| People see me as this starry-eyed, rose-coloured glasses kinda girl; the 'Golden Hour' girl. Well, here I come with a post-divorce album, bursting the f***ing bubble. | | | | |  | Nas at ONE Musicfest, Atlanta, Sept. 8, 2018. "King's Disease II" is out today on Mass Appeal.
(Paras Griffin/Getty Images) | | | | | "People see me as this starry-eyed, rose-coloured glasses kinda girl; the 'Golden Hour' girl. Well, here I come with a post-divorce album, bursting the f***ing bubble." | | | | Go Jump in a Lake
If anyone has had a better response to the pandemic (besides, like, wearing masks, getting vaccinated and working in a hospital) than jumping into Lake Michigan every day for over a year in a pair of MOTÖRHEAD swim trunks, I've yet to see it. A daily act of catharsis. An expression of pure joy. Wind, snow, ice and global malaise be damned. DAN O'CONOR, the Great Lake Jumper—who in the past week has expanded his repertoire to other Great Lakes and an ocean—is a lifelong music guy who used to write for SPIN and now designs rock merch. In January, he started inviting musicians to perform live on the water's edge while he jumped, and using his daily ritual as a platform to fundraise for Chicago music venues. Life-affirming daily practice became live-music lifeline. There are probably more consequential things going on in the world. But some days this is all I need to know. In this short and sweet first-person account for Pollstar, Dan O'Conor tells the story of his jumps and a life full of live music. Go ahead and jump.
None in a Million
I've read my share of stories over the years about why nearly all of AALIYAH's music is missing from the streaming music universe, and if there's one thing they all have in common it's that they never quite make sense. There's always a vaguely villainous figure—her shadowy uncle, BARRY HANKERSON, who owns her masters through his label BLACKGROUND RECORDS and who appears to have a long trail of broken relationships behind him. There's her immediate family—grieving, sympathetic, suspicious of the uncle. There's music that keeps getting teased but never delivered. But the details never quite square with each other, and you generally have to read between the lines if you want to try to guess what's actually going on. A major announcement this week that Aaliyah's classic catalog is on its way to streaming services later this month along with the rest of the Blackground catalog, through a partnership between Hankerson and Bay Area indie label EMPIRE, is, strangely, not helping. Billboard has the lengthy "inside story" in which Hankerson lays out his plans. Twitter has the family's seemingly unhappy response. The New York Times has the analysis of how none of the dots seem to connect. "For fans," the Times' BEN SISARIO dryly notes, "the behind-the-scenes battling may matter less than the music finally becoming available online." If, that is, it actually does.
It's (Bandcamp) Friday
And that may or may not mean new music from KANYE WEST, it's hard to say, for all we know he's in the middle of a conceptual art project in which he'll hold an album release party in a football stadium every other week for an album that will have the same title but different music every time, or maybe DONDA will be released an hour from now, or maybe Kanye West doesn't exist... It definitely means a new album, the first in 16 years, from Chicago underground hip-hop duo ABSTRACT MINDSTATE, which Kanye produced... NAS collaborates with A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, YG, Eminen, Lauryn Hill and executive producer Hit-Boy on KING'S DISEASE II... JAZZ IS DEAD partners ALI SHAHEED MUHAMMAD and ADRIAN YOUNGE mix it up with multi-instrumentalist and longtime Gil Scott-Heron collaborator BRIAN JACKSON on BRIAN JACKSON JID008. Jackson "set the tone for the entire [Jazz Is Dead] label," says Younge. "He turned our aspirations global".... Kristin Hayter, aka LINGUA IGNOTA, takes a turn away from the classical/metal hybrid that's been her calling card on SINNER GET READY, a concept album about the religious history of her adopted home state, Pennsylvania. Stereogum calls it "Appalachian Gothic"... British composer MAX RICHTER set out to break down literal borders on EXILES. The album's centerpiece is a 33-minute work inspired by the tragic sinking of a migrant ship off the coast of Libya six years ago, and Richter underscored its themes by recording it with the BALTIC SEA PHILHARMONIC, an unconventional orchestra whose members come from 10 European countries... Country singer CHRIS YOUNG's famous friends on his eighth album, FAMOUS FRIENDS, include Kane Brown and Lauren Alaina.
