In a small home recording studio on a Monday afternoon in January, Jesse Welles sat with a guitar on his lap, dressed head-to-toe in black.Welles, a singer-songwriter with a shaggy, dirty-blond mane and a sandpapery voice, has risen...
Ye, the rapper and designer formerly known as Kanye West, aired a commercial in some markets during the Super Bowl that promoted a website selling a single product: T-shirts with swastikas.In the 30-second commercial, Ye appears to be...
The Weekend has scored his fifth No. 1 album with “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” posting the biggest overall numbers on the Billboard chart since Taylor Swift nearly a year ago.The release of “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” which the poppy-yet-creepy Canadian...
Susan Alcorn, an experimental composer and musician who pushed the pedal steel guitar, an instrument more often associated with the country music roadhouse, into the avant-garde, died on Friday in Baltimore. She was 71.Her husband, David Lobato, said...
To lifelong rap fans, even considering these questions borders on the baffling — akin to imagining past vitriolic, subterranean classics like Ice Cube’s “No Vaseline,” Tupac’s “Hit ’Em Up” or Nas’s “Ether” as inescapable, mainstream hits.“It’s by far...
Kendrick Lamar performs like someone parceling out a secret. On the 2015 single “King Kunta,” he stage-whispers, “I swore I wouldn’t tell,” and then proceeds to flaunt industry gossip without naming names. Though the Grammy-hoarding, Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper...
Irv Gotti, a music executive who founded Murder Inc. Records with his brother and built a hip-hop empire that produced some of the biggest rap and R&B albums of the early 21st century, has died at 54.Mr. Gotti’s...
Best Spoken Word Poetry Album“The Heart, the Mind, the Soul,” Tank and the BangasBest Jazz Performance“Twinkle Twinkle Little Me,” Samara Joy featuring Sullivan FortnerBest Jazz Vocal Album“A Joyful Holiday,” Samara JoyBest Jazz Instrumental Album“Remembrance,” Chick Corea and Béla...
Merle Louise Simon, an award-winning stage actor and the only person to play roles in the original Broadway productions of four Stephen Sondheim musicals, died on Jan. 11 in Lake Katrine, N.Y., in Ulster County. She was 90.Her...
Long before Michael Jackson, the Rolling Stones and Rihanna, there was Freddie Colston.Colston was just a 20-year-old student from tiny Fairbanks, La., when he traveled to Los Angeles in January 1967. He had grown up in a home...
