What Is Your Favorite Song By an Artist’s “Alter Ego?”
In Ep. 37 of Themes and Variation, we chat about famed musical alter egos and welcome the return of one of our favorite guests!
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How Rap Ushered the Piano Into Its Next Developmental Phase
Hip-hop is officially pop music. With Bruno Mars and Kendrick Lamar’s sweep of the Grammy Awards earlier this year, it’s evident that hip-hop has officially shed its status as “that controversial music genre” that prompted the Grammys’ organizers to refuse to air any rap categories back in 1989, which subsequently prompted some to boycott the event.…
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Unsung: In Praise of Rap’s Studio Musicians
Rappers used to say, “The real backbone of hip-hop is disc jocks.” Nowadays, though, the real backbone of hip-hop is ostensibly the virtuosic studio musicians dominating the most heralded releases of the past few years. In leaving their indelible marks on records by award-winning artists like Chance The Rapper and Kendrick Lamar, instrumentalists like Nico Segal (a.k.a. Donnie Trumpet), Robert…
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On Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize Drama, and Other Brilliant Songwriting Poets
By RE Katz When Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature last week “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition,” the literary world promptly ripped itself in half trying to respond to the announcement. Some folks stood right up and applauded Dylan, and have since commended the Nobel committee…
