When the three dudes of Blink-182 were running naked on MTV back in 1999, it wasn’t necessarily easy to predict that the just-reunited trio would end up as one of the most enduring and influential acts of their generation – or that they would have one of weirdest, most dramatic …
Read More »'It's Hyphy Pop!' Lolo Zouaï Logs Into a Cyber Dream World on 'Playgirl'
The last time Lolo Zouaï made an album, she was “super-hardcore dreaming” from behind the host stand during her shifts at Bareburger in New York City. She wanted a future when she could fully focus on her craft instead of making milkshakes for customers. “I remember I wrote a note …
Read More »How Jorge Drexler Beat Writer's Block to Make His Most Free-Wheeling Album Yet
Even critically acclaimed icons have bouts of insecurity. For Uruguayan singer-songwriter Jorge Drexler, Tinta y Tiempo was an album that “almost didn’t happen.” In the past, the Oscar-winning veteran had stepped out in the world and shared bits and pieces of unfinished tunes with fellow artists — something that had …
Read More »How Ice Spice Added a Touch of Zest to New York's Drill Scene
Ice Spice hasn’t seen much of Atlanta yet when we speak on the phone in September, but she’s already formed the kind of assessment you’d expect from a tried-and-true New Yorker. “It kind of looks like Jersey a little,” she says. The 22-year-old rapper is in town for the first …
Read More »Lil Baby, Lil Yachty, Blink-182, and All the Songs You Need to Know This Week
We’ve reinvented our Songs You Need to Know franchise as a weekly playlist of the best new music — featuring the week’s biggest new singles, key tracks from our favorite albums, and more. This week we’ve got new songs by Lil Baby, Farruko, and G-Herbo, as well as a brand-new …
Read More »'It Turned the World Upside Down': How New York City's 1977 Blackout Jump-Started the Hip-Hop Era
Journalist Jonathan Abrams spent the last four years compiling an enlightening, entertaining, and deeply researched history of hip-hop. Abrams traces the music’s humble beginning in the Bronx and DIY block parties to some of the most popular music in the world today. In this exclusive excerpt from “The Come Up: …
Read More »Michelle Phillips Finally Reveals the Secret History of the Mamas and the Papas
T here’s a modest home in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Cheviot Hills, with a stucco roof, a jacaranda tree out front, and a 1989 Mercedes 560SL in perfect condition resting in the driveway. Beyond a front porch with wind chimes and a couch pillow that reads “This is our …
Read More »How a 'Loud, Psychedelic' Ride Helped Bring Toro y Moi's World into Focus
A ll Chaz Bear wanted was a vehicle. By early January 2021, he’d spent ten months cloistered in his home studio in Oakland, California, putting the finishing touches on his seventh album as Toro y Moi, and the time had come to think about a way of presenting it to …
Read More »Wet Leg: That Whole 'Industry Plant' Thing is 'Misogyny'
THIS YEAR, THE relentlessly clever and catchy indie-rock duo Wet Leg — Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers — became the first buzzy British band in eons to conquer the U.S. A pair of undeniable debut singles, “Chaise Longue” and “Wet Dream,” presaged a self-titled album that managed to live up …
Read More »Steve Keene Is Your Favorite Band's Favorite Painter
The afternoon sun streams through the windows of the Brooklyn art space ChaShaMa. Steve Keene, possibly the world’s most prolific painter, is hard at work, even though the gallery’s hosting a retrospective of his work. Right now, he’s adding a few blond streaks to Iggy Pop’s hair on the cover …
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