Issue 43

Kesha v. Dr Luke | 24

DJ Khaled: A Literary Tribute | 46

Artists Who Could Run For President (And Win) | 31

northeastern students on music

No 43

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The Team

President Ryan Kehr

Staff Writers Kelly Subin David McDevitt Jason Levy Clarissa Cooney Audrey Cooney Anika Krause Anu Gulati Sarah Kotowski Taylor Piepenbrink Jonathan Vayness Raquel Massoud Emily Arntsen Mallika Malkan Peter Giunta Joseph Bondi Spencer Bateman Alexander Wetzel Christopher Miller Timothy Fetcher Matt Sherman Alexander Frandsen Mayeesha Galiba Akosa Amenechi Jonas Polin Youssef El-Sheikh

Editor in Chief Ben Stas Art Directors Emily O’Brien Amanda Pinsker Marketing Director Rami McCarthy

Staff Features Editor Amanda Hoover

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Reviews Editor Terence Cawley Tim DiFazio

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Interviews Editor Joey Dussault

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@tastemakersmag Tastemakers Music Magazine 232 Curry Student Center 360 Huntington Ave. Boston, MA 02115 tastemakersmag@gmail.com © 2016 tastemakers music magazine all rights reserved

Photo Director Ben Stas

Art & Design Fiona Galey Vanessa Gregorchik Madisen Hackley Nicole Maalouf Dan Mondschein Rebecca Still Sara Trosky Abby Walker Grace Woodward Bianca Rabbie Brooke Dunahugh Colleen Curtis Anna Smith Sophia Schonwetter Marketing Jae Lee Hannah Crotty Sarah Keneipp Kylie Ponce Liz Flavin Sofia Benitez Preston Tietjien Scott Breecez

Meet the Staff

About

Listening to

Terence Cawley Position Co-Reviews Editor Major Biology Graduating 2017/8?

Favorite Venue Consolidated Cardboard (Allentown, PA) Tastemaker Since Summer 2014

Peter Giunta Position Staff Writer Major Biology Graduating Spring 2017 Favorite venue Pearl St. (Northampton, MA) Tastemaker Since Spring 2015

Mayeesha Galiba Position Staff Writer Major Journalism and Political Science Graduating Spring 2019 Favorite Venue The Filmore (San Francisco) Tastemaker Since Fall 2015

Amanda Pinsker Position Art Director Major Graphic Design Graduating Spring 2017 Favorite venue The Sinclair Tastemaker Since Fall 2013

Big Black Delta “IFUCKINGLOVEYOU” Sunflower Bean Human Ceremony

Quote

“I wonder if any Tastemakers are dead”

Alexisonfire “Boiled Frogs”

Corn Arthur Russell III “Anna B Savage”

“Brown sugar tastes saltier to me”

Junun Shye Ben Tzur

Years & Years Communion

“Jeb was a sweet man”

The World is a Beautiful Place and I am No Longer Afraid to Die Harmlessness Jack’s Mannequin People & Things

Childbirth “Siri, Open Tinder” ZAYN “PILLOWTALK” Marshmello “Keep it Mellow”

“Here I am, angrily shoving Welch’s fruit snacks in my mouth”

Marianas Trench, House of Blues

Photo by Nicole Service (Mechanical Engineering)

Table of Contents Cover Story

Editorial

26

18

Bowie: In Memoriam 1947-2016 The Tastemakers Magazine staff weighs in on the late David Bowie’s numerous career highlights

Reviews

08 34

Album Reviews Future, Animal Collective, Porches, Massive Attack

Dissecting the strange appeal of one of hip-hop’s fastest rising stars

20

All Art of the Past Must Be Destroyed A look back on the music of Pierre Boulez

22

Show Reviews Muse, Aaron Carter, Lettuce, Wilco

A Musical Mystery: Why Do So Many People Like Future?

24 40 44

With the resurgence of music on wax comes new logistical challenges

Kesha v. Dr Luke Inside the dispute between the pop singer and her former producer, and what it says about the industry at large

Oh, Kanye...

A roundup of Mr. West’s nonmusical greatest hits

Music Censorship and the Perpetuation of Racism

DJ Khaled: A Literary Tribute The key to success lies within

06 Calendar 14

Local Photos

48

11

It’s a 140 BPM Type of Life

31

Artists Who Could Run For President (and Win)

Streaming Wars Analyzing the current state of the streaming revolution

A Retrospective of UK Grime

One Nation, Under...Kanye?

37

The Vinyl Industry

A history of appropriation and repression from Elvis Presley to the Billboard Music Awards

46

Features

Seventeen Moments of Sound Tariverdiev and The West

Etcetera

42

In Defense of

43

BandCamp Jams

50

Just a Taste Of

Fall Out Boy’s Folie A Deux

Surveying the web’s finest musical obscurities

Is this happening?

Calendar March Su

Sa

1

6

7

2

Ty Segall & The Muggers Royale

Neko Case House of Blues

8

9

20

Ra Ra Riot Paradise Rock Club

Leon Bridges Wang Theatre

12

Greg Dulli The Sinclair

Beach House House of Blues

Foxing Middle East Downstairs

18

19

16

17

Oneohtrix Point Never The Sinclair

Tortoise The Sinclair

Earthless The Sinclair

Metric Orpheum Theatre

21

22

Field Music Great Scott

5

11

15

28

Julia Holter Great Scott

10

14

Jukebox the Ghost Paradise Rock Club Dropkick Murphy’s Agganis Arena

Megadeth House of Blues

27

4 Bell Witch / Wrekmeister Harmonies O’Brien’s Pub

Slayer House of Blues

13

3

23

24

Lake Street Dive House of Blues

29

30

25

26

Bombino The Sinclair

David Wax Museum The Sinclair

31

DMA’s Great Scott Majid Jordan The Sinclair

Rockommends

Foxing March 12 @ Middle East Downstairs

Savages April 1 @ Paradise Rock Club

Having spent the past few years blowing headliners off stage with the unbridled intensity of their live show, St. Louis emo band Foxing finally have a headlining tour of their own in support of their tragic, beautiful new album Dealer. Show up early for openers Tancred, ADJY and Lymbyc System, but be sure to save your energy for the main attraction. No one leaves a Foxing concert unmoved.

On their last trip through Boston, Savages were 100 percent committed to creating an immersive show experiences. No cell phones, minimal lights, no distractions from the sound and the atmosphere. Imagine what will happen when they come through again in April. Be there.

Terence Cawley (Biology)

David McDevitt (International Affairs/ Economics)

April Su

Sa

1 Savages Paradise Rock Club

2 l

Young Fathers Great Scott

3

4

5

Wolf Alice Brighton Music Hal

Gogol Bordello Paradise Rock Club

Gogol Bordello Paradise Rock Club

6

7

8

Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals House of Blues

Waka Flocka Flame Paradise Rock Club

Acid Mothers Temple Great Scott

10

The Smashing Pumpkins Orpheum Theatre

11

12

Iggy Pop Orpheum Theatre Yuck The Sinclair

13

14

15

16

Thao and the Get Down Stay Down The Sinclair

Abbath/High on Fire Royale Boston

Parquet Courts Paradise Rock Club

Melvins/Napalm Death/Melt-Banana Paradise Rock Club

The Joy Formidable Paradise Rock Club

San Fermin Paradise Rock Club

17

18

19

Kvelertak Middle East Downstairs

Tokyo Police Club Paradise Rock Club

Peter Murphy Royale Boston

Murder by Death The Sinclair

Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate) Great Scott

Dream Theater Orpheum Theatre

24

25

26

27

The Residents Royale Boston

Van Morrison Wang Theatre

Van Morrison Wang Theatre

20

Murder by Death The Sinclair

21

22

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Into It. Over It. / The World Is a Beautiful Place and I am No Longer Afraid to Die Royale

Father John Misty House of Blues

Behemoth Royale Boston

28

29

30

Suuns Great Scott

Mothers Great Scott

White Denim The Sinclair

The Thermals The Sinclair

Iggy Pop April 11 @ Orpheum Theatre

Melvins/Napalm Death/Melt-Banana April 16 @ Paradise Rock Club

Iggy Pop is a living legend if there ever was one. The perpetually shirtless icon fronted the groundbreaking Stooges, made masterpieces with David Bowie and remains one of rock’s most notoriously vibrant live performers well into his 60s.

This year’s Post Pop Depression, a collaboration with Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme, is Pop’s strongest recorded work in years, and he’s made indications that its ensuing tour may be his last.

Better catch him while you can.

It’s still unbelievable that this is a real lineup.

Japanese noise rockers Melt-Banana and their insanely high-pitched vocals open for Napalm Death, the ultimate pioneers in grindcore, and Melvins, the eclectic clowns of metal in one of Boston’s smallest venues. The posters refer to this as the “Savage Imperial Death March Tour,” and it really raises the question of whether anyone will make it out of this concert alive.

Ben Stas (English/Journalism)

9

Anu Gulati (Computer Science/Math)

Album Reviews Future Purple Reign Release date January 17 Label Freebandz Genre Hip Hop, Trap Rap Tasty Tracks “Perky’s Calling”, “Inside the Mattress”, “Purple Reign”

Reviews Spring 2016

8

In a recent interview with Clique, Future described his drug-fueled, hedonistic lyrics as a “catch.” It’s not uncommon for an artist to be marketing savvy and sing what sells, and it’s questionable whether Future is lying considering his current custody battle, but generally the statement doesn’t negatively affect his illustrious career despite his having made more lean references than Wiz Khalifa has ever made about weed. With a title that alludes to the medicated drink and 12 out of 13 songs mentioning drug use in some way, Purple Reign is a typical Future release that extends the momentum of 2015. Watching him evolve from spiritless AutoTune and cheap trap, it’s reassuring to see he no longer dabbles in unfocused mixtape material and has found his artistic strength.

That strength lies in beats that hit hard and poetic lyrics that hit even harder. Dressed in the best producers like DJ Esco, Nard & B and Metro Boomin, Purple Reign has Future rather humorously reflecting on the past few months over throbbing bass and howling synths. His trap flow excels in “Never Forget,” where his voice sails over verses about selling drugs to his own family. He reinvents his past musical habits to great benefit with “Drippin (How U Luv That),” where he immerses himself in AutoTune again, but this time with a darker beat that suits him better now than it would have in his Pluto era.

The hype leading up to Purple Reign on Twitter conspicuously mentioned Future and his producers putting the finishing touches on the mixtape hours before its release, and the record does feel slightly rushed. There’s nothing as chilling as “Perky’s Calling,” and radio-banger “Inside the Mattress” doesn’t top the sheer celebration that is 2015’s “March Madness,” but Future’s ability to discover his best talents and create a well-defined zone for himself makes Purple Reign a more monumental release than initially realized.

With lines like “I’m cool on her, I done had her/Bounce back with a millio,” Future signals that he’s moved further on from Ciara

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since DS2. But it’s notable that Purple Reign dropped the day of the Panthers-Seahawks divisional round match-up, where Future fan Cam Newton faced off against Ciara’s current beau Russell Wilson. And it’s also notable that Future describes his drug addiction as made-up in that Clique interview, but doesn’t address how he treats Ciara and other women like punchlines in all of his songs. Drug use and addiction in rap has always been a prominent yet problematic matter, but misogyny in rap is an equally major issue that isn’t addressed enough due to the lack of female music critics.

Future makes denigrating women sound cool, with lyrics like “I got her mouth when I want” or “I might smash her on the couch and tell her bye-bye,” and having an indifferent stance to this wordplay only perpetuates the alarming male complacency that’s run through criticism for years. Purple Reign is artistically excellent, but it’s getting more difficult to listen to him without thinking about the larger message he purports.

While Future has matured in terms of what kind of music he wants to make, it’d be refreshing to hear him sing without using

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women like props to enact vendettas on a former flame. Despite sounding all over the place, Future’s pre-Monster mixtapes brought joy, and his appeal lied in his ability to feel everything too intensely, rather than his current affected numbness. Future’s mumblecore will generate more middling tapes in the months to come, but it won’t be long before someone tells him he fell off and he gets hungry again.

Anu Gulati (Computer Science/Math)

We publish album reviews online too! tastemakersmag.com

Animal Collective Painting With Release date February 19 Label Domino Records Genre Psychedelic Pop, Electronic Tasty Tracks “FloriDada”, “Vertical”, “The Burglars”

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Porches Pool

Each Animal Collective record is a musical island. Band members come and go, and each member adds his own qualities to create a unique and colorful musical experience. These changes and pairings in creativity have led to some of the most interesting, innovative and catchy psychedelic pop music of the 2000s.

Like many other AC releases, their tenth album, Painting With, is a reaction to their past work. Their last album, Centipede Hz, was extremely dense and overblown with instruments and effects. On their new album, the three current members are reacting by shedding their more complex compositions and bringing their music back into sweeter and more electronically-tinged territory. Panda Bear also seems to take the reins on many of these tracks, as his songs tend to be more straightforward; his frequent use of vocal manipulation on this record calls to mind his most recent solo album, and Avey Tare’s vocals make way for Panda Bear’s voice through Tare’s more subdued delivery. The contorted vocal samples and strange dissonant synth loops that punctuate these strikingly simple compositions harken back to the band’s late 2000s work. Painting With can be seen almost as a parallel to the move towards accessibility the band made with Merriweather Post Pavilion, and many of these songs feature some of the most accessible and simple compositions of their entire discography.

Chris Miller (Music Industry)

Release date February 5 Label Domino Records Genre Alternative Tasty Tracks “Be Apart”, “Underwater”, “Car” When synthpop first began to make its way into popular music in the 1970s and 1980s, the key metaphor at the center of its presentation was “robotic.” Artists would dress up in shimmering leather costumes with futuristic hairstyles, fill their songs with alien and cyborg-based motifs and create an image, along with a sound, that felt rigid and almost inhuman. Years later, artists pioneered the use of synthetic instruments to create vast experimental soundscapes, driven by ambiance and a connection to the world through the electronic, rather than the electronic representing something that is definitively not of this world. What Aaron Maine has created with Pool, his first album for Domino Records after a few years of putting out material on Bandcamp and Soundcloud, is somewhere in between the two: a synthpop record that takes the lessons of creating a soundscape in the style of an experimentalist with the eclectic bounce of the 1970s new-wave breakthrough.

The lead single and first track, “FloriDada,” is no doubt one of the most fun and engaging pop songs they have ever written. It has a very simple progression even compared to their work on MPP, but the band adds some fruity synthesizers and off-kilter vocal melodies to spice up the mix. The bridge of this song in particular shines as one of the album’s highlights, with a swirling buildup of synths and Colin Stetson’s shrill saxophone coupled with Tare and Panda Bear trading off on a mantra about a literal bridge.

