I invented horrorcore rap. When I did 'Chuckie' and when I did 'Mind of a Lunatic'—there was nothing like that. And it was just from my love for Hitchcock and Wes Craven and Orson Welles... To me it was like my version of heavy metal where things get dark. It's a stretch of the imagination. | | | | Bushwick Bill promoting his first solo album, "Little Big Man," Chicago, September 1992.
(Raymond Boyd/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I invented horrorcore rap. When I did 'Chuckie' and when I did 'Mind of a Lunatic'—there was nothing like that. And it was just from my love for Hitchcock and Wes Craven and Orson Welles... To me it was like my version of heavy metal where things get dark. It's a stretch of the imagination.”
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| | rantnrave:// RICHARD "BUSHWICK BILL" SHAW made a life out of escaping death and rapping about it, so it's fitting that he appeared to manage one last escape before finally succumbing Sunday at age 52. "Damn near didn't make it on my day of birth," he rapped on his first solo album, referring to his being born with dwarfism in Jamaica in 1966. In the same song, he recounts in documentary-like detail the point-blank shooting that landed him on the cover of the GETO BOYS' 1991 gangsta classic, WE CAN'T BE STOPPED, on a gurney being wheeled down a hospital corridor by his bandmates, his right eye badly wounded, his IV tube ripped out of his arm, his judgment clouded. Both he and fellow Geto Boy SCARFACE would come to regret the photograph but not the album, a violent, uncompromising and sometimes vulnerable inner-city confessional that stands as their greatest achievement. What brought Shaw down in the end was neither his dwarfism nor violence nor his on-and-off battle with drink and drugs; it was pancreatic cancer. But when his death was publicly announced by Scarface Sunday morning, and then un-announced by his family, who said he was sick but still fighting, it seemed he was taking one final swipe at the demons that he lived his entire life with and that he and the Geto Boys memorably rapped about in songs like "MIND PLAYING TRICKS ON ME." Alas, he wasn't going to win this round. Word of his actual death arrived about 12 hours later. Bushwick Bill will be remembered as a particularly brutal, and straightforward rapper. Funny, too. Cinematic. And, to be fair, he'll be remembered for several troubling verses whose descriptions of women, taken literally, border on indefensible. GEFFEN RECORDS took great offense, refusing to distribute the RICK RUBIN-produced 1990 album THE GETO BOYS even while happily doing business with GUNS N' ROSES. Which, in retrospect, fine. Because being underdogs, being judged, suited the group's sensibilities. Bushwick Bill's size was a recurring lyrical subject. He was fond of comparing himself to CHUCKY. His attitude was basically this is who I am and I'll talk about it all I want and, at the risk of your life, don't you dare judge me for it. Also, he wanted you to know his size and his prowess with women were directly related. It might even be the thing he'd most want you to know. RIP... Of the 39 albums that hit #1 in BILLBOARD in 2018, 18 (!) were sold with ticket or merchandise bundles. The NEW YORK TIMES' BEN SISARIO explains how Billboard's chart math makes bundling more valuable than ever, how the magazine counts some bundles more than others, and why "some of the very people who have taken advantage of this strategy are complaining about it." Billboard is promising to change its chart rules later this year. Is it too much to ask for more of a popular vote and less of a weighted electoral college when it comes to making the charts? (Spoiler: Yes, it probably is)... The sound of the city: New York, summer, 2019.. RIP also TRE DA KID, BRIAN DOHERTY and ANDRÉ MATOS. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | NPR Music |
| A proposed change could see more radio stations ending up in the hands of fewer executives, which would have a homogenizing effect on radio dials around the U.S. The thing is, that's already happened. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Over the past three years, the world’s biggest artists have seen their market share of total streams -- and therefore total money distributed by the likes of Spotify -- decline significantly. Why? | | |
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 | SPIN |
| Sexually explicit and graphically violent, the Geto Boys are Rick Rubin's latest rap signing. Now Geffen won't release their album. (Originally published in November 1990.) | | |
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 | The Undefeated |
| The shot of Bushwick Bill’s eye injury made everyone stop and listen to what the South had to say. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| About half the 39 titles that topped the charts last year were sold as part of ticket or merchandise “bundles.” Now even some who benefited from the strategy are complaining. | | |
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 | NPR |
| After Avicii died by suicide last year, a team of longtime music partners was tasked to wrap his album. When it came to manipulating his friend's work, producer Carl Falk had to ease into the process. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| The company announced last month that it would enter bankruptcy. The bands who thrived on the platform want to know why--and where their money went. | | |
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 | San Francisco Chronicle |
| The State Department asks visa applicants to list every place visited outside their own countries for the past 15 years — for musicians, that may be a lot of places — including details about specific locations within those countries, specific dates those places were visited, and source of funds. Also, 15 years of past employment details. | | |
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 | Office of Copyright |
| “I have songwriting credits…even though I don’t know how to write a song.” The speaker of this statement is not a musician and has no musical training. His involvement with “creating” the songs in question? Virtually none. He writes computer code. The program he helped create has “composed” over 600 songs, all created with a “push of a button.” | | |
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 | Billboard |
| After attending an advance screening of the new "Shaft" movie, without a doubt I can say the film is excellent. It’s a laugh-out-loud comedy that has action and black culture humor. But there’s one thing noticeably absent: the iconic, Oscar-winning theme written and performed by my father, Isaac Hayes. | | |
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 | The Daily Beast |
| Sacha Jenkins, the creator of the acclaimed Showtime miniseries ‘Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men,’ writes about how Robert Fitzgerald Diggs formed the greatest rap group of all time. | | |
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 | The Independent |
| The uncompromising singer retraces the peyote trip of a French poet on her new album. She talks to Holly Williams about streaming culture, Fat White Family and not caring what people think. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| Apple’s announcement that it is to close the software is a reminder of its role in reconciling music and the internet. | | |
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 | Variety |
| More than a year ago, the producers at Big Fish Entertainment -- the company behind A&E's hit "Live P.D." -- started talking about ways to create a program timed to the 10th anniversary of Michael Jackson 's death. Surely interest would be high, given the King of Pop's musical legacy and the circumstances of his untimely demise. | | |
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| The Daily Beast |
| The Grammy-winning singer-bassist’s "12 Little Spells" charts her search for music’s therapeutic power. Now she’s going to grad school to study the data. | | |
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 | The FADER |
| After breaking the barriers down for U.K. rap on his last go round, Skepta opts to let people in closer than before. | | |
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 | Slate |
| We look at how Tchaikovsky deployed a musical illusion in the final movement of Symphony No. 6 to illustrate how the mind constructs meaning out of sound. | | |
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 | Interview Magazine |
| The legendary musician answers questions from her famous friends including Lana Del Rey, Debbie Harry, Gwyneth Paltrow, and more. | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| Forty years after ‘I Am’ and "Boogie Wonderland," a writer reflects on the death of the genre and his father’s role in the band’s pivotal work. | | |
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| The Guardian |
| The warmer months have replaced Christmas as pop’s key battleground. But what strange alchemy brings about a Shotgun or Despacito, and who are this year’s contenders? | | |
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 | YouTube |
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