It feels like I'm alive today because of being able to write those songs. Instead of darkness, instead of other choices humans make, I chose to write songs. | | | | The general theory of violin: Albert Einstein on board the S.S. Belgenland, bound for California, in 1931.
(Hulton Archive/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | "It feels like I'm alive today because of being able to write those songs. Instead of darkness, instead of other choices humans make, I chose to write songs."
| | | | | | rantnrave:// The cover of PUSHA T's new album, DAYTONA, showed up on my phone for the first time on Friday—on my SONOS app as the song "INFRARED" came up on shuffle—and my immediate thought was it's a fantastic album cover. Noticeably great album artwork is rare these days, if only for the fact that there are so few opportunities to actually see it. The voyeuristic photo of a disheveled bathroom sink, framed almost too perfectly by what looks like pink, gray and black oxidation, could be a painting of a domestic nightmare. It's horrifyingly beautiful, deeply evocative and, not incidentally, of a piece with the lyrical themes on "Daytona." It's also, as anyone who's been paying attention knows, horrifyingly real. It's WHITNEY HOUSTON's bathroom, overrun by drugs and drug paraphernalia. It presumably was shot by someone close enough to Houston to have access to the bathroom and distant enough to betray her confidence. The NATIONAL ENQUIRER published it in 2006, with a cover story about Houston's "Drug Den." KANYE WEST, executive producer of the Pusha T album, licensed it for $85,000 (it's not clear from whom) and made a last-minute decision to use it as the cover. Is a public figure's private space fair game for public display? Is it a little more fair if it's already been seen in a newspaper? But what if that newspaper is a lurid tabloid that neither had, nor sought, the subject's permission? And what if the use is commercial—to sell another artist's work, say? Is it valid cultural commentary or gross invasion of privacy? Provocative remix or crass repurposing? What if it was a black-and-white photo taken 100 years ago, and all close friends and relatives are long gone? What if it was taken last week in the bathroom of someone who's still with us? What if it was Kanye's drug-filled bathroom, and it was being used as a RHYMEFEST album cover? How strong is Kanye's irony meter these days? We know his aesthetic game remains strong, but what about his empathy game? Where are we drawing the lines these days? Where should we be?... Whitney Houston family pro/con: Nephew says OK. Cousin says not OK... BTS is the first K-pop group to top the BILLBOARD 200... There are two BELLYs and they don't care... RIP STEWART LUPTON, ROGER CLARK and PHIL EMMANUEL. | | | - Matty Karas, curator | | | | | | | victorious, yeah we warriors | |  | The Atlantic | | The fight to control the playlist is a struggle between the group's happiness and the individual's. | | | |  | Louder | | Jesus Jones were built up by the music press - and knocked right back down again when fashions changed. Frontman Mike Edwards on chart success, depression and the rise and demise of that most despised of all music genres: "indie dance." | | | |  | Medium | | When you scoff at a boy band, you're doing exactly what the capitalists want you to do. | | | |  | The Guardian | | Once there was the Love Parade, a celebration of peace, joy and dance music. Now the city's clubbers have shown their political clout with a very noisy demonstration against the AfD party. | | | |  | The New Yorker | | The doomed event exposed the underside of our young-money-flaunting, social-media-envy-generating era. | | | |  | Pigeons & Planes | | "This album is pure to me." | | | |  | Plagiarism Today | | Sometimes an extension isn't an extension. | | | |  | Los Angeles Times | | With a direct line to his millions of Instagram followers, 19-year-old heartthrob Shawn Mendes has a pop currency his elders likely admire. | | | |  | Broadly | | Fresh out of a long-term relationship and entering my Saturn return, I've been feeling confused and hopeless. So I revisited "Return of Saturn" to see what I could learn from Gwen Stefani's evolution as an artist and person. | | | | | The Atlantic | | 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. | | | | | | | no fear, cavalier, renegade | |  | The California Sunday Magazine | | The days, weeks, and months after the worst mass shooting in modern American history. | | | |  | NPR Music | | Three women - a soprano, a mezzo-soprano, and a vice president of opera programming - join NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro for a conversation about harassment and inequity in the opera world. | | | |  | DigBoston | | Paramore dominated day one of Boston Calling. So why weren't they a headliner? | | | |  | Dazed Digital | | Whether you call it afroswing, afrowave, or afrobashment - it's the new sound of the UK. | | | |  | Paper | | The 19-year-old found fame as a freshman, and is still working out what that means. | | | |  | American Songwriter | | Paul Zollo had a nice, long chat with the guitar maestro about his new album, "The Prodigal Son." | | | |  | Marie Claire | | These six female execs are turning the music business on its head. | | | | | The Guardian | | Twenty years on, Chan Marshall remembers how it felt to write the album that became her "salvation." | | | |  | 4Columns | | A staggeringly exhaustive retrospective, currently on view at the Red Bull Arts New York space in Chelsea, offers a fascinating plunge into the Rammellzee mythology. | | | |  | The Flaming Lips | | A song by song history of the Flaming Lips episode one. | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2018, The REDEF Group | | |
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