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The Rap Year Book: Tupac's "California Love"
The first proper single of Tupac’s career was "Brenda’s Got a Baby" in 1991, and that’s kind of insane to think about, and it’s insane in two different ways: (1) because of what it is about, and (2)...
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Meet Composer Caroline Shaw, Kanye West’s New Pulitzer Prize-Winning...
Photo by Timo AndresLast week, Kanye West performed "POWER" at a Democratic National Committee Fundraiser. Before he emerged, the curtain opened on a woman alone singing wordlessly, stacking her voice...
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Elvis Costello's Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink
In his memoir, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, Elvis Costello deviates from the rock star bio template, and resists recounting history in a straight line. Instead, Costello works circuitously...
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Quentin Tarantino, Johnny Cash and the White Fantasy of the Black Outlaw
"In a country that thinks it's divided by race, where actually it's divided by class, Johnny Cash's songs of hillbilly thug life go right to the heart of the American underclass."That's the first line...
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Laurie Anderson Discusses Her New Film Heart of a Dog
In the opening seconds of composer Laurie Anderson’s new film, an animated version of Anderson—which she identifies as a "dream body, the one I use to walk around in my dreams"—narrates a macabre but...
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Part of God's Plan: How Vince Staples and Kendrick Lamar Portray Black Faith
Photo by Erez AvissarThe recent 20th anniversary of the Million Man March celebration in Washington, D.C. was themed "Justice or Else" and aimed at continuing to raise awareness around injustice and...
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Q&A: Tavi Gevinson
Photo by Hilton AlsWhen Tavi Gevinson, now 19-years-old and Editor-in-Chief of the richly-articulated Rookie Mag (as well an actress and fashion icon in her own right) talks about pop culture, her...
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You Used to Call Me on My: Hotlines in Pop Music
Months before Drake brought "hotline" back into pop vocabulary, dial-a-star numbers were already having a moment. Neon Indian, Tanlines, Shamir, and Speedy Ortiz weren’t just singing about...
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Ride's Nowhere at 25 and the Evolution of Shoegaze
Photo via Facebook"We tried to sorta marry punk rock and psychedelia, that’s what we were really trying to do," said Alan McGee, co-founder of Creation Records, in the 2014 documentary Beautiful Noise....
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Carrie Brownstein Discusses Her Memoir
By the third page of her memoir Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, Carrie Brownstein seems to say it all. "My story starts as a fan," she writes. "And to be a fan is to know that loving trumps being...
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Kristin Hersh's Don't Suck, Don't Die: Giving Up Vic Chesnutt
Vic Chesnutt noticed the little things. His songs were populated by humble characters from small towns as they went about their ordinary business. But it was through these stories that Chesnutt tackled...
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Future’s Inferno: Monster, One Year Later
We know now that this was the fulcrum. The breaking point between Pop Star and Monster, the gruesome final rip of provisional sutures. The moment Future became something else—an oracle, or Faustian...
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The Pitchfork Guide to Paris 2015
Photo by Tom SprayPitchfork Music Festival Paris begins today at la Grande Halle de la Villette, featuring performances by the likes of Beach House, Four Tet, Laurent Garnier, Deerhunter, Thom Yorke...
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Carrie Brownstein's Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl
"Music has always been my constant, my salvation," wrote Carrie Brownstein in the farewell post for her NPR music blog, Monitor Mix. With her memoir, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, Brownstein—one...
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Sci-Fi Synthesizers: Three New Dune-Inspired Reissues
Widely loved by sci-fi fans and counter culture types alike during its mid-'60s heyday and beyond, there's one subculture with which Frank Herbert's literary space-opera, Dune, really connected: dudes...
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Why So Many Punks Grow Up to Be Cowboys (and Cowgirls)
Back in the "no future" early days, punk didn’t offer a great retirement plan. After a record or two of three-chord raging, you could stay the course, turn pop, get clever, or check out altogether,...
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40 Years of Krautrock Supergroup Harmonia
More than 40 years after its genesis in the German countryside, the music of Harmonia sounds removed from time. Featuring the late Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius of electronic duo Cluster...
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Jeff Mills Talks His Evolution as a Techno Wizard
In 2004, Detroit techno legend Jeff Mills released his first Exhibitionist DVD. It captured him on three turntables, going to town on a dynamic selection of techno, house, and even disco. It was as...
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Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll
Photo courtesy of the Sam Phillips Family A tall, lanky boy named J. R. Cash (that was his given name, and the name by which he had always gone until he joined the service) was one of those poor...
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Adele's Confidence and Damon Albarn's Mistake
"M.O.R.", from Blur's eponymous 1997 album, mocks the easy tropes of contemporary songwriting and the rolling wheel of entertainment. "Under the pressure/ Gone middle of the road," Damon Albarn sings....
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