When Bob Dylan‘s Time Out of Mind hit shelves on Sept. 30, 1997, it was hailed by fans and critics as his best work in decades. The Daniel Lanois-produced LP won a Grammy for Album of the Year, kickstarted an incredible period of renewed vitality for Dylan, and forever silenced …
Read More »There Was a Little Part of David Crosby in All of Us, Whether We Knew It or Not
In my many years of seeing live music, few sights were as dispiriting as the first time I saw David Crosby up close. In the early Eighties, he played a solo show at New York’s Town Hall. Walking onstage, looking a little overweight, unkempt and shaggy in an untucked shirt …
Read More »Nick Hakim Is Ready to Share His Quiet Explorations With the World
Nick Hakim seems to inherentlyunderstand the value of silence, of sparseness. The child of a Peruvian father and a Chilean mother, Hakim was born in Washington, D.C., and now resides in a quiet pocket of the Ridgewood neighborhood in Queens, New York, along the Brooklyn border. When we catch up …
Read More »You Missed a Lot of Music Last Year. Here's the Best of What You Didn't Hear
On the new episode of Rolling Stone Music Now, we run down some of the best Spanish-language, indie-rock, and hip-hop you may have missed in 2022, including Puerto Rican singer-songwriter ILe’s genre-jumping Nacarile, Nas‘ late-career triumph King’s Disease III, albums from rising artists including Mediopicky, Horsegirl, Junior H, and Che …
Read More »David Crosby: 20 Essential Songs by the Folk-Rock Legend
“I’ve got to make the most of every minute I have,” David Crosby told Rolling Stone in 2018. “Wouldn’t you?” He was on his third or fourth life by then — the golden-voiced, long-haired, cantankerous, beatific American original who was there to invent folk-rock with the Byrds in the mid-Sixties, …
Read More »Libianca Is the Afro Soul Siren Who Can Do Everything
Libianca may have fooled some of us into fandom. Her incredible talent as a pristine vocalist is the real thing, though. Born Libianca Kenzonkinboum Fonji, her exceptional control over her instrument was developed over more than ten years of training, seven years as a professional musician, and a season on …
Read More »Remaking Your Old Songs Used to Be Considered Lazy, Shady, and So Uncool. What Changed?
As U2 announced last week, they’ll be back in March with a brand new album that, really, is anything but.Songs of Surrender, playing off Bono’s recent memoir Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, finds the band remaking 40 songs from its back catalog — “a musical reimagining resulting in a completely …
Read More »The Courts Screwed Gunna, Now He's Being Shunned by His Peers
The arrest of Young Thug, Gunna, and other YSL associates in last May’s RICO (short for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) indictment elicited a unified response from within the rap world. Fans and other musicians resoundingly proclaimed “Free Gunna.” But after his release in December, following an Alford plea …
Read More »'He Got Better and Better': Joe Satriani on the Legacy of Jeff Beck
When guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani started imagining a recording career for himself based around instrumental compositions, he knew it could be possible — thanks in large part to the fact that the late Jeff Beck had scored hit albums (Blow by Blow, Wired) without the help of a singer a …
Read More »11 Rappers Set to Make it Big in 2023
The rap world is ever-changing, and 2022 showed us where we might be heading next. The year was full of solid releases from budding stars who set the stage for a lower-key sensibility within hip-hop. It was a year where fans turned away from the larger-than-life superstars towards more down-to-earth …
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