Being a mother taught me to go get some money. Once you become a mom, it’s just like, 'OK, strategy. How are we going to pay for this?' You do what’s necessary, and sometimes you get creative. | | | | Rico Nasty at the FOMO Festival, Auckland, New Zealand, Jan. 15, 2020. Her album "Nightmare Vacation" is out today on Atlantic.
(Dave Simpson/WireImage/Getty Images) | | | | | | “Being a mother taught me to go get some money. Once you become a mom, it’s just like, 'OK, strategy. How are we going to pay for this?' You do what’s necessary, and sometimes you get creative.”
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| | rantnrave:// Feel-good stories, lord knows we could use some feel-good stories these days. Here's Dutch producer AMMAR JUNEDI explaining how a guy who was uploading type beats to YOUTUBE when he was 17 has a cut on an ARIANA GRANDE album at age 20. "I’m still just in my room in Rotterdam making beats on my laptop," he tells Genius, "and she’s like the biggest pop star in the world." He doesn't know how to feel about this. I do. It feels good. Here's MEGAN THEE STALLION and producer LilJuMadeDaBeat (if ever a name resisted our impulse to put names in all-caps, this is it) chatting, in glorious studio-geek detail, about how they came up together, from making beats together in a living room to making, well, Megan Thee Stallion records. Familiarity breeds trust in this case. "Even if I didn't make the song with him," says Megan, "I still send him everything I record because I feel if he not liking that s***, then it might not be goin' hard." He grew up hearing other people's songs blaring through the neighborhood from faraway sound systems, "and I always just wanted my beats to do that... I want people to hear mine from that far away, too. Subconsciously, I'm trying to break their speakers every single time." How can you not root for him? Who else is doing the work in living rooms, in studios and behind office desks to turn dreams into hits? Here are 88 "Hitmakers and Hitbreakers" behind 2020's biggest songs, courtesy Variety... The bipartisan HITS (Help Independent Tracks Succeed) Act—the acronym doesn't quite work but OK—has been introduced in the US House and US Senate. It would allow artists and producers to deduct all their recording expenses in the year they're incurred rather than amortizing them over several years, which would bring music production tax law in line with TV and film tax law. And hopefully it will be a little easier to pass than previous acronym-based attempts at getting Congress to provide pandemic relief to the music industry... Pop and rock on TV: SELENA: THE SERIES, which is actually a two-part biopic, drops today on NETFLIX (advance word has been lukewarm), while MARIAH CAREY's MAGICAL CHRISTMAS SPECIAL arrives on APPLE TV+. JULIEN TEMPLE's SHANE MACGOWAN doc, CROCK OF GOLD, and JAMES ERSKINE's BILLIE (as in HOLIDAY) are available on-demand from various providers, and MORGAN WALLEN gets a second chance at SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, two months after screwing up his first chance with a little bit of Covidiocy... RADIO DISNEY—whose groundbreaking programming helped launch pop stars like DEMI LOVATO and MILEY CYRUS—and the newer RADIO DISNEY COUNTRY are being shuttered as part of Disney's cost-cutting efforts... "I'm a cat. I can do what I want"... It's FRIDAY—and it's the last scheduled BANDCAMP Friday, so a lot of these will be Bandcamp links—and that means new music from SHAWN MENDES, RICO NASTY, DEZRON DOUGLAS & BRANDEE YOUNGER (one of my favorite ongoing collaborations in music), TISAKOREAN, YOUR OLD DROOG, SIGUR RÓS, KELLY MORAN & PRURIENT, RESPIRE, JOAN OF ARC (long-running Chicago band's swan song), GONE IS GONE (members of MASTODON, QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE and AT THE DRIVE-IN), NICK CAVE & NICHOLAS LENS, YUNGBLUD, RUSSELL DICKERSON, YUNG BABY TATE, DJ SCHEME, YXNG K.A., PLAYTHATBOIZAY, KHRUANGBIN (or, rather, a Khruangbin-curated "LateNightTales" mix), SUN-EL MUSICIAN, LEE RITENOUR, ADAM RUDOLPH, NIC DALTON & HIS GLOOMCHASERS (Nic is my Platonic ideal of Australian indie-rock, also he signed my band to his label some years back, those two things aren't necessarily related), LAVENDER DIAMOND, LOST HORIZONS, JORDANA, QUARTER-LIFE CRISIS, KASS RICHARDS, SERENA ISIOMA, ALEX MAAS, CALEXICO, BAAUER, TIMMY TRUMPET and STEVE PERRY... Oh, and this limited-edition vinyl 12-inch from THOM YORKE, BURIAL & FOUR TET (related consumer advisory)... Speaking of Bandcamp Friday, this cool new tool from HYPE MACHINE can turn any SPOTIFY playlist into a Bandcamp shopping list, with direct links... RIP ANDRE GAGNON. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| Brianna Agyemang and Jamila Thomas, the founders of #TheShowMustBePaused who demanded the music business reckon with racial injustice, lead this year’s roster of over 200 female executives and activists changing the industry. | | |
