You've got the guy who wrote 'Happy' writing a song with the guy who wrote 'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now.' | | | | Great "Expectations": Hayley Kiyoko in Los Angeles, Oct. 20, 2016.
(Randy Shropshire/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “You've got the guy who wrote 'Happy' writing a song with the guy who wrote 'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now.'”
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| | rantnrave:// I've written about death quite a bit in the four years I've been doing this, but until this week I don't think I've written about anyone whose life and death were so polarizing that the very idea of mourning has been called into question. "RIP seems like a stretch," the band WHITNEY tweeted on Monday about XXXTENTACION, murdered in what his lawyer says was a random robbery. Hip-hop, pop and rock musicians have been warring with each other and with fans over their reactions to the murder of a 20-year-old who was prone to saying, and accused of doing, indefensibly terrible things while producing a tiny catalog of resonant, influential, maybe even revolutionary, music. Some of the smartest XXXTakes of the past 36 hours, across the spectrum: "I have trouble mining any feelings of superiority or 'justice' from the killing of a 20-year-old, no matter what he did in his life. Not too long ago, that was someone’s actual child"... "If we act as if he never existed, or as if he was not as popular as he was, or as if his fans didn’t see some articulation of their own hurt and hopelessness in his music, we’re lying to ourselves"... "A generation of artists with colorful hair and face tattoos will be able to cite [XXXTentacion's] 'Look at Me!' as a 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' moment, exposing the world to a distorted, angry, proudly demo-quality underground"... "These eulogizers don’t give a s*** about GENEVA AYALA and the countless other Geneva Ayalas abused and discarded by the XXXTentacions of the world—women and girls whose only value is to eventually exist as a redemptive narrative fulcrum; their entire lives and worths reduced to literary devices"... "XXXTentacion may have spent his career trying to convince his most ardent young fans that they’re worth more than they believe, but his legacy—of trauma endured and seemingly unrepentantly inflicted—reminds us that worth has never been distributed evenly"... SPOTIFY was famously all over the map in trying to figure out how to promote XXX, or not, during his life, and the service was widely criticized for going all-in on his music on Tuesday... You can donate to his accuser Geneva Ayala's GOFUNDME page here... You can donate to EVERYTOWN FOR GUN SAFETY here... XXX died with his most troubling criminal charges unresolved. Unlike, say, TIM LAMBESIS, frontman of metal band AS I LAY DYING, who was convicted in an attempted plot to kill his estranged wife and served two and a half yers in prison. Should Lambesis and his band, which recently played its first show in five years, be allowed a second chance?... Two KID ROCK-loving, DONALD TRUMP-hating filmmakers spend a few days aboard the former's 8th annual Chillin’ the Most cruise and try to reconcile the innate contradictions of their allegiances by partying, drinking and not talking politics with anybody. And while it's possible that the only thing they prove is that we can all get along as long as we're all reasonably drunk and bound for the BAHAMAS, MICHAEL FELD and ROBERT M. EDGECOMB's ONLY GOD KNOWS WHY is a sweet, short documentary about Americans and the music and beer that, against long odds, can bring us together... BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN breaks from his Broadway script to denounce PRESIDENT TRUMP's immigration policies... There have been, by my count, 17,648 official takes to date on the meaning of the BEYONCÉ and JAY-Z album, 11,531 of which have explored the meaning and cultural resonance of the art on display at the LOUVRE, but only one of which has delved into the etymology of the word "apes***," whose root and suffix appear to have been joined for the first time by AIR FORCE pilots during the KOREAN WAR. A gold star, and an open invitation to guest-edit MusicREDEF, to lexicographer BEN ZIMMER... COACHELLA's radius clause—or claws, if you will—made public as part of an ongoing legal battle. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Forbes |
| Many people think of Airbnb as the poster child for disruption: leveraging the sharing economy to democratize participation in the travel & hospitality marketplace, turning those industries on their heads. Now, the $31 billion startup is building a similar business case for music. | | |
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 | The Huffington Post |
| Gail O'Hara's fanzine, Chickfactor, has been publishing off and on since 1992. It has outlasted many of the bands that appeared on its cover. It has outlasted the bookstores that used to stock it next to long-dead zines like Rollerderby (R.I.P.) and Punk Planet (R.I.P.). | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| The rapper, who died at age 20, leaves behind a whirlwind of controversy, but also a huge musical footprint. | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| The rapper with a violent past and a thriving career has died at 20 years old. What he leaves behind is not easy to parse. | | |
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 | Medium |
| A safe venue, strong brand and Facebook ads are your best friend when the secret police don’t like what you listen to. | | |
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 | Very Smart Brothas |
| Royce da 5'9" on visions of conversations with his father. | | |
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 | MUSIC • TECHNOLOGY • POLICY |
| The only pumping I see going on in my opinion is spinning that there’s pumping of cash going on. And I’ve found that kind of pumping usually precedes the dumping. | | |
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 | Chicago Magazine |
| For years, LGBTQ youth have met in a West Side storefront to practice the iconic dance form. Now, it’s at risk of closure. | | |
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 | The Root |
| At the intersection of music fandom, music history and great music storytelling is a weekly Twitter moment with its own hashtag. It’s called the #MusicSermon, and people tune in every Sunday the way they would for a regular church service—coming to live, learn and fellowship with music we all know and love. | | |
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 | Pigeons & Planes |
| The Neptunes/N.E.R.D. legend shares thoughts on Pusha T and Drake, gun control, and a legacy built behind the scenes. | | |
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 | Loud And Quiet |
| As they prepare to release their fourth LP 'Hive Mind', Sam Walton traveled to Venice Beach to meet a band who say they're one more album form greatness. | | |
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 | The Daily Beast |
| Multiple women claim that musician William Control is the leader of a violent ‘sex cult,’ branding women with his initials and forcing them to obey his every terrifying demand. | | |
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 | Noisey |
| Remembering Penelope Spheeris' 'Decline of Western Civilization Part II' 30 years after its release. | | |
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 | Esquire |
| The author returns to Guyville with the artist who shaped his adulthood. | | |
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| Medium |
| An interview with musical tastemakers & Nue Agency founders Alex & Jesse Kirshbaum. | | |
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 | Innovating Music |
| LyricFind's Robert Singerman has been on a 14-year quest: to translate music legally between languages and cultures. | | |
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 | The Fader |
| The creator of Spotify’s Dissect podcast tells us what he’s learned after more than 450 hours of studying Frank Ocean's work. | | |
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 | The Vinyl Factory |
| Like the hand-assembled Condesa rotary mixers we recently featured, phonon is building a reputation among an international DJ community that is demanding a little more personality from its audio gear. | | |
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 | The Miami Herald |
| Menudo, the Latin pop boy band that spawned Ricky Martin in the 1980s could be reborn for a new generation as a Miami court decision resolves ownership over the brand trademark name. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| US company turned over $172.4m last year, down from $208.1m in 2016. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | Henry Butler & Steven Bernstein |
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