Music Features

“You see a really quick rise, and a lot of people don’t see that you came from nothing to a hundred real quick,” Hudson Westbrook says. He’s speaking from experience. A little more than a year ago, Westbrook was just another student at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, working cattle …

Ruby Ibarra, a Filipino-American rapper from the Bay Area known for her potent storytelling, made her debut on NPR’s Tiny Desk this week. Chosen among 7,500 entries from independent artists across the country, Ibarra secured the top spot for the series’ annual contest with her entry track, “Bakunawa,” which released …

I have the pleasure of living in the big, busy, diverse, and very diasporic city of Atlanta, where the summertime lituations are about to get very real. There are a ton of great DJs in town spinning all sorts of Afropop and adjacent genres all year long – Afrobeats, amapiano, …

Conan Gray took a detour into retro, bombastic synth-pop with last year’s Found Heaven, and his new single, “This Song,” is yet another evolution — a melancholy, indie-ish, string-enhanced mid-tempo track with production by Phoebe Bridgers collaborator Ethan Gruska. The song is the first release from Gray’s next album, Wishbone, …

It happened — Taylor owns everything. All her songs, all her masters, her life’s work. She won. Eight years after her label Big Machine sold off her catalog, Taylor Swift has finally achieved her goal of buying it back herself. The most impossible battle of her career, the most invincible …

Rome Streetz set a high bar with 2022’s Kiss The Ring. The Brooklyn-based MC’s star had been steadily rising since 2019’s Headcrack (with Futurewave), but Kiss The Ring is viewed by many as the crown jewel of his recent output. Whether it’s him getting off bars on “In Too Deep’s” …

Welcome to our weekly rundown of the best new music — featuring big singles, key tracks from our favorite albums, and more. This week Miley Cyrus releases her disco-infused, Pink Floyd-influenced LP Something Beautiful, Lorde bares her truth in a cathartic song from her forthcoming Virgin, and Haim step back …

As John Fogerty begins talking about his new album, a bemused smile comes over his face. “I wanted to call it Taylor’s Version,” he says during a recent visit to New York. “I lobbied very much to the record company.” Whether he’s joking or not, Fogerty says his label passed …

Stockton rapper EBK Jaaybo is playing Roblox with his brother. He’s so deep into the game that he’s initially distracted from our conversation on Zoom. I ask him if he’s an avid player. “No, I’m not,” he says. “I don’t know, I’m just playing right now because I’m on an …

Even if the New York Knicks, currently down 3-1 to the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals, don’t meet their championship goals, their run has been a monumental moment for New York sports (ask New York City Mayor Eric Adams and his street signs). And TNT’s coverage of the …