#jamal-roberts

#jamal-roberts

"We tried to challenge ourselves and make songs that excite us, often starting with ideas that push our comfort zones."

Mamdani opened up about his journey from immigrant child to becoming the city's 112th mayor, calling it a dream realized. Born in Uganda in 1991 and arriving in New York at age 7, he's now the youngest person to hold the office in over a century and the city's first Muslim and African-born mayor.

"Doing It Too' is about confidence in motion. Cortland brought a clean, elevated touch that kept everything feeling so effortless. There's a rhythm to this song that people have been picking up on."

Kanya King stated, 'Black music shapes what we listen to, how we speak, how we dress, how we tell our stories and I guess it's defined as Britain's cultural identity but structurally and institutionally is still often treated as m.'

"It's slow music, the lyrics transmit good feeling and it's moody," said frontman Gustavo Raya Garcia following the album's release on March 26.

In recent years, he's evolved into an emissary of Florida hip-hop and a rap star at the nexus of niche underground fame and household ubiquity, able to stunt on blockbuster movie soundtracks one minute and do pop-ups at Chinatown arcades with no security the next.

This is about creating the ultimate entertainment destination. Planet Hollywood has always been connected to pop culture, and PH Live takes that energy to the next level, a place where music, film, sports, and nightlife collide.

Well, I don't think with blues I could get around it. It was in my house since I can remember, you know. My mother's from Monroe, Louisiana. My dad is from somewhere in Texas. And between the both of them, it was a lot of blues in the house. I had a stepdad, too, who was even more into blues. So I couldn't get away from it. And I loved it from the first time I heard it.

When Norman Sylvester was 12, long before he garnered the nickname "The Boogie Cat" or shared a stage with B.B. King, he boarded a train in Louisiana and headed west, toward the distant city of Portland, Oregon. He'd lived all his life in the rural South, eating wild muscadine grapes from his family's farm, fishing in the bayou and churning butter at the kitchen table to the tune of his grandmother's gospel singing.

More than 40 years ago, United States civil rights leader Jesse Jackson called on the Democratic Party to open its doors and welcome the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised. This included Arab Americans and Palestinian rights supporters, who have suffered from decades of racism, demonisation and marginalisation. list of 3 itemsend of list Advocates in those communities say that Jackson, who died on Tuesday at the age of 84, helped elevate their voices over his decades-long career.

In a way, it was the Sgt. Pepper's of hip-hop. It's a record that changed the way that people thought about putting music together. I'm not a big hip-hop historian; I just know the stuff that I worked on.

Rockie does kinda feel like the album Donna Hayward would make if she could pursue her musical ambitions: She'd be influenced by Julee Cruise, for sure, and probably Chromatics, and Sky Ferreira, and what could be more Badalamentian than the cloudburst of synth that opens "On Our Knees"?

Amid the savagery of the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration - culminating in the killing of Renee Nicole MacklinGood - everyday Americans have shown incredible courage in pushing back against ICE's takeover of their cities. Joining them today are several Minnesotaart institutions that will close their doors to protest against the cruel treatment of their neighbors. You can read all about that today, plus a moving personal essay by Ifrah Mansour, a Somali-American artist based in Minnesota.

In §46, Kant defines genius as "the inborn predisposition of the mind through which nature gives the rule to art" (5:307). Because beautiful art cannot be created according to fixed rules, the artistic genius is a kind of channel for the way beauty appears spontaneously in nature. (My slideshow includes Angelus Silesius's "Die Rose" on this point: "The rose is without why.") For Kant, genius has a talent that cannot be learned or taught, and it cannot give an account of itself.

Maybe we ran into an old acquaintance at the supermarket and said "Let's catch up sometime" or told our friends we would "check out" the boring-sounding show they spent the past five minutes recommending? That's what country-music superstar Jelly Roll appeared to do after the Grammys last week when, in response to a question about the state of the country, he said he had "a lot to say"

Hoops, Hopes & Dreams tells the story of how Dr. King used basketball to connect with young people and organize communities during moments of protest.

Over freakishly lucid, cybernetic production, Zel pens dope boy anecdotes and takes a scalpel to them, splicing, re-shaping, and overlapping his punch-ins as he fits them in wayward pockets. After years of SoundCloud-only singles, his first solo full-length is immediately up there as one of the most singular rap debuts of the decade so far.

Last month, LaRussell announced his signing of a "project deal" with San Francisco label EMPIRE, one of the music industry's largest and most powerful independent labels and distributors. In 2023, he announced a deal with Live Nation for select concert dates. Both deals, LaRussell indicated, allowed him to make decisions on his own terms. The Roc Nation announcement comes after images of a late January meeting between LaRussell and Jay-Z were shared online.

But Rocky can't get his phone to sync with his sports car. He's determined, though, and while the engine growls at low idle, he tinkers for minutes that feel much longer. But still-no dice. He calls over one of his two bodyguards, both of whom are affable as far as dudes who protect celebrities for a living go. One of the bodyguards pushes a button here and twists a knob there and, bada bing, Rocky's album at last begins playing on the Ferrari's speakers.

Chances are, if the Atlanta rapper sounds like they have a loogie stuck in their throat, I'll probably like them. B5 and Zeeball? Yep-"Heist" might be the biggest omission from our Best Rap Songs of 2025 list. Rroxket? I still listen to his zooted-out regularly. Before I get carried away, let's add Bby Kell to that list. Her new tape, Straight Pop, is cool as hell-it reminds me of Glokk40Spaz back when his bread and butter was belligerent dark plugg.

J. Cole continues to be the preeminent face of a specific microgenre I like to call Podcast Rap, the general idea being that you don't have to listen to these songs more than once, but they'll give a roundtable of dinguses something to chew on for a week. "What If," off Cole's new album The Fall-Off, is an instant Podcast Rap classic.

At the turn of the 1960s, when free jazz was making its initial seismic impact, multi-instrumentalist Phil Cohran-he later added the name Kelan-was living in Chicago and playing trumpet for Sun Ra's Arkestra. He contributed to crucial recordings by the band during his tenure, including We Travel the Space Ways, but Cohran was a restless autodidact who never stuck with any one project for long.

The rapper, known on his tax form as Charles Wingate and known by his old Harlem associates as Charley Rambo, made his name in the rap game during an all-too-brief run in the 2000s, as one of the most colorful members of Jim Jones' Byrdgang, his solo offshoot from the Diplomats (although due to his growing up with rappers Cam and Mase, Max is like honorary Dipset).

Co-written by Rocky with Cristoforo Donadi (aka Ghost), Zach Fogarty, and Ging (fka Frank Dukes), the track features a psych-rock-inspired sound, setting the tone for the direction of his upcoming album. Buy Don't Be Dumb on Vinyl/CD On "Punk Rocky," the Harlem rapper channels heartbreak with lyrics like, "She ain't gon' be in my life no more/ Got me crying in the microphone/ Let me shout on the megaphone/ That ho ain't my type no more."

The staff of Pitchfork listens to a lot of new music. A lot of it. On any given day our writers, editors, and contributors go through an imposing number of new releases, giving recommendations to each other and discovering new favorites along the way. Each Monday, with our Pitchfork Selects playlist, we're sharing what our writers are playing obsessively and highlighting some of the Pitchfork staff's favorite new music.