For the rest of the album, the band lets the vocal melodies take the spotlight while accompanying them with thick synths and upbeat drum patterns. These songs don’t feature their most creative sound play, but still stand very strong. Another highlight is the song “The Burglars,” which has a very Beatles-esque descending melody and a fantastic high energy build with a great chorus line. Although Panda Bear seems to shine on this album, the two main singers’ harmonies and melodic exchanges come through on songs like “Vertical” and “Bagels in Kiev.”

Although this album does not have any sprawling epics or a diverse musical palette, these 12 songs make for a very fun experience sprinkled with some extremely strong moments.

Animal Collective tend to paint with many different brushes, and their carefree and fun brush on Painting With is as potent as ever.

Maine’s success in toeing the line works on a thin margin. Tighten the sound on Pool, and it loses the human elements that make the record listenable. Yet loosening the sound would almost make the atmosphere seem flaccid, like that kid dancing with spaghetti arms on the dance floor.

Fluid, controlled and active is the ideal space for Aaron Maine to work in. The motif of fluidity encompasses the entire album, from the title itself to the opening track “Underwater,” the title track “Pool” and the images of black water in “Be Apart.” On the album’s closer “Security,” we hear a rigid click bass setting the foundation over a series of echoey and detuned synthesizers, as if Maine was trying to create the sound of a river flowing over his vocal intrusions.

Signing to Domino was a good thing for Aaron Maine, definitively moving Porches from a Soundcloud start-up band to a legitimate indie pop act. He has begun this phase of his career with an album that is thematically concise,

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making up for its lack of groundbreaking oddities with its execution and intentionally designed to place the introverted thoughts of Maine in front of an aquatic background.

David McDevitt (International Affiars/ Economics)

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Massive Attack Ritual Spirit Release date January 28 Label Melankolic Recordings Limited Genre Experimental hip-hop, Trip-hop Tasty Track “Take It There”

Reviews

To be honest, I thought Massive Attack was dead. The trip-hop progenitors hadn’t released anything major since 2010’s mediocre Heligoland, and they hadn’t released anything at all since 2011. So I was surprised when I saw news about an app called Fantom they released featuring new music. The app did not allow streaming of original mixes; instead it played different versions of the tracks depending on time of day, brightness of the room, motion and even heartbeat. I almost exclusively opened it at night, and the resulting tracks were dark and staticky. They sounded more like Burial-style dubstep than trip-hop, and I was intrigued.

The original mixes on the ensuing Ritual Spirit EP are about as murky as their algorithmically remixed versions. All the tracks feature deep bass, mournful vocals and stuttering percussion. Hand drums and shakers are featured throughout, giving the EP a tribal sound. None of the tracks feature a female vocalist, which is a marked departure for a band and a genre known for such collaborations. Ritual Spirit is somber in tone, but it’s hard not to bob your head along to the slow percussive patterns.

The most interesting tracks on the EP are its B-sides. “Voodoo in My Blood” features

the genre-defying trio Young Fathers, whose bafflingly-titled 2015 album, White Men Are Black Men Too, was lauded as one of the year’s best releases. The track begins with aggressive vocals and a heavy, minimalist drum pattern that makes it seem like the track is going to be akin to modern abstract hip-hop. That only lasts for 30 seconds though, at which point it switches back to the droning and clicking that characterizes the EP. The guitar in “Voodoo In My Blood” is reminiscent of old Massive Attack, and its inclusion in a track featuring a group at the forefront of the modern experimental music scene is indicative of Ritual Spirit’s role as a transition for Massive Attack. “Take It There” sounds like a full-blown throwback, complete with crackling noises meant to evoke the sound of vinyl. It features Tricky, who hasn’t worked with Massive Attack since 1994 and has made a point of eschewing the trip-hop label the public gave his solo work. Now Massive Attack seems to be attempting the same distancing, so their reunion is fitting. The music video for “Take It There” portrays a drunk man stumbling through a cityscape and eventually performing an elaborate dance with background dancers, a la Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You.” This combination of a depressive stupor and a sanguine dance is a microcosm of Ritual Spirit.

In a word, Ritual Spirit is visceral. It creates an emotional landscape the listener can’t help but enter. Massive Attack has shown that they are not content to just rest on their laurels, and they aren’t merely updating their sound to match the modern zeitgeist either. Ritual Spirit marks a new beginning for Massive Attack, and their upcoming full-length promises to be radically unique.

Jonas Polin (Undeclared)

Spring 2016

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If you would like to submit a review to be considered for publishing in print or online, e-mail: tmreviews@gmail.com

Its a 140 BPM Type of Life: A Retrospective of UK Grime

Drake had many people to thank in the credits for If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late, but one name stood out from the rest of his traditional crew: Skepta. Through countless Instagram posts and even a tattoo of the man’s record label on his left shoulder, Drake has often shown reverence and respect to Skepta, one of the most enduring and enigmatic MC’s in grime, a genre that remains grounded in the U.K. He even imitates the foreign slang of his influence in “Used To,” which borrows both lyrics and flow from a previous Skepta song.

Drake isn’t the only big name rapper who pays homage to grime: Kanye West surrounded himself with numerous members of the genre including Skepta, Novelist, and Jammer during his memorable performance of “All Day” at the 2015 BRITS Awards, and rapper Danny Brown has cited the grime scene as the largest inspiration for his music. What some U.S. rap fans might think is a new genre really isn’t: Grime music has been heavy in the underground for well over a decade now, birthed in East London when a crop of teenagers began banging out bleepy tracks on Playstations and spitting aggressive raps.

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Now part of one of grime’s most beloved crews Ruff Sqwad, Rapid and Dirty were initially just two 15-year-old students sitting in a parentteacher conference in 2002. Rapid recalls in an interview with The Guardian, “We had a parents’ evening, and my teacher said: ‘He needs a PC, to be doing his homework, and research and stuff,’ and my dad was sort of embarrassed, so a week later he went out and bought me a Packard Bell, which came with all these programmes.” They began messing around with FruityLoops 3 (aka FL Studio) in their spare time, and eventually “bunked” school for a day to record over a particular beat they liked in a northern London studio. The teenage boys spitting hot verses over palettes of icy synths and guttural bass caught the attention of studio execs, and their song “Tings In Boots” became a surprise radio hit.

While a radio hit would bring welcomed pop stardom to a U.S. artist, Rapid and Dirty expressed mostly fear after “Tings in Boots” got big in the U.K. “In a sense, you’re risking your life,” Rapid told The Guardian, “because we used to come out of our area, where we’re comfortable, taking buses and trains to Tottenham, or walking deep into areas in Hackney from the bus stop. We’d have people asking: ‘Where are you from? What are you doing here?’ and see people pulling out guns at the radio stations, dogs, whatever.”

But England is the Queen’s country. She endlessly sends out the message on BBC networks that there’s no hood, it’s all tea and red phoneboxes. The U.K. has never been able to nurture, develop, or sustain homegrown black music, and the closest thing that the black British community has to call their own is grime—the most important British music since punk rock.

Dizzee Rascal’s 2003 debut album, Boy in da Corner may be the most well-known symbol of grime. Writing when he was only 17, Dizzee Rascal captured what it’s like to live in a stultifying Britain like Pete Townshend, Johnny Rotten, and Morrissey did before him, but in a brilliantly original way. His thick accent and slang make the album seem incomprehensible on first listen, but the vocal delivery paired with staggering beats are reminiscent of Mick Jagger’s intriguing slurs and buried vocals on Exile on Main Street. His song “I Luv U” has happy, hardcore kicks and 8-bit synth noises built into this dark, bleeping track that goes back-and-forth between him and female MC Shystie. They touch on teenage relationships, sex, and pregnancy with authenticity, as actual teenagers who are both trying to sound unbreakable, but it’s their vulnerability that this song—and whole album—revolves around. Boy in da Corner is a bleak indictment of high-rise Britain, where Dizzee Rascal raps about guns, knives,

The intensity of experience represented through grime music is bound to the conditions of urban dwelling in the U.K. With grime slowly gaining momentum in the U.S., writers have begun to refer to the genre as a subgenre of hip-hop, or just “British rap.” This attachment of location to a genre’s context is important—grime is the voice of poverty, frustration, and a throwaway generation that doesn’t translate well on American soil. Hip-hop is celebrated in the U.S., with President Barack Obama even discussing rap battles between Kendrick Lamar and Drake or the fact that he listens to Ludacris on his iPod.

depression, and getting 15-year-old girls pregnant, finally admitting, “I am a problem for Anthony Blair.”

When Boy in da Corner took home the 2003 Mercury Music Prize, grime finally had the push it needed. It was a backlash to its turn-of-the-millennium predecessor; two-step (aka U.K. garage) with it’s 140bpm-based sound and completely opposite leading gender.

Where two-step had high-pitched diva vocals, sensual swing, and sexed up amorousness, grime brought in gruff rapping, stiff electroinfluenced beats, and raucous aggression. Behind Dizzee, Wiley is also

Kanye West surrounded by UK grime artists in his performance of “All Day” at the 2015 BRITS Awards

one of the genre’s best known MC’s, with his work pre-dating both the grime and two-step scenes. Like Ty Dolla Sign and Soulja Boy, Wiley is an auteurist force, equally skilled at production as he is rhyming.

His productions are cold to the point where he originally referred to them as “Eski” (like “Eskimo”) and those beats have helped define the genre’s the sound.

Despite how prolific artists of the genre—Skepta, Dizzee Rascal, and Wiley—have become, it’s extremely difficult to find grime albums or essential records besides Boy in da Corner. The main draw of grime is the live sets and singles, these short bursts that truly convey the genre’s raw energy. Its heart is in the local scene that transcends the corporate market and necessity for album structure. Grime was often played over pirate radio, or the transmission of communications over radio waves by unlicensed amateurs, which is illegal by FCC standards.

These pirate radio stations would use transmitters on the roofs of buildings to create a kind of “raves on air” format, and would advertise through specialist record shops. The DIY nature of grime surrounded it in London, with the hackneyed ways it was sold and heard.

Slated to be the next big thing by music critics, it was difficult for the genre to gain traction when facing obstacles in the U.K. Grime never affected the charts the way garage did or traveled the world the way dubstep has more recently. Frankly, it never stood a chance, given the poor infrastructure with the decline of pirate radio and specialist records shops, coupled with the police’s dogged insistence of shutting down every rave.

Towards the end of 2007, the English police began rolling out Form 696, a now-notorious “risk assessment” document that requires promoters to provide details of their events to the police at least two weeks in advance. The form drew particular criticism for demanding a breakdown of the ethnic groups expected to attend—a move that many saw as an attempt to ethnically profile clubbers. That’s what happened at the 2014 Just Jam event at the Barbican in London.

Following advice from the London police, the Barbican cancelled the event even though it wasn’t a grime event—there was just one grime act scheduled to perform. The question of a cohesive black British musical identity is more than just a question of sales and demographics—it’s an institutional problem. The U.K. has an issue with racism that it’s unwilling to address, reflected not only in negative attitudes towards black British music, but also toward the culture.

Despite the setbacks, grime saw a “revival,”—an arguable term because grime itself hasn’t gone anywhere since the early ‘00s—last year. The resurgence has moved its artists away from the street corners and estates of working class Britain and into the foreground of British culture, with Skepta’s “Shutdown” reaching the top of the U.K. charts, a total of 27 nominations for grime artists across all categories at the Mobo awards, and artists like RL Grime getting slots at American festivals like Hard Summer and Coachella.

The surges of trap rap in America and grime in the U.K. aren’t so different. The booming trap production powered by Metro Boomin and 808 Mafia generally has a tempo of 140 beats per minute (BPM), which is the tempo of most of the grime instrumentals that U.K. MCs spit over. The heavy use of synthesizers, ominous strings, and lots of bass, not to mention the generally aggressive nature of the beats, are yet more similarities between trap and grime production. Add some triplet hi-hats to Wiley’s “Morgue” instrumental from 33 seconds onwards, and you have a beat with undeniable similarities to Metro Boomin’s “Warrior” beat for Young Thug.

Grime is a timely metaphor for our mixed-race society, taking influences from various cultures yet managing to sound utterly,

resolutely, determinedly British. It is an important part of the British experience, one of the few genuinely working-class music scenes to have emerged in recent years, and one whose influence has written through pop’s mainstream in the work of Tinie Tempah and SBTV’s Jamal Edwards. Just as scenes like punk have been celebrated and nurtured, this new wave of grime deserves the same treatment.

It’s hopeful to think that grime could fully spread to America, but it wouldn’t be for any kind of validation. Skepta and Wiley are two of the most direct and headstrong names in U.K. music who have fought tirelessly to open doors within the scene and take it to new heights for the past 12 years, and who know that their personal career moves will affect the gateway for the next generation. These are not guys who have been waiting for the opportunity to go weak at the knees over a chart co-sign. The reason grime and U.K. rap are on the cusp of becoming uniquely special propositions right now is because of how grounded and determined its leading exponents have become.

The revival of grime in recent years is credited to a feeling of unrest among a lot of young people who were using the honest lyrics and homegrown DIY approach to express their disillusionment and anger. Grime started off underground and bedroom-based, and it still is. But now, increasing recognition has given the genre respect, and inspired a whole new generation of MCs to push grime from its secluded corner to become a defining countercultural insurgency of the millennial generation.

• Anu Gulati (Computer Science/Math)

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Local Photos

Young The Giant, Whittemore Center, NH

Rio Asch Phoenix (Media Arts)

...The Academy Is, House of Blues

Nola Chen (Computer Science)

Cherry Glazerr, Royale

Katie Nelson (International Affairs)

Artists who could run for President

(and win)

So far, the 2016 presidential election has seen hopefuls that moonlight as neurosurgeons, business executives, and the dude that yells, “You’re fired!” at people on TV. So is it really that far-fetched of an idea that a musician could run for president? We came close in 2015, when Waka Flocka Flame released a video supporting his run for office with a platform that vaguely referenced smoking a blunt a day and a federal ban on people with large feet using sidewalks.

Maybe Waka Flocka wasn’t our political salvation, but here are a few other artists that could put up a decent fight in the presidential election.

