Aretha Franklin was born March 25, 1942 and died Thursday, August 16, 2018.

Nate Chinen may have been the last full-time jazz reviewer at any American newspaper. He says jazz hasn’t been in a better place since the ’60s — but the commercial infrastructure is broken.

If the convenience store and Japanese society are so similar, why can Keiko Furukura function in one and not the other?

Growing up, Niya Marie sought refuge in Whitney Houston’s ethereal notes; as an adult, Marie found recognition in her silences.

How Canadian is Justin Bieber? His hometown’s “Steps to Stardom” exhibit provides some answers.

The story of Sadlack’s Heroes, the Raleigh dive bar that helped galvanize the alternative country scene in the 1990s.

How a hard-not-to-love show glosses over the powers that produced its makeover subjects.

The co-authors of ‘Country Music USA’ – a revised edition of the genre’s definitive history – talk about the music’s African-American tributaries, its unpredictable politics, country radio’s woman problem, and working on Ken Burns’ forthcoming doc.

Nina Coomes unpacks the origins and legacies of the Japanese word hafu, or half.

Adaobi Tricia Nwaumbani reveals her Igbo great-grandfather’s history with the transatlantic slave trade.

She’s a rock star, and a mom, and a tomboy, and a wife, and a study in contradictions.

There is little in the world that is not in some way political, including YouTube makeup tutorials.

Nineties relationship books had some serious issues, man.

Billy Joel is totally over it.

Leslie Jamison remembers Amy Winehouse, who passed away seven years ago in Camden, London, at age 27.

Adrian Piper’s body of work encourages audiences to think critically about race, gender, and power, and to engage with their own perceptions.

We wear slogan tees to signal our politics and identify ourselves to like-minded thinkers — but maybe they mask more than they reveal.

Is food nourishment, or art, or both?

No one would have thought that Highland Ridge, Virginia was the center of anything. Then Jim McCoy’s honky-tonk came along.

Sometimes, the review is better than the film it reviews.

German tennis player Andrea Petkovic meets the band.

Henry Taylor’s portraits are sacred objects that lovingly center black subjects and black interiority.

“Key West’s brand of camp reflects Wolkowsky’s understanding — never on the nose, always sideways, a place where anonymity feels like an innate right.”

There’s no use debating a feeling. It’s time to change how we engage with Jordan Peterson.

How soul singer Mary Jane Jones was forced to perform as Aretha Franklin before she took control of her life and career.

The death of popular rapper XXXTentaction raises questions of ethical consumption.

How two exiled Sufi musicians returned to make traditional music in postwar Kabul, Afghanistan.

Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy is the embodiment of concept that the personal is political, even (especially?) in her fiction.

At Paisley Park, the most palpable feeling isn’t of Prince, it’s of loneliness.

In the first war, Joseph Gray used his art to reveal his fellow soldiers. In the next war, he used it to hide them.