| Being Ukrainian is all about the spirit. We don't go to a doctor if something hurts, for example. We will endure it until the end... We have steel balls. |
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| Singer Tatiana Shmayluk of Ukrainian metal band Jinjer at the Fillmore, San Francisco, Oct. 27, 2021. |
| (Miikka Skaffari/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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“Being Ukrainian is all about the spirit. We don't go to a doctor if something hurts, for example. We will endure it until the end... We have steel balls.”
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- Tatiana Shmayluk, Jinjer singer
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| rantnrave:// |
Snooping Around
If I'm a rapper looking to sign with a major label or giant indie, I'm definitely signing with SNOOP DOGG, whose philosophy of working for a label is "You can bring me in to do executive s***, but remember I’m an artist, so I’m going to always pattern it for the artist." Which is how all contracts and negotiations should work. Why is anyone doing anything in this business if not for the artists? It was DEF JAM that brought Snoop in to do executive s*** last year, and Def Jam "didn't want Snoop Dogg the artist," Snoop Dogg the artist tells ELLIOTT WILSON in an entertaining interview for TIDAL's online magazine. "They wanted Snoop Dogg the businessman." Snoop the biz man's signings have included GRISELDA graduate BENNY THE BUTCHER, with whom he apparently shared this amazing advice: "You never know what you're worth until you overcharge."
Then again, if I'm a rapper looking to overcharge a major label or giant indie, I might have second thoughts about Snoop Dogg, whose philosophy of working with artists after he signs them is an aggressive form of laissez-faire. "I’m not in there trying to develop," he tells Wilson. "I’m trying to find muthaf***as that got that s*** that’s already locked and loaded that just need me to be, 'Here you go. Come on, put the DEATH ROW logo on that. Let me take you to the metaverse.' Bang!"
If you're that locked and loaded, you can do that stuff yourself, too, can't you? But maybe that's what you're looking for. I guess. Notice Snoop has switched to talking about Death Row, the label he recently scooped up from investment firm BLACKSTONE's MNRK MUSIC GROUP. He's still at Def Jam but only for another year, he says. His Death Row purchase famously came with his own first two albums and two enormous question marks—the early work of DR. DRE and TUPAC, whose rights have reverted to the artists (or, in Tupac's case, to his estate). Snoop made headlines by telling Wilson he's "pretty sure we're going to be able to work something out" with Tupac's estate and "same with DR. DRE and THE CHRONIC... I got all those records."
"I got" is the ambiguous hip-hop phrase of the week. Does he mean he has all the vinyls at home? Does he mean he thinks he now owns all those masters? Or is he saying "I got this" as in "Leave it to me; I know how to get this done"?
Several other sites who picked up the news went with "owns all those masters," which prompted Dr. Dre's lawyer, HOWARD KING, to publicly respond with sorry, no, Dre's masters are, um, still Dre's. Which itself is ambiguous in the way everything any lawyer says is. Is he saying "Um, no," or is he negotiating? If anyone's in a position to overcharge right now, it's Dr. Dre.
And Snoop might not be as disinterested an A&R exec as he claims. His pitch to Dre, if I'm reading correctly, is EDM and Latin remixes and remakes. "When we made these records," he says, "EDM and Latin wasn’t much. Now EDM and Latin run the world... I may explore that."
You have been warned. And/or overcharged.
Etc Etc Etc
The ACADEMY OF COUNTRY MUSIC AWARDS, the first major awards show to cut the cord, airs at 8 pm ET tonight exclusively on AMAZON PRIME. DOLLY PARTON hosts, CHRIS YOUNG is the leading nominee and there will be no commercials... HIPGNOSIS has bought LEONARD COHEN's songwriting catalog—his writer's share of all his songs through the year 2000, for which SONY MUSIC will continue to control the publishing, and both the writer's and publisher's shares of everything Cohen wrote afterward, during his "Old Ideas" era.... Songwriter ROSS GOLAN has started a CHANGE.ORG petition asking performance rights organizations to sever ties with their Russian counterparts... Publicist CARY BAKER is retiring after a celebrated 42-year career repping "Americana, blues, power pop, classic rock, a little bit of indie-rock, up to a point—if it got too millennial, I had other excellent publicists I would refer to — and a little bit of jazz." He's shuttering his firm, CONQUEROO, which he opened in 2004 after working for six labels... QUESTLOVE's SUMMER OF SOUL was named Best Documentary at the INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AWARDS.
Rest in Peace
Nashville singer/songwriter WARNER MACK, whose string of top 10 country hits in the 1960s included "The Bridge Washed Out" and "Talkin' to the Wall"... TV producer JIM OWENS, who oversaw much of TNN's country music programming in the 1980s and '90s.
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| - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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Tidal |
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| Snoop Dogg: Boss Moves |
| By Elliott Wilson |
| Death Row Records’ new CEO reveals his plans to resurrect the legendary label, and reflects on his important role in Dr. Dre’s historic Super Bowl halftime show. |
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Kerrang! |
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| RETRO READ: Outlanders: How Jinjer survived a revolution and built their own world |
| By Nick Ruskell |
| Jinjer’s resilient spirit was forged in the war that erupted their native Ukraine in 2014. As the groove metal quartet prepare to unleash their fourth and most complex album to date, singer Tatiana Shmayluk relives the turmoil that shaped them. Cue: one of modern music’s most remarkable tales of survival, resistance and sheer determination. |
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CNN |
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| Meet the queer vanguard of country music |
| By Scottie Andrew |
| LGBTQ country stars like Orville Peck, Patrick Haggerty of Lavender Country and Allison Russell are challenging country music stereotypes -- and broadening the genre. They open up about what it means to tell authentic stories. |
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The New Yorker |
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| Glaive Is Acing Hyperpop, Failing Math Class |
| By André Wheeler |
| The seventeen-year-old pop singer, who began making music as a COVID diversion, chats in his bedroom about his inspiration (girls), his current grade in math (54), and life as a sudden star. |
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The Washington Post |
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| For Michael Tilson Thomas, the grandeur of music answers a grim diagnosis |
| By Michael Andor Brodeur |
| To speak to MTT about music is not so far removed from speaking frankly of life and death. His music — whether conducting or composing — has everything to do with the push-and-pull of opposing forces and the musical space in between them: sound and silence, harmony and dissonance, instinct and intelligence. |
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Bookforum |
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| Anti-American Graffiti: The Revolutionary Music of J Dilla |
| By Harmony Holiday |
| Arthur Jafa relays a haunting interpretation of the griot as someone who cannibalizes the flesh of those whose stories he tells, as a matter of pragmatism, in order to keep those stories alive for the telling in himself. At the end of his life, the griot’s unsolicited efforts at preservation of both self and other are met with the same gesture: he is denied a traditional burial. |
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| what we're into |
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| Music of the day |
| “Ultrabeat” |
| Space of Variations (feat. Alyona Alyona) |
| Metalcore from Vinnytsia, Ukraine. At least eight Russian missiles hit the city Sunday and its airport was destroyed. |
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| Video of the day |
| “Live in Melbourne, March 5, 2020.” |
| Jinjer |
| Originally from Donetsk, a part of Ukraine controlled by pro-Russia separatists. The metal band fled several years ago to Lviv and was in Kyiv when Russia invaded the country two weeks ago. Singer/screamer Tatiana Shmayluk is a force of nature. |
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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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