Kanye West Andrew W.K. If Andrew W.K. were to run for president of the United States tomorrow, there would be no doubt what political party he would represent: the Party Party. An active performer since the mid-’90s, Andrew W.K.’s principles of partying hard, having fun, and accepting others have been invigorating and inspiring people for years. The self-proclaimed “King of Partying” is an esteemed motivational speaker and pens a weekly advice column that tackles such topics as depression, religion, and relationship problems. W.K. even hosts his own radio program, spectacularly titled “America W.K.,” on the network owned by conservative political commentator and Fox News alum, Glenn Beck. Have you seen the iconic cover of I Get Wet, featuring a sweaty Andrew W.K. with blood dripping from his nose and down his face? Of course you have, and the controversial image is practically begging to serve as his campaign logo, ready to put President Barack Obama’s significantly less bloodstained “Hope” poster to shame.

Kanye West is the only artist on this list that has actually expressed interest in becoming president. The flames were ignited at the 2015 Video Music Awards when, at the end of his acceptance speech, Yeezy unexpectedly announced his intentions to run in the 2020 election.

Although we’re all familiar with Kanye’s tendencies to…we’ll say, surprise us, at award shows, follow-up interviews with both him and his wife, Kim Kardashian, have confirmed that he’s kind of serious about it. So where does Mr. West stand politically? His lyrics have tackled racism, classism, and his distrust in formal education. He’s fearlessly outspoken, an incredible speech-giver, and a perfectionist.

If that doesn’t sell you, just think of how stylish the White House would look after Kanye and Kim got done with it. If Kanye can mobilize hordes of young people to wait in line for hours for his $350 Yeezy Boosts, he can definitely motivate them to head to the voting booths in 2020.

Campaign Slogan: “One Nation, Under Kanye”

Campaign Slogan: “Party Hard For America” 17

Feature

Killer Mike Killer Mike is as famous for his activism and interest in politics as he is for being one half of the critically acclaimed rap duo Run The Jewels.

The Atlanta-native is extremely outspoken on the topics of racial discrimination, police brutality, and criminal justice reform both in his music and interviews, as well as on social media, while still managing to be playful. What other rapper could maintain a stage name as intimidating as “Killer Mike,” while also possessing an album consisting entirely of cat sounds in their discography? Currently, Killer Mike is endorsing presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders–the unlikely pair has released a series of interviews together that bring light to pressing national issues and raise awareness for Sanders’s campaign in new audiences. Right now, it looks like our best chance of getting Killer Mike a permanent spot in the White House is as a member of Bernie’s Cabinet.

Campaign Slogan: “Close your Eyes (And Count to a Better Tomorrow)”

Tom Morello In 2008, Tom Morello described himself as the “half-Kenyan Harvard graduate from Illinois who is not running for office.” He may have been joking, but Morello has been dodging governmental inquiries for years.

Unfortunately for us, a brief stint in Democratic Senator Alan Cranston’s office in his early 20s and an overall distaste for formal politics has left a career in government policy off of Morello’s aspirational checklist.

However, over the course of his 30+ year career, Morello has candidly blended his political activism with his various musical projects, as guitarist for the hard-hitting Rage Against the Machine and as his alter-ego solo project, the Nightwatchman. He’s no stranger to political quarrels either–he once referred to Paul Ryan, former Republican vice presidential candidate, as a “jackass” when Ryan cited RATM as his favorite band. In an ideal world, instead of raging against the political machine, Morello would get inside and rebuild it.

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Campaign Slogan: “Feed the poor. Fight the power. Rock the fuck out.”

Snoop Dogg There has never been, and probably will never be, a rapper more widely accepted and adored than Snoop Dogg. Martha Stewart loves Snoop Dogg. Larry King loves Snoop Dogg. Ask your grandmother—I bet she at least likes Snoop Dogg. Although Snoop’s lengthy career has never been without controversy, from a laundry list of criminal charges to a more recently and highly publicized altercation with Iggy Azalea, the Doggfather has always maintained a relatively positive public image– something not many politicians can say. Snoop’s political views are blurred in terms of normal party distinctions. He’s usually a Democrat, sometimes a conservative, and generally down to endorse the candidate that’s most likely to legalize marijuana. So what’s stopping Snoop from running for office? Hypothetically, President Dogg’s executive power would have to remain relatively domestic, however, as the rapper has been banned from Norway, Great Britain, and Australia, to name a few. Should Snoopadelic ever decide to run for president, it wouldn’t come as a surprise at all if he easily charmed his way, blunt in hand, right into The Oval Office.

Campaign Slogan: “One Toke, One Vote”

Beyoncé If Beyoncé Knowles was elected president, would the constituents refer to her as such? Or would we vote for a more fitting title to be instated, such as “Queen Bey of the Free World?” Would we the people still be American citizens, or would we begin collectively referring to ourselves as “The BeyHive?” She’s a force of nature in the pop world, having dominated the charts since she was a teenager. Lately, Beyoncé’s lyricism and performances have taken on social issues typically not explored by other pop stars. She’s a proud feminist, as evidenced by her essay on gender equality, as well as in her iconic 2014 VMA performance that solidified her as a feminist icon when she danced in front of the huge, glowing letters that spelled the word itself.

Beyoncé was even the subject of a course taught at Rutgers University, titled “Politicizing Beyoncé.” Bey would also have no problem reaching the one demographic many of the current presidential hopefuls have trouble gaining support from today: the single ladies.

Campaign Slogan: “Who Run The World? Beyoncé.”

• Kelly Subin (Marketing/Interactive Media)

illustrations by Brooke Dunahugh (Studio Art) 19

All Art of the Past

Editorial Spring 2016

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A look back on the life and music of Pierre Boulez

Must Be Destroyed On the surface, Pierre Boulez was an insufferable defender of contemporary art music, championing the weird and unapproachable, demanding only the best from his performers and from himself. But at his core, he was a rebel. Filled with unforgiving passion, he was known to boo and offend some of his more established colleagues.

Bringing attitude to western art music, he set himself apart from the pack.

When he died at the age of 90 on January 5, Boulez was widely considered the most significant French composer of his time.

He had worked to support and champion the work of forward thinking 20th century composers, even those in the art rock world like Frank Zappa. He had become an equally famous conductor and composer, having led many of the world’s most prestigious orchestras by the age of 50.

In 1954, he founded a series of concerts known as Le Domaine Musicale. Boulez created and served as the director of the Centre for Musical and Acoustical Research, an organization and research lab that has been instrumental in the advancement of new forms of experimental art and music, including modernism and post-modernism, as well as being a lab for the development of new music software including OpenMusic, AudioSculpt, OMax, Spat, Modalys, Antescofo and Orchidée.

Receiving a total of 26 Grammy awards in his lifetime (to date—Kanye only has 21), Boulez was truly a force of nature in the modern music scene. He pioneered the use of pitch manipulation and controlled chance in musical works, and he sought the integration of technology into new forms of composition, famously saying that, “Music cannot move forward without science.” These ideas have become cornerstones of not just modern art music, but of much pop music, including hiphop and rock n’ roll.

The reason Boulez should be important to you or to me is not his otherworldly compositional abilities, but his lack of prejudice. Boulez placed importance on what musicians did, not who they were. He was known to be critical of many popular

and established composers—including the renowned Igor Stravinsky—and also championed more alternative forms of art.

Boulez was responsible for taking Frank Zappa under his wing and conducting some of his more experimental pieces of art music. The western art music scene has always been incredibly conservative, and having someone find more value in Zappa’s work than Stravinsky’s was rare, especially coming from someone in a place of power and prestige. That’s what that makes Boulez important—until the day he died he never rested on his laurels. He was always pushing forward, looking for new ground to break and critiquing even the most untouchable pieces of art while also seeking to beautify the most unfashionable things. Above all, he demanded passion, both from artists and his listeners.

When speaking about his work with Zappa, Boulez recalled, ”Zappa stood out from the ranks [of rock music] because he refused to let himself be ensconced in it, and shunned commercial logic. Provocative, leaning much to the Left, he loathed the market into which rock music had compromised itself.” His respect for a fellow artist, regardless of their background, is one of the many things that made Boulez so unique.

Many similarities can also be drawn between Boulez and Zappa, both in their irreverence to pop-culture and their disdain for the music industry, whether it be the ivory-tower or the Hollywood record label. It was Boulez who said: “The function of pop music is to be consumed,” even though that line sounds like something that could easily come from someone like Frank Zappa.

In his own finality, Boulez was never satisfied with where music was, and always fascinated by where it should go. He will always be remembered as a driving force behind the evolution of music in the 20th century and a man who pushed French music throughout the world. More than anything, his life is an example of placing the most importance on the music artists write, not where they come from.

• Spencer Bateman (Computer Science/ Music)

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Feature Editorial

THE VINYL INDUSTRY

by Tim Fetcher (Political Science)

If you’ve ventured into your local Barnes & Noble or Urban

Outfitters in the last few years, you may have noticed an interesting addition to the merchandise: Both retail giants have gradually began stocking vinyl records. Any music lover would be excited that vinyl has reached a level of popularity that causes major chains to see the economic benefit of stocking records – at least initially. In the age of digital music, the fact that people are still willing to purchase music at all is a promising trend, and marks beneficial change to a crumbling industry.

But this surge comes at a cost.

Fall 2014 Spring 2016

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When the major

labels started taking notice of this resurgence of vinyl, they began reissuing their best sellers: The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and Bob Marley. Now, each makes up a major portion of all annual record sales. Only a handful of vinyl pressing plants are left in the U.S., so these major labels are given priority, with plants running at full capacity to produce 60,000 copies of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of Moon, putting small-label orders of a mere couple thousand pressings on the back burner. Small releases are often delayed for a few weeks, or in worse cases, up to half a year. As Jimmy Johnson, owner of independent Arlington-based distributor Forced Exposure, puts it, “If Universal orders AC/DC, you’re screwed.”

In Johnson’s line of work, the perpetual queue is a constant headache, causing production of the labels he works with to languish. “It has turned down the whole process six to nine months and you have very little control of what happens,” he said. ”When a record becomes popular, it is impossible to get more copies.”

This not only hurts initial record sales, but also leaves touring bands unable to stock their merch tables with copies of their latest records, diminishing their sales and the label’s profits.

This bottlenecking isn’t just a result of big companies squeezing out the little guys, but also comes from the laborintensive process behind producing vinyl records. Creating vinyl is a time consuming and delicate process, and

ever since the CD boom of the ’90s, few advances have been made. Meanwhile, materials and machinery are becoming increasingly scarce. Johnson suspects the major labels see this as more of a “headache” than anything else. With smaller margins for capital than with CDs or digital and significantly more expense, it’s easy to see why major labels are counting the days until the end of

“

records. Plants and major labels prioritize special editions of their best-selling records and overly complex reissues, with colorful vinyl and picturedisc 45 sets. This strain, along with normal production, is when the industry moves at its slowest, and some labels have gone as far as to boycott the entire holiday. English indie labels Howling Owl and Sonic Cathedral wrote in an

”

...co-opted by major labels and used as another marketing stepping stone.

the vinyl surge. According to a Factmag report, only two suppliers produce the lacquer needed to make vinyl. One is a major supplier located in Fairfax, Virginia; the other is a one-man business based out of Japan, who is, apparently, hard to get in touch with and extremely overworked. The result is a demand that neither supplier can fulfill. Rainbo Records’ Jerome Bruner told Noisey that pressing plants are working at full efficiently and are still overloaded: “We are running our machines 24 hours a day, six days a week at max capacity, as are the other few plants in the United States,” he said in 2015.

Many small labels blame Record Store Day as another culprit of this inverse effect of vinyl record sales.

The day began as a celebration of independent record stores and the vinyl they sell, but has quickly escalated to a major factor in the delay of independent

open letter that Record Store Day has become “just another event in the annual music industry circus…co-opted by major labels and used as another marketing stepping stone. U2 have already shat out their album into our iTunes, why should they constipate the world’s pressing plants with it too?”

This problem facing the vinyl industry has no clear solution—perhaps the simplest answer is to open more pressing plants, but it’s hardly the most practical. Jack White has taken this step, but he is also one of the most criticized users of the vinyl resource, thanks to the intricacies he implemented in the pressing of Lazaretto. Despite taking the high-profile initiative, it’s unlikely White will set a trend, as few see vinyl as a lasting profit. Unfortunately, this problem may only disappear if or when the resurgence of vinyl dies–and that isn’t really a solution at all.

23

Editorial

KESHA V. DR LUKE For many people, Ke$ha’s music conjures up images of glitter, vodka, and middle school dances that involved neither of those first two items. But the artist, whose full name is Kesha Rose Sherbert, has lately been grappling with a much heavier topic.

AUDREY COONEY (JOURNALISM)

Spring 2016

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S

ince 2014, Kesha has been ensnared in a string of lawsuits against Sony Music Entertainment and her former producer Lukasz Gottwald, known more commonly as Dr. Luke.

The two have worked together since 2005, but in 2014 she sued him for sexual assault, saying he abused her physically, mentally, and emotionally. Her allegations included that he had drugged and raped her, forcing her to keep silent for the sake of her career.

He hit back with a lawsuit of his own, claiming the singer was refusing to comply with the contract. Because of the lawsuit, Kesha was barred from recording, performing, or selling music. The last song she worked on was Pitbull’s 2013 hit “Timber,” and her last studio album came out in 2012.

This lapse in recording, she said, would be fatal to her career, asking a judge to allow her to work with producers besides Gottwald.

Kesha alleges that Sony knew about Gottwald’s abuse and was aware of him doing the same thing to other female artists under his supervision.

“Upon information and belief, [Sony] has not investigated, supervised, taken any corrective action, or sought to prevent Dr. Luke from further physical and emotional abuse,” the lawsuit says.

Now 28, Kesha first entered into a contract with Sony and Dr. Luke when she was only 18. At the time, she was completely unknown, and Gottwald is now taking credit for transforming the teen into a widelyrecognized pop star.

For young, unknown artists, scoring a contract with a well-established record label can be the only way to obtain recognition in the music industry. But while signing a contract might seem like hitting the jackpot, it’s actually the labels themselves that stand to gain the most. Labels take a huge cut of the profits from record and merchandise sales— artists usually only get 10 to 25 percent, and a large part of that goes to paying managers and covering other expenses.

The problem isn’t a new one. In 2001, country singer LeAnn Rimes testified during a California State Senate hearing about the unfairness of her contract with Curb Records. Nineteen at the time, Rimes claimed she would be 35 years old by the time she had produced enough music to release her from the label she signed when she was 12, which called for 21 records. The contract also stipulated that she would only reside in Texas and Tennessee. Rimes claimed that, at 12, she hadn’t fully understood the terms of her contract and essentially signed whatever was deemed necessary to launch her career.

Her situation was unusual—she had signed a string of seven-record deals strung together— but indicative of a larger issue.

