RapInterviewKendrick Lamar: the rise of a good kid rapper in a mad cityHattie CollinsDespite being steeped in gang culture, the rapper who Pharrell Williams calls 'this era's Bob Dylan' deconstructs the lifestyle rather than glamourising it"You know Compton," rumbles Kendrick Lamar. "You don't hear no artists from Compton showing vulnerability. You always hear about the person pulling the trigger. You never hear about the one in front of it."
There are a lot of sharp observations in Kendrick Lamar's debut album, good kid, m. Read More...
Book of the dayPJ HarveyReviewSet in a magical realist outpost of the West Country, the singer-songwriter’s novel-in-verse delights in Dorset dialect and folklore
A novel-in-verse written in dense Dorset vernacular, Orlam is a curious and enchanting thing. Like a dark poetic almanac, it charts, month by month, a year in which its heroine, nine-year-old Ira-Abel Rawles, leaves behind the innocence of her childhood.
Orlam takes the reader by the hand, with each poem laid out opposite its “standard” translation and an abundance of footnotes to illuminate a hoard of folklore. Read More...
Pop and rockSince emerging two years ago, they’ve divided the critics with their strange sounds and highly manufactured image. We meet the collective blurring the lines between art and artifice
Let’s just say, Jools wouldn’t get it. If the cast of producers, vocalists, creative directors and conceptual cyber droids who form PC Music were booked on Later…, he would have a nervous breakdown. “How did you meet?” he would ask. “When’s the record coming out? Read More...
