Music Features

The two Atlanta rappers in Earthgang know their music has a tendency to cover a lot of ground. The duo, comprised of Olu (a.k.a. Johnny Venus) and WowGr8 (born Eian Parker), have spent the past few years reinventing Southern rap at a pace as dizzying as it’s been dazzling. For …

Capturing the yearning in a Daniel Johnston song is a difficult thing, possibly because the specific kind of longing felt by Johnston — the prolific outsider musician who died a couple of years ago — was difficult to describe, much like the untranslatable words saudade in Portuguese or toska in …

Since 1997, Rahsaan Patterson has specialized in handsome songs, loving and lovelorn, packed with vocal pirouettes, supple pleading, and lush harmonies. The singer draws from R&B’s venerable Quiet Storm tradition, making music that would fit comfortably next to oldies by Anita Baker and Stevie Wonder. But when Patterson entered the …

It’s one thing to revive a genre and another to resuscitate a specific type of old-school song. But on “Another Man,” from his new self-titled debut, Buffalo Nichols has both goals in mind: to update the blues and the protest song in the 21st century. Born in Houston but raised …

Leave it to Parquet Courts, the ever-inventive, erudite indie rock outfit, to make a pandemic record before the pandemic. The Brooklyn band’s seventh album, Sympathy for Life, out October 22nd, is a meditation on technology, alienation, and impersonal relationships; masks are a recurring theme, albeit in a more classic psychological …

To celebrate his 80th birthday, Parliament-Funkadelic founder George Clinton recently sat down with Rolling Stone for a career-spanning interview, where he dug deep into the real origins of P-Funk’s sound, explained why he chooses weed over hard drugs, and reflected on his legacy. The whole conversation, where Clinton also talked …

Even before they revved themselves up into synth-boosted MTV hitmakers in the Eighties, ZZ Top were never an ordinary blues-rock band. After Cream and Jimi Hendrix warped electric blues into psychedelia, ZZ Top pulled it back to the dusty ground of Texas, but they weren’t as straight-ahead as they seemed: …

At some point before his death in July 1971, Jim Morrison handwrote a list, titled “Plan for Book,” that laid out his thoughts on a collection of his poetry, lyrics, and other work. Now, 50 years after his passing and the release of his last album with the Doors, that …

Leave it to 98 Degrees to reform and announce a new project in the middle of a summer heatwave. Jeff Timmons, brothers Nick and Drew Lachey, and Justin Jeffre are returning to the spotlight as a band for the first time in eight years for the “98 Days of Summer” …

Mainstream Nashville’s attempts to engage with a Spanish-speaking audience have been hit-or-miss, despite the obvious similarities between country music and Tejano or Norteño. Freddy Fender is probably the best-known example — his “Before the Next Teardrop Falls” hit Number One in 1975 — but other artists, like Rick Trevino and …