I used my ancestors to help me write. I don't think that I did it all by myself. | | | | De La Soul in Werchter, Belgium, Aug. 7, 1990.
(Gie Knaeps/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I used my ancestors to help me write. I don't think that I did it all by myself.”
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| | rantnrave:// With closures and cutbacks spreading across the music media—and media in general—like some kind of internet flu, have record companies decided they have to fill in the gap themselves? UNIVERSAL MUSIC recently hired ex-WAX POETICS and GENIUS editor ANDRE TORRES to oversee its urban catalog, and he's created a hip-hop and R&B website, URBAN LEGENDS, to market the catalog but also, why not, to be an actual hip-hop and R&B website. "I want to build a strong community of super-hardcore fans of urban music," Torres tells THE ROOT. And ATLANTIC RECORDS this week launched ATLANTIC PODCASTS, with a full slate of current and archival programming planned. Part of me wants to congratulate labels for finding a business with an even worse financial future than music, and part of me wants to hug them for each and every writer, editor and producer they give a full-time job to... Bonus reading for previous item: AMOS BARSHAD's great NY TIMES MAGAZINE piece on DEREK JETER's THE PLAYERS' TRIBUNE, in which athletes swap out pesky reporters and pesky questions in favor of ghostwriters who help them tell their stories in the first person. Some of the content is riveting, some is legitimately top-notch and a lot of it is exactly what you think would happen after you kill all the reporters. The question I've been asking myself since it launched in 2014 is why isn't someone doing this for music?... Fun question. My answer today: "JAMES JOINT," "KISS IT BETTER," "WORK" (my answer yesterday: "I WISH," "KNOCKS ME OFF MY FEET," "PASTIME PARADISE")... Why are the track listings all the way down there on WIKIPEDIA album pages? Isn't that the first thing anyone wants to know?... MetalPass, anyone? What would you pay to see all 34 shows on METALLICA's 2018-19 tour—or even, say, five or 10 of 'em? How about $598, which is the price of the Wherever I May Roam Black Ticket, and which seems like a reasonable fee for the chance to see as many shows as you want between Sept. 2, 2018, in Madison, Wis., and March 13, 2019, in Grand Rapids, Mich. (Caveat: Airfare and hotels not included.) "Did PHISH or any other band with tour followers ever try this?," the WALL STREET JOURNAL's JOHN JURGENSEN wonders. How about a MADISON SQUARE GARDEN pass?, I wonder. What would you pay for an entire year of entry to MSG shows? How would that work? Would there be a market? | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Touré Show |
| The greatest MC ever on how to write songs, the influence of John Coltrane on his MCing, the influence of his mother on his music, the real reason why his album with Dr. Dre never came out, and the story of Rakim slapboxing with LL Cool J in 1987. | | |
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 | The New York Observer |
| 'I was looking for a place where I could make noise and not piss anybody off,' says musician Chris Butler, who purchased the house where serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer killed his first victim. | | |
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 | Medium |
| Using machine learning to explore the ways that neighborhoods are connected by live music. | | |
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 | RealClearLife |
| A former record executive laments the decline of risk-taking in rock. | | |
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 | Speaker TV |
| Speaker TV contributor Ed Ledsham discusses the social theories behind music taste in this video essay. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| As television shows with strong female points of view continue to swell, the opportunity for female artists and composers to augment TV storytelling is rising in tandem. | | |
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 | FiveThirtyEight |
| The Academy Awards strive to highlight the most significant annual achievements in acting, the craft of making movies and, for some reason, which song from the last year was pretty good. Yes, the Oscar for best original song is a chance to look back on the small batch of tunes explicitly written for the medium of film. | | |
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 | Lefsetz Letter |
| AEG North America President Rick Mueller talks about his path from booking acts in college to learning the ropes under some of the biggest promoters in the business. Hear Rick's views on ticketing, the benefits gained by acts playing festivals, and the success of certain genres over others online, on air and on stage. | | |
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 | Complex |
| Rick Ross, Mike Dean, Consequence, Malik Yusef, and more talk about how the Taylor Swift incident gave us one of the greatest albums of all time. | | |
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 | Noisey |
| We spoke to Scott Bell about how Insane Clown Posse fans may have caused "the CBGBs of the Midwest" to receive a box full of DMCA notices. | | |
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 | 1A |
| The two biggest musicians of their day were murdered months apart. Why are the cases still unsolved? | | |
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 | Vulture |
| "Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G." doesn't seem like it should be necessary. Then again, that’s exactly what a lot of people said before they watched "American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson." | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| Laments from the two stars show that an industry quick to sell the idea of female independence is far less keen to provide it. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| A guide to the experimental Toronto musicians who surround Meg Remy. | | |
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 | Mixmag |
| Digging deeper doesn't paint quite such a gleaming picture. | | |
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 | The Tennessean |
| In fact, no one’s really dared to attempt it since 2014, when three Nashville-based shows hit the airwaves, and all promptly crashed and burned. But there’s reason to believe “Music City” won’t suffer the same fate as “The Private Lives of Nashville Wives” or “Crazy Hearts: Nashville.” | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| The rising singer-songwriter has a knack for clever turns of phrase and a big fan in D.C. (No, not him.) | | |
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 | The Vinyl Factory |
| Used as a business card by the man who funded the recording in his basement and after whom the album is named, Tohru Aizawa Quartet's Tachibana is one of the rarest Japanese jazz records of all time. Tony Higgins tells the bizarre story behind this real-life holy grail. | | |
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 | Okayplayer |
| To commemorate American Heart Month, Ericka Blount Danois interviewed legendary hip-hop talent to talk about establishing proper healthcare for the culture. | | |
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 | Getintothis |
| Following The Old Grey Whistle Test's brief return to our TV screens, Getintothis' Andy Sunley looks back at some of the show's highlights. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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