| Songwriting has been the skeleton key to open every door in my career. |
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| Pharrell Williams (left) and Pusha T at Something in the Water, Washington, D.C., June 19, 2022. |
| (Paul Morigi/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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“Songwriting has been the skeleton key to open every door in my career.”
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- Pharrell Williams
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| rantnrave:// |
Higher Ground
It goes without saying that if artists did nothing more than make art, they’d be helping make our lives, our communities and the world around us better. Here’s to a few artists doing exactly that, but also more.
The best music festivals are as much about community as they are about music, a concept PHARRELL WILLIAMS has made explicit with his SOMETHING IN THE WATER festival, the second edition of which he staged over Juneteenth weekend in Washington, D.C. During a Friday night panel on how the student debt crisis is affecting Black students (yes, in addition to LIL UZI VERT, 21 SAVAGE, CHLOE X HALLE and a CLIPSE reunion, the festival included a panel on student debt), Pharrell surprised five HBCU students and recent grads by paying off their loans. He “forever changed their lives,” the NAACP’s youth and college director, WISDOM COLE, said. And when the fest was over, he returned to the work of an even bigger community initiative: his nonprofit YELLOW, which is developing free micro-schools to teach tech skills to underprivileged grade-schoolers. The first school opened a year ago in Norfolk, Va., and on the eve of Something in the Water, Pharrell announced a partnership with CISCO to provide tech support for the program.
Longtime DRAKE collaborator NOAH “40” SHEBIB, whose most recent production credits are on a little project called HONESTLY, NEVERMIND, very much does mind gun violence in his hometown Toronto, and he’s trying to do something about it. He wants to teach inner-city kids music production and give them the tools to pursue it. That’s one of the goals of the JUSTICE FUND, which 40 founded in 2021 with community activist YONIS HASSAN. He tells Complex Canada he had an aha moment a few years ago when he realized how good a job he’d done building a mobile-studio-in-a-road-case to take on tour with Drake: “I toured 100 cities with it, and when we got back, the thing was still functioning perfectly. Nothing had fallen out, no cable was missing, everything was there. It all folds up into a box, you can put a lock on it. It shuts, done. You can’t steal nothing. You can’t break nothing.” His plan, with the Justice Fund, is to build versions of the same studio for community centers around Toronto, and to interconnect them so kids can collaborate between communities—“a way they can have a connection without physically having to share a space and put their own safety at jeopardy.” Among the Justice Fund’s other pursuits: Teaching kids archery. And pressuring Canadian philanthropists and foundations to give more of their money to Black and indigenous charities.
DOLLY PARTON made headlines—and memes—when she donated $1 million to VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY MEDICAL Center at the beginning of the pandemic to fund Covid-19 research. Her donation ended up supporting the development of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine, which doesn’t mean she paid for the vaccine, as some of those memes suggested, but does mean she played a part. It wasn’t a one-time fling for Parton. She’d donated the same amount two years earlier to Vanderbilt’s pediatric cancer program, and this month she gave the medical center another $1 million to fund pediatric infectious disease research. “No child should ever have to suffer, and I’m willing to do my part to try and keep as many of them as I can as healthy and safe as possible,” she said in announcing the newest donation. (Her connection to Vanderbilt, by the way, is DR. NAJI ABUMRAD, a physician and professor she met after a 2013 car accident. Her 2020 Covid donation was in his honor. Dr. Abumrad’s son JAD is the radio producer and podcaster who hosted the acclaimed 2019 series DOLLY PARTON’S AMERICA.)
Rest in Peace
Disco and soul producer/engineer (and synth player and composer) PATRICK ADAMS, who worked with Black Ivory, Loleatta Hollaway, Gladys Knight, Cloud One, Bumblebee Unlimited and countless other artists. He was a crucial force in 1970s and ‘80s dance music, even if he didn’t achieve the name recognition of some of his peers. “Not only one of my favorite composers/producers, he’s also one of my greatest influences,” Nile Rodgers once said... Playwright/composer JAMES RADO, who co-wrote the musical “Hair”... Chicago blues guitarist JIM SCHWALL of the Siegel-Schwall Band... Singer GENE FOWLER of New York metal band Wetnurse... Rock publicist TODD BRODGINSKI, who also managed Art Garfunkel.
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| - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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KEXP |
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| The Sonics of Black Spirituality |
| By Mia Imani |
| Music has been one of the ways Black folks have maintained a cultural and spiritual link to the African continent. |
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Chicago Reader |
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| Pravda Records goes the distance |
| By Mark Guarino |
| Chicago’s longest-running independent rock label throws the first Pravdafest, celebrating 38 years of rolling with the punches and putting in the work. |
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Pitchfork |
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| The Rise of Dissociation Music |
| By Jayson Greene |
| From indie rock to SoundCloud rap, artists are combating the hell of modern existence with blank detachment in their voices. |
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Dada Strain |
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| How We Fight Out of This |
| By Piotr Orlov |
| Confronting the ghosts, the energy and the potential reward at 2 GIGS: Olivia Rodrigo @ Radio City Music Hall (April 27) + The Loft @ Ukrainian National Home (May 29). |
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The New York Times |
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| The Netrebko Question |
| By Javier C. Hernández |
| The Russian soprano Anna Netrebko is opera’s biggest star. But her career is in disarray because of her ties to Putin, and arts companies around the world are divided on whether to welcome her back. |
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Music x |
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| Web3 music needs gatekeeping. Here's why |
| By Bas Grasmayer |
| Basically anyone can mint a music NFT, just like anyone can upload a song to YouTube or SoundCloud or have one distributed to Spotify. Are most people just going to listen to all music NFTs on the blockchain hoping to find a good one? Of course not. |
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Holler |
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| Rissi Palmer's Color Me Country: Championing Change |
| By Matt Wickstrom |
| Rissi Palmer, Madeline Edwards, Chapel Hart and Miko Marks talk about the Apple Music Country radio show Color Me Country, and how it's championing change in the industry for under-represented artists. |
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| what we're into |
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| Music of the day |
| “Lady Bug” |
| Bumblebee Unlimited |
| 1978. Co-produced, co-written and arranged by Patrick Adams. RIP. |
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| Music | Media |
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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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