Tom Breihan

Drake released his new album For All The Dogs last month, and after saying that he planned to take time off to deal with health issues, he’s already back with new music. Yesterday, Drake announced plans to release his third Scary Hours EP. The new music is here today, but it’s not packaged as an EP. Instead, it’s out in the world as a new edition of For All The Dogs, with six extra tracks attached. Perhaps the world didn’t need six new Drake songs immediately after the 23-track album came out, b…

Surely, you didn’t think André 3000 was the only person releasing ultra-chill impressionistic instrumental music today. Harp virtuoso Mary Lattimore released her album Goodbye, Hotel Arkada last month, and now she’s come out with a cover of a track from the late Japanese ambient music pioneer Hiroshi Yoshimura.

October 27, 2005. East Rutherford, New Jersey. The building then known as the American Airlines Arena. My first Jay-Z show. (I was pretty late. Can’t believe I didn’t see the Hard Knock Life tour.) It was deep into Jay’s fake retirement — two years after The Black Album, the fake-goodbye record that turns 20 today. In his fake retirement, Jay didn’t really stop doing anything — he didn’t even stop touring — but this was billed as a special evening. Jay had some things that he wanted to get off h…

By any measure, Outkast’s André 3000 is one of the greatest rappers who have ever lived. He’s also one of the most reluctant. Unless you count his half of Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, André has never released a solo album. He hasn’t released an album of any kind since Outkast’s Idlewild soundtrack in 2006. In recent years, André has popped up, very occasionally, to rap on other people’s songs, often to dazzling effect. (Most recently, it was on Killer Mike’s “Scientists & Engineers.”) But now An…

In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. Book Bonus Beat: The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music.

You remember RMR. In the early pre-pandemic days of 2020, it was the best kind of viral sensation: A singer with a designer ski mask and gold fronts, surrounded by gun-toting friends, singing tenderly about scamming hoes to the tune of Rascal Flatts’ “Bless The Broken Road.” RMR’s “Rascal” was the sort of beautiful online stunt that couldn’t be repeated, though he tried, flipping songs like Matchbox 20’s “3AM” and the Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris.” But now, RMR has apparently realized that the time has…

We already published our list of this year’s first-time Grammy nominees, but there’s also another name that belongs in the record books — an artist who’s significantly younger than any of the Best New Artist nominees. Hazel Monét is two years old, and she’s been nominated in the category of Best Traditional R&B Performance. Today, as Billboard reports, she became the youngest Grammy nominee in history.

First things first: Grizzly Bear, at least for now, are done. The band was one of the biggest things in indie rock for a long time, but they haven’t released an album since 2017’s Painted Ruins, and they haven’t played a live show since the 2019 indie nostalgia-fest Just Like Heaven. Three of the four band members are still actively making music. Daniel Rossen and Christopher Bear scored Past Lives, one of the year’s best films, while Chris Taylor mixed and co-produced the dance producer Tycho’s…

Over the summer, the London producer known as DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ released her album Destiny, an overwhelming four-hour joy-bomb of chopped-up samples and shimmery vibes. Since then, she’s released a few more tracks: “(Livin’ In A) Barbie’s Paradise,” “Fine,” “Say What You Mean.” Today, she’s followed all of them with a hectic, chaotic new release called Destextrinum, which works as a kind of Destiny companion piece.

The LA-based singer-songwriter Loren Kramar first made his name as a fine-art photographer, and he’s worked with people like Jorge Elbrecht, Francis And The Lights, Twin Shadow, and Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor and Chris Bear. Earlier this year, Kramar toured with Father John Misty, and he makes a similar kind of lush, biting, self-aware orchestral pop. Now, Kramar has signed with Secretly Canadian, and he’s just released the new single “Hollywood Blvd.”