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Get Pocket‘Everybody just wants to have fun, be with the scene,” Kendrick Lamar said when we met in his cramped quarters inside the Barclays Center in Brooklyn last fall. “Certain people get backstage, people that you would never expect. . . .
Our Exposition columns offer informed, compelling takes on issues around the movies, from opinions about the topics driving films today to reconsiderations of the movies of yesteryear.
Although she had no music out at this time last year, by now Lorde requires no introduction. Seventeen years old, from New Zealand, with a richly hushed voice that she lays over minimal beats—you’ve heard all this. You’ve probably also heard her portrayed as some kind of alpha-Daria.
Nicki Minaj's eyeliner is a precision event, a marvel, as if drawn on by the kind of pre-programmed robot arm used for laparoscopic surgeries.
She’s left country behind, sworn off dating and built a fortress around her heart So my brother comes home the other day," Taylor Swift says, "and he goes, 'Oh, my God – I just saw a guy walking down the street with a cat on his head.
Kanye West has been married for ten days, and he has that new-husband way with the ring still, pulling it on and off like it's something he might yet undo, or do again. The ring is gold, and understated in a way that not much else about Kanye West is.
Pomplamoose just finished a 28-day tour. We played 24 shows in 23 cities around the United States. It was awesome: Nataly crowd surfed for the first time ever, we sold just under $100,000 in tickets, and we got to rock out with people we love for a full month.
“First things first: I’m the realest.” This is the first line of “Fancy,” a single that has dominated the hip-hop charts since June.
Listening to jazz musicians improvise, how the piano player’s chords toy with the sax player’s runs and the standup bass player’s beats, it may seem like their music-making process is simply magic.
When you decide that spending about 27 work hours determining the holders of the American Band Championship Belt going back to 1964 is a good, even noble idea, you quickly come up against two inconvenient facts.1 One, many of the best bands ever aren’t from the United States.
Sia Furler walked into the Silver Lake studio 10 minutes late, ignoring the 22 keyboards and six guitars and giant speakers on her way to the blue velour sofa in the back.
There was a time, not many years ago, when people used to ask each other what type of music they liked as a way of finding common ground.
A few years back, a critical mass of musicians started making R&B steeped in the sort of art-damaged signifiers indie rock has traditionally claimed as its own.
Few cities have as rich a cultural and sporting history as Detroit. From the ’80s Pistons to Bob Seger, Eminem to Miguel Cabrera, the Motor City is a rich tapestry of compelling figures, unbelievable moments, and uniquely American ingenuity.
During the 1970s and 80s, I mostly listened to pop and rock music, when even the likes of Captain Beefheart, Henry Cow and Popul Vuh were filed under pop.
Do you like Swedish pop music? The answer is probably yes, even if you can’t name a single artist born in Sweden.
Steve Albini is the producer (he prefers the term “recording engineer”) behind several thousand records. He is also a member of the band Shellac.
Twenty years after the Wu-Tang Clan invaded and radically altered hip-hop, Shaolin’s finest are struggling to reunite for one more album. Here, a 10-part portrait of how the legendary group lives apart today.
Happy Record Store Day! There are plenty of business-related grievances to be filed against the annual vinyl celebration, but it's hard to argue with the spirit of a day encouraging people to explore and buy new music.
A few years ago, I was caught up in a big research project about contemporary hymns (or “hymnody,” as they say in the trade). I listened to hundreds of hymns on Spotify; I interviewed a bunch of hymn experts.
If we’re talking about vinyl in 2014, we have to talk about Jack White. In April, rock‘n’roll’s self-appointed analog evangelist celebrated Record Store Day by teaming up with United Record Pressing in Nashville to put out the “World’s Fastest Released Record.” At 10 a.m.
It's been an interesting decade for the album. As the 2000s ended, conventional wisdom suggested that the album was on its way out, that the future would all be individual tracks and playlists.
Before Jack White envisioned the world in red and white, he saw Lime. Harry Lime, that is, the character played by Orson Welles in the classic 1949 noir The Third Man. A Welles fanatic, White quoted dialogue from Citizen Kane on the White Stripes’ 2001 commercial breakthrough, White Blood Cells.
Samples and remixes have become a staple of pop music today, with artists blending new and old in seemingly endless combinations. According to the BBC, though, one song has proven particularly popular among DJs and musicians: "Change the Beat," by Fab 5 Freddy.
Weary from touring, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page retreated in 1970 to a stone cottage in Wales, called Bron-Yr-Aur, with no power or running water. Legend has it King Arthur fought his last battle nearby.
Yasiin Bey and I make beautiful music together. We are yin and yang, our styles complement each other very nicely. While it’s always a treat for us to perform together as Black Star, the style and pace of our solo performances are different.
It’s hard to imagine now, but there once was a time when you could not play any song ever recorded, instantly, from your phone. I call this period adolescence. It lasted approximately 30 years, and it was galvanized by conflict.
You might be rocking headphones while you read this—but does what's playing make you better at your job? Music has a way of expressing that which cannot be put into words.
How a culturally conservative effort in the 1940s backfired to create the greatest engine of pop music in the world.
Spotify is the future. Spotify is the enemy. Spotify doesn’t pay enough. Spotify is music’s best bet for revenue growth. Since it arrived in the United States from Sweden in 2011, Spotify has been cast as both hero and villain in the music industry’s continuing debate over streaming music.