As an artist, I think the most significant accomplishment or feeling is realizing something you've created from a fragile and intimate place has reached out, resonated and affected someone else, possibly changing how they see the world. | | | | King Von at the Tabernacle, Atlanta, March 11, 2020.
(Prince Williams/WireImage/Getty Images) | | | | | | “As an artist, I think the most significant accomplishment or feeling is realizing something you've created from a fragile and intimate place has reached out, resonated and affected someone else, possibly changing how they see the world.”
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| | rantnrave:// A short biography of KING VON, the fast-rising Chicago rapper who on Friday became at least the 16th hip-hop artist murdered in 2020 (and the third from Chicago, after FBG DUCK and TRAY SAVAGE): He grew up on what has been called "the most dangerous block in Chicago," the 6400 block of South Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, better known as O'Block. He spent a chunk of his teenage years in jail, where he developed the art of writing raps without beats, "because you know there ain’t no beats in jail." To the end, he wrote a lot of his songs that way, rapping completed pieces to producers and asking them to come up with beats. He was a craftsman. Writing away from studios, away from the time pressure they impose, he said, you get "more time to sit over one word, one sentence, really perfect it. The stories can get more detailed, have more depth." His stories, like those of many of his peers from the Chicago drill scene, detailed life on the streets around O'Block and tended to be violent; a lot of the inspiration, he said, came from novels he read in jail. His third album, WELCOME TO O'BLOCK, came out 10 days ago on LIL DURK's label, ONLY THE FAMILY. "It’s been a long time," Stereogum's TOM BREIHAN wrote, "since a rap storyteller showed this much promise." He was facing charges, along with Lil Durk, stemming from a February shooting in Atlanta, where he was living. Von had his album-release party in Atlanta on Friday and that's where he and another man were murdered, in a shootout outside the MONACO HOOKAH LOUNGE. The details remain murky, though on Saturday Atlanta police charged a man named TIMOTHY LEEKS with Von's murder. He had ambitions beyond rap. He told writer MARK ELIBERT he wanted to invest in real estate and, in Elibert's words, "own everything in sight, including various places in his neighborhood that he would use to give back to those in need." Shades of NIPSEY HUSSLE. "I’m giving myself 10 years in this," he told Elibert. "I’m actually trying to do this for five because I’m too raw to just do it in 10." He got neither in the end. He was 26. There's a dark cloud over Chicago drill. RIP... The rest of today's rantnrave is dedicated to a slightly less talented rapper who was one of my all-time favorite TV stars, a rock-steady, everlasting presence in so many of our lives who made pop culture smarter. Please remember to phrase all your responses in the form of a question... This '60s and '70s rock star who's sometimes one-third and sometimes one-quarter of a well-known supergroup says he sold some of his publishing this year because "that’s the only way that I can continue to take care of my family and live in my home" during the pandemic. (And he wants the world to know "you couldn’t feed a squirrel on what [streaming services] pay us")... Their four-year-old song about the 45th president of the US was the soundtrack for celebrations of the 46th president-elect in Los Angeles and elsewhere, and hit #1 on the ITUNES chart over the weekend. Fans were campaigning to get it to top the BILLBOARD HOT 100 as well... An amphitheater in North Augusta, Ga., will be named for this hometown soul singing great whose career didn't take off until she was in her 40s... An LBGTQ youth home in Dallas will be named for this late frontman of the thrash metal band POWER TRIP... Thirty-two-year-old drummer ILAN RUBIN is the youngest person ever inducted into the ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME, after having spent the past decade playing with this band that officially entered the Hall Saturday... This pioneering Cuban jazz percussionist who recorded and performed with the likes of CHARLIE PARKER, TONY BENNETT, TITO PUENTE, DIZZY GILLESPIE and RAY CHARLES was celebrated for, among many other things, turning conga drums into melodic instruments (RIP)... He was the "bassist with the beautiful voice" in MIDNIGHT OIL (RIP)... He was the lead singer of early '60s rockers the DOVELLS and had a major solo hit with "1, 2, 3" (RIP). | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| Drill music, for some, is purely entertainment. And for others, it’s the difference between life and death. | | |
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| King Von was more than just a rapper from the south side of Chicago that recounted stories of the hood all over menacing drill production. He was a rising star that fought through difficult circumstances and positioned himself to be a leader of the new generation of Chicago Hip Hop. | | |
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| 17-year-old Tate McRae’s “You Broke Me First” has been used in more than a million TikTok videos, inspiring her record label RCA to retool their marketing strategy. | | |
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| Fleetwood Mac, Aly and AJ, and Jack Johnson have had years-old songs coast to the top of TikTok. "There’s so much opportunity out there for all these legacy labels," says one of the app's music execs. | | |
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| And Black women deserve better than rock ’n’ roll’s lies. | | |
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| Nannette Streicher has been marginalized by history, but she was one of Europe’s finest keyboard manufacturers. | | |
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| If only 'embracing failure' was as easy as Silicon Valley makes it out to be. | | |
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| Each Deaf Broadway production uses Zoom recordings to interpret shows, often playing captioned video side-by-side as actors sign. The result: theater “for the Deaf, by the Deaf.” | | |
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| It's "July Morning" that resonated most with me, and still does to this day, an epic on a par with that "Led Zeppelin IV" biggie and Deep Purple’s "Child in Time", if maybe not so lauded in wider circles. They don’t write ’em like that anymore. | | |
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| YG and Nipsey Hussle's 2016 protest song against Donald Trump became newly relevant on Saturday, shooting to No. 1 on the iTunes chart. | | |
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| The Kronos Quartet's "Long Time Passing" was recorded before the United States shut down due to COVID-19, but made in anticipation of the country's 2020 election. And, in light of the ongoing pandemic and the delays that surrounded the election (in terms of both absentee ballots and tabulating results), the title takes on new meaning. | | |
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| Guetta’s last Top 100 win, in 2011, signaled EDM taking over from trance and dominating the 21st century’s second decade. | | |
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| The deaths of Walker and Shaver this month prompted critic Charles Aaron to consider the impact of their work on the wider sound of American music. | | |
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| The indie-rock lifers are living out their L.A. quarantine as bandmates and as a couple, still navigating where the line is between the two. | | |
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| With the publication of his new book, *The Nolan Variations*, an in depth portrait of Christopher Nolan, Tom Shone picks out ten of the best bits of music from the director’s oeuvre, from "Memento" to "Tenet." | | |
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| Listening to Ice Cube sparked my interest in Black activists and issues, which my mentor then deepened and guided. | | |
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| Solutions to new artistic strictures include video and virtual reality to maintain a sense of community and connection. | | |
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| When we look at our great heroes, they all have something in common: born with a mission too fierce for easy public perception, they’re a leader and not a follower, misunderstood and too early for their time, persecuted for their bravery and perhaps just for being unfiltered. | | |
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| Candido Camero was a virtuoso percussionist who had a major hand - or more precisely, two of them - in the development of Afro-Cuban music. | | |
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| | | | | | | RIP. From "Welcome to O'Block," out now on Only the Family. |
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