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Republic Records What Is Ariana Grande Doing?
In her first songs since the Manchester bombing, the singer has triumphed with a rare pop commodity: inscrutability.
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Mark Blinch / Reuters Why Drake Can’t Pull Off Being the ‘Good Guy’
Scorpion subtly invokes spirituality as the rapper moves into fatherhood, but he’s missing the bigger message.
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Lucas Jackson What Classical Music Can Learn From Kanye West
Whether or not Ye was forward-thinking, the musicians behind the Yeethoven project want to bring two very different genres together.
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Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Coachella The Grandeur of Great Protest Music
Political art that outlasts its times needs more than just a powerful message.
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Denis Balibouse / Reuters Is Empathy the Essence of Soul Music?
The genre’s sound, sentiments, and politics all aim for the same connection.
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Disney Making Innovative Art Is a Form of Generosity
An experimental composer proposes a new way to think about tradition versus progress.
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HBO Westworld’s Virtual Afterlife Might Not Be Fiction
HBO’s drama added a layer of complication—and real-world relevance—by introducing digitally simulated locations in its second season.
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Chloe Scheffe The Changing Sound of Male Rage in Rock Music
Linkin Park introduced new ways of expressing male angst into the mainstream—an evolution that continues today.
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HBO Westworld: Is This Now?
Three Atlantic staffers discuss “The Passenger,” the final episode of Season 2.
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Rebecca Blackwell / AP Nine Inch Nails Enters Its Least Compromising Phase Yet
The rock band’s Bad Witch completes a trilogy of terse, inventive, post-Trump blasts of rage.
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Mario Anzuoni / Reuters Mike Shinoda Asks Not to Be Defined by Loss
The rapper’s new album, Post Traumatic, insists that the music go on, nearly one year after the death of his Linkin Park bandmate Chester Bennington.
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HBO Westworld: Who Cares About the Man in Black?
Three Atlantic staffers discuss “Vanishing Point,” the ninth episode of Season 2.
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USA Today Sports / Reuters Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s Marriage of Conquest
With Everything Is Love, pop’s biggest couple celebrates itself—and its significance to America.
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Netflix How Queer Is Queer Eye?
In Season 2 of Netflix’s reboot, gay lifestyle advice has less to do with sexuality than with self-definition.
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Rob Grabowski / Invision / AP Kanye West’s Rock-and-Roll Moment
On the highlights of two recent albums—Ye and Kids See Ghosts—the rapper reaches across genres to redefine “freedom” again and again.
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Dennis Van Tine / STAR MAX / AP What Anthony Bourdain Understood About Authenticity
He was one of 21st-century pop culture’s few figures to argue persuasively for an assailed and slippery concept: realness.
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HBO Westworld: Ghost Nation, Revealed
Three Atlantic staffers discuss “Kiksuya,” the eighth episode of Season 2.
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Ash Kingston Serpentwithfeet’s Songs of Supernatural Intimacy
The experimental musician’s powerful debut album, Soil, blends gospel and the gothic.
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JoJo Whilden / FX Pose and the Uncapturable Brilliance of the Ballroom
Amid a wave of new tributes to the queer art of voguing, Ryan Murphy’s FX show struggles to capture the subculture’s energy.
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Anthony Bolante / Reuters Donald Trump’s Mysterious Sense of Irony
The president is even further from the definition than Alanis Morissette was.
