Beating up women as being a catalyst for rap success—which I'm really seeing in 2017—is a horrible trend... They're not problematic artists, they're cowards. That's my issue, that we get into this place of confusing troubled and charismatic people with just cowards. | | | | Grace Jones at the Savoy Club, New York, 1981.
(George Rose/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Beating up women as being a catalyst for rap success—which I'm really seeing in 2017—is a horrible trend... They're not problematic artists, they're cowards. That's my issue, that we get into this place of confusing troubled and charismatic people with just cowards.”
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| | rantnrave:// Want to make your favorite songwriter's life better? DAVID LOWERY has a single, clear, actionable suggestion: "Just pay for your subscription service." The difference in royalties between a free stream and a paid stream is 10x, the CRACKER frontman tells the TORONTO STAR. But that, of course, is not all that songwriters and publishers want out of, say, Spotify. They want equity, too: The NEW YORK POST reports on a new front in a long-running war... R. KELLY has been accused of—a lot. And convicted of nothing. What exactly are the allegations, and what should the music business do about Robert Sylvester Kelly? MusicSET: "The R. Kelly Files"... And for some added context, here's a heartbreaking 2015 essay by NPR MUSIC's ANN POWERS examining how "[t]he history of rock turns on moments in which women and young boys were exploited in myriad financial, emotional and sexual ways." The issue is neither new nor old. It just is. That's the heartbreaking part... RADIOHEAD plays PARK HAYARKON in TEL AVIV tonight in a gig that has not gone unnoticed and unremarked upon. What's right about the summer's most controversial rock show, according to NASREEN QADRI, an Israeli Arab singer who is one of tonight's opening acts (and who had never heard of Radiohead before being asked to join its US tour this year). What's wrong with it, according to HILARY AKED, a PhD student whose thesis is on the BDS movement. Bonus: Radiohead's long history in Israel. Updated MusicSET: "Radiohead, ROGER WATERS and the State of Playing Israel"... Secrets of a MUSICAL.LY superstar... TROY CARTER's life lessons from his job as personal assistant to THE FRESH PRINCE's manager... DEEZER's secret weapon in the streaming wars: soccer... RIP ROLAND CAZIMERO. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Real Life |
| The iPod as safety prosthetic. | | |
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 | Fast Company |
| Music fans and artists have a lot to lose if SoundCloud goes the way of Vine. | | |
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 | Noisey |
| We spoke to the former One Direction member about how he went from working class Northern lad to pop star worth $50 million. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| Spotify's average subscriber used to spend more than Netflix's. Things have changed. | | |
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 | REDEF |
| He's been accused of—a lot. And convicted of nothing. What exactly are the allegations, and what should the music business do about Robert Sylvester Kelly? | | |
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 | Watt |
| The convention of assigning elementary school letter grades, star ratings, or best-of-ten subdivisions to music reviews is so ubiquitous now that it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t always this way. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Miranda Lambert's platinum-selling 'The Weight of These Wings' and what it says about cultural problems with country radio. | | |
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 | Toronto Star |
| Lowery’s band Cracker is hitting Danforth Music Hall on Tuesday (Jul 18) in wake of conclusion of vocalist’s class action. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| A new oral history shows just how much of his story is up for grabs. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| Will Kid Rock's next career pivot be one to politics? Chuck Eddy examines his catalog for clues of his intentions. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| It’s there in the melancholia, the vintage trappings, and the fervent cults of personality. | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| Revisiting the Vines’ ‘Highly Evolved,’ a killer debut and a jarring cautionary tale. | | |
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 | GQ Style |
| The singer-songwriter goes deep in his most extensive interview about fashion to date. | | |
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 | New York Post |
| The Swedish music-streaming service — which for years has tangled over business terms with big-name artists like Taylor Swift — is getting fresh static from music publishers and the songwriters they represent over unpaid royalties, sources told The Post. Among their demands: a chunk of Spotify’s equity when it takes itself public. | | |
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 | NewMusicBox |
| In the wake of questions surrounding SoundCloud’s future, it may seem important to quickly figure out “What service do I use now?!?" | | |
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 | Wear Your Voice |
| With 'Channel ORANGE,' Ocean revived my love for R&B. He set a new standard for other rising artists, he inspired others to be fearless, break boundaries and give the finger to the old cishet formula within songwriting. | | |
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 | VladTV |
| After the untimely death of Prodigy, DJ Vlad sits down with his longtime friend and the other half of Mobb Deep, Havoc. Havoc details what it was like growing up in Queensbridge, their first rap names, and reveals Prodigy turned down a deal to work with him at first. | | |
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 | Fact Magazine |
| John Twells looks back on horror auteur George A. Romero's impressive history of matching music with his influential horror films. | | |
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 | NPR |
| Critic Lester Bangs once declared progressive rock "musical sterility at its pinnacle." David Weigel, author of The Show That Never Ends: The Rise And Fall Of Prog Rock, begs to differ. | | |
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 | BuzzFeed |
| “I listen to 1,000 songs every week so we can make this playlist" | | |
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