Ernest Hardy

In mid-December, the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper ran an interview with Mary J. Blige, in which she said, “The blacker you are, the worse it is for you [in America]. If you’re mixed, you’ve got a shot. If you cater to what white America wants you to do and how they......

From their very first introduction to American audiences in 1983, Eurythmics were about tension and contradiction — the sometimes uneasy, sometimes disarmingly beautiful reconciliation of influences across musical and gender divides. Cold synthesizers and drum machines were flamed from the inside by refashioned soul riffs, by reggae grooves that swayed......

Photo by Winni Wintermeyer “I’m here to laugh, love, fuck and drank liquor/and help the damn revolution come quicker ...” —The Coup, “Laugh, Love and Fuck” “My Favorite Mutiny,” the current single from East Bay radical hip-hop outfit The Coup, is their first new music since 2001’s Party Music —......

Lewis Taylor is a brilliant soul singer. But his artistic strength and Achilles’ heel is that he’s so much more: Musical tributaries flow in from Brian Wilson, Todd Rundgren, Prince and Jimi Hendrix, just for starters. His near-flawless eponymous 1996 solo debut had the faithful swearing that Marvin Gaye had......

In the past, Kanye West has made it far too easy to diss him — his bratty temper tantrums at not winning the industry recognition he felt was his due, his never-ending auto-fellatio via interviews with the press. But watching him stammer, stutter and nervously grasp for language on the......

Photo by Dan MonickWith his 1998 funk-you-up overhaul of Rush’s “Tom Sawyer,” DJ Z-Trip earned the title of mash-up king, and introduced his style of genre-fusion to the world. (“You’ve got your classic rock in my hip-hop!” “No, your hip-hop’s in my classic rock . . .”) Now, with his......