Other singers, including Don Henley and Courtney Love, testified at the same hearing that music industry executives had acted unfairly.

Love was in the process of suing her label for what she claimed was an unfair contract; the previous year, Vivendi Universal had sued her and her band Hole, claiming they owed the company five albums they had failed to produce.

Henley, former frontman for the Eagles, has said for years that the music industry is rigged against artists. In 2000, he founded the Recording Artists’ Coalition, an organization aimed at protecting musicians from scheming record companies. The group has fought to repeal the laws that hold artists to seven-year contracts, and Henley has gone so far as to testify before several committees in the U.S. Senate on the subject.

As Kesha points out in her lawsuit against Dr. Luke, musical careers can peeter out due to tangled contract negotiations. In one notable example, Jordin Sparks, who won American Idol in 2007, dropped off the map during a six-year gap between albums. In 2014, she publically claimed her label had put her on

“

the backburner, and that she was considering releasing an album independently. As she explained, she was not on her label’s “schedule” for the year, meaning she would have to wait until she became the focus of her label’s attention again.

While Henley’s objections seem to hold water, it’s hard to ignore that female artists are more likely to be victims of abuse at the hands of their managers. Being trapped in an unwanted contract is a difficult situation, but female artists in particular are at risk for more intimate forms of abuse. Kesha claims that Gottwald’s emotional abuse contributed to her eating disorder, which resulted in a stint in rehab. She also maintains he used drugs and alcohol to make it easier for him to rape her, possibly using her image as an avid partier against her and the potential accusations.

Female artists being loaded with drugs by their handlers is nothing new. Judy Garland, whose acting and musical career took off when she starred in The Wizard of Oz when she was only 16, is a notable example. She was frequently given adrenaline shots and pills meant to keep her awake during long hours on set, then given barbiturates and sleeping pills to counteract their effects. Before long the teenage was desperately addicted, and spent the rest of her life beholden to drugs and alcohol, eventually dying from an overdose at the age of 47.

While artists decry long-term contracts, labels say they’re necessary in order to properly develop clients. But in cases such as Kesha’s, these contracts expose artists to the possibility of severe mistreatment.

When artists are tied to their producers and labels, and told their entire careers depend on them, it places them in an impossible—and potentially dangerous—situation.

IT’S HARD

TO IGNORE

THAT FEMALE

ARTISTS ARE

MORE LIKELY

TO BE VICTIMS OF ABUSE.”

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Cover Story

In Memoriam: 1947 — 2016

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In mid-1968, David Bowie was an awkward, flamboyant, ambitiously artsy social reject. Less than 10 years later, he was still all of that, but this time, everyone wanted to be just like him.

Everyone remembers the first time they encountered Bowie. For me, it was age 15. My best friend and I had a long drive home ahead of us and my friend’s father, who was driving, decided to pass the time by playing Hunky Dory from beginning to end. From the opening piano chord of “Changes,” I knew I felt something special. I don’t know if it was the unabashed campiness, the simplicity of the instrumentation, or the fact that the song was just so damn catchy, but something just clicked inside. I’ve been a Bowie nerd ever since.

Bowie is the most influential musician in modern music, period.

He has had his influential fingerprints on more musical genres, musicians, designers, and other areas of the arts than most artists will ever come to contact. Bowie has directly influenced at least one of your favorite artists. He influenced pop music. He experimented in the studio with every song, and understood the highs and lows of popular image. His pop stint brought him superstardom in the states with No. 1s like “Fame” and “Let’s Dance,” and stimulated a slew of homages in the form of vintage and modern artists like Madonna and The 1975.

Of course, Bowie influenced rock. The release of The Man Who Sold the World marked the birth of the glam rock genre that would pave the way for further Bowie innovations in hard rock that inspired giants like Def Leppard and Guns N’Roses (lest we forget Nirvana’s famous cover of the album’s title track). He left his mark on folk music with “Space Oddity,” his first major contribution to popular culture. The genre-bending epic detailed a failed space mission, and he solidified his influence as a folky singer-songwriter with the everlasting Hunky Dory, the album that introduced most, myself included, to the icon.

Bowie influenced electronic music. The Berlin Trilogy of albums, underselling at the time but now considered immortal, took the electronic groundwork laid down by artists like Kraftwerk to new highs — or Lows, if you will. Those albums influenced other groundbreaking, industrial rock artists like Marilyn Manson, and my personal musical idol, Trent Reznor, who wouldn’t exist without Bowie.

His work has even given way to hip-hop, where his tunes have been sampled over and over by the likes of George Clinton and Jay-Z for hugely influential songs like “Give Up the Funk.” David Bowie was a fashion icon, paving the way for Lady Gaga and Grace Jones, who took the biggest of cues from Bowie. He revamped his appearance by the day, and popularized and developed (taking a cue from The Beatles) the everlasting tradition of musical alter egos. Aladdin Sane invented the lighting bolt look, the Thin White Duke was dark and brooding, and of course, Ziggy Stardust played guitar.

Bowie understood fame — its nuances, its highs and lows, its culture. He took what he knew and flipped it on its head, letting it spin around with no respite in sight. Bowie influenced every area of the arts under the sun, but most of all, Bowie built a culture of weirdos.

The outsiders, the rejects, the different, the strange; Bowie made all of them cool. He made it okay to not know who you are, okay to be spontaneous, okay to be introspective, okay to be out of your damn mind, okay to be yourself, okay to be an awkward, flamboyant, ambitiously artsy social reject. A shy recluse at heart, Bowie kept his personal life very private in his final few years, but never failed to share what meant the most to him. We’ll miss you David Bowie, you beautiful lad insane.

Jason Levy (Business)

Davy Jones-era (1964-1967) Before his immensely successful reinvention as Bowie, a 17-year-old David Jones, enamored with American R&B, formed “Davie Jones and the King Bees.” He was joined by George Underwood, the man responsible for Bowie’s signature eye discoloration by punching him in the face at 15. Underwood would later quit performing and create album art for T. Rex, Procol Harum, and Bowie himself—specifically, Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust. On the band’s first single, a reworking of the spiritual “Liza Jane,” Bowie affects a compellingly adolescent snarl amid swaggering sax licks. A pre-fame Glyn Johns engineered the B-side, a cover of Paul Revere and the Raiders’ “Louie, Louie Go Home.”

Just a month after the release of “Liza Jane,” Bowie quit the King Bees to join the Manish Boys. This was the beginning of Bowie’s brief working relationship with producer Shel Talmy, who had been pivotal in the success of The Kinks and The Who. The Manish Boys debuted with a cover of Bobby Bland’s “I Pity the Fool,” featuring a guitar solo from a young Jimmy Page, who was working as a session musician. The B-side was “Take My Tip” — a lyrically uninspired account of teenage courtship, but the first commercially-released Bowie composition nonetheless. Where Bowie’s usual timbre is near-unrecognizable in earlier recordings, he begins to find his voice here.

Bowie quit the Manish Boys that same year, unsatisfied by the group’s minor success. His new group, Davy Jones and the Lower Third, began cranking out high-octane Mod anthems like “You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving Me” and “Baby Loves That Way.” These singles were also produced by Talmy, which only supported the notion that the Lower Third were ripping off The Who — ironic, given The Who’s obvious debt to The Kinks. On the solipsist “Can’t Help Thinking About Me,” Bowie laments his impending adulthood. Bassist Graham “Death Rivens” characteristic thump and alternating fifths seem to foreshadow proto-metal — three years before the arrival of Iron Butterfly and Blue Cheer.

• Joey Dussault (Journalism)

HUNKY DORY | 1971 It really is a shame that Bowie’s fourth effort was largely overlooked until the monster success of Ziggy Stardust, but looking back, it kind of makes sense. A cursory glance of the album presents Hunky Dory as very similar in style to his second self-titled LP, an album that largely established Bowie as a one-hit-wonder with “Space Oddity.” The remainder of David Bowie contained slower, folksy songs that failed to capture the public ear, and many assumed Hunky Dory was more of the same.

Oh, how wrong the public was. “Changes” set the stage for every subsequent Bowie release, as it was a true manifesto of the constant fluctuations in Bowie’s musical style, look, personal life, and voice that were to come. It truly is the song that introduces most young people to Bowie’s music: simple, yet so accessible. “Oh! You Pretty Things,” arguably a spiritual successor to “Changes,” is no less catchy, jaunty, or sentimental. Even “Kooks,” a short, poignant instruction book Bowie wrote for his son Duncan, resonates beautifully.

“Queen Bitch” is the quintessential campy song—sure, the whole album is campy, but “Queen Bitch” really got the ball rolling in terms of Bowie’s ever-changing out-there persona.

Then of course there’s “Life on Mars?” Covered over and over, this song is one of the best lyrical achievements in music history, wavering from surreal image to surreal image, and culminates in such a simple, yet stark and unanswered question. Hunky Dory wasn’t the first proper Bowie album, but it is certainly the best place to start.

• Jason Levy (Business)

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Cover Story

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars| 1972 It’s hard to write about Ziggy Stardust without sounding clichè. Since the album’s release more than 40 years ago, it’s received just about every commendation one could imagine, and every single piece of clichèd, vomitus praise you could lay on Ziggy Stardust is entirely true and well deserved. So few albums achieve its perfection — every melody is catchy, but complex. The instrumentation is heavy where it should be, yet reserved when necessary, and the lyrics are thematic and bright.

Everyone probably has that one Bowie moment — a line or a riff where he just cuts through. For me, it’s the opening chord on “Five Years.” The cold, steel guitar strings hit your ears in a slow and almost hopeful sounding way. Opening the door to the weird and wonderful world of Ziggy Stardust, that chord alone sets the stage for the story of a freaky alien coming to earth to warn us of our imminent doom. The song builds with piano and a vocal climax, a structure that is echoed later on the album on songs like “Rock and Roll Suicide.” A gifted songwriter, Bowie crafted every track on Ziggy Stardust with a melody so unique and perfectly suited for the message of the song. Take a song like “Starman,” the soaring vocals and instrumentation would conjure the image of soaring in space, even if there had been no lyrics.

For all its musical merit, the album was more than just the sum of its songs. Along with it came the Ziggy Stardust image and era, another chapter in the Bowie mythos. Bowie, pale with red hair and a red and blue lightning bolt across his face, has become just as iconic as the music. That image, mixed with the brilliant melodies, art rock style, and provocative lyrics cemented him as the oddity everyone needed in their lives.

• Jonathan Vayness (Psychology)

ALADDIN SANE | 1973 Aladdin Sane, its cover featuring Bowie’s oft-recreated lightning-bolt makeup, was his first release following Ziggy Stardust, the album that made him a full-blown rockstar. Just a year after releasing the highly stylized rock opera that is Ziggy Stardust, Bowie took a step back, looking to his friends in The Rolling Stones (the album also features a sped-up cover of “Let’s Spend the Night Together”) and earlier artists for inspiration.

The result was an album with more of an edge to it than its predecessors. Bowie was moving toward a heavier rock sound, but he still drew from an eclectic array of influences. The avant-garde title track makes heavy use of erratic jazz piano over a steady guitar rhythm. “The Jean Genie” features a driving blues riff and intermittent harmonica, while “Panic in Detroit” makes use of a Bo Didley beat. Both tracks are heavily reminiscent of R&B.

While Aladdin Sane might seem less ambitious than Ziggy Stardust, Bowie was continuing to expand in myriad artistic directions. The album was proof that, with or without an outlandish persona, Bowie could consistently deliver the unexpected.

• Audrey Cooney ( Journalism)

STATION TO STATION| 1976

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Bowie made a lot of records that could accurately be described as “weird,” but Station to Station might just be the weirdest of them all. Its stark black and white artwork, splashed with dramatic blood-red text, shows a dead-eyed Bowie poking his head out from what looks to be soundproofing material from another galaxy. The image, a still from Bowie’s starring role as a shipwrecked extraterrestrial in Nicholas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth, sets the tone for the paranoid, cocaine-fueled art-funk within. Bowie’s Thin White Duke character, a detached and eerily otherworldly persona derived in part from his character in Roeg’s film and further developed by his copious drug use, was in its peak form during Station to Station’s 1975 recording. Bowie himself reportedly remembers little of the process, and there’s no shortage of gonzo stories about witches and swimming pool exorcisms surrounding it.

All of this bleeds directly into the music, which warps the “plastic soul” of Young Americans into more boldly adventurous shapes while maintaining a backbone of danceability. The 10-minute title track is Bowie’s consummate epic, chugging from an abstract intro to an

anthemic conclusion featuring the immortal couplet, “It’s not the side-effects of the cocaine / I’m thinking that it must be love.” The LP thrives on symmetry, and “TVC15” opens side B on a similarly striking note by blending textural guitars and saxophones with a jaunty piano into an upbeat tune that belies its sci-fi nightmare subject matter. “Golden Years” and “Stay” occupy the middle slots of each side, and deliver the album’s most purely accessible jams; “Golden Years” is its most well-known single for a reason, and the six-minute-plus “Stay” is an alluring come-on that exalts in Carlos Alomar and Earl Slick’s impeccable guitar work. Side A closer “Word on a Wing” and finale “Wild is the Wind” proffer Station to Station’s raggedly lovelorn counterpoints. They’re both desperate pleas to a lover, the first romantic, the second nearly frantic, both framed by the swirling insanity of the rest of the record.

Bowie never recorded another project that sounded like Station to Station, ostensibly because it would’ve killed him; within a year of its release he had fled both its Los Angeles backdrop and the accompanying mountains of blow. But this final product is a peek into a particularly unhinged corner of a genius mind. The songwriting is equal parts pop perfection and creeping terror, the vocal performances are magnificent, the band is on fire, and the whole thing coalesces into a freaky, fascinating entity that’s plainly one of Bowie’s best.

• Ben Stas (Journalism/English)

LOW | 1977 The main ingredients responsible for Bowie’s 1977 album Low have become the stuff of music-nerd legend: the cocaine detox, the Krautrock influence (Low being the first album in the much-mythologized “Berlin Trilogy”), Brian Eno and Tony Visconti’s wacky Oblique Strategies and synthesizers. Yet the album’s nervous ambience comes primarily from Bowie’s isolation and loneliness.

Bowie’s state of mind can be hard to discern, given that almost half of the songs are instrumentals and those that do have lyrics are either complete gibberish or Burroughs-esque cut-up fragments. The fact that Bowie and his excellent band were initiating sonic revolution on every track also distracts plenty from the words. While Low deserves praise for everything from the alien laser guitars and zero-gravity drums of the album’s pseudo-rock songs to the commiserating ghosts Eno summons on the side B instrumentals, it’s Bowie’s lyrics that give Low its strange pathos.

