25: In the time honored tradition of URB’s Next 100 annual issue, we present to you the 25: NOW! digital fall supplement. Now! It’s a word that leaves very little room to maneuver around; it’s the rallying cry for our age of instant gratification, a sentiment that seems to be getting us in trouble a lot these days. Now is the urge that caused thousands of folks to sign bad mortgages because they didn’t want to wait to own a home. And once we tanked the economy, the same impatience is driving down Obama’s approval numbers as he fails to “fix it!” (as Kenan Thomas would say) in a manner as speedy as we’ve come to expect. Save the economy, create jobs, fix health care, end two wars, close Gitmo, repair our foreign relations—oh, and end nuclear weapons—all in under 12 months. I’d like to see you do it. Even in the far less consequential world of emerging music and culture, now has become an albatross around our necks. Now is what drives music blogs to breathlessly promote less than outstanding artists in the race to fulfill the compulsive browser refreshing the makes a profitable site. Now is what leaks out early or unfinished MP3s, diluting the once sacrosanct experience of record release dates. Now is why this issue’s cover artist, Mike Posner, dropped his online mixtape (a format already the epitome of today’s MP3 consumption) two days earlier than expected. It can make your head spin. And just to address the elephant in the room, the now culture has more than a little bit to do with why you’re reading this digital issue online, instead of printed on fine glossy paper, shipped across the
country by truck or plane, shoved into your mail slot or stacked on a newsstand; patiently waiting for you to pick it up and take time out of your busy day to discover some great music. Who has time for that? You need URB now. Of course, for that same reason, maybe now isn’t so bad after all. When we last collected a list of hot new artists for our annual Next 100 issue this previous spring, months passed between crafting the list and the final magazine hitting the stands. With this digital edition, our first 25: Now! fall supplement to the Next 100, it’s been a matter of weeks. Not to get too English major on you, but now has more than one meaning. And when the adverb now becomes the noun—now—things can look different. We believe the acts found here are the ones most worth your time to discover at this point in time— the now. We also believe that more than a few of these artists will be worth paying attention to in the future—the then. And if not, we’ll be here to serve you up a new list of artists we’ve discovered along our journey from now to then. Music changes, just like times change. It’s important to look ahead, to see what’s on the horizon, and we appreciate the thrill of discovering the new. But it’s also important to be satisfied where you’re at—to live in the now. Just remember that you don’t need the now to live.
URB.com
|9