| I come from a very spiritual home. So that plays just a role in everything, just everything. I can’t even make an album if I’m not in the right space. I can’t make music if I’m not feeling right or feeling good with my soul, my family, or anyone close to me. |
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Wizkid in Miami, Oct. 17, 2021.
(Jason Koerner/Getty Images)
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“I come from a very spiritual home. So that plays just a role in everything, just everything. I can’t even make an album if I’m not in the right space. I can’t make music if I’m not feeling right or feeling good with my soul, my family, or anyone close to me.”
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In the Pocket
There are plenty of reasons to feel nostalgic for the iPod, the most elegantly designed music player the modern tech industry ever produced, which turned 20 years old Saturday. It was beautiful to look at and a tactile joy to play. It was, for most people, the first device that could plausibly fit an entire music collection in a single pocket. And it was—this may be the most important part—your own music. Music you had bought, downloaded, ripped or otherwise acquired. However you did the acquiring, it was yours, curated by you, for you. As the last great breakthrough in music-playing tech in the CD and download age, the iPod was the end of the road for that very concept. Future players including the iPhone, the iPod's most famous offspring, were optimized for streaming music, meaning they were optimized for music you didn't own—an unwieldy, seemingly bottomless well of music. Tangible, manageable collections would give way to virtual, unmanageable ones. The personal would give way to the impersonal. You'd no longer be able to carry your music collection in your pocket. The technology would all but demand you carry everyone else's collections, too. That's its own kind of magical concept; it's just a different concept. And it's easy to understand why, in the age of iPhones and streaming services and Siri and Alexa and music flowing not like water but more like a tsunami, iPods have become fashionable again, particularly among people who were barely alive during their heyday. CNET's ROGER CHENG looks back on their creation with TONY FADELL, who oversaw the development of the iPod for APPLE; the Guardian's EAMONN FORDE traces their impact on the music business; and JAMES FITZGERALD, writing for Dazed, profiles the teens and 20somethings reclaiming them for themselves. "We reject where tech is going," FItzGerald quotes one Redditor as saying. "It’s not an art anymore, its losing soul." A used-iPod aficionado from New Jersey tells him, "It’s a fun game to see what’s on them. There was one which had all the American Idol songs on it. Another had a lot of Disney Channel songs." Which is to say, they have someone's taste on them. Someone's curation. They're tangible connections not just to the past, but to music itself.
Rattled by the Hum
And then there are the music tech ideas that record companies really, really hate, or really, really don't get, or maybe they really, really just want a 50 percent cut of the business. This is an amazing tale, as told by co-founder ALI PARTOVI, of what happened when ILIKE (born 2006, died 2012) tried to pitch the idea of a shared video feed to UMG's JIMMY IOVINE, who was not impressed, and BONO, who was.
Plus Also Too
Indie label investor EXCELERATION MUSIC has bought BLOODSHOT RECORDS and vows to "revitalize the presence and availability of the Bloodshot catalogue, both digitally and physically." Variety has a range of reactions from the troubled label's current and former artists and one of its former owners... New York City is once again without a commercial country radio station, after AUDACY's 94.7 FM, the most-listened-to country station in the US, "unexpectedly flipped" its format to classic hip-hop on Friday. (Related question: The station's staff was told of the format change on Thursday. Listeners were told Friday morning. Why do music stations insist on basically ghosting their audiences instead of saying proper goodbyes?)... Elsewhere on the dial, TAYLOR SWIFT's rerecorded FEARLESS (TAYLOR'S VERSION), a hit on streaming services, isn't getting much radio love. Some programmers say the songs are too old; others say listeners wouldn't notice the difference. "I just don't think we need a re-do," JULIE STEVENS of KRTY in San Jose, Calif., tells Billboard. Swift herself might not notice either, the magazine notes, since she gets the same royalty no matter which version of her songs terrestrial radio plays.
Rest in Peace
The most endearingly goofy oldies show I've ever seen was a 2007 performance by JAY BLACK, late of Jay & the Americans, on Coney Island. Black (real name David Blatt; he was the second, and best-known, of the three "Jay Black"s who led the band) had by then lost the operatic range and flair that had turned songs like "Cara Mia" and "Come a Little Bit Closer" into 1960s pop hits. He had, in fact, lost nearly all ability to sing. He knew it and he talked about it and he hardly sang a single note. Instead he delivered a 20-minute, off-the-cuff standup routine that I would have paid good money to see in a comedy club. I'm not surprised to learn he lived a colorful life, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Frank Sinatra (who warned him early on he was ruining his voice) and John Gotti, spending a little too much time in casinos and, with the Americans, opening the Beatles' first American concert. He won over the Fab Four's unruly fans, his New York Times obituary notes, with a joke... Also: Bluegrass banjoist and harmony singer SONNY OSBORNE of the Osborne Brothers... JAZ HAYER, who with his brother Jat formed the British bhangra and hip-hop duo the Kray Twinz... Nineteen-year-old Swedish rapper EINAR, murdered Thursday in what Swedish media believes was a gang-related shooting.
