21 Savage was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Atlanta Sunday, with the agency claiming that the rapper is actually from the United Kingdom and overstayed his visa after coming to America as a teenager. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that 21 Savage, real name …
Read More »
The e-mail that the National Football League had been awaiting for years finally arrived a few days after 2008’s Super Bowl XLII. On his train commute home, Charles Coplin, then the NFL’s head of programming, saw a notification pop up on his BlackBerry — a message from Jon Landau, Bruce …
Read More »
There is a devastating sadness to 21 Savage and J. Cole‘s “A Lot” video, not because of its musings on poverty, death, racism, abuse and generational trauma. Those are sad as well, but that imagery is so ingrained in the black experience that one learns to exist with that consistent …
Read More »
Folk-pop duo Lily & Madeleine released “Can’t Help the Way I Feel,” aretro-styled clip that finds sisters Lily and Madeleine Jurkiewicz lounging on a bed, blowing bubblegum, listening to music on headphones and chatting on a landline phone. Director Horatio Baltz creates a vivid landscape out of this ordinary backdrop, …
Read More »
Quincy Jones is traditionally viewed as the mastermind behind the apex of all charity singles, but it was actually Harry Belafonte who instigated the idea in the wake of Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” Seeking to make a star-studded Yankee equivalent to alleviate the Ethiopian famine, Belafonte contacted …
Read More »
In November of 1991, Neil Young told Rolling Stone about his ambitious plans to dig into his archives and release “eighteen to twenty albums’ worth of unreleased material” in some form or another. “We can’t put it all out,” Young said. “But it will be like an archive. There will …
Read More »
Mott the Hoople were on the verge of disbanding in the spring of 1972 when David Bowie offered to lend them a hand. He sent them a demo of his new song “Suffragette City” for them to record, but they politely declined. Bowie then visited them in person and played …
Read More »
A little after midnight last night, Weezer shocked their fans by dropping a new album of cover songs. Since they’ve basically ran out of colors at this point, they’re calling this one The Teal Album. It begins with their shock comeback hit “Africa” and then gets into Michael Jackson’s “Billie …
Read More »
Ty Segall and the Freedom Band reboot and recharge the rocker’s 2012 track “Love Fuzz” on the first offering from their upcoming live album, Deforming Lobes, out March 29th via Drag City. From its introductory back-and-forth barrage of guitars, Segall and the Freedom Band transform the original garage chug of …
Read More »
Welcome to ‘Will I Get Fired For This?,’ an occasionally recurring column in which staff writer Charles Holmes — whose duties include but are not limited to watching and writing about music videos — watches a new music video that he fears will get him fired. Read the previous entry …
Read More »