gangsta rap that was rife with corporeal violence,...
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The Magic Bullet Behind The World’s Most Popular Songs
Analyzing data to find patterns can be tricky. This past week, the Internet has been obsessing on a project by Polygraph, in which Matt Daniels analyzed the top played tracks on Spotify versus the...
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