| Until James Dewitt Yancey recorded ‘Fantastic, Vol. 2,’ no one had tapped the true potential hidden in [MPC drum machines]: not to make a machine beat sound more like that of a ‘real’ drummer, but to make a kind of rhythm that no drummer had ever made before. |
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| Resistance rap: Ukrainian rapper Alyona Alyona in Castelbuono, Sicily, Aug. 7, 2022. |
| (Roberto Panucci/Corbis/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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| rantnrave:// |
Stories of Us
A man who reimagined the rhythm of popular music and another whose software sang the words of God. A tree that makes perfect guitars. The long and lively pre-history of a single THELONIOUS MONK tune. The boy-band fans and classic rockers who sort of invented the internet. Music, like all art, is storytelling, and for this sleepy week at the end of a not-so-sleepy year we offer a collection of our favorite stories *about* music from these past 12 months.
This is by no means an attempt to explain or recap or even comment on 2022. Some of these reads (and listens and watches) have nothing, per se, to do with this year. Some address very particular concerns of 2022, from the price of concert tickets to the price of copyright to the price an artist’s connection to a vilified world leader. They’re all, I think, great deep dives and/or diversions for a rainy (or snowy or sunny) day. Which maybe, together, do say something about where we’re at at this particular moment. Or not. Maybe they’ll just send you running to your stereo or your music hard drive or your streaming service, where many more stories will await.
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| - Matty Karas, curator |
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Rolling Stone |
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| How J Dilla Reinvented Rhythm |
| By Dan Charnas |
| In this excerpt from hip-hop historian Dan Charnas’ book "Dilla Time," we get the inside story of how iconic beatmaker J Dilla and an elite group of musicians, including D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, and Questlove, changed the shape of rap and R&B forever. |
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Black Music and Black Muses |
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| Mostly the Voice |
| By Harmony Holiday |
| The tonal bond between Future and Billie Holiday and how it exceeds itself. |
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Los Angeles Magazine |
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| The Assassination of Drakeo the Ruler |
| By Jeff Weiss |
| After surviving a lifetime of brutal obstacles, the 28-year-old rap star was stabbed to death backstage by a mob of anonymous invaders just before a concert in December. A reporter’s eyewitness account. |
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Lapham's Quarterly |
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| Enjoy My Flames |
| By Jeremy Swist |
| On heavy metal’s fascination with Roman emperors. |
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Tim Lawrence |
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| David Mancuso and Louis Vuitton: Can they “Fall in Love”? |
| By Tim Lawrence |
| The world’s most profitable luxury corporation had a good, long think and concluded it would be entirely reasonable to align itself with a person who paid almost no attention to his appearance, spent the very minimum on clothes, placed no value on material possessions and ran a house party that placed anti-commercialism and egalitarianism at the centre of its ethos. |
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Smithsonian Magazine |
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| The Legend of The Music Tree |
| By Ellen Ruppel Shell |
| Exotic lumber salvaged from a remote forest in Belize is the world’s most coveted tonewood. |
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Sonos Radio |
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| Dada Strain Radio: Electronic Improvisation with King Britt |
| By Piotr Orlov and King Britt |
| A conversation with producer, DJ and futurist King Britt about electronic music’s improvised history, and how music and community have been guided by machines. Featuring tracks by King Britt & Tyshawn Sorey, Sun Ra, Jazzy Jeff, Herbie Hancock, King Tubby, Miles Davis, Tony Allen & Jeff Mills, Phuture and more. |
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The Washington Post |
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| The Search for the Perfect Sound |
| By Geoff Edgers |
| Vinyl is booming in the digital age. So why does the best way to listen feel just out of reach? |
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The New Inquiry |
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| Streaming Services |
| By Jaime Brooks |
| It doesn’t bother me as an artist to know that most people who love music are going to be subscribing to services like Spotify for as long as they’re available. I would just ask that you try to see Spotify for what it really is––a way to generate royalties from old music. |
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Tedium |
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| The Death of the Key Change |
| By Chris Dalla Riva |
| One of the key changes—pun intended—to the pop charts in the last 60 years is the demise of key changes. What happened? |
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The Ringer |
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| Size Matters: Inside the Politics of Festival Posters |
| By Ben Lindbergh |
| Joyner Lucas’s Lollapalooza meltdown is just the latest manifestation of one of the touchiest subjects in the concert industry: how big the name is on the flyer. To get to the heart of the matter, we spoke to some experts about all things font size. |
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Study Hall |
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| How Long Can Music Journalism Stay Segregated? |
| By Adlan Jackson |
| As the music journalism industry itself shrinks with the media industry at large, gestures at post-racial universality have in many ways entrenched white power in the music press. |
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| rantnrave:// Postscript: Joe Bussard died in September. |
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NPR Music |
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| When the creek does rise, can music survive? |
| By Stephanie Wolf |
| How does a scene survive when disaster strikes its venues, music schools, rare instruments and priceless archives all at once? The musicians of flood-ravaged eastern Kentucky have a few answers. |
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| what we're into |
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| Video of the day |
| “Naatu Naatu” |
| Rahul Sipligunj and Kaala Bhairava |
| From S.S. Rajamouli's 2022 film "RRR." |
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| Music | Media |
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Suggest a link  |
| “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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