| I know I'm the closest I've ever been because I'm absolutely terrified. But if you're not peeing your pants and something isn't pushing you to grow, it's probably not right for you. | |  |  | | Kendrick Lamar at Coachella, April 13, 2018, Indio, Calif. "Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers" is out today on PGLang/Top Dawg. | | (Larry Busacca/Getty Images) | | | | quote of the day | | | rantnrave:// | It's Friday
And whoa that wobbly, throbby, low-register thing that serves as the beat for KENDRICK LAMAR's "WORLDWIDE STEPPERS" (producers: J.LBS, Sounwave and Tae Beast), which shall serve as my entire review of his first album in five years, the double-length MR. MORALE & THE BIG STEPPERS, which I'm listening to for the first time as I write this. Millions of words of commentary, criticism speculation have been spilled over that five-year gap, a subject that was mildly interesting until today, when it officially stopped mattering. Miles Davis is among the many great musicians who've been credited with telling fellow musicians and listeners to pay attention not to the notes but to the space between the notes. But the space between musical works themselves is a different matter. Who cares if an artist is making five albums a year or one ever five years if the albums aren't any good? And who cares how long it took if they *are* good? Just listen to the damn thing and appreciate it in its own space and time. The last one, of course, was literally a "Damn" thing, and won a Pulitzer prize and soundtracked a few years in a lot of people's lives and came out exactly 1,855 days ago, on April 14, 2017. Lamar's first words on this one are "I've been going through something / One thousand eight hundred and fifty-five days / I've been going through something / Be afraid." We can talk about *that* now. "I grieve different," he tells us several times in the same song. A hell of an opening gambit for your first album in five years, especially these exact five years... The SMILE is the Radiohead brain trust of Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood plus Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, and on their full-length debut, A LIGHT FOR ATTRACTING ATTENTION, they're joined by assorted colleagues of Skinner's from the London jazz scene (including Theon Cross and Chelsea Carmichael) and friends of Greenwood from the London Contemporary Orchestra. The results, say Pitchfork, are "very Radiohead-y" and "instantly, unmistakably the best album yet by a Radiohead side project." P.S. "Not the smile as in ha-ha-ha, more the smile as in the guy who lies to you every day." This is gorgeous... Detroit rapper QUELLE CHRIS follows up his acclaimed "Innocent Country 2," an album he couldn't tour behind because it was released at the beginning of the pandemic, with DEATHFAME, which he conceived and made during the pandemic. It's partly, he says, about "the chaos that is the world and learning to live with it." And partly meant to evoke "an incredible lost tape found at a Baltimore flea market"... The word on this single from ETHEL CAIN's PREACHER'S DAUGHTER, released Thursday, is that it has a Taylor Swift x Bruce Springsteen vibe, but I'm here to tell you it's actually Taylor Swift x the Cranberries, which doesn't make it any less great. There's a slow-burning intensity to the rest of Cain's beautifully crafted album, which she produced, and it's a major debut.
Plus new music from LEIKELI47, BECKY G, MARY HALVORSON (two albums on Nonesuch), the BLACK KEYS, the CHAINSMOKERS, BLAC YOUNGSTA, DABOII, TANK & THE BANGAS, OBONGJAYAR, PHELIMUNCASI, MODERAT, PEREL, TSVI & LORAINE JAMES, MAX CREEPS (whoever Max Creeps might be), STATE CHAMPS, KEVIN MORBY, FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE, LIL EAZZYY, THEY HATE CHANGE, ELCAMINO, JOHAN LENOX, MANDY MOORE, JACOB GARCHIK, JONATHAN BARBER & VISION AHEAD, GILAD HEKSELMAN, ODED TZUR, SONNY SINGH, DEMIRICOUS, GOSPEL (first album in 17 years), RLYR, EMMA RUTH RUNDLE, JOEL JEROME, BLACK UHURU (celebrating 50th anniversary), LYLE LOVETT, DELBERT MCCLINTON, STEVE FORBERT, LUKE STEELE (of Empire of the Sun), MOGLI, SAY SUE ME, REBOLĂ, YVES JARVIS, SAM GENDEL & ANTONIA CYTRYNOWICZ, DANA BUOY (of Akron/Family), the BROS. LANDRETH, 49 WINCHESTER, TYLER TISDALE, BEAR'S DEN, MALLRAT, YE VAGABONDS, and ADRIAN YOUNGE & ALI SHAHEED MUHAMMAD's JAZZ IS DEAD 011, featuring performances by LONNIE LISTON SMITH, JEAN CARNE, the late TONY ALLEN and more.
