It's from our darkest moments that we gain the most strength. There were so many days, months even, when I didn't want to get out of bed... I had horrible night terrors where I would physically cry and scream through the dark. I was never at peace, night or day. But I dragged myself out of bed and took my emotions to the studio and made art out of them. | | | | Kesha leading the crowd in prayer at the Firefly Music Fest, Dover, Del., June 17, 2017.
(Kevin Mazur/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “It's from our darkest moments that we gain the most strength. There were so many days, months even, when I didn't want to get out of bed... I had horrible night terrors where I would physically cry and scream through the dark. I was never at peace, night or day. But I dragged myself out of bed and took my emotions to the studio and made art out of them.”
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| | rantnrave:// Defiant to the end—or, more likely, this is some kind of beginning—KESHA returns from a long, painfully public four-year absence with a single and video called "PRAYING" in which she isn't the one doing the praying. There's no secret who the song is about, even if she doesn't say so in her essay about fighting back in LENNY. But it doesn't matter if your sympathies are with Kesha, LUKE, both or neither. "Praying" is a raw, stripped-down ballad about freedom, independence and rising above that serves as a welcome reintroduction of a strong female voice... And for anyone who needs a reminder, it isn't easy being a woman in this game... It isn't easy being a streaming service either. SOUNDCLOUD's drastic staff cuts Thursday were seen variously as a last-ditch attempt to stave off and/or position itself for a sale or a sign that the economics of streaming aren't working. Either way, SoundCloud's future seems cloudier than ever. As a service for DJs, indie labels, unsigned bands and any number of other constituencies, it's still a unique, essential service. Dear labels, publishers, everybody else: Support it. Please... Is JAY-Z anti-Semitic? For what it's worth, there are two Jewish stereotypes in one verse in "THE STORY OF OJ": 1) Own all the property in AMERICA. 2) "Credit," which sort of implies they own all the banks. Also for what it's worth, it's immediately preceded by an African-American stereotype: Don't know how to save money. There's a lot of ugliness behind that verse, and I won't blanket defend it, but context matters: It's a song (and video) about stereotypes. The ugliness extends in many directions, and deep into history. It's a song that uses self-deprecation and dark humor to talk about all this. And he's not saying f*** those property-owners. He's saying good for them. He's saying emulate them. It's a great, complicated, troubling song. Great art. My first response wasn't to say, "Apologize now." My first response was to keep listening. To ask deeper questions. Questions that are easily masked by one or two provocative lines. There has been lots of discussion of those lines, and I hope Jay-Z keeps listening, too... It's FRIDAY and that means new music from HAIM—god I love Haim—21 SAVAGE, PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING, TORO Y MOI, UGLY GOD, THIS IS THE KIT, CHARLEY PRIDE, DJ SHADOW, TWISTA, BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE, SARAH JAFFE, TRISTEN and THE MELVINS... RIP electronic music pioneer PIERRE HENRY. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | CDM Create Digital Music |
| There's a famous line in business by Tom Peters, in his book The Circle of Innovation: "you can't shrink your way to greatness." But shrinking is exactly what SoundCloud now has to do, with its survival - let alone any ongoing greatness - at stake. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| How the DIY Philly group won a loyal following while resisting the hype machine. | | |
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 | Lenny |
| The artist bares all about her lowest moments and how they inspired her first song in almost four years. | | |
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 | The Atlantic |
| Her new ballad announces she’s moving on after alleging abuse by her producer-but it is also, inevitably, tied to that producer. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| Austin, Nashville and New Orleans have thrived on the success of vibrant music scenes. But as rents rise and noise complaints become more common, do they risk ruining what made them famous in the first place? | | |
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 | The Fader |
| Club culture is plagued by sexism and white supremacy. These three women won’t stand for it. | | |
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 | Music Industry Blog |
| Jay-Z’s control over his artistic output extends back to the beginning of his career. He co-founded his own label to release his debut in 1996, and he is now in full control of his own master rights. Such self-determination over one’s career at the scale of his audience is rare, thus enabling 4:44’s window release while the rest of the industry retreats from such practices. | | |
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 | Glamour |
| 'I think more guys should wake up and realize we’re equal.' | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| Kanye West’s dispute with JAY-Z’s streaming service may be less about money and more about the trend away from windowed album exclusives. | | |
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 | NME |
| NME's Leonie Cooper on how Guns N’Roses at London Stadium proved to her that maybe stadium gigs aren't so bad after all. | | |
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| The Guardian |
| The film biography has a chequered past, but a rash of dramas based on the lives of 90s rap stars such as Tupac and NWA has juiced the genre. | | |
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 | Noisey |
| Last week, Public Enemy released their 14th album as a free download. We trace the group's impact, from 90s grunge to nü-metal and everything in between. | | |
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 | GuideLive |
| The one milestone that eludes him — the only honor that gets him slightly riled up today — is a movie about his life. Pride says he hopes his life story makes it to the big screen before he heads into the big sleep. | | |
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 | The Muse |
| On the first episode of ABC’s Boy Band-a mildly entertaining singing competition hosted by veteran TV host Rita Ora-we’re introduced to 30 teens desperate to be part of a boy band. Why? | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| The career trajectory of Naughty Boy – aka Shahid Khan – has been one of the most impressive, and heartening, in the British music industry of the past decade. | | |
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 | Soundfly |
| It took Ben Folds 10 minutes to create and compose this song. Let's break it down minute by minute and discover why it works. | | |
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| Pitchfork |
| DFA Records' longtime synth expert shares her story for the first time. | | |
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 | LA Weekly |
| "Are you with the pussies or the punks?" This has been a recurring comment on threads regarding Dickies frontman Leonard Graves Phillips' recent tirade from the stage against a young woman in the crowd at Warped Tour, and it seems to be tearing apart the hardcore music community right now. | | |
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 | The Telegraph |
| Bråvalla Festival, which this year was headlined by The Killers, The Chainsmokers and Skepta, has been blighted by news of sexual crime since its inception in 2013, while last weekend saw four rapes and 23 sexual assaults reported over the course of the four-day event. | | |
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| The Guardian |
| The French creator of musique concrete loves birdsong, and inspired the theme for TV's Futurama. Just don't play him anything with a hunting horn in it. (Originally published Oct. 15, 2006.) | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | From "Rainbow," out Aug. 11 on Kemosabe Records. |
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