Do good by other people, man. If you all are accomplished or if you all are ahead in your career and your life and somebody steps to you, you all ain't that busy to take some time out and give them some advice. If you ahead of the game and some cat is on your heels 'cause they ambitious, don't make it a competitive thing. Show love and embrace. | | | | All I want for Christmas... Mariah Carey at the Beacon Theatre, New York, Dec. 5, 2016.
(Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Do good by other people, man. If you all are accomplished or if you all are ahead in your career and your life and somebody steps to you, you all ain't that busy to take some time out and give them some advice. If you ahead of the game and some cat is on your heels 'cause they ambitious, don't make it a competitive thing. Show love and embrace.”
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| | rantnrave:// I never met REGGIE OSSÉ, even though we overlapped for a time at MTV NETWORKS, but I've been doing this job long enough to feel like we were friends. That's the vibe he gave off to anyone who listened to his long-running podcast, the COMBAT JACK SHOW, which has basically served as hip-hop's online living room for the past seven years. It has also served, in a way, as the scene's conscience. Ossé had pedigree and knowledge and heart. He knew the game (before he became a blogger and podcaster, he had been, among other things, JAY-Z's lawyer), he knew the players, he knew the music and he loved all of it. And it loved him back. You'll be in tears listening to his final appearance on the Combat Jack Show, recorded a month ago, not long after he disclosed his aggressive colon cancer, in which he talks about the beauty and joy of being inundated with roses while he was still alive. "It's my duty to get by this, to overcome this s***," he said. The roses kept coming; BLACK THOUGHT signed off from his earth-shaking freestyle last week on HOT 97 with a shoutout: "for Combat." Combat Jack succumbed Wednesday morning. He was 48. RIP. And f*** cancer... In his final year, Ossé went into longform podcasting, writing and hosting the series "Mogul: The Life and Death of CHRIS LIGHTY" for SPOTIFY. It was a high point for podcasting in 2017, and is very much worth a revisit... Moving from podcasting with a heart and a message to online radio with a heart and a message, THEO PARRISH and SOUND SIGNATURE have launched this and it sounds fantastic... PENSKE MEDIA buys controlling stake in WENNER MEDIA, and JANN and GUS WENNER will stay on... Where do songs come from? A biology student wrote the beat for POST MALONE's "ROCKSTAR" between finals at (shoutout to my brother JOEY) UNIVERSITY OF HARTFORD. ED SHEERAN came up with the main vocal hook for "SHAPE OF YOU" after playing with Legos. Another volume of fly-on-the-wall stories of the making of classic songs. MusicSET: "Behind the Song, Vol. 6"... Goodbye, AMAZON MP3 storage closet... REP. JERROLD NADLER, D-NY, gets a leadership spot on the HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE, putting him front and center on copyright legislation... MusicREDEF is taking a short CHRISTMAS break. Our next newsletter will be a special Christmas Day edition featuring our favorite writing of 2017, and then we'll be back later in the week with more year-end goodies... You'll find some Christmas stocking stuffers sprinkled among the links below... And FRIDAY will still be Friday, so to speak, which means new music from GUCCI MANE, with LIL WAYNE promising a long-awaited mixtape on Christmas Day. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Vulture |
| The story of the Texan producer who defined the sound of rap music in New York. | | |
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 | Village Voice |
| In his 2006 memoir, "You Must Set Forth at Dawn," the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka posed this simple question about his countryman, and first cousin, Fela Kuti, the larger-than-life Nigerian bandleader: "How would one summarize Fela?" For Erykah Badu, the answer is succinct: "Listen, all you need to know is...Fela Kuti is a f-ing genius." | | |
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 | Esquire |
| With a solo record and a career as a male model, the One Direction member is redefining what it means to be Niall Horan. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| A feat of musical syncretism, the song blends the spirit of belief with that of worldly ambition. | | |
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 | Okayplayer |
| The hip-hop community lost a real one. | | |
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 | Song Exploder |
| In 1992, R.E.M. released their eighth album, "Automatic for the People." In honor of the 25th anniversary of its release, in this episode, Michael Stipe and Mike Mills take apart the song “Try Not to Breathe.” | | |
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 | Genius |
| Each day, millions of music fans come to Genius to read lyrics and learn about their favorite artists-our Top Songs Chart reflects what the world is listening to all day, every day. With over one billion pageviews in 2017, Genius data tracks the artists, songs, and projects that music lovers cared about the most this year, measured from Dec. 16, 2016 through Dec. 15, 2017. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| Choirs around the world sing John Rutter’s works, but their tuneful accessibility has kept him from a place in the pantheon of serious composers. | | |
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 | Very Smart Brothas |
| Last week, Tariq Trotter aka Black Thought, frontman for the Roots, tried to break the rapper-nets with a 10-minute freestyle with Funkmaster Flex over the Mobb Deep "Burn" instrumental that even had people who think Kevin Gates is the best rapper of all time impressed. | | |
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 | Dangerous Minds |
| In the early 1980s, two albums of rare Beatles recordings were released with little fanfare. Consisting of the Christmas messages the Fab Four distributed to their fan club in the 1960s, these LPs weren't authorized by the Beatles, and it appears the reasons they were put out in the first place had, oddly, little to do with financial gain--in the traditional sense, that is. | | |
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 | NPR Music |
| Vijay Iyer Sextet, Steve Coleman's Natal Eclipse, Tyshawn Sorey, Craig Taborn, Nicole Mitchell... | | |
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 | Heavy Blog Is Heavy |
| Welcome to the final installment of Death's Door in the Year of Our Nefarious Overlord 2017! Wipe your feet on the mat, remove that stupid holiday-induced smile from your face, and prepare yourself for ultimate year-end audio brutalization. Because, quite frankly, 2017 was one of the best years for death metal in decades. | | |
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| Vulture |
| With all of the TV shows with standout soundtracks this year, it was a particularly welcome surprise to end 2017 on a sonic note that harkened back to the 1950s. In "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," co-creators Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino created a diverse musical world that's not only as meticulous as their fast-paced dialogue, but one that's whip-smart with its choices and cues. | | |
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 | Vox |
| Hint: Mariah Carey’s "All I Want for Christmas Is You" uses it. | | |
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| NPR Music |
| As women lit up hip-hop this year, an old idea persisted that only one female MC can wear the crown at a time. Our year-end series continues with an artist determined to coexist without compromise. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| Singer follows in footsteps of Britney Spears with her show and hints she may debut new material. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| It all began with a little silver cross Bob Dylan found while he was on tour in support of his 1978 LP "Street Legal." "I said, 'I need something that I didn't have before,'" he explained to an audience at a 1979 concert. "And I looked in my pocket and I had this cross." | | |
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| The New York Times |
| More than a thousand worshipers attended a Pentecostal singalong whose set list included Beatles hits like “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “Here Comes the Sun.” | | |
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 | Fast Company |
| Like the rest of us, entertainers tried to make sense of the 45th president of the United States this year. | | |
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 | WNYC |
| Some workers to store owners: We're all for holiday cheer, but could you vary the playlist? | | |
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 | YouTube |
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