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1 week ago | 
pitchfork.com | Stephen Kearse
Annahstasia Enuke couldn’t become the star her early handlers wanted her to be. As a teenager, the Los Angeles-raised model, guitarist, and folk singer signed to a label that pushed her toward pop and R&B, genres that fit her like a straitjacket.
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1 week ago | 
flipboard.com | Stephen Kearse
I haven't been this creeped out watching a new HBO series in a long time“I could cremate one guy in, like, two hours. Or you could put ten of ‘em in there and take two-and-a-half hours. So, what would be the difference? …
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1 month ago | 
pitchfork.com | Stephen Kearse
The arc of the golliwog almost comically aligns with billy woods’ fascination with world history. The racist British caricature was invented in the late 1800s by an American cartoonist working in London, who based it on an old minstrel doll. She co-wrote a dozen children’s books using the figure, which became a hit among English kids and a popular toy. But when she failed to trademark the golliwog, enterprising Brits turned it into a global icon and multiple racial slurs.
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1 month ago | 
thenation.com | Stephen Kearse
Books & the Arts / April 30, 2025 The Bloody Blues of Sinners The Bloody Blues of “Sinners”Ryan Coogler’s blockbuster horror period piece sets out to reinvent the creature feature—for better and for worse. Ad Policy (Courtesy of Warner Bros.) Ryan Coogler slips a deliberate anachronism into an early scene of his new movie, Sinners. In 1932, on a back road near Clarksdale, Mississippi, two twins disagree over when they should open up their new juke joint.
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2 months ago | 
pitchfork.com | Stephen Kearse
Will Smith slapping Chris Rock should have fueled at most two days of discourse. It was not as weird and unhinged as Kanye interrupting Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMAs. It was not as racy or trolling as the Britney-Madonna-Christina kiss. It lacked the intrigue of the Carter-Knowles elevator fight footage. Really, the situation was incredibly straightforward. Chris Rock told a wack joke about Jada Pinkett-Smith, Will overreacted, and the Academy awarded Smith his first Oscar.
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Mar 25, 2025 | 
pitchfork.com | Stephen Kearse
It tracks that Saba and No ID would take a photography class together. Both of the Chicago-raised, Los Angeles-based artists pay close attention to the ephemeral, building songs from snatches of memory and rhythm. For Saba, focusing on the small things helps to settle racing thoughts and preserve everyday joys. “Life I be taking for granted, capture the moment, the Canon,” he rapped on 2018’s “SMILE,” chiding himself to be mindful. For No ID, observation is the bedrock of producing.
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Feb 27, 2025 | 
pitchfork.com | Stephen Kearse
In 2018, Nao found a fun metaphor for reinvention in Saturn’s return, the astrological notion that every three decades, people undergo radical personal transformation. The London singer, then 30, had made her name as a prophetess of synth funk, teaming up with electronic producers like Disclosure, A.K. Paul, and Mura Masa for retrofuturist cuts full of liquid basslines and deep grooves. On Saturn, she traded the dense funk for ventilated R&B that spanned Afropop, neo-soul, and quiet storm.
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Feb 14, 2025 | 
pitchfork.com | Stephen Kearse
Mereba makes torch music about freedom. The Los Angeles-based singer, guitarist, and rapper is constantly on the lam in her yearning, restless songs, braving storms and wars in her matte black truck as she guns for liberation. She rarely finds it. Even her more idyllic tracks, like the hopeful ballad “Glock Peaceful,” present sanctuary as elusive. “Then I opened up my eyes/Wasn't what I thought it would be,” she mourns after dreaming her block was free of cops and tension.
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Feb 4, 2025 | 
vulture.com | Stephen Kearse
Kendrick Lamar is rap’s resident theater kid, an observer who can wrest drama from any situation Kendrick Lamar tends to preach peace over conflict, but a shadow lurks in even his cheeriest songs. Many artists are unpredictable, but for the 37-year-old rapper spontaneity is a worldview as much a style. His narratives constantly fork and waver, swinging from pole to pole. He prizes his contradictions and builds songs around the contrasts. The results are head-spinning.
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Dec 17, 2024 | 
thenation.com | Stephen Kearse
Books & the Arts / An avant-garde adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel careens between questions of style and substance. Ad Policy Nickel Academy, a reform school for troubled Florida boys, is not a place of learning—it’s a prison camp. The wards perform manual labor for no pay, can be killed if they try to flee, and receive vicious beatings from staff for minor infractions or no reason at all. Some absorb the malice of the institution, hardening into bullies.
