I half-remember that Quality Control compilation record from last year calledControl the Streets Volume 1. It featured Lil Yachty, Nicki Minaj, Travis Scott, Cardi B, each and every Migo, Young Thug, City Girls, Gucci Mane, and Lil Baby. But if you put a gun to my head and confiscated my laptop, I couldn’t say, on pain of death, whether or not it included a song called … Continue reading Lil Yachty Is Still Trying to Impress the Doubters on ‘Nuthin’ 2 Prove’

Young Jesus have been thinking about mushrooms. They’ve read Paul Stamets, who believes that mushrooms can save the earth. They’ve read The Mushroom at the End of the World, in which the author Anna Tsing forages through the mushroom industry for answers about late capitalism. They’ve read Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees, a book that draws parallels between fungi and social security systems and eventually posits that … Continue reading Young Jesus Are Indie Rock’s Great Anarcho-Impressionists

Before moving to the East Coast and devoting himself to New York Minimalism, the American artist Don Dudley lived and worked in Los Angeles. There he was one of the Finish Fetishists, bringing pop culture, hyper-glossy materials, and a Californian sensibility to gallery walls. On both coasts, his work tended to be sleek and geometrically pleasing. But one very early painting, from 1964, is stylistically … Continue reading Meg Baird and Mary Lattimore Finally Combine for a Stunning, Uneasy Album

The raid on Prince’s long-sealed vault officially begins today, with Piano and a Microphone 1983, a collection of songs recorded at the artist’s Kiowa Trail home studio a year before Purple Rain. It is, inevitably, a slightly uncomfortable listen. Whether you’re a casual listener or dedicated collector of Prince bootlegs, the nine raw, unadorned songs on Piano and a Microphone throw up a dicey ethical question: How should we listen … Continue reading Eavesdropping on Prince

Seven years ago, a scrawny half-Jewish kid-rapper from Pittsburgh had the best-selling record in America. He earned it by gurning and grinning his way through verses that made sense to the underage drinkers who packed out his shows on college campuses, then laying those rhymes over palatable, poppy beats. Born Malcolm McCormick, he was exuberant, hedonistic, hard-working, confident, lyrically messy, and totally unprepared for the … Continue reading Mac Miller Wasn’t Done

Kyle Thomas recently purchased a yellow coat. It’s a Swedish military snow parka, and he loves it. “Just having the yellow on me, man,” he says. “It’s so good.” He got some suits made too, which make him feel like a “bedazzled motherfucker.” For the 35-year-old songwriter and multi-instrumentalist better known as King Tuff, it’s a brightly colored experiment as he grows up. “I think … Continue reading King Tuff Was Dead, but Now He Feels Like a Kid Again

“Me and Willow are scientists,” a 17-year-old Jaden Smith told GQ‘s Zach Baron in 2015, “so everything for us is a scientific test upon humanity. And luckily we’re put in a position where we can affect large groups of human beings at one time.” Banksy-like art installations, global cross-disciplinary free-education programs, and superhero anonymity would come in the future, he said. But as things were, his Twitter … Continue reading The Strange Conspiracy Theory Behind Jaden Smith’s New Album

Outside the 3500-capacity AGP Arena in the modest suburban town of Billericay, Essex, a 100-foot-long, 20-foot-high mural depicts Glenn Tamplin’s dream. It begins with the Mayflower setting sail for the New World, jumps ahead somewhat to the formation of Billericay Town FC in 1880, and quickly addresses the club’s modest, amateur-level successes during the 1970s. And then God speaks. Specifically, He speaks to Tamplin, who … Continue reading How One Rich Man’s Weird Dream Transformed A British Pro Soccer Team

There’s a rumor out there that Frank Ocean and director Tyrone Lebon were both tripping on acid when they shot the video for “Nikes” in 2016. It adds up. There are those shots of Ocean sitting on the dirt, surrounded by his cars, a styrofoam cup in his right hand, eyes closed as the screen splits and he says he’s “got two versions.” The way … Continue reading The Psychedelic Connection Between Kacey Musgraves and Frank Ocean

Lil Wayne: The Dedication 6 The sixth installment in Lil Wayne and DJ Drama’s Dedication series, and the first in four years, came out on Christmas Day, and it had everything you’d expect from a stocking-filler, down to the DatPiff digital wrapping. The beats are familiar, from Kendrick Lamar’s “DNA” to 21 Savage’s “Bank Account” to JAY-Z’s “The Story of O.J,” and Nicki Minaj and … Continue reading Album Reviews: 2018

In a slim-fitting, sequined black jacket, a pair of mirrored Aviators around his eyes, his blonde hair draped over his collarbones, William Basinski walks onto the small stage at National Sawdust in Williamsburg—a few hundred feet from the roof above his loft where he watched the Twin Towers fall on September 11, 2001—and picks up the microphone next to his MacBook Air. “Alright you crazy … Continue reading An Hour of Watching William Basinski, Blacking Out, and Realizing that Nothing Ever Dies

Elliott Smith had been playing “King’s Crossing” sporadically at his shows for four years before he recorded it in late 2003. But it was only in his last few months, in a streak of sets that ran from transcendent to painful depending on the his chemical imbalances, that his half-sister, Ashley Welch, and his girlfriend, Jennifer Chiba, would add their responses in-time. At the end … Continue reading You Won’t But You Might: On Elliott Smith’s Suspended, Hopeful ‘Either/Or’