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| Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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CNET |
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| The iPod was no sure thing, but Steve Jobs insisted: 'We're building this' |
| by Roger Cheng |
| For the 20th anniversary of the iPod, we talk with the inventor of Apple's iconic music player, Tony Fadell, who reminisces about working with Steve Jobs and the success of the device. |
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The Guardian |
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| 20 years of the iPod: how it shuffled music and tech into a new era |
| by Eamonn Forde |
| In October 2001, the music industry was riven by piracy and had no idea how to solve it. Enter Steve Jobs, whose new device created a digital music market - and made Apple into a titan. |
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The Washington Post |
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| Covid put music festivals on hold. Climate change might offer bigger long-term problems. |
| by Julia Gray |
| The summers are getting hotter, the storms are fatal, and the windows for hosting outdoor gatherings are shrinking. What’s the point of music if it’ll only hurt us in the end? |
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Pollstar |
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| Seth Hurwitz On Rebuilding The Old 9:30 Club: ‘It Won’t Have The Smell & The Rats’ |
| by Andy Gensler |
| When no less a figure than Dave Grohl, Washington, D.C., area native and rock God in his own time, announces a new venue is coming to the Capital City, you take notice; but when it’s the stuff of local live music legend, it’s far more than just a new venue story. |
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VICE |
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| This Band Thought Their Biggest Hurdle Was the Patriarchy. It’s Actually the Internet. |
| by Safina Nabi |
| This all-women Sufi band is trying to break into a traditionally male genre of music, but that's the least of their problems. |
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FLOOD Magazine |
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| My Morning Jacket: The Last American Band |
| by Mike Spry |
| Jim James, Carl Broemel, and Bo Kosteris discuss releasing their new self-titled album in a post-band world. |
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The Nation |
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| Which Version of Coltrane’s 'A Love Supreme' Reigns Supreme? |
| by Ethan Iverson |
| Is the latest posthumous addition to his canon released today the Holy Grail? |
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Billboard |
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| Big Money’s Pouring Into Music -- Where Do We Go From Here? |
| by Ed Christman |
| Less than a month after a $54 billion stock spinoff by Universal Music, three of the world's biggest private equity players are making billion-dollar bets on the business. |
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The Illusion of More |
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| Trump Claims 'Absolute Immunity' in Eddy Grant Copyright Suit |
| by David Newhoff |
| When I wrote about the Grant v. Trump copyright case on October 1, I was wrong about one thing: that Team Trump would quickly settle the matter as a relative storm in a teacup within the legal tornadoes swirling around the ex-president. But I should know better. |
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Dazed Digital |
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| Why are Gen Z collecting 20-year-old iPods? |
| by James FitzGerald |
| Two decades on from the Apple product’s launch, Y2K fashion and streaming fatigue are fuelling a fascination with the retro Apple gadget, |
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The Daily Beast |
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| The Bloody and Tragic End of Scientology’s Biggest Pop Star |
| by Tony Ortega |
| His name was Kuba Ka, and he called himself the “God of Pop”-having allegedly been handpicked by Michael Jackson’s manager as his successor. Then his face began falling off. |
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CBS Sunday Morning |
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| Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen: Renegades |
| by Anthony Mason |
| The former president and the singer-songwriter have shared their stories in a podcast, and now a book: "Renegades: Born in the USA." They discuss the influence of their fathers on their life's work, and the collective narratives in both popular music and politics. |
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NPR Music |
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| How Rico Nasty and Kenny Beats became the loudest, unlikeliest duo in rap |
| by Rodney Carmichael |
| Rico Nasty and producer Kenny Beats explain how the vital collaboration that culminated in their joint 2019 mixtape Anger Management traces back to a single scream during an impromptu studio session. |
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Variety |
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| Bloodshot Records Bought by Exceleration Music, Which Vows to Promote Troubled Indie Label’s Catalog |
| by Chris Willman |
| Exceleration Music, a company formed earlier this year to invest in indies, said it was “beginning a long-term campaign to revitalize the presence and availability of the Bloodshot catalogue, both digitally and physically.” |
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Passion of the Weiss |
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| An Excerpt from Eric Harvey’s ‘Who Got the Camera?: A History of Rap and Reality’ |
| by Eric Harvey |
| It’s hard to find two sectors of popular culture that reflect the democratic possibilities, consumerist ideologies, and emotional flare-ups of American life more than reality TV and reality rap. |
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Loud And Quiet |
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| Theon Cross: a different kind of tuba player |
| by Cat Gough |
| Meeting the genre-bending Theon Cross in a room that's named after him, as jazz, dub, soca and more are channelled through his tuba. |
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Billboard |
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| How U.K. Touring Is Struggling to Keep On Truckin’ |
| by Richard Smirke |
| New "cabotage" rules that require haulers to return to the EU or the United Kingdom mean they cannot effectively service tours outside of their home country. |
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Stuff |
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| 'You are holding the country to ransom': New Zealand promoter's plea to unvaccinated as summer plans still hang in the balance |
| by Glenn McConnell |
| Brent Eccles is urging the unvaccinated to promptly get the jab, after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern indicated more freedoms would arrive as soon as regions started hitting 90 per cent vaccination. |
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KQED |
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| Bay Area Ghostwriter Behind Hip Hop's Biggest Names Takes Center Stage |
| by Pendarvis Harshaw and Marisol Medina-Cadena |
| Jane Handcock has ghostwritten for some of your favorites in hip hop, and now she looks to step into the limelight. |
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The FADER |
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| Maxo Kream on channeling tragedy, vices, and Houston pride into 'Weight of the World' |
| by Jordan Darville and Maxo Kream |
| Jordan Darville talks to Maxo Kream about the Houston rapper's new album "Weight of the World." |
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| Music of the day |
| "Psalm" |
| John Coltrane |
| From "A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle," out now on Impulse! |
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YouTube |
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From "A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle," out now on Impulse!
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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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