Category: Music Feature

How Phora Built His Base via Positivity and YouTube

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READ IT AT YOUTUBE FOR ARTISTS

Phora has been through a ton of traumas—from trouble with would-be father figures to the two times he nearly died as the result of attempted murder—but he’s persisted not only as a positive human being, but a hard-hustling self-made rap sensation. He did much of his fan-building via YouTube, initially DIYing his own videos, and eventually teaming with director George Orozco to create visually stunning, often narrative-heavy visuals. The man even engages the comments section, which, I suppose after you’ve been shot in the neck isn’t so scary. Still, I’m impressed.

Rolling Stone Feature: 10 Manic Hours with BTS

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READ IT AT ROLLING STONE

Remind me never to join a K-pop boy band. I barely had the stamina to follow BTS around for 10 hours, watching them dance and rap and sing and change clothes and get made up and dance and rap and sing and sweat and change clothes and get made up all over again with frequent breaks in between, not to rest, but to be painfully stretched out and kneaded and spinally adjusted by a very strong and very stern masseur. It was a little bit stressful and a lot bit awe-inspiring to watch these seven (!) young men do their thing, and an honor to work alongside photographer Brian Guido. That’s his shot of group leader RM brushing his teeth above, and you can view more over here. This piece is narrative-based so to say much more would be to give it away. Get over to Rolling Stone to spend a day with BTS and their wild, and very sweet, fans.

Billboard Interview: Willow Smith and Jhene Aiko

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READ IT AT BILLBOARD (in print too)

Mushrooms! Magic! Overcoming industry misogyny! All three were ripe topics for discussion when I sat down with two sisters-from-different-intergalactic-misters, alt-R&B queen Jhené Aiko and future benevolent supreme world leader Willow Smith, who are touring together right now. We also talked about their provenance among the stars, and that’s not a reference to Willow’s famous parents—both artists believe (or like to believe) they hail from the Sirius star system. So yes, they are bona fide hippies, and like hippies, we three shared our plates of farm-to-table pasta and clinked our hand-pressed ginger beers while further contemplating Vietnamese poet-monks and the benefits of home-schooling. It was trippy and genuinely life-affirming good.

Mija Is a Self-Made One-Woman Art Factory

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READ IT AT NOISEY (also in Vice’s print music issue)

Do you know about Mija yet? If not, it’s time. Because sometime in the next year or so, you will find yourself either wearing clothes she designed, attending a festival she put together, watching a feature-length anime she conceived, thrashing to one of her infamous DJ sets, or, at the very least, enjoying one of her songs which run the gamut from happy hardcore filtered through an 8-bit circuit board (are circuit boards the keepers of bits? probably not, but humor me) to ambient ballads for piano and beat-machine. Anyway, the point is, I got to spend some time with Mija in L.A.’s Arts District, where she is right at home, and she was equal parts chill, driven, and strange.

The Secret Concert Series You Need to Know About

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READ IT AT LOS ANGELES MAGAZINE (in print too)

A selection of people you might see at a Sofar Sounds secret show: moms and dads on benches with wine, hipster youth on blankets with LA Croix, hirsute heshers on walls with beers, teens on top of Taco Bell wrappers eating Taco Bell, pretty people floating on air drinking air. One of the unique side effects of throwing shows with unknown lineups is the L.A.-rare intermingling of various types of music fans, and it’s a good good thing. In fact, there are many good good things about Sofar Sounds—perhaps goodest of all is that it puts the intimacy and discovery back into seeing live music. To say much of anything about how it works would be to give away, like, 90 percent of the article, so I’ll refrain. But I will say this: the piece was edited to read “Venice Blvd. event space” in the first sentence, but it should say “Venice Blvd. clothing boutique” because throwing shows in unusual places is a huge part of what makes Sofar—wait for it—so good.

Weezer Almost Went Mumble-Rap for Their New LP

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READ IT AT BILLBOARD (in print too)

After nearly 20 years of interviewing musicians, I was finally led by the journalism gods to the living rock nerd altar that is Rivers Cuomo. He was every bit as repressed and smart as I would’ve hoped. And also Brian Bell was there. He had long hair and wore a loose suit and rockstar-ed me the second I met him at a fancy Santa Monica coffee shop. I introduced myself and he said, “Great. Because I’m Brian Bell from Weezer and I need an espresso,” as he walked past me, took a seat, and waited for his espresso to materialize. But all worked out in the end: his publicist ordered him a drink and I asked these two Weezers a bunch of questions about their new album, Pacific Daydream. Also, Cuomo big-upped XXXtentacion, which was surprising on many levels.

The Los Angeles Magazine Icon Interview: Beck

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READ IT AT LOS ANGELES MAGAZINE (in print too)

Beck is a delight. I interviewed him once or twice back in the oughts and it was kinda tough. If he didn’t have a guitar in his hand, he’d respond to my questions exclusively at a glacial pace. I suspected it was because he was a’feared of saying the wrong thing about Xenu for which he’d be forever exiled to a reprogramming camp in the California desert. I was probably wrong about that. In any case, the Beck of today is candid and thoughtful and has a fascinating long view on his mercurial career. Like, he said, with a straight face, that musically, “I’m always trying to do the same thing.” Beck Hansen said that. In fact, he said a lot of unintentionally provocative and utterly fascinating things in the full article, which appears both via the link above and in stores and mailboxes via the magazine’s November issue on the occasion of his new album, Colors.

Michael Cera Is (Still) Really Good at Music

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READ IT AT NOISEY

If you don’t know, Michael Cera makes music—he just keeps a low profile. Back in 2014, he dropped a great lil’ web-only album of bedroom pop and folk. I bought it on Bandcamp and, on a whim, emailed the account asking for an interview. Cera replied, and we talked for SPIN. Now he’s back with a nifty synthy track called “Best I Can” featuring Sharon Van Etten, written for Sundance-slaying documentary Dina. This time he emailed me, and Noisey ran the words.

BILLBOARD COVER: ZEDD IS EDM’S ANTI-BRO

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READ IT AT BILLBOARD (in print too)

Want a true testament to the delightfulness of my subject this time around? Here’s the list of folks who went on the record to say nice things about Zedd: Kesha, Jared Leto, Liam Payne of One Direction, Hailee Steinfeld, Dillon Francis, Interscope CEO John Janick, songwriter/artist Julia Michaels, and DJ-producer Porter Robinson. As for the story, this one takes me into the Hollywood Hills home of the dance/pop genius not only for poker night (excerpted: his brother took me for $40), but for a hang sesh in which he plays piano, reveals his plans for Jeff Buckley’s legacy, and shows off a $13,000 side table that fills his living room with rainbows on sunny days. Also, as the headline suggests, there are the myriad ways in which he is not a basic bro.