DAILY DOT: The emerging consensus is that Schoolboy Q’s Blank Face LP is a messy but exceptional record—a sizable notch in gangsta rap’s three-decade-plus timeline. It’s also big-selling outlaw music in a summer of insanity. My feelings about it change daily. Q is deeply connected to unifying messiah Kendrick Lamar, but there’s no way Blank Face was going to be a sprawling but politically digestible epic like To Pimp A Butterfly. Q’s oeuvre hasn’t pointed that way, and the video for “Groovy Tony,” released in April, confirmed that the L.A. rapper with the punchy flow was going to stay grimy. Instead of […]
HOT DOCUMENT: Today’s RNC Schedule
Via @DLin71
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR: Comic Mike Birbiglia’s new film, Don’t Think Twice, was inspired by an observation his wife made when she came to one of his improv shows. “She goes, ‘It’s amazing that everyone is equally talented in this show, and yet this one person is on Saturday Night Live and this one person is a movie star and this one person lives on an air mattress in Queens,’ ” Birbiglia tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “And I thought: Not only is that true and a great observation, but it’s also a movie.” Don’t Think Twice tells the story of […]
Melania Trump’s 2016 Convention Speech Plagiarizes Michelle Obama’s 2008 DNC Speech
There is a very hard and fast rule in American society, when you plagiarize you are disqualified. You are fired. Or, barring that, if you have even a shred of honor or shame, you apologize and resign. There is no Fair Use claim for unattributed word-for-word appropriation of other First Lady’s convention speeches. When Melanoma Trump stood before the cameras and delivered that speech as if it were her own she was lying right to the face of the American people. The media should refuse to cover another second of the RNC until the Trump campaign comes clean about this, […]
RIP: Alan Vega, The Voice Of Suicide, Dead @ 78
NEW YORK TIMES: Alan Vega, the singer in the minimalist, proto-punk, proto-electro, proto-industrial two-man band Suicide and a prolific musician and visual artist on his own, died on Saturday. He was 78. Suicide, particularly in its early years, was as much a provocation as a concert act. Formed in 1970, it was one of the first bands to bill themselves as “punk music.” With Martin Rev playing loud, insistently repetitive riffs on keyboards and drum machines and Mr. Vega crooning, chanting, muttering and howling his lyrics about insanity, mayhem and death, Suicide fiercely polarized its audiences. “We almost got […]
HOT DOCUMENT: Tuesday’s RNC Schedule
Via @DLin71
FUNNY GIRL: Matador Recording Artist Lucy Dacus
Photo by DUSTIN CONDREN BY DYLAN LONG You probably haven’t heard of indie rocker Lucy Dacus just yet, but that will soon change. With the release New Burden, her Matador debut LP, she is well on her way to becoming one of the most talked about singer-songwriters of 2016. The girl knows what she’s doing, plain and simple. Her entire debut album was recorded in under 48 hours, her voice kicks major ass, and her lyricism is nothing short of truthful and direct. She’s already notched a #4 spot on Time Magazine’s “Best New Albums of 2016 So Far” list […]
ART OF THE DEAL Ghostwriter Says The Book Is A Scam, Trump Is A Fraud & A Sociopath Who, If Elected POTUS, Will Be The End Of Civilization
THE NEW YORKER: In his journal, Schwartz wrote, “Trump stands for many of the things I abhor: his willingness to run over people, the gaudy, tacky, gigantic obsessions, the absolute lack of interest in anything beyond power and money.” Looking back at the text now, Schwartz says, “I created a character far more winning than Trump actually is.” The first line of the book is an example. “I don’t do it for the money,” Trump declares. “I’ve got enough, much more than I’ll ever need. I do it to do it. Deals are my art form. Other people paint […]
USE YOUR ILLUSION: How GNR Saved My Life
Artwork by RYAN ROCK ARTIST via FINE ART AMERICA BY CHRIS MCCARRY In 1998, I was an awkward, oft-ridiculed thirteen-year-old lacking many of the things that lead to a successful adolescence: friends, girls, sports, dads. But Guns N’ Roses changed all that for me, as they did for so many in the last 30 years. The first time I watched Axl Rose get off that bus in the video for “Welcome To The Jungle,” I felt we were brothers, like the two of us were doing the same thing: stepping purposefully into the unknown after wandering unfulfilled for years. There’s […]
CINEMA: Consider The Lobster
VULTURE: The genius of The Lobster, the English-language debut of Greek writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos — whose 2009 wonder Dogtooth was the first Greek movie since 1977 to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film — is that it does not make the assumption that fuels every rom-com and love story known to man: that we can choose how we find love. In the world of The Lobster, all single people are sent to a hotel for 45 days in order to find a mate. If they fail, they are turned into an animal of their […]
SOUND & VISION: David Bowie’s $13 Million Art Collection To Be Exhibited In Los Angeles & New York & Hong Kong & Then Auctioned At Sotheby’s
THE GUARDIAN: The collection will be seen by the public for the first time when it is exhibited for 10 days by Sotheby’s, after highlights are sent on tour to Los Angeles, New York and Hong Kong, before the three-day sale in November. Bowie’s interest in art went well beyond collecting the fashionable artists of his day. He painted and was fascinated by art and design throughout his career, taking a close interest in the visual presentation of his work, from his stage costumes and album covers to videos, including those made for his last singles and album months […]
BEING THERE: Macca @ Citizens Bank Park
Photo by BEN PELTA-HELLER Rick Warren can suck it. If you want a congregation of people waiting to experience love and grace, Paul McCartney brings it like no other. When I was a kid, before I knew about drugs, I would listen to Best Of The Beatles on my Walkman CD player, and “Hello Goodbye” used to do it for me, let me tell you. At any rate, at a certain point, in college or whatever, it becomes clear that The Beatles are not cool, and Paul McCartney is the least cool Beatle. He’s the one who you would want […]
BEING THERE: Dylan @ The Academy Of Music
Artist’s rendering EDITOR’S NOTE: This originally posted in November of 2014. The Academy of Music opera house in Philadelphia opened in 1857, which, if memory serves, is where and when Bob Dylan first went electric — much to the consternation of the stovepipe-hatted folkies in attendance, who felt he was selling out the purity of old-timey steam-powered protest anthems. It is said that Stephen A. Douglas was so incensed he attempted to chop the cable supplying power to the Academy stage with an axe and had to be wrestled to the ground by none other than Abraham Lincoln, who “licked […]