Guy Le Querrec/Magnum Photos
Hieroglyphics is an Oakland based hip-hop collective that has always thrive to dismantle music by tackling the social consciousness through their scrupulous wordplay. With their extensive knowledge of hip-hop, Hieroglyphics focused more on the lyrical flow rather than the gangster life and always positioned themselves as the alternative to the mainstream and this is best exemplified with their first studio album, 3rd Eye Vision.
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Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ nearly-packed show at Barclays Center on Friday, October 26th was electric. It was deafeningly loud and Nick was on fire, as per usual. It was more of an experience than anything else: I gritted my teeth and applauded until my hands tingled. Tall and thin with jet black hair and dressed in a fitted black suit, resembling a debonair villain of the Old West, Cave looks like an icon. Barclays is huge: It seats 19,000, and except for the rafter seats, the venue looked mostly full. These kinds of arena shows are new for Nick Cave in North America; at age 61, his fame and his audience keep growing. There are no gimmicky stage antics, just pure heart and emotion, running the gambit from sweetness to terror. The band played mostly hard rock, but Nick also sang some piano ballads like “The Ship Song” and “Into my Arms.” The emotion of the latter was breathtaking; Nick’s striking blue eyes tearing up as he sang. I was engaged on every level, even though I was seated some distance from the stage: There were two huge screens with exquisite black and white clarity so that even those sitting in the rafter seats were connected on an intimate level.
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After a six-year hiatus, the much-anticipated release of Nas’s album, Nasir, left fans and critics with mixed reactions. The album arrived as part of the “Wyoming Sessions,” a series of albums executively produced by Kanye West as part of a grand experiment of rapid-fire studio production. The other albums include Pusha T’s Daytona, West’s collaboration with Kid Cudi eponymously entitled Kids See Ghosts, Teyana Taylor’s K.T.S.E. (Keep That Same Energy), and West’s own album, Ye. Each album is limited to seven tracks, and West has hinted at a loose thematic relationship to the seven deadly sins.
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Most musicians film videos on private jets, boats and dance clubs. Hip-Hop Icons Beyonce and Jay-Z used famed Paris-based Louvre Museum as the backdrop for the hit single “Apeshit” video. Beyonce and Jay-Z just released the best music video of both careers spanning two decades of Hip-hop and R&B. There hasn’t been a video with this kind of interesting detail captivating audiences since TLC’s “Waterfalls” released in 1995.
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Childish Gambino’s (Donald Glover’s) music video for “This is America,” a brilliant and provocative take on gun violence, minstrelsy, and Black life, has sent shockwaves through the nation.
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Kendrick Lamar’s recent award of the Pulitzer Prize for his 2017 album Damn. is as much of a cultural watershed moment as Duke Ellington’s infamous Carnegie Hall debut in 1943. At this pivotal point in Ellington’s career, he had already cemented his status as one of the most accomplished and prolific musicians of his generation. With hits such as “Black and Tan Fantasy,” “Mood Indigo,” “It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing),” “Take the A Train,” and many others, Ellington was sonically redefining black music while serving as one of the central sirens of a burgeoning, modern black subjectivity.
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The “David Bowie is” exhibit transforms the life of a music legend into a display of colorful
artistry set to the backdrop of the singers greatest hit music at the Brooklyn Museum. The Bowie
exhibit is unique in its style serving as a tribute to David Bowie and his diverse music.
What creates new ideas within me in such situations, new things to do, is that I play
with my trio because it is my trio and I have a long history with Roscoe so I am
uniquely positioned in this case to find the bridge between these two subsets to
make it into a cohesive whole as a quartet concept.
“Kill Jay-Z,” raps Jay-Z in the first line of the first song of his newest album, the cryptically titled 4:44 (some have read it as a reference to Obama, the 44th president)
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Come on out and help Puerto Rico rebuild and recover!
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Both North and South Indian Classical music gained popularity in the states during the fifties and sixties and can still often be heard in such easy-to-find places as Indian restaurants.
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At 9:42 PM on June 29, 1975, 28 year old singer Tim Buckley, blue and unresponsive, was rushed to the Santa Monica hospital in Los Angeles.
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Nick Cave is more relevant and astounding than ever; he and his band, The Bad Seeds (Warren Ellis, George Vjestica, Jim Sclavunos, Martyn Casey, Thomas Wydler and Larry Mullins) are currently on tour in the U.S. and have European tour dates ready to finish off the year.
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It’s the summer of 2016 and Tammy Faye Starlight is Nico Underground and it is the show to see! I caught her at David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center for free! A dazzling gifted performance artist /singer who you would suspect has supernatural powers the way she channels Nico.
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