Who is the real Childish Gambino? The punchline rapper of 2013’s Because the Internet, exploring his identity crises alongside the majestic movie magic of Ludwig Göransson? The psychedelic funkateer of 2016’s “Awaken My Love” who sang psychedelic ragers about love, unity and rebellion? The experimental R&B star of 2020’s 3.20.2020, …
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In early April, JoJo Siwa debuted a glaringly different new look: She showed up at the iHeartRadio Awards ina black and silver superhero-esque costume with makeup that made her look like she was in a Kiss cover band. Gone were her signature hair bows and her blindingly colorful outfits. For …
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Whatever moved Eminem to actually finish and release his new album, it couldn’t have been the money. It wasn’t to add to his fame, which is already secure. It’s not because he had anything to say, any news to share, any opinions or feelings or (please) ideas. It’s not even …
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Megan Moroney is deep in her feels on her new album Am I Okay?, the follow-up to her breakthrough debut, Lucky, which Rolling Stone named the best country album of 2023. While that album arrived on the strength of the college-football-as-meet-cute anthem “Tennessee Orange,” Am I Okay? dispenses with any …
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Sturgill Simpson is going through it. At the start of his new album, Passage Du Desir, he’s unmoored in Paris, spending his “days in a haze floating around in the Marais” — the city of light and love turned into a “Swamp of Sadness.” The bass offers muffled comfort, an …
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In October 1973, John Lennon — the man who seven years earlier whipped the Bible Belt into the Beatle Belt by proclaiming the Fab Four were “more popular than Jesus”— came off uncharacteristically reserved when discussing his latest LP. “The album’s called Mind Games, and it’s, well, just an album,” …
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Thirty years ago, Common looked back ruefully at his favorite genre in “I Used to Love H.E.R.,” his classic riff on hip-hop as a wayward ex-girlfriend. “She was really the realest before she got into showbiz,” he lamented. The couple patched things up after that, and Common grew from a …
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After the release of her 2019 debut album Immunity, Claire Cottrill could have capitalized on her music’s virality with another slew of made-for-TikTok bedroom-pop hits in the vein of the LP’s breakout songs, “Bags” and “Sofia.” But on her Laurel Canyon-esque 2021 follow-up Sling, the singer-songwriter opted for a far …
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When Nigerian singer Rema emerged with one of the best Afrobeats songs of the late 2010s, “Dumebi,” he was a teenager and he sounded like it. He looked like it in the video, too, a sunny hang with other fashionable teens in the kind of bright casuals you could snag …
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In barely five years, Zach Bryan has transformed from cult-roots road warrior (2020’sElisabeth)to fast-rising country-adjacent renegade (2022’sAmerican Heartbreak)to Number One hitmaker and voice-of-a-Gen-Z-generation storyteller (2023’s Zach Bryan). The men and women (mostly men) in his songs spend their twenties drinking their way through the alienating cities they’ve fled to from …
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