| To live is to suffer and to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. |
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DMX at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill, New York, March 27, 2016.
(Noam Galai/Getty Images)
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“To live is to suffer and to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.”
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Ready to Meet Him
So many words have been written in the past few days—the past week, actually—about the talent, the humanity, the vulnerability and the spirituality of a man who burst onto the world stage around the turn of the millennium dripping in blood, attack dogs at his side, delivering genuinely shocking tales of murder and mayhem and what one hip-hop-friendly magazine, which was not alone in its opinion, dubbed the third grossest rap lyric of all time. The words, the ones written in the past week that is, are beautiful and, by and large, true, and they capture the complexities and contradictions of the most explosive rapper, and one of the great live performers, of our most recent fin de siècle, who succumbed last week to a lifetime of pain and struggle. The same pain and struggle that served as both text and subtext for those extraordinary, and extraordinarily troubling, raps. I'm going to keep this relatively short and let other writers do the talking. What interests me right now, what has always fascinated me most about DMX, is the voice with which he did his talking. A voice that the writer TOURÉ once described as "the sound of gravel hitting the grave." A voice that "growled like a dog, credibly and often." A singular and fantastic hip-hop instrument that EARL "DMX" SIMMONS wielded as the perfect finishing piece in stripped down productions that answered the space he built into his raps with even more space. He was a man who understood sonics, not surprisingly. He took his stage name from a classic early drum machine, the OBERHEIM DMX. Future drum machines should use his voice as a patch. And users of that patch should note that for all the satanic imagery in his music, he spent more time directly addressing GOD than SATAN. He was, against all the odds of his own life, a man of faith. And a man of good, even great, humor. The third grossest rap lyric of all time is genuinely funny, as DMX often was. He turned his pain and struggles into humor and into art and life lessons and into hip-hop gold and platinum. Catharsis for his fans, if not always for himself. He never did leave the pain and struggles behind. MusicSET: "He Overcame, He Saw, He Conquered, He Struggled: DMX's Ruff Ryding Life."
'Twas Friday
And though there was no newsletter, people still put out new music, including TAYLOR SWIFT, who launched her master recording reclamation project with FEARLESS (TAYLOR'S VERSION), of which I'll have more to say later this week (here, in the meantime, is what ALEXA and SIRI have to say about it)... Chicago jazz-funk-electro-plus explorers DAMON LOCKS AND THE BLACK MONUMENT ENSEMBLE, whose NOW is a musical conversation/response to 2020's social justice protests... Malian kora master BALLAKÉ SISSOKO... The ambitious hip-hop sprawl that is BROCKHAMPTON... And MERRY CLAYTON, MIGUEL, VIJAY IYER/LINDA MAY HAN OH/TYSHAWN STOREY, RHIANNON GIDDENS & FRANCESCO TURRISI, the late MO3, KID INK, LAKEYAH, PEGGY SEEGER, SUFJAN STEVENS, SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, LES CHANTS DU HUSARD, REVEREND PEYTON'S BIG DAMN BAND, BALMORHEA, YOSHINORI HAYASHI, CFCF, JEAN-MICHEL JARRE, SKULLCRUSHER, ONYX, BLACK FORTUNE, MATTHEW E. WHITE & LONNIE HOLLEY, the late LARRY CORYELL, ÅRABROT, SWEET OBLIVION, CHEAP TRICK and ARI HERSTAND.
Rest in Peace
B.B. DICKERSON, bassist, singer and founding member of WAR... HOWARD WEITZMAN, lawyer who represented MICHAEL JACKSON, DIDDY, JUSTIN BIEBER and many other music, film and sports stars... Techno DJ, producer, label owner and fashion designer TIM BAKER... RALPH SCHUCKETT, session keyboardist and founding member of UTOPIA... ETHEL GABRIEL, who produced at least 2,500 records for RCA VICTOR at a time when female producers were almost unheard of... New York opera superfan LOIS KIRSCHENBAUM, who left behind a wonderful obituary and a rent-controlled East Village apartment full of autographed mementos... Country songwriter BILL OWENS, who was instrumental in his niece DOLLY PARTON's career... Avant-garde jazz saxophonist SONNY SIMMONS... Pop/disco singer/songwriter PATRICK JUVET... Brazilian bassist SÉRGIO BRANDÃO... Jazz drummer DUFFY JACKSON... PAUL HUMPHREY, frontman of Toronto new wave band BLUE PETER... Ticketing executive BEN TAYLOR, who specialized in festivals for FRONT GATE TICKETS... STONE ANDERSON, bassist for Alabama rockers ROB ALDRIDGE & THE PROPONENTS.
