It’s always exciting to see the rise of a new superstar in real time. Megan Thee Stallion has been growing her fanbase steadily with the effervescent Tina Snow mixtape and her biggest hit so far, “Big Ole Freak.” With her new mixtape, Fever, her first as a signed artist, Megan takes no prisoners and pumps…
Category: Music
Nicki Minaj, Roman Holiday, and Why the Culture Needs to Reevaluate Itself
If you’ve been on the Internet at all over the past few weeks, you’ve seen the rise of the latest viral meme: Nicki Minaj’s 2012 track, “Roman Holiday.” Twitter users have been using the track as the background to hilarious sped up videos of everything from dancing Simpsons’ characters to cars speeding down the highway….
ZAYN & Zhavia’s “A Whole New World” Should Have Been Kept
The new live-action Aladdin remake (out May 24) has been the most questionable in Disney movies in recent times. Two relative unknowns were cast as Aladdin (Mena Massoud) and Jasmine (Naomi Scott), Will Smith’s spectacularly awful genie was relentlessly meme’d online, and now we have this whole new take on “A Whole New World.” Everyone…
Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber Team Up on Song of the Summer Contender, “I Don’t Care”
Next to Drake, Justin Timberlake, Bruno Mars, and The Weeknd, Justin Bieber & Ed Sheeran are the biggest and most influential male artists of the past decade. Bieber’s astronomical rise from YouTube cover star to Grammy-winning chart topper has been one for the history books. His last album, Purpose which debuted at #1, was an…
Iggy Azalea’s “Started” Deserves to Be a Legitimate Hit
Newly independent recording artist Iggy Azalea has been consistently delivering solid songs and stronger visuals. Her rebrand has been genius — a return to the valley girl southern trap of her mixtape days. Fortunately, Iggy knows better than to chase pop hits and is returning to what got her a record deal in the first…
Review: P!nk’s New Album is Awful
The signs were there all along. When P!nk released the incredibly boring “Walk Me Home” as Hurts 2B Human‘s lead single, we should have known the album was going to be a disaster. If we go by the understanding that the lead single should be among the album’s strongest offerings, if not its most commercial…
Taylor Swift Debuts Interesting and Uplifting New Single, “ME!”
Usually, the wait between studio albums by Taylor Swift is about two years. This is a formula she has followed for her entire career with each album landing somewhere in the October-November range. Swift’s last record, reputation (review here), gifted her a fifth #1 album, a history-making adult contemporary radio single with “Delicate,” her 32nd…
BEST NEW MUSIC (4/19)
BEST NEW ALBUM Beyoncé – HOMECOMING: THE LIVE ALBUM Only Beyoncé could have a 40-song album from a year-old live performance be the best album of the year so far. HOMECOMING: THE LIVE ALBUM is a blend of both weekends of her legendary Coachella, sorry, Beychella performances. The album is an achievement in engineering and…
Beyoncé’s ‘Homecoming’ Is a Massive Triumph
In the wee hours of the morning (3 A.M. EST to be exact), Beyoncé released an in-depth look at the making of her legendary headlining set at 2018’s Coachella. That iconic performance, now commonly referred to as Beychella, was an astounding showcase of passion, showmanship, musicality, and the specific experience of homecoming at HBCUs (read…
Review: Donald Glover Releases ‘Guava Island’
When Donald Glover said that his next album would be his last and that he would be retiring the Childish Gambino alter ego, things changed. What would have been a normal album cycle turned into an elongated farewell to one of the most fascinating musical acts of the decade. Gambino released the controversial “This Is…
