Music Features

Kendrick Lamar played on the term “the Great American Game” with a polarizing, Samuel L. Jackson-narrated performance that felt like a Spike Lee Joint in music form. Like every Kendrick Lamar offering, the 13-minute set left observers with a lot of takeaways — but they aren’t all good things. Some …

From the start, director Bernard MacMahon and writer and producer Allison McGourty knew there would be obstacles involved in making a documentary about Led Zeppelin, especially one done with the band’s cooperation. This is a group that has famously and diligently guarded its legacy, always maintaining a sense of mystique …

Kendrick Lamar‘s halftime performance at Sunday’s Super Bowl was the most-watched in history, with more than 133 million people tuning in — and it also may have been the most uncompromising. In a slot that every previous artist has reserved mostly for greatest hits, Lamar only played bits of two …

Kendrick Lamar struck a chord at the Super Bowl, and it was definitely a major. The hip-hop legend triumphed in his halftime show at the big game in the New Orleans’ Caesar Superdome, in the middle of a lopsided Super Bowl where the Philadelphia Eagles ethered the Kansas City Chiefs. …

In the past few years, the uplifting husband-and-wife vocal duo the War and Treaty started showing up everywhere. Since signing a major-label record deal in 2022, Michael and Tanya Trotter — known for their blend of rootsy R&B and country gospel — have become mainstays at awards shows, performed at …

The new documentary Becoming Led Zeppelin charts the origins and early days of the influential rock & roll band through new interviews with surviving members Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones, and a never-before-heard archival interview with late drummer John Bonham. The film opened in theaters this month, …

It’s easy to get tongue-tied when you’re on the phone talking to Janis Ian. This is the woman whose introduction to the cultural zeitgeist as a guitar-toting child of liberal Jewish atheists was met with death threats; the prolific writer who gave voice to girls who yearn for a friend, …

The loss of Irv Gotti, who died last week at the age of 54, is immense. The Hollis, Queens native was a relic from an era when being a hip-hop multi-hyphenate wasn’t about diversifying your portfolio but a passion for hip-hop culture. In his time, he was a DJ, an …

This story was originally published in the April 17, 1980, issue ofRolling Stone. “God, I was beautiful.” Blonde hair in her face, Marianne Faithfull is hanging halfway off the bed in her New York hotel room so she can reach a blazer thrown over a chair. She fingers a huge …

Kendrick Lamar got the world talking with his attention-grabbing Super Bowl halftime on Sunday night. As the Pulitzer-winning hip-hop legend took centerstage in the New Orleans’ Caesar Superdome, everyone wondered what he might do — and the main question was whether he’d perform “Not Like Us,” the ubiquitous, chart-topping diss …