Etc Etc Etc
POLAND and SWEDEN are among the 20 countries that will compete in Saturday's finals of the EUROVISION SONG CONTEST against UKRAINE, this year's sentimental favorite (also this year's actual favorite)... CHARLOTTE CARDIN, the WEEKND and JUSTIN BIEBER are the top nominees for Sunday's JUNO AWARDS, and for the first time a woman, HILL KOURKOUTIS, is up for Recording Engineer of the Year. Actor SIMU LIU will host the first non-virtual Juno ceremony since 2019, in Toronto... DIDDY hosts the same night's BILLBOARD MUSIC AWARDS, which will feature performances from TRAVIS SCOTT and MORGAN WALLEN. Diddy, who pushed for both performances, says he's "un-canceling the canceled," which would be a tad more provocative and interesting if Scott hadn't already been announced as a headliner for this fall's PRIMAVERA SOUND festival and if Wallen hadn't performed at the GRAND OLE OPRY and hosted a multi-night run at Nashville's BRIDGESTONE ARENA in recent months, and collected one of the biggest awards at March's ACADEMY OF COUNTRY MUSIC AWARDS... The "II" in SPINAL TAP II, which is going to be an actual thing, looks suspiciously like the number that's one louder than 10, which I just thought I'd mention... BILLBOARD's 40 Under 40... Happy birthday SUSAN KARAS!
| | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | |
| |  | | GQ |
| | In Search of Chad Hugo | | By Jeff Mao | | The enigmatic half of legendary production duo the Neptunes is quietly making music again after years of near-silence. | | |  | | Vulture |
| | TDE Played the Long Game | | By Paul Thompson | | For years, Kendrick Lamar and his (soon-to-be former) record label dominated hip-hop. But getting there came at a cost. | | | |  | | Pollstar |
| | Money For Nothing: Live's Back … And So's Inflation | | By Andy Gensler | | Just as the live industry is emerging from its most difficult years, which included a laundry list of maladies we know reflexively well and that don't bear repeating-comes a doozy: Inflation. | | |  | | Streaming Machinery |
| | The Problems of 'Owning Music Discovery' | | By G.C. Stein | | Spotify's objective of "owning music discovery and demand creation" may make sense financially, but it can have drastic implications for the users. | | | | | | |  | | Complex |
| | How Jack Harlow's 'Come Home the Kids Miss You' Was Made | | By Jessica McKinney | | When Jack Harlow first announced the release date for his sophomore album, "Come Home the Kids Miss You," people couldn't help but notice the timing. It was set to be released on May 6, right between the album rollouts for Future and Kendrick Lamar. | | | | | | |  | | Variety |
| | Kevin Weatherly Returns to KROQ After Two Years at Spotify | | By Shirley Halperin and Michael Schneider | | In what has become the soap opera of the radio industry, Kevin Weatherly, the former program director at Los Angeles' KROQ, who helped build the station to become a leading influence in alternative rock music nationally, is returning to the station as senior vice president of programming. | | | | | |  | | theLAnd |
| | The Legend of Zackey Force Funk | | By Jake McGee | | The Long Beach modern funk innovator survived jail stints, house arrest, and the '90s to become a rocket mechanic and one of the most influential heirs of the funk tradition. | | |  | | MetalSucks |
| | On Heartburn | | By Emperor Rhombus | | MetalSucks editor Emperor Rhombus offers a few inadequate thoughts on the loss of one of metal's finest frontmen and best people. | | | | what we're into |  | | Music of the day | | "Secret Service" | | Leikeli47 | | From "Shape Up," out today on Hardcover/RCA. | | |
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| | Music | Media | | | | | | Suggest a link  | | "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?'" |
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