Kendrick Lamar Duckworth was born in Compton, California, in 1987, and was still a baby when his hometown became synonymous with gangsta rap with the 1989 release of N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton. So it might feel preordained that Duckworth, who would record at first as K-Dot and then as Kendrick Lamar, would eventually sign to […]
Two-time Grammy nominee Arlo Parks finds sanctuary on the dance floor on her third album, Ambiguous Desire, which will arrive April 3 from Transgressive. The 12-track effort is led by the bass-heavy single “2SIDED,” on which Parks yearns to know if her romantic feelings will be reciprocated by the person making her heart race. “2SIDED” […]
Foo Fighters, Lorde and LCD Soundsystem will share headlining duties with the more pop-oriented Backstreet Boys, Teddy Swims and sombr at the 2026 edition of California’s BottleRock Napa Valley festival. The event will take place Memorial Day weekend (May 22-24) at Napa Valley Expo, with tickets now available. Among the dozens of other artists confirmed […]
In the first season of her recording career, from 1974 to 1980, Patti Smith was a raw nerve, blazing behind the microphone on a mission to reinvent rock and roll as a setting for a new kind of feral, literary revolt. She emerged from the first generation of punk rock at CBGB in New York […]
Omaha native Todd Fink was on his way to becoming a professional skateboarder. Much like other teenaged boys who grew up in the 1990s, skating had become a way of life, an obsession, and Fink kept excelling at it—much to his high school guidance counselor’s chagrin. “That’s not a plan,” he remembers hearing. But skaters […]
While Pearl Jam plots its next move following the summer departure of longtime drummer Matt Cameron, frontman Eddie Vedder is making his maiden solo voyage across the Pacific. Vedder will play four theater shows in Japan this spring on April 14 in Nagoya (Forest Hall), April 16 in Osaka (Festival Hall), April 17 in Kyoto […]
Band Of Horses’ beloved 2006 Sub Pop debut, Everything All the Time, will be bolstered with rare and unreleased tracks for its 20th anniversary edition, which will be out March 20 from Sub Pop. They include the group’s hard-to-find 2005 Tour EP, demos and its contribution to The O.C., “The End’s Not Near.” The first […]
Roxanne Shanté is listening to her Juice Crew partner Masta Ace talk about RZA’s upcoming EP, Juice Crew, when she has an a-ha moment. Unbeknownst to her, RZA had started the project years ago to accompany the 2017 release of the Shanté biopic Roxanne Roxanne. Suddenly it all clicked. Song titles like “Single Mothers,” “Lolita,” […]
Dry Cleaning singer Florence Shaw likes to keep some distance between her vocals and the rest of the band. Shaw’s curious confidences, spoken-word confessions, and bemused monologues appear to have only a passing relationship to the propulsive rhythms and brittle riffs that frame them. That dissonance can be striking at first, but it grows restrictive–stark […]
Bob Weir, who joined the Grateful Dead on guitar and vocals at the age of 16 and then spent the next 60 years helping shepherd its legacy, died today (Jan. 10) at the age of 78. According to a social media post from his family, the jam band legend was diagnosed with cancer in July […]