Tag Archives: music-features

Danyel Smith knows charts and awards are flawed metrics of success, but she also understands they are the ones we have, and wants to see Black women earn their due. This is not an abstract goal to the legendary music journalist. In a call with Rolling Stone from her Southern …

P erhaps you’ve seen the music video for “Whiteboy,” which currently has more than 22 million views on YouTube and made a minor celebrity of a carpenter turned pro wrestler turned rapper named Tom MacDonald. It’s set in a Southern California classroom where the musician, who is white, wears blond …

F our years ago, DaBaby signed a deal with Interscope Records that would change his life. Just 11 weeks prior, he had taken one. At the time, the rapper was a few years shy of global fame, whether for a steady stream of chart-topping songs and Grammy nominations, various brawls, …

Thirty-nine years ago this month, on April Fool’s Day, Kirk Hammett got a call he hoped was no prank: an offer to join Metallica. The guitarist, then age 20, was still playing in Exodus, the thrash-metal band he’d co-founded as a teenager, but he’d fallen in love with Metallica since …

Three years ago, Laria McCormick, the singer who performs as Marzz, found themself in turmoil. The non-binary artist had grown up attending church regularly and singing in the choir, but they were starting to feel a disconnect between their identity and their beliefs. In 2019, they began writing freestyles in …

Before you hit play on a new song, think about how many times you might listen to it. Believe it or not, this decision can have a small, but real impact on climate change — and the artist. Surprisingly, the act of downloading that song uses the same amount of …

“Have you ever had mochi ice cream?” Mike Shinoda asks with a grin. “Did you know it was invented in Los Angeles?” The Linkin Park rapper and multi-instrumentalist, 45, continues: “That’s a Japanese American creation. This thing people think of as Japanese, but actually is American. People don’t know that.” …

Sharon Van Etten is no stranger to drama. The L.A-via-Brooklyn indie-rock star has spent her career breaking hearts, turning grief and lust and pain into cathartic beauty. But even by her standards, life has been messy lately. She fell in love with her drummer and had a kid. She moved …

Vladimir Putin gave one of Russia’s most controversial rappers a special birthday present this year: designation as a foreign agent. The first musician to ever receive the government branding, rapper FACE spent his 25th birthday elated by the news. “I’m proud of it. It’s the best birthday gift I’ve ever …

It took three years for music to return to Indio’s Empire Polo Club. But Covid seemed to be an afterthought this past weekend as fans flocked to each Coachella stage, mostly unmasked. Overall, the fest’s 2022 edition served as an exciting three-day celebration of live music’s resurgence, with Harry Styles, …