I was told that was a s***ty song because it didn’t rhyme. A group of men thought it was OK to sit around a young woman and bully her. I was told I should shut up and sing. | | | | Eminem at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, Nov. 6, 2015.
(Scott Legato/Getty Images) | | | | | | “I was told that was a s***ty song because it didn’t rhyme. A group of men thought it was OK to sit around a young woman and bully her. I was told I should shut up and sing.”
|
| |
| | rantnrave:// Where is all the protest music? We've been hearing that question for months, for years, even as artists from BEYONCÉ to KENDRICK LAMAR to KAMASI WASHINGTON have continued to deliver it in various forms. But sometimes you need someone to stand in front of you on your TV, announce he's protesting, raise a fist and threaten to drop a pot of hot coffee on the president to satisfy your desire that artists are still willing, in 2017, to look what's going down. #EMINEM. On BET. In prime time. Tuesday night. Going after the president of the USA like a lioness going after the predator who attacked her cubs. Dropping bomb after bomb, bar after bar, using the president's own words against him. Invoking the swamp, taxes, golfing, the Klan, PUERTO RICO, racism, KAEPERNICK, immigrants, much much more. Drawing a line in the sand. Telling his own fans to take a stand. And reminding us, in case we had forgot, how utterly great a rapper he remains. A powerful four and a half minutes of TV. And while he risks years of trolling on social media and a few burned t-shirts, how much did BET risk by putting his rant on air? How will the WHITE HOUSE, the FCC or the rest of the ruling establishment respond to that? Or to BET's parent company? Protest music is here and stakes is high... Huge congrats to RHIANNON GIDDENS, YUVAL SHARON, TAYLOR MAC and TYSHAWN SOREY, who are among the 2017 recipients of MACARTHUR FOUNDATION "genius" grants... A realpolitik argument for why the music industry needs blockchain technology: It would eliminate "the requirement for trust behind disparate parties." Ouch. Also, maybe an industry shouldn't be running on EXCEL spreadsheets in 2017. DAN FOWLER of LONDON-based rights-management startup JAAK makes his case. Background: "Building the Music Blockchain"... If you've ever wanted to know what deep darkspy music sounds like, or you weren't sure exactly which 200 or so performers fit the description, allow me to remind you of GLENN MCDONALD's amazing interactive musical genre map, EVERY NOISE AT ONCE. Gawk at its chaotic aesthetic beauty, then start clicking. Then click some more. Remember to eat at some point, perhaps while you're exploring deep Danish pop or vintage swoon (McDonald made up some of the nomenclature, but the music and the links are as real as they are neverending). I'll be back tomorrow to check in on you... Hey wait what happened to the new MTV UNPLUGGED? The long-dormant MTV live-music staple returned with SHAWN MENDES and a good deal of hype on Sept. 8, followed up with BLEACHERS on Sept. 15 and then, um, appeared to have unplugged from itself. In MediaREDEF on Tuesday, JASON HIRSCHHORN explored the aimlessness of his (and my) old corporate home, and I don't want to pile on, but I am sort of wondering if anyone's piloting that rocketship right now. Or is a two-episode season a perfect, insidious response to those who say everything needs to be more like SNAPCHAT? Blink and you missed it. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
|
|
| T La Rock was one of the pioneers of hip-hop, an old-school legend sampled by Public Enemy and Nas. But after a brutal attack put him in a nursing home, he had to fight to recover his identity, starting with the fact that he’d ever been a rapper at all. | | |
|
| Daniel Barassi is a minor celebrity among Depeche Mode fans, having run the band's website for nearly 20 years. But he'd rather talk about his "Fishure-Price" modified toy turntable. | | |
|
| A 17th birthday party at a strip club, go-kart racing, and very little eye contact: We trailed the king of SoundCloud as his debut album hits the charts. | | |
|
| Grammy Award winner Bruno Mars with a special remix of "That's What I Like." | | |
|
| A surprisingly large amount of the music industry still runs on excel sheets and legacy systems. The time is now for a radical re-think about how the industry’s tech capability needs are addressed. | | |
|
| These are multiple works of genre history and works tackling important issues of race, class, and gender. All challenge dominant narratives of music. | | |
|
| In the ’60s, there was no internet culture. There was just the mainstream, and you had to search for fun wherever you could. Discovering Monk was like finding water in the desert. | | |
|
| Breaking down Post Malone's unlikely rise to the top of the charts. | | |
|
| Mr. Petty and his wacky visual aesthetic belonged to MTV, alongside Duran Duran and Cyndi Lauper, as much as it did to the rock ’n’ roll canon. | | |
|
| With a billion-dollar valuation and $500 million deal under its red box-logo'ed belt, Supreme is all grown up. But will the brand lose the kids who made it what it is today? | | |
|
| A powerful short film about stage fright. Kyra is a young cellist on her way to becoming an outstanding soloist. During an important concert one of the strings of her cello comes lose, unnerving her; this results in a panic attack and stage fright. Her anxiety and loneliness become too much to handle, but quitting is not an option. | | |
|
| Controversial billionaire Alki David has been trying to get this hologram theater in Hollywood off the ground for more than a year. | | |
|
| Jack Irons played a big role in creating two of America’s biggest bands, but he’s largely unknown. His legacy, plus efforts to speak frankly about depression, is worth cheering. | | |
|
| Baton Rouge raised YoungBoy Never Broke Again , a teen rapper who’s taking his city’s sound to new heights. Now he just needs to leave. | | |
|
| We may be seeing the beginnings of a new musical era in which pre-composition, generativity, indeterminacy, and improvisation are able to interact in heretofore unimaginable ways. Instances in which composers sit alongside a chamber group or orchestra, modifying elements of a piece such as dynamics, form, and tempo in real time via networked devices, may become commonplace. | | |
|
| The original “TRL” helped a post-Gen-X MTV successfully court millennials. Gen Z doesn’t need or want the reheated leftovers. | | |
|
| Ian Dury released his single "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll" in 1977- - and the phrase has been stuck in pop culture ever since. A new study published in the Human Ethology Bulletin scientifically investigated whether sex, drugs and rock music are actually interrelated. | | |
|
| Tom Petty waged a battle for his music rights that changed forever how artists negotiate with record companies. | | |
|
| Inside the home of the pioneering composer, a residence currently under threat. | | |
|
| An open letter to music fans in the wake of the tragedy at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas | | |
|
| © Copyright 2017, The REDEF Group |
|
|