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| Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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REDEF |
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| REDEF MusicSET: He Overcame, He Saw, He Conquered, He Struggled: DMX's Ruff Ryding Life |
| by Matty Karas |
| He was the dark, troubled, cathartic soul of hip-hop, sharing a lifetime of pain and struggles with a gruff voice and blunt lyrics that changed the sound of the music seemingly overnight. But he never quite left the pain and struggles behind. |
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The Guardian |
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| The music streaming debate: what the artists, songwriters and industry insiders say |
| by Lanre Bakare |
| The Guardian has talked to 25 figures from the music world ahead of publication of a parliamentary report. |
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GQ |
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| The Keeper of Country Music’s Tall Tales and Secret Histories |
| by Brett Martin |
| Tyler Mahan Coe created a sensation with his podcast "Cocaine & Rhinestones." Now the son of Nashville outlaw David Allan Coe returns with a story that goes even deeper. |
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Variety |
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| Inside the Dirty Business of Hit Songwriting |
| by Jem Aswad |
| Sixty-four years ago, as Elvis Presley's career reached its supernova stage, the 21-year-old singer's team hit on a strategy that enabled him to profit from songwriting without actually writing songs. |
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Artforum |
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| Taylor Made |
| by Domenick Ammirati |
| The need to outfox the Scooters of the world has unexpectedly led Taylor Swift into the territory of contemporary art, as she appropriates her own work, turning her persona into a copy of the persona it was thirteen years ago, albeit not to offer a critique of Western metaphysics but rather to fight over enormous sums of money. |
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CBS News |
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| Exploring the unreleased music in Prince's vault |
| by Jon Wertheim and 60 Minutes |
| It's been five years since Prince died, but his estate continues to churn out new music from the prolific artist. Jon Wertheim reports on the unreleased songs - 8,000 by one estimate - locked away in Prince's vault and the newly unlocked album, "Welcome 2 America." |
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Billboard |
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| When Pandemic Ends, Will Artists Go Back to Pricey In-Person TV Tapings? |
| by Steve Knopper |
| For much of the past year, Adrian L. Miller has arranged for his clients, including R&B singer-songwriter Mereba and jazzy instrumentalist Cassowary, to perform on squeaky clean private stages with minimal staff and musicians. Then he noticed something: It's relatively cheap to create bare-bones remote performances and beam them out as livestreams, sponsored productions and TV performances. |
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Medium |
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| Can YouTubers Like TwinsthenewTrend Put the Music Back in MTV? |
| by Kitanya Harrison |
| Twin brothers Tim and Fred, and other YouTubers with similar channels, are the new veejays. |
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The Muse |
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| The Best Time I Ever Had at a Club Was Watching TV in My Living Room |
| by Rich Juzwiak |
| The thing about Club MTV is you had to be there. Not necessarily there there, at the legendary New York nightclub the Palladium, where the show filmed in the late ’80s and early ’90s, but at least there on your couch watching a low-key revolution take place in American pop music. |
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Philadelphia Magazine |
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| A Look Back at the Sound of Philadelphia, in the Words of Those Who Created It |
| by Victor Fiorillo |
| Fifty years after founding their legendary Philadelphia International Records, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, with friends and collaborators from Thom Bell to John Oates to Patti LaBelle, look back on the musical partnership that came to define the city. |
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The Washington Post |
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| The world is fast. Bad Brains are faster |
| by Chris Richards |
| The legendary D.C. hardcore band raced ahead of its time, and we’re still catching up. |
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VICE |
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| The Fall of the Bassnectar Empire |
| by Avery J.C. Kleinman |
| According to women and former collaborators who spoke to VICE, and a new lawsuit, the EDM star abused his fame and power to build a complex web of secret and manipulative relationships. |
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Pitchfork |
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| A Year in the Life of NYC Dance Club Nowadays |
| by Nathan Taylor Pemberton |
| Over the last 12 months, the people behind this welcoming destination were forced to ask themselves: What is the role of a nightclub during such tumultuous times? |
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Consequence of Sound |
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| Flipping Alone: An Oral History of Record Stores During the COVID-19 Pandemic |
| by Tyler Clark |
| Owners of several of the coolest record stores on the planet explain what life and business have been like during a global health crisis. |
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Billboard |
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| NMPA and RIAA Chiefs: Music Creators and Fans Deserve Better From Twitter |
| by Mitch Glazier and David Israelite |
| Last year music creators sent more than 2 million notices to Twitter of unlicensed and infringing appearances of copyrighted music on the platform – more than 200,000 of which dealt with the especially harmful presence of not yet released stolen songs. |
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Variety |
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| Hans Zimmer Explores a New Composing Frontier: Smartphone Ringtones |
| by Jon Burlingame |
| Not content merely to conquer the film-music world, composer Hans Zimmer has now turned his attention to cell-phone ringtones. |
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Slate |
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| “Montero” Is the Gayest No. 1 Single in Billboard History |
| by Chris Molanphy |
| Lil Nas X once again proves he’s a master memester. Plus, he gives great lap dances. |
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Backseat Freestyle |
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| The Power Behind N.O.R.E.'s 'Yo, Do You Remember...' Line Of Questioning |
| by Jayson Rodriguez |
| When he lines up the right guests, like this past week with Cam’Ron, the rapper-turned-podcaster can be as dialed in as an athlete in the zone. |
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The Daily Beast |
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| Usain Bolt Wants to Be the D.J. Khaled of Dancehall |
| by Patricia Meschino |
| A collaboration with a Champagne company yielded a hit song that in turn spawned a new Jamaican record label run by the world’s fastest man. |
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Middle Class Artist |
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| Why Do Fat Singers Fight So Hard For An Industry That Hates Us? |
| by Tracy Cox |
| Sometimes, as a fat singer in the opera industry, I don’t know why I bother at all. Except that I love to sing. |
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The Ringer |
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| The All-Too-Radical Existence of the Black Woman Rockstar |
| by Lani Renaldo |
| HBO’s new Tina Turner documentary explores the life of an icon who never got her due for existing in spaces typically associated with white artists. And the issue still affects new generations of trailblazing women. |
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| Music of the day |
| "Ready to Meet Him" |
| DMX |
| "I wanted the last thing you hear to be a conversation with the Lord," DMX told the Fader about the last track on 1998's "Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood." |
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YouTube |
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"I wanted the last thing you hear to be a conversation with the Lord," DMX told the Fader about the last track on 1998's "Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood."
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| Music | Media | Sports | Fashion | Tech |
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“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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| Jason Hirschhorn |
| CEO & Chief Curator |
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