Plus new music from TINASHE, LIL TECCA, SADA BABY, PINK SIIFU (released earlier this week), KHRUANGBIN (remixes), the MORITZ VON OSWALD TRIO, FOXING, YOUNG NUDY (released earlier this week), RZA, HOMEBOY SANDMAN, FREDO BANG, DAMON & NAOMI WITH KURIHARA, TY SEGALL (earlier this week), LIARS, DESIRE MAREA, ELLEN FOLEY, BURN IN HELL, UNREQVITED, PATRICIA BARBER, GERRY GIBBS, SAINT BODHI, LAURA STEVENSON, ALLISON PONTHIER, ZACHARY KNOWLES, WILL YOUNG, KISSISSIPPI, SARA KAYS, the WANDERING HEARTS, LEAH BLEVINS, LAUREN ANDERSON, 9 HORSES, GAHLORD DEWALD (earlier this week), VACATION, the UMBRELLAS, INFORMATION SOCIETY, COLIN HAY, KATE TAYLOR, WILLY MASON... And the box set version of GEORGE HARRISON's ALL THINGS MUST PASS, which was technically already a box set when it was originally released 51 years ago... And (hi mom!) an album of BARBRA STREISAND rarities.
Programming Note: All I Ever Wanted
MusicREDEF will be off for the next week for summer vacation. The next newsletter will go out Tuesday, Aug. 17. You can find us on Twitter in the meantime. Or you can jump in a lake.
| | | | Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| | |  | | Pollstar |
| | Lake Shore Dive: How The Great Lake Jumper Jumped To Benefit Chicago Venues | | by Dan O'Conor | | I started in June 2020 taking a daily jump into Lake Michigan to momentarily escape the unrest, divisiveness and pandemic-related stress. Little did I know it would turn into more than 365 consecutive days and eventually come to raise money for independent venues. | |  | | Billboard |
| | Aaliyah's Music to Return After a Decade: The Inside Story | | by Dan Rys and Gail Mitchell | | The singer's biggest albums have been unavailable for a decade. Now her uncle, who founded her label, has a deal with EMPIRE to release them on streaming services. But Aaliyah's estate isn't happy about it. | |  | | GQ |
| | The Most Upbeat Death Song Ever: The Oral History of "(Don't Fear) the Reaper" | | by Rob Tannenbaum | | The 45-year old Blue Öyster Cult song turned undying 'Saturday Night Live' meme took a strange, winding journey to rock classic status. | |  | | Mixmag |
| | Dance 'Til The Police Come: How oppressive policing has eroded rave culture | | by Mike Smaczylo | | Mike Smaczylo traces a potted history of how draconian legislation and policing has harmed communities and crippled the spirit of rave. | |  | | Complex |
| | How Kanye West Reunited With Abstract Mindstate to Produce Their Whole Album | | by Andre Gee | | After a long journey in and out of each other's lives, Kanye West reunited with Chicago rap duo Abstract Mindstate to produce their new album. Here's the story. | |  | | Crack Magazine |
| | Kacey Musgraves -- The sun also rises | | by Douglas Greenwood | | 'Golden Hour' made a household name out of country outlier Kacey Musgraves, even as her personal life was coming undone. For its follow-up, she leans into tragedy to find inner peace. | |  | | The Guardian |
| | 'Too late': UK live events sector promised Covid insurance scheme | | by Mark Brown | | After months of calls for support and abandonment of a string of festivals and events, Sunak announces help. | |  | | The New York Times |
| | How Do You Capture Four Decades of Hip-Hop? Very Broadly | | by Jon Caramanica | | "The Smithsonian Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap," a 129-song boxed set, has a very challenging (and maybe impossible) goal: pinning down a constantly evolving genre. | |  | | Bloomberg |
| | Live Music is Back and Breaking Records, Delta Variant Be Darned | | by Lucas Shaw | | Festivals are selling out without publishing lineups as young people rush back to concerts. | | | | The Guardian |
