Kanye West called Erick Sermon sometime in May 2023 and wanted the EPMD co-founder to hop a flight to Los Angeles to work on a new project. Sermon’s ailing mother, Belinda, was in hospice care at the time and knew about the trip but didn’t want to hamper her son’s opportunity. Sermon protested but was […]
This new ongoing series is about the business of music with a SPIN twist. Not since the dawn of the Internet, Napster, and streaming services combined has there been such curiosity and horror over the music industry’s latest challenge: AI. Every day brings a new headline pondering whether we are on the precipice of a […]
Jimmy “Super Rhymes” Spicer, whose 15-minute single “Adventure of Super Rhymes” is widely considered hip-hop’s first storytelling rap, died from cancer in 2019 in financial peril. As Russell Simmons’s flagship artist at Rush Management, Spicer helped lay the foundation for what would eventually become Def Jam Recordings. His music has been sampled by the Wu-Tang Clan, 2Pac, De […]
Gina Birch never thought of calling herself an artist. Which seems like a strange attitude for this restless musician, painter, and filmmaker who first made her mark as a founding member of the Raincoats, a lasting spark from London’s musical underground of the late 1970s and a personal favorite band of Kurt Cobain and Kathleen […]
“And” is the first word Rise Against frontman Tim McIlrath sings on “Nod,” the opening track from Ricochet, released in August. It’s also the first word he sings on the next song, “I Want It All.” But that wasn’t a deliberate strategy, judging from McIlrath’s surprise when I point it out. “Oh yeah, I didn’t […]
Once Upstate New York locals sense that an early winter is on its way, they can count on a few short weeks of spectacular weather, where amber-leafed sugar maples and auburn birches sway in the warm breeze. At the end of a rocky dirt road, surrounded by this cinematic countryside, is the bright blue barn […]
Name Steven John Fucking Kilbey Best known for Idiot savant (perhaps more of the former) behind Australian band The Church. A prolific renaissance bloke, knocking out records, paintings, poems, books, and now even comics. Still haven’t choreographed a ballet, but who knows? Current city Coogee Beach, Sydney, Australia 2034. Really want to be in Bali. Sitting on a deck […]
In an ’80s pop landscape full of enormous talents and outrageous fashions, Cyndi Lauper still managed to stand out with one of the loudest voices and biggest personalities on MTV. The Queens native looked like a thrift store come to life and incorporated professional wrestlers like Captain Lou Albano into her music videos and performances. […]
There is a quote attributed to the late Athabascan elder and ambassador of indigenous Alaskan culture, Howard Luke. It’s about the concept of Gaalee’ya. “Gaalee’ya is a luck that you get by learning to live right with the land and the animals, including people, and everything around you, to respect everything.” We shouldn’t have to […]
Kelvin “Pos” Mercer—also known as Posdnuos or Plug One of pioneering hip-hop trio De La Soul—was flipping through television channels when he stumbled across the 1943 film Cabin in the Sky starring Lena Horne, Duke Ellington, and other jazz greats of that era. He instinctively knew that was going to be the title of the […]