On Low, Bowie is torn between the desire for and the fear of human connection. Lines like “Such a wonderful person/But you got problems” from “Breaking Glass” and “I’m in the mood for your love/I’m just a little bit afraid of you” on “What in the World” spell it out most clearly, but the theme is alluded to elsewhere. Two of the most optimistic songs appear consecutively: “Be My Wife” and “A New Career in a New Town.” Save his crumbling marriage or throw himself into his travels, either path may offer true contentment, but Bowie cannot bring himself to choose. On the album’s most optimistic song, “Sound and Vision,” Bowie chucks both options into the fire and finds the album’s one pure moment of inner peace by retreating to his room and losing himself in music. No song better captures both the overwhelming joy of falling in love with music and the tinge of loneliness that all music lovers accept as their lot each time they annihilate the world beyond their headphones. It’s a fount of life-giving energy in an album defined by desolation.

There is something reassuringly sympathetic in Low, despite it being an emotionally distant album crafted by an artist so iconic he barely seemed human. It is a cry of solitude spoken in a private language, a touching reminder that, behind the poses, costumes, and obfuscations, even Bowie shared our human need to love and be loved.

• Terence Cawley (Biology)

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Cover Story

HEROES | 1977 Characterized by its invention and urgency, Heroes takes the ideas first generated on Low and expands them through opening up the studio claustrophobia to a full band once again. In a recording studio located 500 yards from the Berlin Wall, Bowie was accompanied by Brian Eno with a droning EMS VCS3 synthesizer, Robert Fripp of King Crimson with a pitched feedback guitar, and producer Tony Visconti, who pushed Bowie to his most expressive and emotive vocal performances. The improvisational nature of Heroes’ recording shines in songs like opener “Beauty and the Beast” which assaults the senses with a renewed energy not found in Low, and the titletrack “Heroes,” where Visconti moved the microphone away from Bowie as the song progressed, forcing him to shout just to be heard.

Heroes’ B-Side strays from the industrial disco rock to deliver evocative ambient pieces comprised of wailing saxophones and reverbed string plucking. This dual nature of Heroes resembles the zeitgeist that was the Cold War at the time. Where an album’s B-side is typically connoted with a decline of importance or quality, the second half of Heroes displays beautifully dense, innovative arrangements that never lose the sense of ambition or depth found in the first half. That Bowie could retain a texture-rich atmosphere with a multitude of sounds over the course of a record is worthy of denoting Heroes a masterpiece as much as it is an experimental, artistic statement.

• Anu Gulati (Computer Science / Math)

LET’S DaNCE| 1983 Let’s Dance is pop art at its best, a timeless album that exists outside of context and reason, and demands one thing: You better have a good time. Often seen as the beginning of Bowie’s artistic decay, Let’s Dance was his successful attempt at the ‘80s; those that contest this opinion are probably no fun at parties. Thirty-three years after its release, from front to back, the album remains fresh and focused.

Let’s Dance illuminates a side of Bowie that is often overlooked, shrouded by melancholy and the significance of his sullen, more somber work that many have turned to following his premature and private passing. The darker recordings, such as Low or Station to Station are albums that shifted rock and left an undeniable, untouchable impression, but Let’s Dance is just as significant and serves as a reminder of how much fun Bowie is. At heart his music is more comfort music than anything else—you feel good when you listen to him.

More than what this album is musically is how it brought artists together. Let’s Dance gave Stevie Ray Vaughan his start as a fledgling guitarist whose notorious guitar work on the title track has all but been immortalized. Let’s Dance also featured work from super-producer Nile Rodgers, who has cut tracks with almost every relevant dance group imaginable since his work in Chic, including Madonna, Duran Duran, and more recently Daft Punk. The musical influence of Let’s Dance was immediately apparent in the pop dance revolution of the 1980s.

Let’s Dance included three of Bowie’s most successful singles, including the heart-pounding “Modern Love” and blazingly-hot “China Girl,” as well as the title track “Let’s Dance” which reached number 1 in both the UK and the US. Listening to this album in 2016 makes me wonder what it must have been like to listen to music without the Internet, when music was you and your car stereo, or you and your turntable turned up loud. Through the sleek guitar riffs and the thundering drums, Bowie proved that music will never stop being fun.

• Spencer Bateman (Computer Science / Music)

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THE NEXT DAY| 2013 After a nearly 10-year-long hiatus between albums, the longest in his career that spanned more than 40 years, Bowie came roaring back into the limelight with the release of The Next Day. The album reached critical acclaim immediately, being a brash mix of everything that made him great: his strong vocal melodies, his operatic production, and his sleek rock moves. During the recording, Bowie made a large effort to keep the fact that he was working on a new album a secret.

Having suffered from a number of health conditions in the years prior to the release of The Next Day, Bowie had given up touring for good, and many thought that might mean recording music as well. Despite rumors that Bowie had traded rock stardom for a quieter existence, his 24th studio album sounds anything but weak.

With all of its accolades, The Next Day was also the subject of criticism arguing that it was too reminiscent of his old work and not representative of the forward thinking, innovative Bowie. Feeling like a lost album from Bowie’s heyday, it had no business being released in 2013. Yet, The Next Day is what people want as a comeback album: It is a perfect summation of Bowie’s ego, his flair and most importantly his roots. The Next Day also serves as a perfect foil to Bowie most recent work Blackstar. Everything that was experimental in Blackstar was familiar in The Next Day. With the dread that is brought to our mind with songs like Blackstar’s “Lazarus” or “Dollar Days,” there is something warm and comforting about listening to the simple, honest “The Stars (Are Out Tonight)” or “Valentine’s Day” on The Next Day. There’s no great overarching theme, no character to play. It’s just Bowie being Bowie.

The Next Day isn’t necessarily a good jumping off point because it’s Bowie’s best, but because it represents what he stood for. It is a little bit Heroes and little bit Ziggy Stardust. A sampling of everything and a thunderous comeback, The Next Day is a perfect twin when paired with Blackstar. While Blackstar felt final, The Next Day was open-ended, bringing about feelings that anything was possible, maybe even another tour.

• Spencer Bateman (Computer Science / Music)

BLACKStAR| 2016 After an unforgettable career, of course Bowie’s final statement would be something to remember. Freddie Mercury famously recorded “The Show Must Go On” as the complications of HIV/AIDS began to finally take his life, announcing to the world that he was dying before the details of his battle with the disease became public. Bowie gave us a similar farewell, but with an entire album instead. Blackstar is Bowie’s 25th and final LP, hitting shelves just three days before his death.

The sessions that became Blackstar began almost immediately after the release of The Next Day, coinciding with the beginning of his 18-month-long battle with cancer. What resulted was an album from a lifelong musician inspired by his own impending death, with the awareness of his own body deteriorating in front of him, taking a central role in the construction of his final work. Bowie’s battle with cancer was not a public one by any means, yet pre-release singles, “Lazarus” and “Blackstar,” both draw attention to his own ascension into heaven months before his passing.

Serving primarily as a throwback to his Eno-era Berlin years, Blackstar is filled with experimental movements, chaotic jazz horns, and abrasive intrusions of a variety of sound.

His lyrics move back and forth from clear dictations to distorted and echoing choruses. The strange nature of the album compliments the circumstances of its creation.

A powerful artist is one that allows us to see the world through their own eyes. Bowie left this planet by giving us an opportunity unlike any other, a chance to see through the eyes of a dying mastermind, with some of his best work of the five decades that spanned his career.

• David McDevitt (International Affairs / Economics)

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Feature

A MUSICAL MYSTERY

Why Do SO Many people Like Future?

Think of the best year of your life.

Maybe it was the year you graduated high school, or the year you got your first car. Maybe it was the year your romantic dry-spell finally ended, or the year you bought a place of your own.

Now, multiply the positive things from that year by the number of tattoos Young Thug has. That is how good 2015 was to Future.

Future had one of the best years in rap history, thanks to an unprecedented mixtape and album run. On the backs of Beast Mode, 56 Nights, Dirty Sprite 2, and What a Time to be Alive, he went from popular rapper to cultural icon. As much as any one person can own a period of time, Future owned 2015.

But you knew all that. His achievements have been applauded in article after article, and you would have to be living under a rock with very bad cell reception to be unaware of his exploits, both musically and socially. What you might not know, though, is why precisely he has become so successful. Future is truly a musical enigma, and it’s

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incredibly hard to pin down one reason for his mass acclaim – much more so than with other famous artists. Drake has beautiful dexterity in both singing and rapping, Kendrick Lamar is unmatched lyrically, and J. Cole is as earnest and likeable as he is skilled. But what does Future have that makes him so special?

Lyrics are most definitely not the answer. As Shea Serrano, author of the New York Times bestseller “The Rap Yearbook” puts it, “If you actually listen to what he’s saying, it’s some of the dumbest shit in the world.” Future simply can’t hang with many other rappers in this regard, often leaning on basic rhyme schemes and shallow lyrics. As descriptive as it is, lines like “I just took a piss and I seen codeine coming out,” are not going to set you apart.

And that is something even his fans can agree on. Adrian Kombe, a freshman at Northeastern, described Future’s lyricism as “not creative and pretty degenerative.” Ayorinde Ifatunji, a sophomore and Future fan, went with “terrible” when asked to label it.

The thematic content of his songs is nothing special either, unless you are super into lean and strippers. He occasionally touches on the poverty of his upbringing and his love life, but for the most part, his subjects of interest are limited to money, drugs, and sex. And the way he discusses them is not novel or unique.

So with those ruled out, what is left is “his sound” – that vague term that encapsulates everything from production to the inflections in his voice. Somewhere in this murkiness is the key to figuring out Future’s appeal.

The sheer originality of his production and enunciation of lyrics could explain it partially. He doesn’t rap so much as he lets the words fall out of his mouth in a stream of syllables, and it’s all laid over complex and layered beats. “It’s weird and eclectic, and you’re not really sure if you like it at first, but then you get into it and you’re like ‘Oh, this is bomb,’” said Ifatunji, an experience that countless Future fans can undoubtedly relate to. “The way he enunciates things is very different, but it’s consistent and sounds good,” said Kombe.

But that still fails to fully explain the mystery of Future. After all, most of those descriptions could be used for Rich Homie Quan, and he has yet to match Future in terms of cultural relevance. Serrano, however, may have deciphered Future’s appeal with one quote: “It just feels like he’s plugged into the universe.”

It sounds silly and vaguely ridiculous, but it hints toward a much greater truth: Future is excellent at relaying the emotions and feelings of the world around him, and he does it without stressing about lyrics.

“He’s the first real post-word rapper. What he says doesn’t matter; it’s the emotions behind it,” said Serrano. “He was the first guy to be able to [relay emotions] without worrying about what he was saying.”

So while it may seem ironic for a trap rapper who talks mainly of drugs to be an expert in emotions, it could very well be the case.

The reception of each of his individual mixtapes and albums is prime evidence. Heading into the release of Honest, his second studio album, it seemed like Future was set to blow up. Pluto and Pluto 3D set the scene for heightened commercial success, and Honest becoming a hit was the natural progression.

But it flopped, at least in terms of critical reception. It was a stark departure from the more brooding Future of before, and people did not like it. This was most likely because, in spite of its title, the album felt dishonest. It felt overly poppy and seemed like a “play for radio attention,” in the words of Serrano. Jordan Sargent, a writer for Pitchfork and Gawker, described it as music “that neither appealed to a new fan base or his old one.” It was only when he returned to his introspective and darker roots with DS2 that he became an icon. It felt gritty and real, adjectives that definitively cannot be applied to Honest. “[With DS2] he wasn’t worrying about anything but getting his true sound out,” said Serrano.

That necessity of honesty is critical to understanding Future’s success. Future can’t effectively display his emotions if he is not truthfully reporting them, and without that emotional layer to his music, he is nowhere.

It’s not just Future’s emotions that make his music so beloved, either. It’s the fact that his songs leave space for the listener’s emotions as well. Most of the population can’t identify with the events or topics in Future’s lyrics, but they can identify with the feel of his sound. It is impossible to listen to “Turn On the Lights” without sympathizing with Future’s loneliness, just as it is impossible to listen to “Where Ya At” without feeling his confident defiance. People don’t listen to him because they want to hear what he is feeling. They listen because they want to rouse those same emotions within themselves, an appeal that extends to countless listeners, not just rap fans.

“What’s common about everyone who listens to him is that it’s a reflective thing for them,” said Serrano.

To put it simply, Future feels the same things you do, and the listener can tell. “He has a tangible authenticity. Not just street authenticity, but authenticity as a human,” said Sargent. “When you listen to Future you feel like you’re getting the real him, and I think that makes it possible for people to relate to him as an artist regardless of what one’s background might be.”

Future will never be a lyrical genius. But he is an auditory one, in the sense that he can contort his words and sentences in ways people never really considered before. Combined with expert production from producers like Metro Boomin’ and DJ Esco, Future has authoritatively unlocked a new way to appeal to the masses.

His music is less a refined and finished product and more of an open tapestry, one with ample room for listeners to inflect their own feelings and thoughts. Future’s triumphs are your triumphs, and his insecurities are your insecurities. That two-way emotional street is exceptionally rare in music, and it defines his rise to the top.

• Alex Frandsen (Journalism/Sociology)

Illustrations by Madisen Hackley (Experience Design) 33

Show Reviews

Reviews Muse

Raquel Massoud (Music Industry/Journalism)

Muse January 25 @ TD Garden

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Supporting Muse for the North American stretch of their Drones Tour, X Ambassadors opened the night with a relatively average set. The New York natives played their hits “Renegades” and “Jungle,” along with a slew of other tracks off their debut LP, VHS, which they released this past summer. While frontman Sam Harris and his brother/keyboardist Casey seemed to oversell the performance, their guitarist and drummer lacked the siblings’ level of enthusiasm. Overall, X Ambassadors felt out of place in such a large venue and their generic Imagine Dragons-inspired alt-rock was a sore complement to the headliner.

Muse is a band that loves theatrics, and it’s apparent on their Drones Tour. As the lights dimmed, a procession of soldiers circumnavigated the stage, introducing the theme of dystopian militarization that runs throughout the band’s seventh studio album.

As the first choral bars of the album’s acapella title track sounded, four spherical drones descended from the rafters and danced in synchronization over the crowd. As the

song came to its end, the drones gracefully returned to their perch above the crowd.

