I can still sing my ass off... When I sing onstage, I ain't 74. I sound like a 30-year-old! That feels good. I get a little break from being 74. | | | | SZA sharing her own insecurities at a party for HBO's "Insecure," July 15, 2017.
(Randy Shropshire/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I can still sing my ass off... When I sing onstage, I ain't 74. I sound like a 30-year-old! That feels good. I get a little break from being 74.”
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| | rantnrave:// I've had SZA on my mind, and on my SONOS playlist, for the past 48 hours, partly as penance for missing her set at AFROPUNK and partly because I'm obsessed with a two-song sequence in the middle of her album, CTRL, and the more I play it the more I have to hear it. The melancholy "DREW BARRYMORE," with its underwatery production and all-time great "Am I warm enough for ya?" chorus hook, is from the point of view of an insecure young woman whose lover appears to be slipping away, and she just wants someone to cuddle and watch the first episode of NARCOS with. The more propulsive "PROM" flips some of the insecurity, the narrator now trying to explain to her lover why she isn't quite ready, and it's me not you, and don't take it personally "like I know you usually do," which could come across as cutting and insulting except SZA sings it soft and sweet, as if she's not quite sure how not ready she is. Maybe my favorite pop/R&B moment of the year... Yo BILLBOARD: I'm certain there are more than three nonwhite people on the digital side of the music biz who you could highlight in your list of 50 Digital Power Players. I could name some of them if you need me to. Full-on congrats to everyone from streaming services, publishing companies, social media, etc., who did make the list. As for the list itself, I'm sure I sound like a hopelessly broken record by now, but seriously... I'm a SHAZAM guy all the way—old school, I know—even if sometimes I think the app is telling me to move closer to the source when it can damn well hear the song but doesn't know what it is... Welcome back to one of the great voices in hard rock (and one of the top two voices to ever sing AC/DC songs)... New life goal: convince @ACTIONBRONSON that mackerel is good. Maybe have him try the mackerel escabeche while seeing a show at NATIONAL SAWDUST. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | The Guardian |
| Ampersands in music do more than tell you who’s on a record -- they illustrate the power struggles that go on behind pop’s closed doors. | | |
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 | BuzzFeed |
| Deaf music fans want more than viral fame. They want the access -- and independence -- of the hearing-centric music world. | | |
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 | Africa is a Country |
| Daddy Yankee and Luis Fonsi’s “Despacito” is now the world’s most streamed song ever. Many view this as a triumph for Afro-Latino culture. However, for us it reflects everything that is wrong with the music industry and how it exploits the cultural production of communities of color. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Brian Wilson goes deep on depression, family, the Beach Boys' ups and downs, and the legacy of 'Pet Sounds' in our in-depth feature. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| As streaming drives the $15.7 billion global music business, these 50 executives, deep in data and from every industry sector, are on the cutting edge of music and tech. | | |
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 | DJBooth |
| We felt we could no longer stand on the sidelines, watching rap's ugly embrace of sexual assault. | | |
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 | Talkhouse |
| A musical history of existential freakouts, from 1953 to the current age. | | |
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 | NPR |
| The Alabama singer-songwriter and his band perform three songs from The Nashville Sound, but their set includes a few surprises, too. | | |
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 | The Vinyl Factory |
| From Jamaican sound systems to jungle, garage and grime, dubplates have long played a crucial role in DJ culture. But what does that look like in 2017? | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| In the midst of national crises and a pop personality vacuum, the annual celebration of flash mostly seemed desperate to fill time. | | |
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 | Stereogum |
| So here's what we know: Taylor Swift interpolated (or lifted) the cadence from Right Said Fred's 1991 pop-house hit "I'm Too Sexy" for the hook to her single "Look What You Made Me Do." Here's what we don't know: Why? | | |
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 | The Root |
| Why isn’t Ms. Tay-Tay clocking Kim Kardashian? Easy answer: It’s because the only other person who is able to subvert and defeat a white woman (and her white privilege and white tears) is another fellow white woman. | | |
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 | Genius |
| Cardi B, French Montana, & Lil Uzi Vert's songs of the summer owe little to their hometowns. | | |
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| Billboard |
| Following the 'Despacito' VMA snub, actor John Leguizamo pens a powerful essay on Latinos' absence from film, TV and media in general. | | |
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 | Forbes |
| In 2014, Emma Burgess-Olson, Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson and Christine McCharren-Tran founded Discwoman. The platform, collective and booking agency represents and highlights oft-overlooked cis, trans and genderqueer talent in electronic music. | | |
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 | LA Weekly |
| In this excerpt from his new book, Metal Blade Records founder Brian Slagel recounts the last-minute nature of Metallica's contribution to the now-legendary "Metal Massacre" compilation. | | |
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| NPR |
| The acclaimed jazz pianist and Harvard music professor talks with NPR's Scott Simon about the Vijay Iyer Sextet's new album, Far From Over, and the politics that inspired it. | | |
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 | The Cipher |
| Time to find out why everybody was talking all this stuff about him. | | |
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 | Vulture |
| The most delightful moment in Janicza Bravo's absurdly bleak (and critically lauded) new comedy "Lemon" may be when, seemingly out of nowhere, 11 members of the cast burst into a sing-along of Dean Friedman's classic-that-never-was, "A Million Matzoh Balls." | | |
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| Pitchfork |
| Behind the scenes of Mac DeMarco’s trippy virtual reality experience. | | |
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