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| The producers, songwriters, mixers, managers and key executives responsible for delivering the smashes. | | |
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| The great songs of 2020 were as abundant as the rest of the year was a drag. Think of these 100 jams as a silver linings playlist for the worst year of our collective lives. | | |
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| “Life Goes On” broke the language barrier—but there are still other obstacles holding them back. | | |
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| How did a hacker find Jay Electronica's "Act II: The Patents of Nobility (The Turn)" in the first place? What right did he have to release Electronica’s fabled opus? And did Electronica agree with his reasoning? | | |
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| In the latest Diary of a Song, Prince’s estate and his closest collaborators offer an unprecedented peek into his creative process. | | |
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| The runway to success was short for Black Pumas. Five months after releasing their debut album, the Austin band was nominated for Best New Artist at the Grammys. In this episode, guitarist/producer Adrian Quesada talks about being taken under Prince’s wing, singer Eric Burton reminisces about writing the group’s biggest hit in church, and they explain their unique chemistry. | | |
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| Peter Robinson wonders if the secret to a happy and successful artist career is focusing on your biggest fan - literally. | | |
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| The initial installment of the two-part television show details the first 20 years of Selena’s life-yet it feels like we’ve hardly gotten to know the person the series is about. | | |
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| When I heard the Jazz Standard was closing, I didn't cry. I closed my eyes. I inhaled. And six years worth of memories came tumbling to me. I promised them I would write them down, that I wouldn't forget this tiny club in the basement of Danny Meyer's Blue Smoke on East 27th Street. | | |
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| Juicy J nearly retired after Three 6 Mafia’s Oscar win. Now he’s unstoppable. | | |
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| I urge the UK government inquiry to recommend that all musicians are given a fair slice of the vast streaming cake, says singer-songwriter Nadine Shah. | | |
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| We talked to the 20-year-old producer behind Ariana Grande’s “west side.” | | |
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| Megan Thee Stallion and her longtime producer, LilJuMadeDaBeat, break down their personal relationship and “Body” of work from the early mixtape days to her new album, "Good News." | | |
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| Music Tech analyst Mark Mulligan explores what comes next after streaming saturation in this talk recorded at Music Tectonics’ conference teaser event, The Shock Before the Quake. As the streaming market reaches saturation, where will new growth drivers arise? Which unlikely platforms are poised to take the lead in converting free users to subscribers? | | |
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| With 'Future Nostalgia,' the pop dynamo reimagined what an album campaign could be - all just part of her plan for "global domination." | | |
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| The Australian group known for its sample-heavy music paused for 16 years between its first two albums. Sobriety, and an ambitious new set of inspirations, fuel its latest LP, “We Will Always Love You.” | | |
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| It’s 40 years since the biggest rock band in the world broke up, two months after the death of drummer John Bonham. The Zeppelin myth holds that the band wouldn't go on without him, but others tell a darker tale. Mark Beaumont explores what really happened. | | |
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| The Seatbelts frontwoman talks working with "Bebop" creator Shinichirō Watanabe and what live-recording the intergalactic jazz soundtrack was really like. | | |
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| On our latest episode of our journey through the music of the 1990s, we dive deep into the biggest holiday song of the past three decades and Mariah Carey’s long journey to happiness. | | |
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| | | | | Dezron Douglas & Brandee Younger |
| | Pharoah Sanders cover, from "Force Majeure," out today on International Anthem. |
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