How can a song by an unknown band acquire 6.5 million listens? It was difficult to tell in the days before streaming, when we still used "popular" instead of "viral," and it's much more perplexing today. Facebook would have created an algorithm for it if they had known. That hasn't prevented reviewers from spinning their […]

Melanie vividly recalls the day she busked in London. It was 1983, and the performance she was supposed to perform had been canceled owing to low ticket sales. So she was dining with friends, sipping Pimm's, when she got a phone from someone informing her that admirers had gathered outside the Royal Albert Hall. "I […]

Little Simz is a prominent lady in British rap and an MC whose wit matches that of more well-known artists. Both Stormzy and Kendrick Lamar have praised her abilities. However, on the first night of a UK and Ireland tour, she seemed to be less concerned with hefty labels and more concerned with having a […]

A lined A4 notebook is pinned open on a board, highly doodled with love hearts and the strange ideas of an 18-year-old girl, not unlike any other 18-year-old girl throughout history. "Just plain fuckin' nice" is the title of a playlist that includes Bobby Darin's I Wanna Be Around (1965), as well as the words […]

KeiyaA didn't have internet connectivity on her phone when she released her first album Forever, Ya Girl on Bandcamp in March 2020, so she had to walk downstairs to connect to the local video store's wifi to post about the release on her Instagram. " All I remember is letting hours pass and then returning […]

Please refrain from completing JJJJJerome Ellis' phrases. The stuttering composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and writer from New York pleads for tolerance from whomever he is speaking with. He explains, "Sometimes people just walk away." "Perhaps because I didn't follow the choreography that we're accustomed to." Over a video chat, he tells me that these types of […]