Clover Hope

Writer, Producer and Editor at Freelance

Contributing Culture Editor at Mic

Contributing Writer at Pitchfork

writer + producer + nyu professor | past: Jezebel, Vibe, XXL, Billboard | Author of THE MOTHERLODE: 100+ Women Who Made Hip-Hop | https://t.co/HpIas6Y6jB

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Articles

Why Do the Real Songs on Love Is Blind Sound So Wrong?

1 month ago | pitchfork.com | Clover Hope

There I was, immersed in a melange of thick Minnesotan accents and conversations about Black Lives Matter when suddenly, I sensed a shift. It started with Billie Eilish. During a sweet scene of two cast members formalizing their relationship after several days in the Love Is Blind dating pods, producers swoop in to celebrate the occasion with a misty ballad, “Birds of a Feather.” OK, fine.
Why Do the Real Songs on Love Is Blind Sound So Wrong?

1 month ago | yahoo.com | Clover Hope

Image by Chris Panicker, photos via Netflix and Getty ImagesThere I was, immersed in a melange of thick Minnesotan accents and conversations about Black Lives Matter when suddenly, I sensed a shift. It started with Billie Eilish. During a sweet scene of two cast members formalizing their relationship after several days in the Love Is Blind dating pods, producers swoop in to celebrate the occasion with a misty ballad, “Birds of a Feather.” OK, fine.
Kendrick Lamar’s Fierce and Petty 2025 Super Bowl Halftime Show

2 months ago | pitchfork.com | Clover Hope

The audience came for blood, but Kendrick Lamar made them wait. With his Super Bowl LIX halftime performance, Kendrick reminded everyone that, despite over 50 years of hip-hop history, rap still struggles for widespread recognition as a legitimate art form. And an important part of the genre is competition. His halftime show embraced that motif, framing America, football, the Super Bowl, and himself as components of a larger machine. The first face on screen? Samuel L.
Kendrick Lamar’s Fierce and Petty 2025 Super Bowl Halftime Show

2 months ago | yahoo.com | Clover Hope

Kendrick Lamar, February 2025 (Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)The audience came for blood, but Kendrick Lamar made them wait. With his Super Bowl LIX halftime performance, Kendrick reminded everyone that, despite over 50 years of hip-hop history, rap still struggles for widespread recognition as a legitimate art form. And an important part of the genre is competition. His halftime show embraced that motif, framing America, football, the Super Bowl, and himself as components of a larger machine.
Kendrick Lamar’s Fierce and Petty 2025 Super Bowl Halftime Show

2 months ago | flipboard.com | Clover Hope

Super Bowl 2025: The 5 Best And 5 Worst CommercialsEvery year, the world pauses to watch two teams grapple it out for the top of the NFL heap. The Super Bowl is, and likely will always be, event TV -- …
T-Pain: Epiphany

2 months ago | pitchfork.com | Clover Hope

The ringtone rap era still feels like the wildest fever dream in hip-hop. Like, did it really happen? Yes, it did. By the mid-2000s, song-buying options had dramatically expanded to include not just CDs but also legal downloads, with iTunes monopolizing the digital market and record labels making billions off turning the catchiest parts of their artists’ singles into 99-cent ringtones—a step up from the sparse polyphonic MIDI tunes of the past.
FLO: Access All Areas

Nov 18, 2024 | pitchfork.com | Clover Hope

When British R&B trio FLO dropped their debut single “Cardboard Box,” a sugary sendoff to a cheating ex, they easily won over a pop audience desperate for an impeccable girl group that seemed to be having genuine fun. Singer-songwriters Stella Quaresma, Jorja Douglas, and Renée Downer met in 2019, after an Island A&R discovered them each from their Instagram cover songs.
Missy Elliott: Da Real World

Oct 27, 2024 | pitchfork.com | Clover Hope

“Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real?” It’s Act 1 of The Matrix, and Morpheus is laying out the rules of reality for Keanu Reeves’ phlegmatic protagonist, offering him a choice. Neo slowly touches a mirror, liquid silver creeping up his arm, engulfing him, ripping him from the simulated life he experienced as reality and into the “real” world—an AI-controlled, post-apocalyptic Earth.
This couple has re-created the sights and smells of a Senegalese market in Brooklyn: ‘Experiences keep people coming back’

Oct 18, 2024 | theguardian.com | Clover Hope

Nilea Alexander and her husband, Lamine Diagne, started out with a neighborhood coffee shop in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Over the past decade, though, their modest enterprise has evolved into what they call “an experience”. Next door to Café Rue Dix, which serves Senegalese cuisine, pastries and lattes, is Marché Rue Dix, their marketplace-boutique stocked with goods sourced directly from Senegal, Diagne’s birthplace.
Victoria Monét: “SOS (Sex on Sight)”

Aug 28, 2024 | pitchfork.com | Clover Hope

Whenever someone mentions responsive desire, I immediately think of dead prez’s stic.man suggesting on their 2000 single “mind sex,” “Before we make love, let’s have a good conversation”—a sapiosexual’s dream. On the other side of the spectrum is spontaneous desire, a more immediate urge—what Victoria Monét explores in her new collaboration with Usher, “SOS (Sex on Sight),” the first release from the upcoming deluxe version of last year’s Grammy-winning Jaguar II (release date TBA).