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Vulture |
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| Saweetie Wants You to See Her Sweat |
| by Hunter Harris |
| She’s not yet the rapper she aspires to be. It’s all part of her long fame game. |
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The New York Times |
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| The Subversive Joy of Lil Nas X’s Gay Pop Stardom |
| by Jazmine Hughes |
| A peek into a hot boy summer filled with new highs, disappointment and growth. |
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Dazed Digital |
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| What’s it like for musicians whose labels won’t release their music? |
| by Felicity Martin |
| Pop star Raye publicly called out Polydor for holding back her debut album, and she’s not the first to voice frustrations at detrimental deals, from Charli XCX to Tinashe and Fifth Harmony. |
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Pitchfork |
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| The Small-Town Touring Boom Is Coming |
| by Eric R. Danton |
| Everybody’s hungry for live music, and smaller concert scenes stand to benefit from the stiff competition for tour dates. |
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The Verge |
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| Apple Music is missing one major thing: a classic iPod to go with it |
| by Mitchell Clark |
| Apple should make an iPod that’s all about the music again. |
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Chicago Reader |
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| No More Heroes are building the future of Chicago rap |
| by Jack Riedy |
| Azeez Alaka and Brandon Holmes run a music and video production company with a pipeline to the majors and a headquarters shaping up in Little Village. |
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The New York Times |
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| Robots Can Make Music, but Can They Sing? |
| by Malcolm Jack |
| At an international competition called the A.I. Song Contest, tracks exploring the technology as a tool for music making revealed the potential - and the limitations. |
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Music Business Worldwide |
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| Music catalog sales are reaching an all time high. So how will AI music catalogs fit into this new matrix and what is their value? |
| by Rory Kenny |
| If today’s booming price-tags are an indication of how buyers value a ‘fixed’ music catalog (i.e a limited number of static music tracks), how will the market price emerging AI music catalogs that have no limits and are uniquely positioned to serve future technology trends? |
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PEOPLE.com |
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| Jennifer Nettles on Continuing Her Fight for Equal Play: 'Women in Country Are So Underrepresented It's Gross' |
| by Jennifer Nettles and Brianne Tracy |
| "All people hear on radio is men, and one or two women. That's the perspective they're left with." |
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The Wrap |
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| Van Toffler on Why the Indies Will Survive (Guest Blog) |
| by Van Toffler |
| In a world of increasing consolidation, independent creators should be nurtured and amplified, Gunpowder & Sky CEO writes. |
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Variety |
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| MDRCs: the ‘Archaic’ Contract Clause That’s Harmed Many Songwriters |
| by Geoff Mayfield |
| It might seem reasonable to expect a professional songwriter to have two songs officially released over the course of a year, and certainly within five or 10 years. But as many have found out, it's not that simple. |
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NPR Music |
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| How 'The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill' Taught Me To Love Blackness |
| by Namwali Serpell |
| The theory of nigrescence describes the process of developing a Black identity. Namwali Serpell says it's like falling in love - and for her, it began when she first heard Lauryn Hill's 1998 album. |
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New York Post |
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| Blondie looks back on iconic music video ‘Rapture’ on its 40th anniversary |
| by Raquel Laneri |
| Forty years ago, Debbie Harry went on network TV to introduce a new musical phenomenon called hip-hop. |
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Slate |
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| Was The Merger of Singing and Rapping Inevitable? |
| by Chris Molanphy and Oliver Wang |
| The story of singing in rap is more than a single pivot point—hip-hop and R&B have always been intertwined, each genre adapting to the other. |
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The Ringer |
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| Looking for the Message in Nas’s ‘It Was Written’ |
| by Paul Thompson |
| Twenty-five years after it was widely panned at the time of its release, the Queensbridge MC’s second album is hailed as a classic. But what did the discourse at the time get right-and what did it miss? |
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Recording Academy |
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| Making Change: A Conversation With Jeff Harleston |
| by MC Lyte and Jeff Harleston |
| In the latest episode of the Black Music Collective Podcast, host and two-time GRAMMY nominee MC Lyte chats with Jeff Harleston, one of the most powerful executives in the entertainment industry who has overseen some of the biggest releases in music. |
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Pollstar |
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| Veeps’ Joel Madden On Bob Dylan’s ‘Shadow Kingdom’ Livestream: ‘We’re On The Edge Of Our Seats Like Everyone Else’ |
| by Andy Gensler |
| Joel Madden, the 42-year-old co-founder of livestreaming platform Veeps and frontman of pop-punk band Good Charlotte, is recounting his team’s reaction upon receiving the news that his company would host very possibly the most iconic living artist on the planet. |
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The Independent |
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| Victoria Beckham’s solo music career wasn’t the disaster you remember |
| by Adam White |
| Victoria Beckham was written off as a solo artist before she’d really begun but a mysterious lost album that exists only on YouTube hints at the one-woman supernova she could have become. |
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Country Queer |
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| Karen Pittelman On Becoming a Queer Country Pioneer |
| by Rachel Cholst and Karen Pittelman |
| Karen Pittelman of Karen & the Sorrows has not only been a pioneer in creating expressly queer, expressly country music, but she also was a driving force in establishing a vibrant queer country scene, starting in her hometown of Brooklyn and eventually expanding to a national circuit of queer country shows, artists, and venues. |
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Songs in the Key of Death |
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| The Murder Of The Lawson Family |
| by Courtney E. Smith |
| On Christmas Day 1929, Charlie Lawson committed the chilling act of murdering his wife and children. What’s darker is the reason why, according to some true crime authors. But are they right, and what do we know today about the rare phenomenon of familicide? |
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