That’s why I’m really thankful for music. Because I get to express parts of myself I don’t really know how to express. | | | | Just the future of hip-hop reading documents at his desk in 1996, NBD.
(Al Pereira/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “That’s why I’m really thankful for music. Because I get to express parts of myself I don’t really know how to express.”
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| | rantnrave:// It's not generally possible to quantify how long we mean when we call an album "long-awaited," but in the case of JAY-Z's 4:44, we can trace the waiting back to an exact moment. We've been waiting for Jay to say something for precisely 14 months and 7 days, dating to the moment BEYONCÉ unveiled LEMONADE on HBO and told her side of a story that may or may not have been about her and him. The best pop album of 2016 was about lots of other things, too, and whether Jay is responding directly to it, is inspired by it or is following a map of his own on 4:44 is something we may never have a clear answer to. But be prepared to spend the rest of 2017 debating it. (And if he isn't hella inspired by LEMONADE, that arguably makes him not only a bad hubby but a bad pop and hip-hop fan. Just sayin'.) The video teasers for the album have been intriguing in a mysterious movie-trailer kind of way, and while no one is expecting him to make the best pop album of 2017, 20-plus years into his career, no one has ever made a dime betting against him. So don't. Just don't... Oh yeah, it's exclusive to TIDAL and SPRINT customers. Boo... The implied rebuke of BILL MAHER (and many many others) in this incredible song and video is priceless, even if Jay does go on to slightly overstate the level of Jewish property ownership in the US... Fun fact of the day, courtesy COMPLEX's SHAWN SETARO: "Jay is only a year younger than BIG DADDY KANE, who hasn't released a new album since 1998, and whose frequent live performances are defined by songs recorded before 1990"... Crazy idea for a new music-discovery venture in 2017: a radio station with DJs who play whatever they feel like playing whenever they feel like playing it. A double devil-horns salute to my friends TYLER LENANE, JON MAPLES and the rest of the GIMME RADIO team, which launched this week as a really, really good all-metal station, with more stations promised in the future. They're not the first to think of this, obviously, but the execution is polished, promising and still metal. Nice bonus touch: A "buy vinyl" button next to most songs that links directly to a page to do just that... Speaking of vinyl: SONY is about to start pressing it for the first time in 28 years... I might have bought one of those KENDALL and KYLIE t-shirts if they said NEGATIVLAND on the back and NEGATIVLAND was getting the profits. Otherwise, um, no... Surprise!... It's FRIDAY and that means new music from the aforementioned JAY-Z along with CALVIN HARRIS, JAMES ELKINGTON, FLOATING POINTS, WASHED OUT, TLC, PUBLIC ENEMY, Z-RO, MC EIHT, BEACH HOUSE, LAPALUX, ACACIA STRAIN and BAIO... RIP KELAN PHIL COHRAN and ROGER D. ABRAHAMS... MUSICREDEF is taking an extended FOURTH OF JULY break. We'll be back Wednesday morning. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | SPIN |
| In October 2015, MTV announced an overhaul to its website, which it hoped would help reposition itself for the future. Now, with a celebrated new staff departed or laid off, an experiment in the power of longform journalism is dead. According to sources, this is the story of why. | | |
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 | Complex |
| Unlike his peers, Jay Z has managed to stay at the center of the hip-hop conversation for two decades. Why? | | |
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 | The Muse |
| Read her lips: Britney Spears is pissed and she wants credit. In a recent interview that ran on Israeli TV, the pop diva decried those who accuse her of lip-syncing. "A lot of people think that I don't sing live," Spears said. | | |
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 | Music Industry Blog |
| It is still common to hear people talk about Millennials as if it is one amorphous group. In actual fact, Millennials are now 2 entirely distinct generations, not 1. In addition to the core Millennials we now have a new generation of younger consumers born on or around 2000. | | |
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 | The Fader |
| Paramore’s Hayley Williams has been an icon of an entire generation’s angst. Now, at 28, she’s finding she has her own unrest to deal with. | | |
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 | The Atlantic |
| The show’s producer, Jeffrey Seller, explains the origins of the November statement to Vice President-elect Mike Pence. | | |
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 | Afropop Worldwide |
| In Jamaica, sound systems are more than just a stack of speakers blasting the latest tunes to an eager crowd. Over the last 70 years, they have touched all levels of society in Jamaica, determining the island’s popular taste and profoundly influencing the daily lives of its citizenry. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| Forty years after its release, the ingenious studio gurus behind the robot-funk masterpiece talk about how it came to be. | | |
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 | NPR |
| The Islamic State is losing territory in Iraq and Syria but is trying to keep its supporters' spirits up through song. Its newest release, "My State Remains," reveals an organization down but not out. | | |
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 | Vulture |
| When I was first presented with the idea for this story -- where I would explain how to write a perfect pop song - I told my manager, 'It's a cool idea, but it doesn't make any sense. There's no one way to do it.' | | |
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 | British GQ |
| Six years ago, Calvin Harris decided to start again. Three years into a moderately successful career, he was fed up with singing, touring, doing interviews and reading reviews that were invariably unkind: everything, really. "I was just pissed off," he says now. "The frustration became unmanageable." | | |
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| NPR |
| Recently, "The New York Times" published an essay defending cultural appropriation as necessary engagement. But that's a simplistic, misguided way of looking at appropriation, which causes real harm. | | |
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 | Noisey |
| If 'cracking open a cold one with the boys' had a soundtrack, it would definitely be Luke Bryan. | | |
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 | Medium |
| Country music and augmented reality: a case study. | | |
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 | The Verge |
| In the last four years, Jay Z has released two albums, both through non-traditional means. While most artists would sign with a record label to release their album, the most successful hip-hop artist of all time, a man worth $810 million, has made deals with a smartphone maker and carrier to cover distribution and promotion | | |
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 | NME |
| Roskilde Festival's food hall is hoping to break down the prejudice against edible insects with an innovative sustainability project. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| Bad sound and indifferent crowds have traditionally made galleries dangerous places for live music, but a new breed of curators are changing the tune. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| The California rapper on his experimental new album, “Big Fish Theory,” and the unrealistic expectations of hip-hop. | | |
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 | Gimme Radio |
| It’s Gimme Radio, a new home for fans of metal & extreme music. | | |
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| The Verge |
| Producers on using the iMessage notification chime and ringtones in their songs. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | How it began, 22 years ago. |
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| © Copyright 2017, The REDEF Group |
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