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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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mpi04 / MediaPunch / IPX How Will XXXTentacion Be Remembered?
The rapper, who died at 20, was a tragic hero to some young fans and artists, even while allegations of violence piled up against him.
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YouTube Do Beyoncé Fans Have to Forgive Jay-Z?
The Carters’ surprise collaborative album, Everything Is Love, insists that past grievances are buried. Will the Beyhive feel the same way?
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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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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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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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James Green / Getty Remembering Clarence Fountain, a Gospel Legend
The singer, who died at 88, was a founding member of the Blind Boys of Alabama, and embodied the vicissitudes of a decades-long career in music.
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Lucy Nicholson / Reuters What Went Wrong With Spotify’s ‘Hateful Conduct’ Policy?
The company’s quickly abandoned stance against misbehavior is a sign that the record industry still doesn’t want to police the ethics of its stars.
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Mario Anzuoni / Reuters The Trumpian Dissonance of Kanye West's ‘Violent Crimes’
On Ye, the album he premiered Thursday night, the rapper speaks of his daughters (and wife) with a disturbingly voyeuristic tone.
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Matt Detrich / USA Today Sports / Reuters Kanye West’s Ye Sparks and Sputters
Amid a few gripping moments, the rapper’s eighth album all-too-briefly glances at politics and mental health.
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Erika Goldring / Bennett Raglin / Getty / ... Pusha T, Drake, and the Limits of Rap Beef
Four Atlantic staffers discuss hip-hop’s vicious and messy brawl of the moment and how the art of the diss track has evolved.
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Atlantic Records Cardi B’s ‘I Like It’ Is the Song of the Summer
Sorry, Drake.
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Dylan Martinez / Reuters Was Classic Rock a Sound, or a Tribe?
Steven Hyden’s book Twilight of the Gods argues that the appeal of the now-dwindling Baby Boomer guitar gods was only ever personal.
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Mario Anzuoni / Reuters Kanye West’s Hypocrisy on Empathy and Celebrity
The rapper insisting that a photo of Whitney Houston’s bathroom be the cover art for Pusha T’s Daytona is a clear betrayal of his rhetoric about compassion.
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Mario Anzuoni / Reuters The Silence in Kelly Clarkson’s Call for ‘Action’ on Mass Shootings
At the Billboard Music Awards, the pop star asked for a “moment of action” after the massacre in Santa Fe, Texas—but kept quiet on what might prevent the next horror.
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Atlantic Records Fight Songs: Can Political Debate Make Good Music?
Kanye West and Janelle Monáe are among those artists to stage rhetorical battles between red and blue America.
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Jason Merritt / Getty Is It Futile to 'Dissect' Frank Ocean's Work?
The new season of a beloved podcast series smartly seeks not to taxonomize the monastic artist’s discography, but to contextualize it.
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Atlantic Records Rita Ora's 'Girls': The Same-Sex Pop of the Past
A song-of-the-summer contender about women kissing women is being received as anything but progressive.
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FX Donald Glover's Evolving Vision of Black Kinship
In the season finale of “Atlanta,” as in his recent “This Is America” video, the artist shows his preoccupation with the burden and blessing of the communal bond.
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Brendan McDermid / Reuters The New Prince of Pablum
In a wave of interchangeable Millennial pop stars, Charlie Puth’s dorkiness on his album Voicenotes proves an asset.