Shaking the spell of wonderment, Muse emerged with the opening riff of “Psycho,” resurrecting the straightforward hard rock of their earlier albums. With drummer Dominic Howard stationed in the center, frontman Matt Bellamy and bassist Chris Wolstenholme commanded the stage, a circular rotating platform flanked by two inclined catwalks. The power trio (accompanied by touring multiinstrumentalist Morgan Nicholls) played another Drones single, “Dead Inside,” before launching into the sinister bassline of “Hysteria,” off of 2004’s Absolution. Muse pleased the crowd with an extended outro, sampling both Led Zeppelin’s “Heartbreaker” and AC/DC’s iconic “Back in Black.”

While Muse played most of Drones, the band’s setlist also paid tribute to a few of their previous albums. Three of their most enduring hits, “Uprising,” “Starlight” and “Supermassive Black Hole,” were met with much enthusiasm.

The band also played fan-favorites “Resistance” and “Time is Running Out,” as well as “Map of the Problematique.” Muse only played one song, “Madness,” off of 2012’s The 2nd Law, and (sadly) ignored their first two albums.

Apart from flying drones and a rotating stage, the band’s live production featured stunning animation, projected on wide ribbons that descended from above. “The Handler” was accompanied by a colossal puppet master, whose eyes scoured the crowd and whose hands manipulated strings corresponding to Bellamy and Wolstenholme’s body movements. Bellamy’s piano ballad, “The Globalist,” also featured impressive animation that began with depictions of shimmering molecules and concluded with an android in a postapocalyptic wasteland. During the song’s midsection, a guitar-driven breakdown, a giant military blimp menaced the audience with searchlights.

As Muse left the stage, a reprise of the opening hymn played, and the drones resumed their choreographed waltz. After a few minutes of cheering, the band resurfaced and banged out a victorious encore with a confetti-ridden performance of “Mercy” and the ever-epic space cowboy anthem “Knights of Cydonia.”

Raquel Massoud (Music Industry/ Journalism)

Aaron Carter January 21 @ afterHOURS Northeastern DJ Camino got the ball rolling, spinning some dance hits to get the crowd warmed up. He started by playing David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” paying his respects to the recently-deceased artist. The rest of his set was the choruses of pop songs with nu-disco backing tracks. The levels were consistently off, but the crowd was moving.

Let’s be honest though, people were there for “I Want Candy” and that’s about it.

Seeing Aaron Carter walk onstage was surreal. My mental image of him is as a tween decked out in ridiculous ‘90s gear, complete with overalls and odd neckwear.

Really all that’s changed is time. Carter is 28 now, and he’s kept up with the ludicrous popular fashion trends. He wore baggy white everything, a designer backpack and a backwards cap that said “DOPE.” His jacket had slits cut out all over it, as if he almost got hit with a few dozen shuriken on his way to the show.

After informing the audience for the third time that he made all his own beats on his forthcoming album, Carter began his performance. He was showcasing new,

unreleased material, much to the chagrin of the crowd. Shockingly, this was not a disaster.

His new songs draw heavily from modern trap music and have concise, catchy choruses. If that sounds familiar, you may be thinking of Justin Bieber’s recent resurgence. Carter’s attempted comeback is unexpected and largely unwanted, but he has executed his move to 2016 startlingly well.

During each song, Carter would teach the audience the chorus and have them sing it. Usually people already know the choruses to songs played at a concert, but this was all exclusive, unreleased material, so he had to do things a bit backwards.

This coaching felt forced and maybe even manipulative, but by the end of each track the whole crowd was singing along, so I suppose it was an effective tactic.

At various points in the show, Carter brought audience members onstage and had them dance with him and sing parts of songs they had only just learned. He even kissed one young woman on the cheek, which, much to my surprise, she seemed to enjoy. The kissing incident may have prompted an impromptu ban on onstage audience members - or perhaps this was already a rule - but either way, Northeastern police were brought in to wait in the wings and prevent Carter from further involving the crowd. Carter was not

Lettuce January 16 @ House of Blues Lettuce is the funkiest band to come out of Boston. Ever. Ok, wait, apologies to all those that think otherwise, but you really can’t funk with Lettuce. Their January show at House of Blues was a sold out affair and an exhibition of groove. Opening for Lettuce were Portland, Maine, natives Jaw Gems.

They play psychedelic soul infused with the melodies of electronic keyboards and synths and carried by J Dilla-esque drums. The beat kept you rooted and rocking, then washed over you with electronic waves of sound.

Fresh off touring with STS9 in the fall, they joined Lettuce on a three-show run around New England. Typically, fans of the Lettuce’s music tend to enjoy all things groove, so the crowd began to swell to capacity towards the middle of Jaw Gems. The biggest plus for a show like this is the generally friendly crowd and the amount of elbow room

allowed. Everyone is pretty much on the same wavelength at a Lettuce show, where enjoying the music is priority number one.

Lettuce is full of what you could call career musicians. Most are widely regarded session players and others lend their talents to top acts around the country: The Game, Lady Gaga and Robert Randolph, to name a few. Originally, they met at Berklee, and over the past two decades have formed into this incredible funk machine found in the fresh produce aisle. They are now on a nationwide tour supporting their most recent LP Crush.

A Lettuce show is pretty much a funk marathon where songs can clock in around the 10-minute mark. Each song is heavy with improvisation and saturated with solos. Everyone gets a ride on the solo cycle.

Notable songs from this performance were “The Force” from Crush and “Ziggowatt”

enthused, asking, “What am I, N.W.A.?” He’s not N.W.A. At one point Carter threatened not to play “I Want Candy” if event staff wouldn’t let him take a picture with the crowd. The objections were deafening, and the staff gave in. Carter may have physically aged in the past 15 years, but he still acts like a 12-year-old.

Carter did eventually sing “I Want Candy.” The crowd sung along unprompted this time. Carter did not, however, play any other old material, no matter how many times audience members asked him how he beat Shaq. At first this annoyed me, as I’m sure it did many other audience members, but as I thought about it, I started to sympathize.

Carter may be sick of singing “I Want Candy,” but it’s a wonderful, timeless pop song. Songs like “Aaron’s Party” and “That’s How I Beat Shaq” are actually terrible and only make sense coming from a child 15 years ago.

As I left the concert, I noticed that it wasn’t “I Want Candy” but a new song called “Let Me Let You Go” that was stuck in my head. This may have been because he inexplicably performed it twice, but it made me wonder if perhaps Carter’s comeback isn’t as doomed as it seems at first glance.

Jonas Polin (Undeclared)

from 2012’s Fly! Lettuce dedicated the majority of their opening songs to the new album, but a high note was when they brought out longtime collaborator and funk foreman Nigel Hall for a stint of five or so songs to cap it off. He is equipped with a funk/R&B singer’s melody and rasp and let it shine on a cover of Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band’s “Express Yourself” and Lettuce’s “Do it Like You Do.”

After a 10-minute intermission, Lettuce came back to close out their set with what felt like one long kaleidoscope of a song, but was in fact a medley of classics from their long catalog of music. This portion is what makes a Lettuce show worth seeing over and over again. They take the crowd on a roller coaster ride where they control the pace masterfully and segue perfectly through the entire journey. When the set was finally finished, you almost felt like you had been in a convertible, with wind-blown hair and numbness of the face from what you just experienced.

Matt Sherman (Business) 35

Reviews Wilco

Ben Stas (Journalism/English)

Wilco January 29 @ Orpheum Theatre It’s amazing that today it’s still possible to go to a show and hear rock ‘n’ roll. With no backing track, no choreographed dance moves, no massive social message and no revolution to buy into or streaming service to subscribe to, Wilco blistered through a 28-song set. That set included the entirety of Star Wars, the short but full-length album which they released last year as a free download to fans, as well as a five-song acoustic encore which included their hits “War on War” and “A Shot in the Arm” as well as a cover of “California Stars,” a song from their collaborative work with Billy Bragg. Having seen Wilco perform before in a festival setting, seeing them at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Boston was a privilege.

The Orpheum is a great old venue, and while it may not be the venue you want to go to to see Young Thug or Taylor Swift, it feels like

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the best venue for drinking a $13 beer and listening to your dad’s favorite rock band.

There I was, standing not 15 feet from the stage listening to one of the best performances from one of the best bands in recent memory. And that’s when I remember: Wilco, born out of the death of the alternative country group Uncle Tupelo, has been at this thing for 21 years. No wonder they sounded so amazing. Even with the members shifting in and out of the group over time, the musical vision remains intact. Between Nels Cline’s free jazz guitar solos and frontman Jeff Tweedy’s sullen yet somewhat uplifting vocal work, their focus and intent had never been so clear, and the sheer pace with which they approached their set was a staggering indication of their devotion to their fans and their craft.

Beyond the music, the seated venue was a pleasure, even though I didn’t get that much of a chance to sit, and notable highlights from the set that are unlikely to be re-created were the man a few rows behind me continuously yelling, “Sit down, asshole!” and Tweedy’s comments about a woman in the front row eating her pizza off the stage, to which she replied, “Not so loud, I don’t want my husband to know I eat pizza.”

Strange encounters, but I expected nothing less from Wilco and you shouldn’t either.

With two sold-out back-to-back shows at The Orpheum, Wilco certainly left its mark on Boston this leg of their tour, and they can’t come back soon enough.

Spencer Bateman (Computer Science / Music)

Seventeen Moments of Sound: Tariverdiev and the West Peter Giunta (Biology)

On the first day of 1976, the whole of Russia gathered around their Rubin television sets at 6 p.m. to watch The Irony of Fate. The highly anticipated two-part telefilm consisted of situational comedy, situational love, and above all, situational critique of Brezhnev era stagnation. The opening sequence is a Pink Panther-esque cartoon depicting the systemic deconstruction of an architect’s designs in favor of marching identical high-rise apartments. It recalls a similar 1970s Vitaliy Peskov cartoon of birds flying south strapped into floating cages. A social contract that guaranteed high living standards discouraged innovation, leaving a society trapped more by the ideology of developed socialism than by the tanks of the Prague Spring.

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Feature

Then head of the Composers’ Guild of Soviet Cinematographer’s Union, Mikael Tariverdiev’s score for the film was poignantly self-referential, and its beauty itself a cosmic irony for the drab suburbs depicted onscreen. This is perhaps the legacy of Tariverdiev’s film music: quietly exquisite in the wake of unsubtle propaganda.

The majority of Tariverdiev’s film music stems from a fruitful collaboration with director and lifelong friend Mikhail Khalik.

They collaborated on more than 130 films, including the controversial Russian-Jewish Goodbye Boys! The film’s Holocaust imagery proved too upsetting for those delicate Soviet sensors, and ultimately led to Khalik’s defection and erasure from the Russian film lineage. And despite Tariverdiev’s complicity in felonious “innovation,” his scores were always just tonal enough to pass

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censorship. Yet he too faded into obscurity on a global scale, perhaps because of reasons antithetical to the ones that drove Khalik to Israel. Tariverdiev was simply moved by forces other than the harshness of his predecessors in the Mighty Handful (a group of renowned 19th century Russian composers), and much of what forms American notions of Russian composition.

Forty years later, Stephen Coates of The Real Tuesday Weld has released a compilation of Tariverdiev’s work aptly named Film Music, the first of its kind to ever reach western audiences. Beyond the semi-evocative song titles that Coates has provided for us, we have precious little access to the anoxic political environment that Tariverdiev lived through. In many cases, the tracks are divorced from their visual counterparts, referring to films that have

never been released in the U.S. Our temporal relationship to Tariverdiev’s film music creates a sociological exercise of thinking about each track, one that could likely have never been anticipated by the composer himself. It asks us to reorient our way of thinking about film music as a device with which to propel our nostalgia for Amélie. Or, as film theorist Claudia Gorbman calls it, the “pretense to immediacy-grasping him/her in a hold of imaginary identification.” For the purposes of this exercise we don’t need a movie, and we don’t need to be trained to believe in something that is inherently false by nature of dramatic representation.

For us, the un-savvy American listeners, the compilation becomes more of a pretense to creativity. We are responsible for reverse engineering the narrative from fragments of muted saxophone and harmony. Take for

example “Couple in a Café,” whose uneasy lounge piano presents two possible scenarios.

On the one hand, this could be a couple on the verge of collapse, pouring over their respective ashtrays and daring the other to utter the first sentence. The volley between major and minor resolutions could hint at love that has been gained and lost over many years, paralyzing any decision to move forward. The other possibility is that the illustration is not of the man and woman and ashtrays at all, but of a separate viewer, one who longs to be so entangled as to stop hearing the lounge piano altogether.

The track is actually from Seventeen Moments of Spring, a popular Russian espionage TV series that aired in 1973. In the café, Max Otto von Stierlitz sees his wife with another man, having left her behind to become a soviet spy. With that we find

ourselves playing the very same games that Tariverdiev and Khalik were in trying to deceive Russian censors—namely, finding avenues to artistic expression that don’t originate from a ubiquitous propagandist narrative. We can ascertain so much about a culture that was politically inaccessible to Cold War Americans.

It seems strange that we’re just now beginning to peel back the iron curtain and reveal several decades worth of cultural advance. In fact, it’s highly possible that in lieu of nuclear proliferation Tariverdiev would be far more popular in the West than he is today. Film Music presents us with a narrative work that is available for criticism as wholly Russian yet strangely familiar, even out of its niche context.

That the compilation blurs sociopolitical lines is a testament to Tariverdiev’s exacting

melodic ear, and to the illustrative power of film music in general. We can celebrate the work not in its relation to each self-centered viewer, but to its capacity for transporting us through time and space in seconds flat.

In essence, embedded in film music is an entirely separate, self-sufficient and universal narrative that travels across the Pacific at light speed. At its best it eclipses the film itself, allowing the listener to interact with a cultural plot in ways that could never be achieved onscreen.

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Editorial

OH, KANYE…

In anticipation of Kanye’s forthcoming album, it seemed like a good idea to take a look back at some of Mr. West’s most ridiculous moments. When it comes to outlandish, inappropriate, and downright hilarious behavior, Kanye is the gift that keeps on giving. With dozens of moments to write about, we’ve compiled a brief “greatest hits” sampler of Kanye’s madness.

one

Kanye gets into twitter beef with Wiz Khalifa—Kanye West has just made the best album of all time* (What a time to be alive!

The best album of all time is about to be released!), and decides to change the name at the last minute. Some people, including Wiz, aren’t so pleased, and call Kanye out a little bit on Twitter. So what does Kanye do? Does he let it slide? No, why would he do that? Instead, he sends out tweet after tweet insulting Wiz Khalifa, including Wiz’s ex-wife Amber Rose (also Kanye’s ex), but still making sure it’s known that he likes Wiz’s pants. Of course, reasonable person that Kanye is, after writing these vicious tweets, he deletes them all and tries to send a message of “positive energy.” Kanye again tries to do the reasonable thing when Rose retaliates by telling the world Kanye is into butt stuff by calmly responding that, in fact, he “stays away from that area all together.” *Album rating determined by Kanye West.

