(Atlantic)The chart-topping MC tilts at the mainstream with mixed resultsGirls, gangs, guns, Edmonton Green: Tion Wayne (Dennis to his mum) is the ladies’ hard man who boasts about boning as much as he does defending the block. Previously best known fo…
Father to 15 children … but were any of blues star BB King’s offspring his?
A new biography says paternity would have been impossible for the musician because he was sterile due to illness and an accidentBB King was born into poverty in Jim Crow Mississippi and raised on a cotton plantation before becoming a street busker then…
Cedella Marley: ‘The mission is to spread Daddy’s music to every corner of the Earth’
As a new musical about the life of Bob Marley prepares to celebrate his spirit and classic songs, Marley’s daughter, plus the director and star of Get Up, Stand Up!, discuss his extraordinary legacyCedella Marley was 13 years old when the man she still…
Chick Corea Akoustic Band: Live review – a remarkable feat of virtuosity and rapport
(Concord Jazz)The late jazz great’s trio are captured in all their unplugged brilliance in this live recording from 2018In the whole history of jazz, I can’t think of a piano, bass, drums trio that has played with such whole-hearted togetherness as Chi…
On my radar: Roy Williams’s cultural highlights
The renowned playwright on David Morrissey’s acting podcast, the joy of Marvel movies and the musician he listens to every dayRoy Williams was born in London in 1968 and raised in Notting Hill. He studied writing at Rose Bruford college and his plays i…
Priyanka Chopra: ‘regrets’? She’s got a few about a doomed activism reality show | Rebecca Nicholson
Little wonder the actress rushed to distance herself from an ill-advised TV competitionJust when you think entertainment and celebrity culture cannot get any more surreal, it does. The last few days have seen: professional health officials in several c…
Arlo Parks review – heart-rending and frustrating
Village Underground, LondonThe Mercury prize-winner showcases her tender debut album, Collapsed in Sunbeams, whose devastating lyrics paired with bland music cry out for the full force of her nine-strong bandOutside, night has fallen; inside, it’s stil…
A whole new way to make electronic music
In a way, Bespoke is like if I smashed Ableton to bits with a baseball bat, and asked you to put it back together. It’s an open source modular synthesizer, a live looping station, a VST host, a Python livecoding environment, and a MIDI controller perf…
“disgrace and pride, forgetting and remembering, change and stasis”
Where the Devil Don’t Stay: Traveling the South with the Drive-By Truckers: “The book is partly a band biography of the Drive-By Truckers, partly a travelogue through the South they depict in their songs, and partly an examination of the cultural and p…
Plainte – Chekoua – Lamentation / Épreuve – Mihna – Hardship
Chris Silver (Gharamaphone): “In May 2020, I posted Sariza Cohen’s stunning recording of ‘أَشْكُوا الْغَـرَامَ’ (Ashku al-gharam) [Soundcloud], released … in 1938. This is the other side of that record [Soundcloud]. It is no less remarkable. Here the…