I’m actually going out of my way when I’m making my music for it to not sound like a bunch of musicians. | | | | BTS' "Love Yourself: Answer" is out today on Big Hit Entertainment.
(Chris Polk/Getty Images) | | | | | | “I’m actually going out of my way when I’m making my music for it to not sound like a bunch of musicians.”
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| | rantnrave:// Hi from Brooklyn. It's AFROPUNK weekend. One of my favorite New York summer weekends. And not just because the next two days are going to bring me some combination of JANELLE MONÁE, THE INTERNET, KAYTRANADA, IBEYI, ERYKAH BADU, PUSHA-T, TYLER THE CREATOR, FANTASTIC NEGRITO and much more. At a moment in time when nearly every summer fest seems like a lightly curated version of every other summer fest, Afropunk is curation with a point of view, a point of view that goes beyond music to incorporate social activism, multiculturalism, art and style. A point of view that shines a critical light on multiple corners of black pop culture and welcomes anybody and everybody to immerse themselves in it. It's a safe space for art and positivity and, most of all, sound. Hip-hop, R&B, electronic, rock, soul and related diversions, curated by actual cultural curators who appear to have license to roam freely within that landscape, and who still, after 13 years, don't appear to be following corporate orders or social media metrics. They're just kind of following the music. There'll be messy lines getting into COMMODORE BARRY PARK and at a certain point you'll find it impossible to get from the Green Stage to the Red Stage and you may find yourself giving up and/or giving in and I swear you won't mind because wherever you are, there will be music... This is fantastic curation, too: The just-launched PEOPLE website is a minimally designed old-school wonder that houses an expansive, ever-growing collection of music created and/or programmed by a collective run by BON IVER's JUSTIN VERNON and the NATIONAL's AARON and BRYCE DESSNER. It isn't music by those bands, per se. It's music that people in and around those bands find inspiring or interesting or worth messing around with in a practice room somewhere. Or something close to that. Everything is freely streamable. You will quickly get lost and, once again, you won’t mind... ARETHA and hip-hop. Aretha and county. Aretha and A DIFFERENT WORLD. Aretha on WHAT'S MY LINE. Funeral and public memorial info... LEONARD BERNSTEIN would have been 100 tomorrow. Some listening guides... It's FRIDAY and that means new music from BLOOD ORANGE, BTS, NOTHING, JEREMIH & TY DOLLA $IGN, AUTECHRE, INTERPOL, ALICE IN CHAINS, ÓLAFUR ARNALDS, BAS, OZUNA, LUCIE SILVAS, WHITE DENIM, LIAM PAYNE, NEIL & LIAM FINN, JESS CONNELLY, JUSTICE, CANDI STATON, MARK LANEGAN & DUKE GARWOOD, DEVOTCHKA, LEMON TWIGS, DEE WHITE, JOEY DOSIK, PLAIN WHITE T'S, RYAN CULWELL, DEVIL MAKES THREE, BC CAMPLIGHT, AMITY AFFLICTION and MURDER BY DEATH... RIP ED KING, who co-wrote both "INCENSE AND PEPPERMINTS" (uncredited, but he did) and "SWEET HOME ALABAMA." He played lead guitar on the latter, which I am reasonably sure is the sweetest sounding guitar track in the history of rock, the crystalline Platonic ideal of the form, and I'm also reasonably sure that guitarist, engineer and producer should all share credit for that... RIP also JEREMY GEFFEN.
| | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| Five writers on what made the protean Bernstein, born 100 years ago, one of the most indelible figures in the history of the arts. | | |
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| Anti-fascist black metal is everywhere all of a sudden, so we put together a heap of recommendations for Nazi-smashing metalheads, including Redbait, Underdark, Yovel, and more. | | |
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| The Brief History of Musicians Saying ‘Hell No’ to Donald Trump Using Their Songs | | |
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| Spotify is no longer allowing new subscribers to sign up through its Apple iOS app, which means it won't end up with new subscribers where subscription monies have to be shared with the tech giant, aka its main competitor in the streaming music space. | | |
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| Each year, more hip-hop artists start festivals, but each festival needs to stand out in an increasingly crowded market. | | |
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| Another special, backroom deal has been brokered in an effort to breathe life into the Music Modernization Act. | | |
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| I’ve been musing on this for months now. Every since I saw the “42 IP law professors” letter opposing the closure of the pre-1972 digital royalty loophole I thought “Really? how can intelligent people be FOR keeping a ridiculous loophole in place that only benefits a handful of billionaires?” | | |
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| The producer and artist just needs pop music to take the leap. And her work with Charli XCX and Vince Staples, a rumored collaboration with Lady Gaga could take her enigmatic, industrial sound into the mainstream. | | |
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| The Dolly Parton theme park in Tennessee has more knickknacks, clothes, and commemorative trinkets than you can imagine. | | |
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| The rapper’s generosity allowed a fan to bury his mom. That says more about the state of affairs in the U.S. than it does about Travis Scott. | | |
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| Data journalist Miriam Quick put Spotify’s new algorithm to the test, analysing over 1000 tracks to find the saddest pop songs to top the charts. The results were surprising. | | |
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| Moving congregations to holy dances at age 10 and President Obama to tears over 60 years later, Franklin influenced decades of American life, nourishing the civil rights and feminist movements, seeding hip-hop and dance music and modeling quiet strength -- when she wasn’t outperforming every other singer alive. | | |
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| The polymath musician is a whole new model of artist, daubing his signature sensibility over music, film, dance and everything else he touches. | | |
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| The origins of “Lightsleeper” reach back about three years to the wedding of Liam and Janina Percival, part of what the Finns describe as a “generational shift” in the family, a prompt for Neil, 60, and Liam, 34, to work together as creative partners instead of musician father and sideman son. | | |
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| In the first episode of The Future of Music, I attended an Imogen Heap concert... by putting on an Oculus headset. | | |
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| In her previous professional life, as Co-President of Columbia Records UK, Alison Donald came across a hot new artist she was extremely keen to sign. | | |
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| For Stein, the songs are what attracts him to a band, musicianship comes second. He is not only an great businessman but a true music fan and fountain of knowledge. | | |
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| An artist in control of her work, Robyn serves us a dreamy possibility beyond the rigid binaries and adapts pop's dance floor language into something that serves her own dreams. | | |
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| Pigeons & Planes is 10 years old. Here's the full story of the brand, from the people who made it happen. | | |
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| Songs that wake up with the sheets soaking wet. | | |
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| | | | | | | Video directed by Spike Lee as an extended trailer for "BlacKkKlansman." |
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