The role is for us to be curious and to allow your curiosity to drive you to a point where you’re unafraid of being wrong. The end goal is not always to be right. | | | | Janelle Monáe at the Boston Calling Festival, May 29, 2016.
(Natasha Moustache/WireImage/Getty Images) | | | | | | “The role is for us to be curious and to allow your curiosity to drive you to a point where you’re unafraid of being wrong. The end goal is not always to be right.”
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| | rantnrave:// You can argue about the difference between freedom of speech and freedom of thought with people who will use their freedom to talk back to you or mock you. Or you can declare yourself a "free-a** motherf***er," not try to tell anybody else what to think or do, and leave it at that. Two ways to promote your new album in the united divided rainbow world that is 2018. Your choice, I guess. Politics or art. Anxiety or composure. Four thousand pre-release tweets or four amazing pre-release singles. I'll take this KANYE tweet any day of the week. Otherwise I'll take JANELLE MONÁE's mind-bending rollout of her third album, DIRTY COMPUTER, which drops today, and accompanying 44-minute film, which premiered Thursday on MTV and BET. The album feels like a gift to a world still mourning PRINCE, who contributed both musically and emotionally to it. Which is not meant to take anything away from the great Monáe, a 1980s soul inheritor and 2010s soul pioneer. As ROLLING STONE's BRITTANY SPANOS notes, " Years before FRANK OCEAN, SOLANGE, BEYONCÉ and SZA pushed arty, alternative R&B to the mainstream, Monáe was already there." And she continues to push forward... JAZZ FEST begins on a sad note today in NEW ORLEANS. Saxophonist CHARLES NEVILLE, who formed the NEVILLE BROTHERS will brothers ART, AARON and CYRIL 1977 and spent the next 35 years as one of the musical hearts of the world's greatest musical city, died Thursday. "My dear brother Charlie the horn man," Aaron Neville wrote on FACEBOOK, "just want you to know that if I would’ve had the choice of picking my brothers, I would definitely choose you. You’ll always be in my heart and soul, like a tattoo." No doubt the Jazz Fest grounds, and the rest of the city, will be full of people who know exactly what to do about that this weekend... A heartbreaking note from AVICII's family... The SPOTIFY-sponsored DAVID BOWIE takeover of NEW YORK's BROADWAY-LAFAYETTE subway station is a strange and wonderful adjunct to the DAVID BOWIE IS exhibit at the BROOKLYN MUSEUM. Cities that don't have subway systems should build one just so they can do this, too... The sound of 18th-century PARIS... The sound of the bottom of the sea 18 miles off the CALIFORNIA coast... WILLIE NELSON releases his 73rd album today, turns 85 on Sunday and probably can still smoke SNOOP DOGG under the table... It's FRIDAY and in addition to Willie and Janelle Monáe, that means new music from POST MALONE, SPEEDY ORTIZ, YOUNGBOY NEVER BROKE AGAIN, KEITH URBAN, HALF WAIF, STEVE ANGELLO, POO BEAR, LIZ BRASHER, VAN MORRISON & JOEY DEFRANCESCO, OKKERVIL RIVER, BLOSSOMS, KAT EDMONSON, TWIN SHADOW and GODSMACK. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| She rose to fame as an endlessly inventive pop android. Now, she's finally revealing the real person inside. | | |
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| Dancehall has long minimized female voices, but that's changing. In Jamaica, where the current generation of male dancehall acts have struggled to replicate the crossover appeal of Sean Paul or the cult status of Vybz Kartel, women like Spice, Shenseea and Ishawna are keeping the genre fresh, provocative and relatable. | | |
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| The Forum was turned into a self-dubbed Science Fair for an official introduction by Jim Dolan and Irving Azoff. | | |
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| Twenty-five years after her career-making album, she’s still writing songs first and foremost for herself. | | |
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| In 1985, a group of Washington women hit back at the ‘offensive’ lyrics of some of pop’s biggest names. Now their ‘parental advisory’ meddling - and the 15 tracks they initially targeted - have been turned into a riotous piece of musical revenge. | | |
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| Recent reports that streaming is now the 'biggest money-maker' for the music biz have prompted hyperbolic claims that Spotify and co have 'saved the music industry'. In reality, this could not be further from the truth. | | |
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| Billboard caught up with Alex Bodman, Global Creative Director at Spotify, on the origins, aims and challenges involved in the David Bowie-themed MTA takeover. | | |
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| Since the mid-2000s, a drumming phenomenon born out of gospel music has transformed drum culture across the world — Gospel Chops. But in its rise, the phenomenon has found itself appropriated by the drum industry and diluted into a brand or style that’s detached from its black cultural roots. | | |
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| In this intimate radio portrait of one of music’s most legendary eccentric geniuses, writer Kristine McKenna offers you a visceral experience of what it was like to be friends with Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart). | | |
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| With the photographer Alec Soth, his onetime next-door neighbor, we went looking for the places Prince had called home. | | |
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| More than a century ago, Joe Hill wrote some of the most enduring anthems in the radical union’s Little Red Songbook-and today’s activists carry on that legacy of struggle through music. | | |
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| Alice Glass last year became a champion for survivors, as she went public with allegations of abuse against her former bandmate. Her new music doesn't shy away from tough subjects. | | |
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| Vindor Music’s goal is to make learning an instrument more accessible to everyone, including special needs children. | | |
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| Jason Aldean never asked to be part of this narrative. If he wants to let what happened in Vegas stay in Vegas, that’s his prerogative. Lord knows not all musicians can speak authoritatively about national affairs. Still, man does "Rearview Town" and the press tour around it feel like a punt. | | |
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| Jon Hopkins makes gentle music with hidden depths. | | |
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| I sat down with three Chicago music-industry veterans—Shawn Campbell, Jill Hopkins and Andrea Troolin—for a freewheeling conversation about being raised on rock ‘n’ roll, navigating the male-dominated music business, what’s different about the Chicago scene and what it takes to turn a passion for music into a lifelong profession. All while retaining one’s feminist cred. | | |
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| In an effort to gain a better understanding of the how the industry is working through its deeply embedded substance use and abuse, it’s helpful to first try and understand the roles different substances play at festivals. | | |
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| The multinational band of theatrically fun and talented musicians in Superorganism mix melody and mischievous with almost Seussian folly. | | |
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| By celebrating great black women across history, by crowning Angela Davis, Harriet Tubman, Albertina Sisulu and Doreen Lawrence, Sons Of Kemet begin a new myth-making and bring afrofuturism down to earth with a beautiful bang. | | |
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| It’s the KARS-4-KIDS of snack food jingles. | | |
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| | | | | | | From "Lavender," out today on Cascine Records. |
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| © Copyright 2018, The REDEF Group |
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