| | Brian May: 'I never have a single day without thinking about Freddie' | | by Michael Hann | | As he reissues his debut solo album, the Queen guitarist recalls how making it helped him cope with a time when his band, marriage and the life of Freddie Mercury were coming to an end. | | | | | Billboard |
| | Billboard's 2021 R&B/Hip-Hop Power Players | | Timbaland and Swizz Beatz - who took 'Verzuz' from pandemic entertainment to a wealth generator for artists - lead the execs pushing the genres forward. | |  | | UPROXX |
| | The Best Music Performances On TV Since 2000, Ranked | | by Steven Hyden | | From Prince to Kanye West, all the moments that kept our ears glued to the screen. | |  | | NPR |
| | How A Composer Puts A Horse's Movements To Music For The Tokyo Olympics | | by Merrit Kennedy | | Horses move to electronic music, disco and classical. | |  | | Variety |
| | The DaBaby Domino Effect: How Lollapalooza Became the Bellwether for Festivals to Follow | | by Ethan Shanfeld and Shirley Halperin | | According to insiders, the internal debates between Lollapalooza organizers, including C3 Presents and Live Nation, heated up Friday night when festival founder Perry Farrell purportedly got on the phone with DaBaby, but was not swayed by their conversation. | | | | The New York Times |
| | Baltimore Symphony Fires Flutist Who Shared Covid Conspiracy Theories | | by Javier C. Hernández | | The musician, Emily Skala, who shared misinformation on social media, has vowed to challenge her dismissal. | |  | | Hollywood Reporter |
| | 'Framing Britney Spears' Directors React to Singer's Speaking Out Against Doc and Significance of Their Emmy Nom | | by Harper Lambert | | Samantha Stark and journalist Liz Day reflect on the cultural reckoning sparked by the star's legal battle and how their documentary is driving forward the conversation "about society, gender, power, money, fame and our legal system." | |  | | Jezebel |
| | Taylor Swift, Please Stop Doing This, I Have a Job | | by Shannon Melero | | The queen of easter eggs has gone too far this time. | |  | | Clash Magazine |
| | Hard To Hear: Why The Music Industry Needs To Prioritise Aural Care | | by Beth Kirkbride | | Artists and crew are putting their health on the line. | |  | | ALL ARTS |
| | 'It Ain't Retro' traces the history and influence of Daptone Records | | by Jessica Lipsky | | Read an excerpt of Jessica Lipsky's "It Ain't Retro: Daptone Records & The 21st-Century Soul Revolution," out from Jawbone Press on Aug. 10. | |  | | Afropop Worldwide |
| | Reggaetón and Race | | by Luis López | | Latin and Caribbean music scholars and social workers break down the racist and sexist undertones of the constant policing of reggaetón, as well as examples of songs by artists such as Tego Calderón and Ivy Queen, that counter these assumptions, while taking detours to explore how this music, and these criticisms, manifest in the Dominican Republic and Cuba. | | | |  | | | Music of the day | | "Ethiopian Sunshower" | | Brian Jackson, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge | | From "Brian Jackson JID008," out today on Jazz Is Dead. |  | | YouTube |
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From "Brian Jackson JID008," out today on Jazz Is Dead. | 2014 doc about Nas' classic 1994 debut. | | | Music | Media | Sports | Fashion | Tech | | "REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in
everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask 'why?'" | | |  | | | Jason Hirschhorn | | CEO & Chief Curator | | |  |
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