There are consistent aspects and techniques that are part of African and African American music... Rakim will tell you about taking John Coltrane’s phrasing. Donald Harrison talks about how Biggie Smalls would come to his house, who in turn got a lot of his phrasing from Max Roach... The music may not sound or look like what came one or two generations before it, but when you strip off the layers of the moment, the core is the same. | | | | Go away, can't you see I'm listening to music right now?
(Cyndi Monaghan/Getty Images) | | | | | | “There are consistent aspects and techniques that are part of African and African American music... Rakim will tell you about taking John Coltrane’s phrasing. Donald Harrison talks about how Biggie Smalls would come to his house, who in turn got a lot of his phrasing from Max Roach... The music may not sound or look like what came one or two generations before it, but when you strip off the layers of the moment, the core is the same.”
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| | rantnrave:// JAY-Z turns 50 today. That's the tweet, as they say. I have nothing more. But others might... December is the new January, which means it's now safe to talk about 2019 in the past tense. It was a year of blockbusters unexpected (shoutout LIL NAS X and LIZZO) and not so unexpected (hi BILLIE EILISH) and critical breakthroughs (BIG THIEF, CLAIRO) and bolts of pop lightning (DABABY, 100 GECS) and all the normal things that happen in a normal pop year. Time to start summing it up, ballot by ballot by ballot till we can't no more. MusicSET: "Best Music of 2019: The Year in Lists"... In a year in which music and arts publications and websites continued to disappear like golf balls in a lake, it's worth celebrating the fearless editors and publishers undertaking the quixotic quest of starting new ones. Like MAGGOT BRAIN, a quarterly print-only zine whose premiere issue is out this week with ALICE COLTRANE on the cover and J DILLA, MIA ZAPATA and DANIEL JOHNSTON in the index. Cheers to publisher THIRD MAN RECORDS and editor MIKE MCGONIGAL for producing a zine that seems to understand what the word "zine" actually means. Cheers also to JERMAINE HALL, who tops the masthead on the new MEDIUM vertical LEVEL, which is aimed at black and brown men of a certain age and isn't strictly a music publication but has plenty of music in both its masthead and its initial slate of articles, including one of those Jay-Z pieces linked above and BUN B writing about "How I Aged Gracefully in Hip-Hop"... A federal judge has ordered UNIVERSAL MUSIC to hand over evidence of losses, or potential losses, in the 2008 warehouse fire on the UNIVERSAL STUDIOS lot to lawyers representing SOUNDGARDEN, STEVE EARLE and the estates of TUPAC SHAKUR and TOM PETTY. The lawyers aren't just looking for what their own clients lost. They want to "identify all artists with master recordings that UMG claimed, asserted, or implied in any prior litigation, in any insurance dispute, or in connection with settlements of litigation or insurance disputes, were, or may have been, damaged or lost in, by, or as a result of the June 1, 2008 fire." Which sounds like a lot. Then again, the company has had 11 years to work on this... CAPITOL RECORDS has a new president, JEFF VAUGHN, and SPOTIFY has a new Head of Global Hits (that's actually the job title), NED MONAHAN... OPRAH WINFREY is producing a documentary for APPLE TV+ about a "former music executive who grapples with whether to go public with her story of assault by a notable figure in the music industry." Advance materials for the film don't name either figure... The WHO will perform in Cincinnati next April for the first time since 11 fans were killed in a stampede before a show at the RIVERFRONT COLISEUM 40 years ago this week. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| Boy & Bear’s Dave Hosking was doubled-over, disoriented and depressed until fecal transplants gave him his health and his music back. | | |
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| Shawn Carter has rewritten the playbook and outgrown men twice his age. Does a billionaire have anything left to prove? | | |
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| When we all fell asleep in 2016, where did we go? To the old town road, that's where. Our annual running list of top 10s, top 40s, top 50s and top whatevers from around the music universe. | | |
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| Three reasons why Bytedance's new service may pose a real threat to the world's No.1 audio streaming platform. | | |
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| A top music executive says music streaming services should diversify by genre. Two classical music companies are kicking off that trend. | | |
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| Ahead of her new album, the enigmatic pop star has so much on her mind that it took two of her friends to help her unpack it all. | | |
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| Talking composition, travel, and the vacuity of musical labels. | | |
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| Four years ago, when Rhodes College professor Charles Hughes published his book “Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South,” he had no idea that his academic history would become part of 2019’s hottest pop culture debate. | | |
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| The rock legend thrived on control before an illness took away her voice. That was the end for us, but not for her. | | |
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| Music Business Association |
| In 2019, product distribution from the major labels was consolidated to one company, Direct Shot Distribution. Thjis has severely crippled the supply chain to indie stores, who across the board have reported new releases missing street dates, incomplete shipments, deliveries where the amount of product exceeds what was ordered, altogether missing shipments, and more. | | |
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| Pop felt more ambitious than ever, voices from the margins broke through in every genre and great records kept coming at us from every direction. | | |
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| The Music Business Journal |
| On October 11, 2018, the Music Modernization Act (MMA) was officially signed into law. Musicians, songwriters, and industry leaders fought hard alongside lawmakers for this legislation, which promises to make several necessary adjustments to copyright law. | | |
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| Going from being fixated on good green and syrup to obsessed with rooting for my granddaughter at her cheerleading competitions. | | |
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| Kiya Lacey, DJ Ohso, Tygapaw, Diamond and Princess, and Yung Baby Tate share how the industry can support women in 2020 and beyond. | | |
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| The record label says the masters of Tupac Shakur, Tom Petty and Steve Earle weren't destroyed in the 2008 blaze - but that's not enough for a California federal judge. | | |
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| Case against StudioCanal 'seeks hundreds of millions of dollars in compensatory and punitive damages.' | | |
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| Three of the Oscar-contending original songs -- from the films 'Wild Rose,' 'Harriet,' 'Always Be My Maybe' -- were co-written by actors | | |
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| Adjacent to the new age of Atlanta hip-hop is a buzzing alternative scene, with artists blending rock, soul, R&B, pop, and electronic in unique ways. | | |
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| The summer I lived in Russia, I was convinced that contemporary Russian music consisted solely of repetitive house beats alongside lyrics recalling some dramatic event on the dance floor. | | |
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| An OpEd on the historical progression of sampling and interpolating music to modern popular creative ends and how context plays an important role. | | |
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| | | | | Kassa Overall ft. Joel Ross & Theo Croker |
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| © Copyright 2019, The REDEF Group |
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