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two

Kanye goes on stage when Taylor Swift wins a VMA—this is perhaps the most famous Kanye blunder. Everyone’s seen the

video—Taylor wins an award, Kanye goes on stage, takes the mic, and lets the world know that Beyoncé’s video was better, one of the best videos of all time, in fact. Now, was Kanye correct? Sure, maybe–Beyoncé did win best video of the year later in the night. Does that matter? Not really. But while the world was busy hating, what does Kanye do? He drops My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. And that’s Kanye in a nutshell. He does ridiculous things, and then makes incredible music, leaving us all scratching our heads about how to feel.

three

Kanye goes on stage when Beck wins a Grammy—so maybe stage crashing is just Kanye’s M.O. This moment was particularly great because it showed that Kanye is capable of being both an absurd and reasonable person.

Kanye goes on stage when Beck wins an award (presumably to defend Beyoncé again), but this time does not take the mic. Beck, “coolest person alive” that he is, actually encourages Kanye to speak, but he does not. Unlike the Taylor incident, Kanye goes on to listen to Beck’s album Morning Phase, really enjoy it, and publicly apologizes to Beck. While not known for it, Kanye is able to admit when he’s wrong.

That actually happened. Kanye West did that. It’s not my intention to bash Kanye. Like him or not, he’s an artist, and talented artists have a license to do things that would get ordinary people ostracized. He does crazy things, some people hate him for it, some laugh, and others don’t know how to feel, and just tolerate it because of how good he is. Maybe that’s why we just laugh at Kanye, it’s our psyche’s way of reconciling the fact that while we don’t want to condone a lot of Kanye’s behavior, we have to deal with it do appreciate his music.

There may be some parallel universe where none of these events took place, or where that person really is a fictional character. But for us this person is real. His name is Kanye West. He’s raising two children.

His new album is out now, and I couldn’t be more excited.

four

Kanye calls out a paralyzed fan for not standing at his show—imagine a bunch of writers sitting in a room:

“Ok, so we have this character who’s a musician, but we need him to do something really preposterous.”

“I’ve got it! He’s trying to get a crowd excited for a song, right? And he won’t start until every person stands. And he’s yelling at one person who won’t stand, blaming him for stalling the show, but it turns out that person is paralyzed and can’t stand.”

“Oh wow that’s great. What then, does he apologize?”

• Jonathan Vayness (Psychology)

“No he doesn’t apologize, instead he draws even more attention and makes sure the person is in a wheelchair, and not in fact refusing to stand.”

“Well then he must apologize and move on, right?”

“Nope! He just goes right into the song he was going to perform, but the performance is just so on-point that everyone immediately forgets what just happened.”

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Etcetera

IN DEFENSE OF FOLIE A DEUX

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Before Fall Out Boy shook the pop-punk world with their indefinite hiatus that definitely looked like a breakup, they released their 2008 album Folie A Deux, displeasing critics and fans alike. Even to this day, those who know anything about the band react to mention of it with a wrinkled nose and responses ranging from “Eh, it wasn’t their best” to “Wow, I fucking hated that album.” I stand by the belief that this was some of Fall Out Boy’s most cultivated and experimental work. And while some stuff really didn’t work, the good outweighs the bad.

Lyrically, the album was more abstract and Pete Wentz focused on figurative language. “Disloyal Order of the Buffalos,” is fast-paced, and the words are almost punched out. “Detox just to retox” is a simple lyric, but one my enthusiastic 13-year-old self screamed many times.

Wentz also became very personal in “She’s My Winona,” comparing his relationship with Ashlee Simpson to Winona Ryder and Johnny Depp. He wrote of their son Bronx: “Then came a baby boy with long eyelashes.” This shows the maturity that came along with the album — marriage was a thing, and they were no longer kids.

Lead singer Patrick Stump’s vocals were showcased in a way that they hadn’t been in previous albums; he pushed himself and that showed. “What A Catch, Donnie” relies heavily on Stump’s vocal ability and piano. It integrates big names in pop-punk like Brendon Urie, Gabe Saporta, William Beckett, Alex DeLeon, Elvis Costello, and Travie McCoy at the end singing lines of Fall Out Boy’s biggest songs in the background. The collaboration was a melting pot of the best singers in the genre at the time, working with some of the best lines Wentz had ever written.

This doesn’t mean every collaboration on this album worked.

Rapper Lil Wayne was featured on the song “Tiffany Blews,” and his

contribution sounded artificial and out of place. Rather than working with the song, it felt merely injected in the middle to push forward another high-profile name. Aside from this minor flop,the album did well in meshing styles — they took pop-punk and added hip-hop, soul, and funk and blended it.

Rejection of the album came from the masses in part because it didn’t sound like what we came to expect from Fall Out Boy. Take This To Your Grave and From Under The Cork Tree were indisputably true to Chicago pop-punk. When Fall Out Boy released these albums, they built a loyal fanbase. Then, at some point around their release of Infinity On High, an album that was much more pop than punk, they reached a ceiling of fame that once broken created this idea that it was almost cool to hate Fall Out Boy. Folie was victim of that, and likely suffered more because of the image Fall Out Boy had cultivated at that point rather than from the actual content. Also, after the release of the album, the band was tired of being a band, so they didn’t give it the promotion and circulation or touring that it deserved.

The album was a great experimental effort, and pushed the bounds of traditional pop-punk. Going back to “Disloyal Order of the Water Buffalos” — Wentz wrote “I got troubled thoughts and the self-esteem to match,” which speaks to the unease and confusion the band was surely feeling at the time before their split. Aside from the beauty and simplicity of the song, you can’t miss the in-your-face sadness of the message: Fall Out Boy is over — this is their goodbye.

Though Wentz has claimed that this song was a positive message of his friendship with Stump, I interpreted it as a nostalgic ballad of the end of something great.

• Mayeesha Galiba (Journalism)

Bandcamp Jams

TALLBOYS genre: emo/folk-punk recommended tracks: “Sad Kids Say Fuck Yeah Hey Hey,” “Doing Magic Mushrooms at Cracker Barrel,” “~*deleet ur blog LMAO” sounds like: Andrew Jackson Jihad, Spoonboy, Bomb the Music Industry!

Tallboys are Ryan, Bryan and Marc, three terminally cynical smart alecks from New York who started out playing Brand New covers on ukulele before writing their own heartbreaking yet hilarious songs. Their 2013 mini-album /Hangovers/ is absolutely brilliant, a largely acoustic folk-punk effort full of seething rage, wistful regret and a stubborn refusal to take life’s disappointments lying down. Tallboys have catchier melodies than many inexplicably more popular bands, but lyrics are where the band truly excels; they somehow encapsulate tired themes like depression and frustration in consistently striking, humorous ways. The choruses beg to be shouted in unison with a basement full of disenfranchised kids and scrawled on any available surface. They’ve

released some very good EPs in the last two years which feature more electric guitar and skew closer to emo than folk-punk, but they haven’t lost that twisted Tallboys wit. The group’s on hiatus right now, but they’d better come back soon. There are a lot of people whose lives could be enriched by a band like Tallboys.

• Terence Cawley (Biology)

BILLY SPRAYZ genre: hip-hop recommended tracks: “The Turtle Hermit Way,” “Dual Sawed Off, Oxi Lean” sounds like: DJ Screw, Knxwledge

DJ Screw meets Billy Mays? Yup, thanks to Los Angeles producer Max “Billy Sprayz” Baer and his bandcamp release /Oxi Lean/. Gucci Mane, Soulja Boy, and Waka Flocka Flame all grace the chopped & screwed style EP and it’s actually pretty fantastic. Billy Sprayz samples from a variety of outlets ranging from some nice smooth jazz to field recordings in a forest, all the while using heavy trap drums to create the atmosphere of cruising down the 110 Expressway in a ’74 Impala.

When I asked Max how he chose his source material for sampling, his only response was “DID NOT MATTER BILLY SPRAYZ CAN FLIP

ANYTHING”. Although that was a vague response, /Oxi Lean/ proves it to be a fairly accurate statement. I also asked where his inspiration for such an interesting mash-up came from. “BILLY SPRAYZ CAME TO MAX BAER IN A DREAM”, he replied. Let’s hope Max has more dreams of infomercial celebrities drinking lean and producing with gangster rappers.

• Timothy Fetcher

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M

Editorial

Music Censorship and the Perpetuation of Racism

Allegedly protecting citizens from perverseness, the anti-Christ, foul language, and the indecency of African American musicians, music censorship laws in the U.S. aim to cleanse American culture of obscenity.

But however good-willed these intentions claim to be, the result is inevitably a violation of constitutional rights and in a lot of cases, a manifestation of racism. Music censorship appears in a number of ways, but the greatest repercussions are felt among African American musicians who have been slighted by the music industry since the emergence Spring 2016

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of blues, the first popular African American genre, at the turn of the 20th century.

Fast forward nearly half a century. The 1940s marked the inception of R&B, a blend of traditional West African rhythms and conventional blues sounds with the addition of electric instruments and faster tempos.

Muddy Waters, the supposed creator of R&B, was a trailblazer for the genre who got his break in Chicago in the late ‘40s. During this period, R&B blew up especially in northern cities as an exodus of southern African American musicians migrated to Midwestern

and East Coast cities for a chance at landing a record deal. Although this African American genre swiftly gained popularity, record sales were still low among white audiences, an unsurprising fact given the segregated, bigoted mindsets of the time.

But the ‘50s brought a stark change to this trend. White teenagers took a keen interest in black R&B records, constituting 40 percent of R&B record sales. While R&B took off among the American youth, it did not catch on with the majority of white Americans who felt uncomfortable buying the records or paying to see black musicians perform.

Record labels at the time noticed this paradox and used it to capitalize on and exploit African American musicians by hiring white musicians to cover their albums. Artists like Bill Haley and Pat Boone are just a few who spearheaded their careers by plagiarizing black records and became famous at the expense of African American musicians, per request of the record labels.

Among the most infamous and controversial of these white rock ‘n’ roll / R&B musicians is Elvis Presley. Growing up in predominately black Memphis, Tennessee in the ‘40s and ‘50s, Presley was greatly influenced by R&B. As his career progressed, the lines between influence, plagiarism, and

appropriation of African American music blurred. His first album, airing in 1956, featured “Tutti Frutti,” a song originally by black musician Little Richard (a song that would later be covered and exploited by numerous other white musicians). Debatably one of Presley’s greatest hits, “Hound Dog,” was a rip-off of a song by black R&B singer Big Mama Thornto. Similarly, Presley’s 1954 rendition of Arthur Crudup’s “That’s All Right” sold around 20,000 copies, for which Crudup had to wait six years to receive his estimated $60,000 in royalties.

Even though all the musicians technically received recognition, Presley’s immense fame stole the limelight from others who fell short based on race, and while Presley expressed his deep appreciation for African American music, his covers did more to disrespect the musicians than celebrate them. There are mixed opinions on whether Presley’s intentions were opportunistic, racist, or simply innocent admiration; however, the proclaimed “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” was quoted saying, “Rock ‘n’ roll has been around for many years. It used to be called rhythm and blues.” In this meek shout-out to black musicians, at least he recognized that they were in fact the kings and queens of rock ‘n’ roll.

This trend fell in and out of practice for the next 30 years, all while a new genre of African American music was roiling under the surface–hip-hop. From its origins in the ‘70s until the late ‘80s, hip-hop audiences were overwhelmingly black. With the start of a new decade, hip-hop artists MC Hammer and Public Enemy kicked off the ‘90s with two top chart singles, “U Can’t Touch This” and “Fight The Power,” and young people, regardless of race, were hooked (interestingly, Public Enemy’s bestseller gives a shout-out to Presley – “Elvis was a hero to most / But he never meant shit to me / Straight up racist that sucker was.”) Despite its vast popularity among people of various races, however, the schism between white audiences and African American music remained primarily due to a select yet influential group who deemed hiphop indecent, whether for racial reasons or not. More than 70 percent of hip-hop records were bought by white teens, which caused uproar among older members of the white community, and thus the Parental Advisory sticker was born.

Spearheaded by Mary Gore in 1985, the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC)

initiated the use of Parental Advisory Labels (PALs) by record companies, although there was (and still is) a gaping hole in the system – no standards for what is and isn’t explicit content. Of course some content is objectively explicit such as swear words and references to drugs, but the definition of “indecent” varies greatly. The first song the PMRC deemed explicit was Prince’s “Darling Nikki” because of references to masturbation.

So what role does race play in this subjective game of parental control? According to Eric Nuzum, author of Parental Advisory: Music Censorship in America, “3/5 albums by a black artist carry a parental warning sticker while 1/5 albums by a white artist carry a parental warning sticker.” It’s hard to conclude whether these numbers are the result of racism or the fact that perhaps African American artists use more explicit language in their music than white musicians.

Today this infamous black and white label holds substantially less influence over record sales than it used to due to online purchases and streaming, but 20 years ago, the sticker was causing a noticeable shift in sales. Walmart, a key player in the PAL movement, declared in 1985 that it would only carry records without stickers (and still upholds this standard today). Alternatively, Walmart sells clean versions of most albums, meaning the swear words and other profanities have been bleeped or changed.

As a mass-market enterprise, Walmart held considerable sway over record sales pre-Internet, especially in rural areas where Walmarts were more common than record stores. Some could argue that these clean versions don’t hurt record sales because the artist receives full compensation. In fact, some claim clean versions could increase sales because parents are more inclined to buy their children the censored versions.

So what does this mean for artists with “explicit” albums, 3/5 of whom are African American? At the discretion of a corporate discount store, their music is beeped, muted and altered and essentially stripped of its integrity. Whether these acts of censorship stem from racist motives or not, the outcome is still racially charged and primarily unfavorable for black artists.

A recent controversy over censorship, and coincidentally (or not) a black musician, was Kanye’s Billboard Music Award in 2015.

On stage for a total of five minutes and 18 seconds, his performance including “Black

Skinhead” and “All Day” was censored for upwards of a minute. Outraged, Kanye released a statement saying he was “grossly over-censored” and “seriously misrepresented,” a fair claim given that the broadcast crew censored both profane and non-profane lyrics such as the harmless line “with my leather black jeans on.” Aside from being an enormous violation of the First Amendment (we’ll leave that topic for another day), it appears that Kanye was over-censored because of the broadcast crew’s preconceived notions, whether rooted in race or not, that his music is “vulgar,” and hence the jumpy censor fingers for innocent lyrics about fashion choices.

