I have never, nor would I ever, put the kind of trapdoors and booby traps in my music to make the listener feel dumb... [My] songs and arrangements were complex and convoluted at times, but they were sincere attempts at connecting. | | | | Aretha Franklin at Muscle Shoals Sound, Jan. 9, 1969.
(Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I have never, nor would I ever, put the kind of trapdoors and booby traps in my music to make the listener feel dumb... [My] songs and arrangements were complex and convoluted at times, but they were sincere attempts at connecting.”
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| | rantnrave:// So what are we to make of a popular musician in 2017 who has publicly declared he's thinking about running for the US SENATE but hasn't declared he's actually running and we have no way of knowing if he means it and we're not sure if he knows either? By "we," I mean everybody: Republicans, Democrats, independents, music fans, non-music fans, Trumpers, never-Trumpers, Michiganders, non-Michiganders, everybody. By "popular musician," I mean KID ROCK, whose maybe-maybe-not campaign against a popular incumbent, DEBBIE STABENOW, is starting to get loud, divisive and ugly. In GRAND RAPIDS last week, he opened a show with an angry, expletive-filled rhyming stump speech (pro-taxpayer-subsidized health care, anti-taxpayer-subsidized lots of other things, pro-GOD, anti-COLIN KAEPERNICK, pro his own awesomeness) while standing at a podium and wearing an American-flag scarf. Tonight, he kicks off a six-night stand opening DETROIT's new LITTLE CAESARS ARENA, and he will be met by protesters led by the REV. AL SHARPTON's NATIONAL ACTION NETWORK. Police are on alert. Local columnists have criticized the booking at the taxpayer-subsidized arena while raising the specter of racism, saying Kid Rock is a "one-time Confederate flag-waver" who "is exploitative and resentful of the city's population." Kid Rock's response: "I am the bona fide KING OF DETROIT LOVE" and "I LOVE BLACK PEOPLE!!" He argues the concerts wouldn't be an issue if he hadn't said he might run for office. Which is true and beside the point. Because he *has* said that. His political flirtation may be a well-orchestrated goof, but it also may not be. And in the political climate of 2017, it's our job—all of us—to assume he's serious. He's acting like he is. This is not simply Kid Rock, rap-rocker-turned-country-rocker, playing a show. Imagine AL FRANKEN, comedian-turned-senator, opening the arena. Or DONALD TRUMP, businessman-turned-president. This is an openly political act. His free speech matters. So does everyone else's. It would be helpful to lower the volume. That's usually the job of the person in office, or the person running for it. It's everybody else's job to pay attention and hold that person to account... BEYONCÉ, DRAKE, JUSTIN BIEBER, GEORGE STRAIT, BLAKE SHELTON, J BALVIN, NICKI MINAJ and DIDDY are among the artists who have signed on for "HAND IN HAND: A BENEFIT FOR HURRICANE RELIEF," airing tonight across multiple networks and websites (8 pm ET) and raising money for victims of hurricanes HARVEY and IRMA... Sampling classical music, from MADONNA and NAS to ZAYN and G-EAZY... Sort of along the same lines: I love the CLASH, I kinda like SAMMY HAGAR and I had no idea the former brazenly nicked the latter but wow this is clear, obvious and awesome... RIP JOSH SCHWARTZ. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | The Conversation |
| The search for old or new African sounds is based around a nostalgia culture that is endemic to Anglo-American popular music. | | |
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 | BuzzFeed |
| "I told you more than I would tell my own mother." | | |
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 | Pigeons & Planes |
| Internet-savvy artists are finding new ways to build diverse fan bases outside of rap. | | |
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 | Wired |
| A group called the Open Music Initiative is figuring out artist payments for digital platforms. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| Slow-mo hip-hop, drugs and the state of the world have altered dance’s bpm. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| The musician’s 1964 hit chronicles the African-American experience in the 20th century. We followed Mr. Berry’s lyrical route to see what had changed. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| Are sneaker collaborations the new mixtape? | | |
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 | The Daily Beast |
| The queer Iranian-American indie rock star talks about stepping behind the mic for his new record ‘Half-Light,’ and his perspective as the son of immigrants in Trump’s America. | | |
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 | PopMatters |
| "Rock in a Hard Place" is a sober chronicling of music in some of the most conservative countries on the planet. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| New software is putting a dent in secondary ticket market for concergoing fans of Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, others, but not without controversy. | | |
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 | Music x Tech x Future |
| Doing a consumer facing music startup is hard. Especially if you don't understand what gives music value. | | |
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| The Guardian |
| Insane Clown Posse fans are fighting a government report calling them a gang, an action they say is emblematic of broader injustices against the working class. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| Amid the turbulence wrought by the current Administration, the singer makes clear that her loyalty remains with the oppressed. | | |
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 | A Journal of Musical Things |
| It’s only natural that our worldviews are created as the result of what we see and experience locally. But if we take the time to get outside our bubble, we often see our preconceptions about how the world works are at best incomplete. | | |
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 | NPR |
| Through the '80s, Minneapolis three-piece Hüsker Dü helped broaden the ambitions and parameters of punk rock. Now, after years of work, its early recordings have been rebuilt from the ground up. | | |
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 | Radiotopia |
| When you go into a bookstore, or record store, or library, you enter another world that you have to learn to navigate. You adapt to it. But today’s digital corporations have created a musical universe that adapts, predictably, to you. | | |
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| The Daily Beast |
| There exists a troubling new class of emcees who are seeing their record sales rise with each disturbing police report. | | |
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| Rolling Stone |
| Michael McDonald reflects on his unlikely musical renaissance and what inspired his first album of original material in 17 years. | | |
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 | Noisey |
| The electronic duo have come a long way since being labelled ‘post-dubstep’ in 2009-and they’re sounding more confident than ever. | | |
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 | The Bitter Southerner |
| Gregg Allman's final album, "Southern Blood," comes out today. When Allman died in late May, only a tight circle of his friends and associates knew the record was already was in the can. The story of how and where that album came to be is beautiful, and I'll tell it to you. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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