Music Features

Backstage at New York’s Webster Hall, about 30 minutes before he’s due to go onstage, Babyface Ray sips lean from a white Styrofoam cup while a photographer snaps pictures of his extremely bright platinum chains. Born Marcellus Rayvon Register, he’s one of the top voices in Detroit’s street-rap scene, with …

When the genre-mashing aggro-rock collective Soul Glo formed in 2014, frontman Pierce Jordan liked to joke around by visualizing wild, seemingly unachievable goals for the group. “I would be like, ‘Yo, if we play Coachella, I’m gonna play that shit fucking naked,” he says. This year, the gag lost some …

Destroy Lonely is in his signature all-black attire when I meet him this spring, except for his hot-pink Marni slippers. His close friend Ken Carson lights a blunt in the studio where they’re currently cooking up something new. “Where else would I be?” asks Lonely. “This shit always going to …

Before Doechii could fully step into her craft, she had to learn more about the power of being present. “The only moment that exists is literally right now. I mean quantum physics, tomorrow literally does not exist,” says the Florida rapper, 24. “Only right now, me and you talking on …

T HE REGULARS AT THE BROADWAY have no idea what’s about to hit them. Model/Actriz frontman Cole Haden, 26, stands onstage in a sequined tunic, cutoff shorts, a weathered baseball cap, and a glorious mustache, looking a little like Freddie Mercury if he lived off the L train. It’s 8 …

T HE TWO MEN HAVE BEEN WAVING for a while before Asake sees them. They’re wearing dirty white T-shirts on the balcony of a tall construction project in Victoria Island, an upscale neighborhood in Lagos, Nigeria. It took them a minute to figure out who was standing in the garden …

The first thing that grabs your attention about Teezo Touchdown is his look — especially when his hair is draped with actual nails. When you delve into his music, you might come across a pop-punk ballad, followed by a contemporary hip-hop track. Before you know it, you’re yearning to know …

Brittney Spencer was stoned and chilling at home in Nashville the night her life changed. She had posted an acoustic cover of “Crowded Table,” a song of radical inclusion by the all-star country quartet the Highwomen, after seeing them sing it on TV. “It was so beautiful watching this supergroup …

Not too long ago, the British girl group FLO were a newly signed act trying to persuade their label to drop a song called “Cardboard Box” as their debut single. The label wanted to try other songs first, but Jorja Douglas, 21, Stella Quaresma, 21, and Renée Downer, 20, collectively …

Kyoto, Japan’s Otoboke Beaver are a force of nature onstage — four larger-than-life hardcore punks, blazing through sets with idiosyncratic wrath and sarcasm. But when they pop in for a translator-guided Zoom interview, they’re resting at their apartments between dates on a Japanese tour. Accorinrin, the band’s howling frontwoman, reclines …