Spencer Kornhaber

New York

Culture Writer at The Atlantic

culture writer for @TheAtlantic. member of @theatlunion. he/him. https://t.co/WBmcnD3nB3

Articles

Hip-Hop for the Infinite Scroll

1 month ago | theatlantic.com | Spencer Kornhaber

For years now, one of hip-hop’s most common debates has been: Who is the next Kendrick Lamar? The question reflects eternal anxiety about rap’s future as a storytelling medium. When the now-37-year-old Super Bowl headliner blew up in the early 2010s, he was hailed as a new-school evangelist for old-school lyricism.
Lady Gaga Sounds Like Herself Again

1 month ago | theatlantic.com | Spencer Kornhaber

The anxiety of influence, a phrase that the literary critic Harold Bloom coined in 1973 to describe the struggle to write innovative poetry, lives on today in the form of reheated nachos. In internet slang, to reheat someone else’s nachos is to take old, soggy ideas and serve them up as if they’re fresh. An interviewer recently asked Lady Gaga to reply to the accusation that she was doing just that with “Abracadabra,” her new single that conjures many of her older songs.
Music’s Most Uncancellable Man

1 month ago | theatlantic.com | Spencer Kornhaber

A few weeks before he started selling swastika T-shirts on the internet, I considered letting Ye back into my life. It was inauguration weekend, and I’d been sitting in a restaurant where the bartender was blasting a playlist of songs by the rapper once known as Kanye West. The music sounded, frankly, awesome. Most of the songs were from when I considered myself a fan of his, long before he rebranded as the world’s most famous Hitler admirer.
The Game That Shows We’re Thinking About History All Wrong

2 months ago | msn.com | Spencer Kornhaber

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Civilization Is Changing. So Is Civilization.

2 months ago | theatlantic.com | Spencer Kornhaber

This is an era of talking about eras. Donald Trump says we’ve just begun a “golden age.” Pundits—responding to the rise of streaming, AI, climate change, and Trump himself—have announced the dawn of post-literacy, post-humanism, and post-neoliberalism. Even Taylor Swift’s tour name tapped into the au courant way of depicting time: not as a river, but as a chapter book.
The Game That Shows We’re Thinking About History All Wrong

2 months ago | ca.news.yahoo.com | Spencer Kornhaber

This is an era of talking about eras. Donald Trump says we’ve just begun a “golden age.” Pundits—responding to the rise of streaming, AI, climate change, and Trump himself—have announced the dawn of post-literacy, post-humanism, and post-neoliberalism. Even Taylor Swift’s tour name tapped into the au courant way of depicting time: not as a river, but as a chapter book.
The Game That Shows We’re Thinking About History All Wrong

2 months ago | yahoo.com | Spencer Kornhaber

This is an era of talking about eras. Donald Trump says we’ve just begun a “golden age.” Pundits—responding to the rise of streaming, AI, climate change, and Trump himself—have announced the dawn of post-literacy, post-humanism, and post-neoliberalism. Even Taylor Swift’s tour name tapped into the au courant way of depicting time: not as a river, but as a chapter book.
The Game That Shows We’re Thinking About History All Wrong

2 months ago | flipboard.com | Spencer Kornhaber

The Game That Shows We’re Thinking About History All WrongA radical tweak makes Civilization more realistic—and more depressing. This is an era of talking about eras. Donald Trump says we’ve just begun a “golden age.” Pundits—responding to the rise of streaming, AI, climate change, and Trump himself—have announced the dawn of post-literacy, post-humanism, …
What Kendrick Lamar’s Halftime Show Said

2 months ago | msn.com | Spencer Kornhaber

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What Kendrick Lamar’s Halftime Show Said

2 months ago | theatlantic.com | Spencer Kornhaber

The Super Bowl halftime show is an opportunity for big, dumb fun: explosions, laser shows, left sharks. But big, dumb fun isn’t Kendrick Lamar’s thing. The 37-year-old Los Angeles rapper and Pulitzer Prize winner prefers subtlety, smarts, and fun that’s tinged by danger and unease. Amid tough, tense circumstances, he put on a tough, tense—and quite satisfying—show. The event framed itself in self conscious terms. “This is the great American game,” Samuel L.