When Eazy-E departed our earthly realm, he left behind not just his own substantial body of work, but an entire, still-thriving record label with a lively, promising roster. The rapper/mogul’s Ruthless Records had been a revolutionary force in the hip hop industry, establishing the…
The Bangles’ origin story is, at this point, the stuff of pop mythology, with Susanna Hoffs’ perfectly on-brand “must be nice” advertisement for bandmates and the shifting line-up’s emergence in the niche Paisley Underground scene. But that backstory actually goes a long way toward…
Every time I come back to Pinkerton, I feel the same hesitancy just before hitting play. Have I finally outgrown this record? Will the second-hand embarrassment of hearing Rivers Cuomo croon “smell you on my hand for days / can’t wash your scent away”…
In 2008, the Drive-by Truckers weren’t exactly a band on the ropes — actually, they were on a winning streak that no other contemporary American band could touch — but they were certainly a band with something to prove. For one thing, they were…
Few, if any, artists in the history of modern popular music experienced a creative eruption as rich as did Miles Davis did in the years leading up to his temporary retirement in 1975. Already the biggest name in jazz and the progenitor of numerous…
Don’t call it a comeback. Even though it was described in the press as such, the May 29, 1984 release of Tina Turner’s album Private Dancer wasn’t really a comeback, as the artist herself recalls in Tina, Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin’s recent documentary…
In the opening scene of the music video for “What Have You Done for Me Lately,” the first single released from Janet Jackson’s 1986 blockbuster album Control, Jackson sits at a diner table with her choreographer Paula Abdul, who in a few years would…
“Here is my music. It is all I have to tell you how I feel. Know that your love keeps my love strong.” This message from Stevie Wonder to his listeners was embossed in braille on the cover of the original LP pressings of…
When William Bevan (a.k.a Burial) was working on the original tracks for the follow-up to his 2006 freshman release, he “took ages on them” (per a 2007 interview with Mark Fisher for The Wire). At this point, his identity was still unknown to the…
If one were to properly date when Pascal Arbez-Nicolas’ cultural ascension commenced — from his humble beginning as a no-name disk jockey, steadily slumming it in France under the moniker of Hustler Pornstar — it would be easy to attribute his rise to an…
