A bove all, he remembers the boots the cops wore when they kicked down the door of his mom’s apartment. They yanked him out of bed and a deep sleep, 12 gang cops in riot gear searching the room of a tall-for-his-age 10-year-old named Tionne Tisdale. “Where is it?” they …
Read More »What It's Really Like to Face Off With a Grizzly — and Live to Tell the Tale
The grizzly swung with its massive right paw. In a desperate attempt to protect his head, Jon Bentzel raised his left arm above him like a karate block and ducked, bracing for the impact of the enormous, fur-lined paw. The bear clubbed him, rattled his dome, hit his wristwatch, and …
Read More »How Rema Became an Afrobeats Visionary
F or Rema, the best part of his first trip to the Grammy Awards was getting dressed for it. The Nigerian superstar wore a mound of custom diamonds over snakeskin and leather in his customary black, an outfit that landed him on Vogue’s list of best-dressed stars at the February …
Read More »How Ivan Cornejo Became Música Mexicana's Heartbreak Kid
M agical as it is, Disneyland at night can lead to sensory overload pretty quickly. A smiling Mickey grins out from a Ferris wheel that glows like a firework in the middle of the park, fluorescent lights blink at every corner, and tinny theme songs from every Disney classic you …
Read More »Megan Moroney Is the Gen Z Country Queen We Need
T here it is,” Megan Moroney says, looking out of the tour bus window while slipping on white cowboy boots and a camo hoodie. “The promised land!” The sun is setting over endless rows of gas pumps on a windy January night in Crossville, Tennessee. Six massive fluorescent letters and …
Read More »Benson Boone on Life After 'Beautiful Things'
W hen Benson Boone is about to jump out of a helicopter hovering 60 feet above Utah Lake, which is the kind of thing Benson Boone likes to do, a single thought passes through his mulleted, 22-year-old head: This is gonna be sick. On clear days, that very body of …
Read More »The Life and Mystery of Luigi Mangione
A pizza order, a thank you, or a death threat — Giuseppe Mantova didn’t know which awaited him as he answered the call the Wednesday evening before Christmas. The phone at Vito’s Pizza had been ringing more than usual that week, thanks to an illustration Mantova’s 30-year-old daughter had taped …
Read More »Jimmy Page on the 'Swagger' of 'Physical Graffiti'
This interview was originally published on February 23, 2015. By the time Led Zeppelin released Physical Graffiti in 1975, they no longer needed to prove anything. “All of us knew that it was a monumental piece of work, just because of the various paths that we’d trodden along to get …
Read More »Eco-Radical, Singer, Criminal, Cult Leader: Inside Carbon Nation
I t’s July Fourth, and Eligio Bishop is pacing his cell at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison, with a phone pressed to his ear, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. The 42- year-old is locked in his cell nearly 24 hours a day, seven days a …
Read More »'Brilliant, Lost, Damaged': Inside the Tragedy of Liam Payne
I t could have been a party. At around two in the afternoon on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024, Doug Jones was making business calls from his room in Buenos Aires’ upscale CasaSur Palermo Hotel when clanging, banging, and whooping sounds erupted across the hall. “I heard some really bizarre noises, …
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