Similar to Kanye’s predicament, much controversy was spurred after Oklahoma University censored the word “nigga” during a YG concert this fall. As a black musician, should YG have been censored in this way?

It’s not an easy question to answer seeing as the word has a range of connotations.

People on the pro-censor side argued the word is derogatory, while the people on the anti-censor side contended that the word is an integral piece of black culture that isn’t always used offensively. One student reasoned, “Black communities have access to this language because it was historically used against them to marginalize their social status,” and that by using the word, black musicians are performing a type of reclamation, “a social evolution for oppressed and silenced communities to find their voices and initiate healing in post-conflict dialogues.”

It’s ironic and unfair that a primarily white university administration claimed the authority to censor a black musician of a culturally infused and integrally black word.

What should be considered “explicit content” is as varied and subjective as our own opinions, which is what makes censorship laws so controversial. Should it be legal to ban certain language or ideas, and if so, who should have the authority to decipher what is and isn’t explicit? Perhaps if the PAL label standardized a system to devise what is explicit, there would be less leeway for racially charged censorship. In the 70 years since the first form of racial censorship (white cover bands), the music industry has become significantly more diverse, but there is clearly still much work to be done to eliminate race as a qualification for censorship.

D E R O Emily Arntsen (English)

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DJ Khaled Editorial

A Literary T r i b u t e

The Key The waters of the South Pacific are said to toy with the heart of man.

Or did it?

This wisdom, known to any sailor native to these western shores, sat in the recesses of Khaled Mohamed Khaled’s mind as he readied his craft. The Kawasaki STX-15 roared to life in the dusk—it’s four-stroke engine calling out to an otherwise still bay. He looked out across the sound to see the sun falling fast in the rosso corsa sky. He would make it back to the dock in time. He always had.

Where did his dock, his sanctuary, lie in the vast expanse of shoreline?

The little light that remained played tricks on the eye, setting him on one path only to reveal its folly moments later. Khaled Mohamed Khaled, known across the world as DJ Khaled, was lost.

The Key is to make it.

The lone Jet Ski tore across the water, leaving land fast behind in its wake.

An hour passed in the span of what seemed like minutes. As the craft skipped across still waters, the man knew an ease rarely felt during the stresses of life on land. In a moment of profound cogitation, he saw everyone and everything that led to this single moment: his parents, his career, his Dove® personal care products, his relationships, his passions.

Zay Zee. He was the Key. In him lay his salvation. Zay Zee would only need to know of his plight for all to be made right. DJ Khaled would ask the world to reach out to him. He would tell the world his story. In five to 10 second SnapChats.

“It’s so dark out here, we don’t know where the hell we at. But the Key is to make it. The Key is: never give up.”

Were these the words of a desperate man, stubbornly clinging to values that had no place in the unforgiving Deep? Or were these the words of a hardened survivor, grizzled by the truth of a life lived and learned from?

So lost in this reflection, Khaled Mohamed Khaled had scarcely noticed the sun sneaking beneath the horizon. It was time to return to shore, to return to the city’s bustle. Wrenching his craft hard to starboard, his path came into view.

A Collection of Haikus

Revealin' the truth: They don't want us to win more.

So we keep winnin'

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Sun rises, bless up What chef D cookin' for us?

Slip on slides and see

With what remained of the light fast failing, only time would tell.

The Key is to make it.

Darkness. Impenetrable darkness engulfed DJ Khaled. Every direction was uniform. There was only him and the Night.

An untold number of minutes, hours, or days later, salvation was at hand.

The Key is…

Standing on his dock, DJ Khaled stared back out at the night.

DJ Khaled couldn’t help but smile.

The Key is…

He was the Lyon.

“The Key is to not drive your Jet Ski at night,” was all the defeated DJ could muster, a spark absent from his once-bright eyes.

The Key is to make it.

He had made it.

He rode on into the darkness.

As Sisyphus with his boulder, so DJ Khaled with his Jet Ski. Minutes spun into hours. The passage of time and space became irrelevant. His voyage took him from the coasts of Nauru far to the south to the shores of the great Volga flooding the Russian Tigre. He rode through waves and stars alike, unstuck in time, shedding his corporeal form.

This is a tribute to the life, voyages, and SnapChats of DJ Khaled. Let this cautionary tale teach you not only of success, but also of failure. #BlessUp

• Ryan Kehr (English/Business Administration)

But DJ Khaled pressed on through the unending waters. He would not submit to the perils of the natural world. He thought of all he had overcome, all the doors that had been shut on him so that he—through sheer force of will—could open them.

Cloth talk, fresh new looks Hits pourin out like Ciroq Business is boomin'

End day with wisdom: So when life gives you lemons, Say, “Another one”

Next, water the plants Major key: bless the lyon While the city sleeps • Anika Krause (English)

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Editorial

STREAMING

WARS

In less than two years, music streaming has grown from a niche corner of the listening market to a full-blown turf war between a Swedish startup, the ghost of Steve Jobs, and Jay-Z. The ground broke half a decade ago when Spotify began to heavily shift the market towards subscription based streaming services, rather than direct digital downloads. Initially, the service offered non-browser based streaming with a free access as an alternative to a paid subscription based services on revenue derived from the occasional advertisements, but Spotify ultimately exploded with the introduction of mobile platform and social media integration, reaching 20 million users (5 million of which were paid subscribers) by the end of 2012.

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At the beginning of 2015, Spotify ruled selective streaming platforms (not to be confused with streaming platforms such as Pandora where individual songs can’t be selected) with 49 percent of all paid streaming subscriptions. Meanwhile, streaming services themselves began to accumulate a larger percentage of all digital music revenues, reaching a net worth $1.57 billion and 23 percent of all revenues. That meant roughly 11 percent of all digital music revenues came from one company: Spotify.

Spotify’s dominant presence became even more apparent when the company’s director of economics, Will Page, supported a claim at the Nashville Music Biz Conference that Spotify provided 10 percent of all revenue to record labels during the first quarter of 2015. The amount of shift in music delivery during the first half of the decade began to rival the changes Apple brought to distribution by popularizing direct digital downloads and music mobility with the introduction of the iPod in 2001 and the subsequent iTunes Digital Music Store in 2003.

If a date had to be placed on when the “turf war” of subscription streaming services began, it would be March 30, 2015, when a group of high profile artists—including Jack White and Rihanna—changed their Twitter profile pictures to a blank electric blue canvas and began posting the vague hashtag “#TIDALForAll.” The day marked Jay-Z’s unveiling of Tidal, a “revolutionary” new streaming service placing the ownership in the hands of the artists.

The months following were not kind to Tidal, accumulating an underwhelming 770,000 subscribers despite a massive promotion campaign. Whether the artist owned venture is a slow-grower or a PR flop is still unknown, but Tidal is a player in the market, serving to start the occasional fire.

Tidal’s promotion campaign played out as more of an attack on Spotify than an ambitious startup. From the initial release video, Tidal was described by its artist-owners as “a movement,” “making a stand,” “bringing humanity back to being artists,” and “what everybody wanted and what everybody [existing services] feared.” Attention was drawn to the shortcomings of Spotify’s model, specifically the miniscule compensation artists allegedly receive for individual plays of their songs. The complete version of Tidal, which boasted full access and a lossless audio format, was priced at $20—double the rate of Spotify Premium. The question became: without undercutting cost, how does Tidal break into the market share?

Tidal doesn’t seem to be much of a competitor to Spotify’s dominance—yet. The real threat to the Swedish dynasty is in the lovechild of iTunes and Dr. Dre’s Beats Music, Apple Music, the tech giant’s venture into the world of streaming. Yet with Apple Music’s only recent debut, it is hard to really gauge its success. The platform accumulated 11 million users within the first six weeks, which looks impressive on empirical data alone, but is actually underwhelming.

Many will drop the service after their three-month free trial wraps up.

Additionally, Apple Music is automatically integrated into iPhones worldwide—all 500 million of them. From that integration, only 2 percent have bothered to even sign up for the free trial. Still, the tech giant’s unlimited resources could be a thorn in Spotify’s side as it works to find leverage to compete.

Contractually, Apple cannot offer a lower price than other platforms, and even fails to offer the half-priced rate for students. The company also can’t depend on artists protesting Spotify’s pay model by removing their catalogue from the platform, as artists don’t have much to gain from ditching the service. Apple had the chance to set

a positive precedent when Taylor Swift’s removed her catalogue from Spotify, but aside from attention, her gains were few. The album she released shortly afterwards, the critically praised 1989, proved to be a commercial godsend by finally breaking the drought of platinum records in 2014. Obviously, critical reception does not directly correlate to commercial success (think: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy), but for a pop artist like Swift, it should have a substantial impact. Yet despite the critical acclaim of 1989 and its disappearance from streaming services, it performed commercially on par with her previous releases, rather than seeing a sales boost.

Apple’s tactics to take from Spotify’s market share mimic Tidal’s, but on a larger scale. The company is trying to attract subscribers by offering exclusive content from popular artists. On a small scale, these contracts seem inconsequential and potentially only harm the artists that sign them, but on a large scale they set a very bad precedent.

These contracts limit audiences and alienate fans. Prince’s 2015 release, Hit and Run (Part One), performed abysmally thanks to its exclusive release on the fledgling Tidal platform, peaking as high as #70 on the Billboard 200, with his previous releases, 2014’s Art Official Age and Plectrumelectrium, peaking at #5 and #7 respectively, even when released on the same day. Dr. Dre met a similar fate thanks to the exclusive Apple Music release of Compton, his first album in over 15 years. Compton was met with critical acclaim and rocketed immediately to #2 on the Billboard charts. Yet the final numbers on the commercial performance of Compton seem to have hurt Dr. Dre, generating relatively underwhelming sales of only 438,000 units as of September. What a Time to be Alive, a mixtape by Drake and Future, saw a similar fate within the first two weeks of release.

Understandably, Dr. Dre and Prince not selling as many albums as they would like is a very inconsequential result of his Apple exclusivity, and only seems to harm the fans who couldn’t be bothered to seek out Compton and the few remaining die-hard Prince fans in their 50s who may be less likely to stream music. But they’re just some of a slew of artists releasing exclusive content through emerging platforms, and listeners feel the impact of exclusivity when these contracts collide with one another. In August, Lil Wayne was hosting Lil Weezy Ana Fest in New Orleans, a charity concert to benefit Louisiana public schools, which was to be streamed on Tidal thanks to Weezy’s connection to the company as a shareholder. As soon as it was announced that Drake, who has a deal with Apple, would be joining Lil Wayne on stage, Apple brought out the big guns. A $20 million lawsuit was threatened if Tidal streamed Drake’s performance, resulting in the stream being

artists had a much easier method of getting their music out there, which despite the low direct payout could potentially snowball into higher show attendance and a larger audience. Contracts such as the ones trying to force Apple Music and Tidal into the market threaten to create a whole new environment of restrictions, damaging artists who just want to get their music out there.

If you don’t like the rules, then why play the game? It’s not viable for artists to remove themselves from the streaming circus, so options are limited. Dr. Dre was one of the biggest rappers/producers in the world at the beginning of the 21st century, and even though his follow up to 2001 has yet to see the light of day, his name is still relevant.

Thanks to restrictions on accessing his first record in 15 years, Compton, due to an exclusivity contract with Apple Music, he gets roughly equivalent sales numbers to a thrown together mixtape by Future and Drake. Neither the weight of Dr. Dre’s return or the success of the film “Straight Outta Compton” was enough to draw the average listener into the exclusive channel where Compton could be heard. Dr. Dre’s previous works, The Chronic and 2001, sold 5.8 million and 7.9 million records respectively, with Compton potentially taking a few years to hit 1 million.

Fighting the trend of streaming only seems possible for the top one percent of artists in the market, and only while they are at their peak of popularity. When artists have that high level of commercial success, they can essentially make the rules. Adele has tried with her third LP, 25, and still managed to obliterate multiple sales records with its November debut. Taylor Swift did the exact same thing, pulling 1989 and most of her catalogue from streaming services shortly after its release. Even though singles such as “Blank Space” and “Hello” were not available through typical means, listeners took the time to seek them out through other channels thanks to the lure of Swift and Adele’s brands. That caliber of pull is rare, and once you leave that realm, you begin to see the damages of restricted access.

• David McDevitt (International Affairs/Business)

blacked out while Drake was on stage. If the precedent set for when contracts collide is “black it out,” then a whole series of issues arise: Imagine the incident with Drake and Lil Wayne occurring in a studio and not on stage, could it be released without creating conflict?

Part of the boom of independent artists moving away from record labels comes from the restrictions they see on their music. Streaming platforms were a huge step in helping that boom, as independent

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Etcetera Spring 2016

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Wolfmother, Paradise Rock Club

Seb Herforth (Engineering)

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST Best of Grime (see page 11 for full story) Grime was born in East London in the early ‘00s when ambitious teens began spitting aggressive rhymes over bleepy tracks banged out on Playstations. Despite the music’s icy sound and locals-only attitude, Grime soon captured the world’s attention, thanks to charismatic stars like Dizzee Rascal, Wiley, Lethal Bizzle, and Tempa T. As a genre of diverse, hybrid sounds that defy neat categorization, it can be difficult to know where to start with grime, so check out this playlist on our Spotify and learn more about grime’s history in this issue’s “It’s a 140BPM Type of Life.”

01 Musical Mob—Pulse X (2002) 02 Dizzee Rascal—Fix Up Look Sharp (2003) 03 Lady Sovereign—Random 04 Skepta—Shape Shifting (2007) 05 Ruff Sqwad—Functions on the Low 06 Wiley—Gangsters 07 JME—96 Bars of Revenge (2010) 08 Tempa T—Next Hype (2010) 09 Lethal Bizzle—Don’t Run It Up (2012) 1 0 Novelist + Mumdance—1 Sec (2015) Find the playlist at https://goo.gl/j1YT6K

• Anu Gulati (Computer Science/Math)

ZOOMED Can you tell which six album covers we’ve zoomed in on here?

Sufjan Stevens Illinois Avril Lavigne Under My Skin Lily Allen Alright Still 2nd Row:

No Doubt Tragic Kingdom The Notorious B.I.G Ready to Die Belle and Sebastian If You’re Feeling Sinister 1st Row:

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FIND KANYE We’ve hidden Yeezy somewhere in this issue. Find him and maybe something cool will happen...

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