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Chicago MC Mick Jenkins has always been something of a rap hermit, emerging when he feels ready and dropping sprawling projects of baritone philosophy and freeform wordplay. When he broke out in 2014 with the contemplative mixtape The Water (S), Jenkins seemed to exist outside of the general rap universe: he collaborated with a small roster of underground MCs while espousing at times sanctimonious views on self-improvement, the ills of society and the shallowness of other rappers. Jenkins’ voice–alternatively ...
“Courtney’s a pioneer,” Auf der Maur said of Love in a statement that accompanied the tribute’s announcement. “Her legacy is vital to the voice of women in our culture. The passion she brings to her life and art fuels the long-fought battle for the empowerment of alternative voices as they take center stage at last! There’s no one as punk and fearless as Courtney, and she ...
In Almost Famous, the 2000 film inspired by Cameron Crowe’s years as a teenage music journalist, one fictional Seventies rocker warns another about talking to a Rolling Stone reporter. “It’s Rolling Stone,” he says. “The magazine that trashed ‘Layla,’ broke up Cream, ripped every album Led Zeppelin ever made!” Rolling Stone had, in fact, panned Zeppelin’s first two albums. “The latest of the British blues groups so conceived offers little ...
When Maddie Marlow and Taylor Dye burst onto the scene in 2014 with “Girl in a Country Song,” the duo were often highlighted as part of the next chapter for country music. That breakout hit, along with the biting “Shut Up and Fish,” helped to get them placed in the same category as Miranda Lambert, the Dixie Chicks and Carrie Underwood; namely, women who don’t take any shit. But with their latest project, Maddie and Tae wanted to show fans the other dimensions of themselves. ...
A years-long delay did little to quell the demand for Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter V as the rapper’s latest album debuted at Number One on the Billboard 200 thanks to the second-best opening-week streaming numbers ever. Tha Carter V, bound in contractual red tape for years as Lil Wayne worked out his departure from Cash Money, sold 480,000 total copies to open atop the Billboard ...