Tag Archives: music-features

“It’s a new chapter in my life as a storyteller,” says Questlove, fresh from reinventing the concert movie with Summer of Soul. His directorial debut, which embedded much-needed Black-history lessons inside jaw-dropping, long-buried performances from Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone, B.B. King, and many others, was one of 2021’s …

After years of performing around New York City, the Ronettes exploded in 1963 behind “Be My Baby,” a modern standard beloved by the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson and pretty much everyone else with ears and a heart. During the recording of the song in Los Angeles, “All the musicians dropped …

Kool & the Gang, one of the world’s greatest living groove-based bands, have been playing more than 100 shows a year for longer than Robert “Kool” Bell cares to remember. He was already adjusting to the unfamiliar sensation of a long stint at home in 2020 when tragedy struck — …

There are more frequent solar eclipses than there are instant classics in rap. But back in 1994, when Nas courted unbelievable hype — after a planet-shifting verse on 1991’s “Live at the Barbeque,” followed by the red-hot “Halftime” a year later — then delivered with the Library of Congress–inducted Illmatic, …

“For once your timing wasn’t great/I must have missed you by a day.” This is quite a statement coming from the guy who’s waited four years to give us another Father John Misty album. Somehow the world that Josh Tillman described in “Bored in the USA” has become even bleaker, …

E lvis Presley had been dead for six months when the plastic-surgeon’s knife plunged into Dennis Wise. There Wise lay, on a table in an Orlando hospital, surrounded by photos of the King. He knew what was coming, but the reality of it didn’t really hit him until the doctor, …

This story was originally published in the July 31, 2000, issue of Rolling Stone. Upstairs in his bedroom, trying to sleep, Ozzy Osbourne has just about had it with all the goddamn noise floating in from outside his window. He tosses and turns, frets and stews, moans and groans, and …

This story was originally published in the October 14, 1971 issue of Rolling Stone. “I am making my last Herculean effort to save his career,” boomed David Kapralik, personal manager to Sly Stone. Kapralik is an ex-carnival barker who has been known to resume barking at the click of a …