A Long Island hip-hop crew called Spectrum City evolved into Public Enemy in the mid-’80s, signed to Def Jam, and became one the most politically outspoken and musically innovative groups the genre had, and has, ever seen. Chuck D and Flavor Flav have been the group’s only two consistent members over the years: the high-minded […]
One of the more intriguing reissues of the 2020s is a rare, 50-year-old album by a band with a crap name. In Fall 1972, Greene Bottle Records, a subsidiary of Paramount, released the debut album by a New York City group called Pool-Pah, who combined odd synth excursions and strutting funk with winding prog arrangements […]
Each week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of great artists and highlights songs you might not know for our Deep Cut Friday series. The Pogues performing in Amsterdam on November 4, 1989. (Credit: Frans Schellekens/Redferns) Elvis Costello loved the Pogues in the 1980s. The band’s opinions of Costello, however, were mixed. Bassist Cait O’Riordan began […]
Name Sam Carter singer for the band Architects. Best known for Being a little gobshite on stage with my band. Current city I’m currently on a plane flying to Nashville. Really want to be in Kyoto Japan. I’d be sat by the river that flows through the center of the city watching the herons and eagles fly about. That […]
Hollywood is obsessed with stories about young people losing their virginity, from 1982’s aptly titled Losin’ It, to one of the few with a fully developed frontal cortex, 2005’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin. But there’s one standout film that consistently sparks a virtual firestorm, popping up every time a social channel needs an organic algorithm boost: […]
Before he was Coolio, Artis Leon Ivey Jr. was just a kid growing up in Compton and South Central Los Angeles, at a time when middle class hope gave way to something very different. “Compton was actually a well-to-do area until the 1980s when Ronald Reagan ushered in the crack era,” said Coolio’s longtime personal […]
For centuries, street singing was considered the lowest form of a musical career. Street musicians — buskers — were looked on as glorified beggars. But cities that once outlawed busking have come to embrace it — as a way to renew foot traffic in the age of Amazon. While street singers used to depend on […]
“I’ve seen, like, Drew Barrymore and Paris Hilton post my shit on TikTok,” says Idris Vicuña, better known as Eyedress, over the phone from North Hollywood while he’s enjoying lunch at a Mexican seafood restaurant in North Hollywood. “I try to just stay humble, I try not to gas myself up with that stuff.” Vicuña […]
OK Go released their new album, And the Adjacent Possible, a first in 10 years, April 11. The first track, “A Stone Only Rolls Downhill,” came out on January 16, accompanied by one of their trademark, surreal and brilliant videos. And this year they head out across the States on tour, starting in South Bend […]
More from Spin: In a World On Fire, Jesse Ahern Brings Us ‘Sunshine’ Tell Me About Your Childhood, Letdown… Wand Cast Quieter ‘Vertigo,’ Meander With Curiosity “Everyone always lies about sex. If you haven’t lied about it, it isn’t sex,” Carrie Fisher wrote in The Guardian, a response to a plea for advice from a woman […]