Classic Westerns make a good parallel with jazz biopics—melodramas and morality tales set in an imagined past where the facts are twisted as needed but with better music. | | | | Better than yours: A still from Kelis' original "Milkshake" video shoot, Nov. 2, 2003.
(L. Cohen/WireImage/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | "Classic Westerns make a good parallel with jazz biopics—melodramas and morality tales set in an imagined past where the facts are twisted as needed but with better music."
| | | | | | rantnrave:// Hip-hop op-ed alert: J. COLE adds his voice to the in-progress BLACK LIVES MATTER box set that is pop music in summer 2020 with "SNOW ON THA BLUFF," which isn't so much a protest song about police brutality as it is a protest song about a protest movement against police brutality. It's written from the perspective of a man who wants to participate but hasn't figured out how. He's wrestling with what he knows vs. what he doesn't know, he's been called out for not speaking out, or at least he thinks he has, and he has a few thoughts about the woman who he thinks called him out. He's humble enough to understand she's "way smarter than me," but there's something about her "tone," specifically her "queen tone," and, oh dear. Cue TWITTER. The case against J. Cole. The defense. It was immediately understood the song was a response to NONAME, though he doesn't name names. Her three-week-old tweet, since deleted, about how "poor black folks all over the country are putting their bodies on the line in protest for our collective safety and y'all favorite top selling rappers not even willing to put a tweet up" was widely understood to be at least partly about him, though she didn't name names either. Names aren't needed. Everyone knows. "Low key I be thinkin' she talkin' about me" is how he puts it. The gist of "Snow on tha Bluff," in which Cole raps over a drumless loop of guitar, electric piano and choral vocals that feels, appropriately, more like underscore than song, is this: He knows he isn't doing enough for the cause. He wants to be educated. He wants her to do the educating. He resents that she won't do that work. He's frustrated, angry even, that she doesn't seem to have the patience to bring him along. As several tweeters pointed out, he could join her book club. Because she literally has a book club. "Snow on tha Bluff" isn't a dumb song, just a problematic one. The writing is beautiful, the argument is muddled and the divide he straddles is no doubt very real. One can imagine lots of listeners silently nodding in agreement at a strange new privilege Cole identifies: the privilege of wokeness, which he believes she was born into and he was not. "Just 'cause you woke and I'm not," he raps, after calling out the good, activist parenting he imagines she had, is "no reason to talk like you better than me." His humility has morphed, within a single sentence, into a weapon. Will he bring that weapon to the protest one day, or will he reserve it for that internal struggle?... The formerly anonymous author of the widely circulated "Dear White Music Executives" comes out of hiding... Urban or nah? Latin artists J BALVIN, DON OMAR, GUAYNAA and BRYANT MYERS share their thoughts on a controversial label... LIVE FROM HERE WITH CHRIS THILE is canceled, a victim of cuts at AMERICAN PUBLIC MEDIA... A SPIKE LEE-directed film of DAVID BYRNE's Broadway show AMERICAN UTOPIA will air on HBO later this year. The Broadway show is scheduled for a second run starting in September, pending the pandemic. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | | | |  | Los Angeles Times | | An illicit dance party, held in a South L.A. warehouse on Friday night, may have been the city's first live music event since the coronavirus shutdown. | | | |  | Africa is a Country | | In Afro-Caribbean music, there exists a vinyl screen to one side of roots reggae, and few people hear the shows being played on the other side. The "World Music" record industry has something to do with it. | | | |  | Pitchfork | | Facing existential shutdowns, a group of 2,000 venues from across America is lobbying Congress to secure desperately needed funds. | | | |  | MusicAlly | | Earlier today, the European Commission launched two formal antitrust investigations of Apple, including one spurred in part by Spotify's complaint to the EC. | | | |  | The New York Times | | As the music industry reckons with racial inequality, one of the first old structures to fall has been a term that dates back to the 1970s. | | | |  | Paper | | The Minneapolis artist and performer on activism, revolution and Patti LaBelle. | | | |  | NME | | On her fearless, grunge-inspired new album, 'Punisher', the singer-songwriter lays old ghosts to rest and celebrates her sense of self - contradictions and all. | | | |  | Music Industry Blog | | Tencent's combined $200 million investment in WMG follows on the heels of its $3.6 billion joint investment in Universal Music. It is hardly Tencent's first investments in music, having spent $6.2 billion on music investments since 2016. | | | |  | Texas Monthly | | The community is fighting to save the 73-year-old cinema and venue, which was denied federal funding. | | | |  | Highway Hi-Fi Podcast | | For being studied from philosophical, sociological, psychological, and biological perspectives for centuries, there is no one unified theory on the meaning of laughter. A common condition of all cultures, every person is susceptible to these involuntary responses. As Aristotle put it, "Humans are laughing animals". | | | |  | Variety | | Grammy Awards are great, but the Recording Academy's greatest contribution to the music industry is arguably MusiCares -- its charitable foundation to support music industry workers in need. | | | |  | Clash Magazine | | The moment that the citizens of Bristol decided to give the Colston Statue some impromptu swimming lessons is the very second that British culture and history was split open, finally freed from shackles that have been built up over decades, or even centuries. | | | |  | Heavy Blog Is Heavy | | On Sunday, May 31st, I sat on the lawn of the State College, Pennsylvania police station. With eyes shut, I listened as a young Black man spoke of his experiences. He spoke of how his school refused to reprimand a fellow student for racist language, and how belittled he felt when the most Black history he was taught was a half-semester offered as an elective. | | | |  | NPR Music | | Many jazz fans hate biopic films, but critic Kevin Whitehead likes noticing which true elements get in -- or get left out -- as messy lives are squeezed into stock-story formulas. | | | | | The New York Times | | The Norwegian bassist's group, Overseas, is releasing a live album featuring a decade's worth of his immersive compositions. | | | |  | Billboard | | When Sam Bettens was in his early twenties, he got to experience what it's like to be a global rock star. As the lead singer for the Belgian band K's Choice, Bettens was booking international gigs, releasing popular music and getting to do what he loved with his best friends. | | | |  | The Guardian | | Online station No Signal and its flagship show #NS10v10 have become social media sensations -- and are bringing black communities together during coronavirus and protests. | | | |  | First Floor | | a.k.a. PR companies aren't the only way to get noticed. | | | |  | NPR | | Hear the cellist talk about the purpose of music in the face of racial tension and health crises, plus his new album, Not Our First Goat Rodeo, which reunites him with old bluegrass buddies. | | | |  | Engineering and Technology Magazine | | How is the besieged music industry coping with the prospect of long-distance entertainment? | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group | | |
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