Music Features

Rolling Stone is happy to be the new home of “Real Life Rock Top Ten,” a monthly column by cultural critic and RS contributing editor Greil Marcus. 1 & 2. Lana Del Rey, “Mariners Apartment Complex” and “Venice Bitch” (Interscope). As a song from her announced 2019 set Norman Fucking …

You were instructed to call her “Ms. Franklin.” In 2014, Aretha Franklin sat for her last extensive Rolling Stone interview to promote 2014’s Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics, her first project in years with her former Arista Records boss Clive Davis.The timing of the interview was unfortunate: it …

Jorja Smith just wrapped a sold-out show at Chicago’s 1,300-capacity Thalia Hall, but she still has work to do. The 21-year-old London singer takes a seat backstage as her hairdresser appears and begins to meticulously braid each strand of Smith’s hair into tight knots – an eight-hour process that has …

The influence of Jamaican pop can be felt everywhere today, from Drake’s “Controlla” to Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” – but Jamaican practitioners of the form have had a hard time breaking through on the U.S. charts in recent years. Enter Protoje, who’s emerged as a leader of the modern …

One day, while working in the studio with a pushy male collaborator, Bebe Rexha knew she’d had enough. Her partner at the session was having trouble with ProTools. Rexha knew the recording program well, having mastered it during her years as a teenage songwriter, when she couldn’t afford producers, engineers …

When theBlack Panther soundtrack debuted at Number One in February, it was another triumph for executive producer Kendrick Lamar – the fourth consecutive album he has steered to the top of the charts. But the soundtrack also quietly gave the Bay Area rap group SOB x RBE their first Hot …

Meek Mill loves dirt bikes the way Mick Fanning loves big waves and Jimmy Chin loves hanging off four-mile-high towers. It’s an inconvenient passion that may one day maim or kill him – but if you’d seen as much death as he did by 18, you wouldn’t be particular about …

Just a couple of weeks ago, ZZ Top frontman Billy Gibbons visited John Fogerty at his Los Angeles home studio to discuss their upcoming co-headlining tour and jam a little. They started out by rocking out on familiar songs like “Fortunate Son,” “Tush” and “Bad Moon Rising,” but before the …

Chuck D has never been shy about sharing his opinions. From the earliest days of Public Enemy, the rapper spoke out about everything from police brutality to what he saw as systematic racism in American society. In the past year, he’s had a new platform for expressing his views in …

The Black Eyed Peas practically disappeared after conquering the world in 2009 and following it up with a monster 2011. In that final year before going on hiatus, they played two of their three Number One singles at the Super Bowl halftime show, performed on four different continents, appeared on …