Search Results for: Rolling Stone

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Brandon Teena
Brandon Teena (Lane Hickenbottom for AP)

This week, we’re sharing stories from Donna Minkowitz, Stephen Rodrick, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, Nadia Berenstein, and Shanna Baker.

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Johnny Depp: We Are Concerned

GLASTONBURY, ENGLAND - JUNE 22: American actor Johnny Depp introduces his film "The Libertine" on day 1 of the Glastonbury Festival 2017 at Worthy Farm, Pilton on June 22, 2017 in Glastonbury, England. (Photo by Ki Price/Getty Images)

You’d think, after years as Jack Sparrow, not to mention roles in 36 movies, that Johnny Depp would be swimming in a sea of dubloons. A penchant for spending, generosity, and a laissez-faire approach to the fine details of his accounts has left Johnny’s treasure chest nigh on empty. At Rolling Stone, Stephen Rodrick attempts to see through the haze of hash to try and understand why Johnny Depp’s ship is sinking.

“So are you here to hear the truth?” asks Depp as Russell brings him a glass of vintage red wine. “It’s full of betrayal.”

We move to the dining room for a three-course meal of pad thai, duck and gingerbread with berries. Depp sits at the head of the table and motions toward some rolling papers and two equal piles of tobacco and hash, and asks if I mind. I don’t. He pauses for a second. “Well, let’s drink some wine first.”

This goes on for 72 hours.

Over the past 18 months, there has been little but bad news for Depp. In addition to the financial woes, there were reports he couldn’t remember his lines and had to have them fed to him through an earpiece. He had split from his longtime lawyer and agent. And he was alone. His tabloid-scarred divorce from actress Heard is complete, but not before there were persuasive allegations of physical abuse that Depp vehemently denies. Depp’s inner circle had begged him to not wed Heard or to at least obtain a prenup. Depp ignored his loved ones’ advice. And there were whispers that Depp’s recreational drug and alcohol use were crippling him.

During my London visit, Depp is alternately hilarious, sly and incoherent. The days begin after dark and run until first light. There is a scared, hunted look about him. Despite grand talks about hitting the town, we never leave the house. As Depp’s mind leads us down various rabbit holes, I often think of a line that he recited as the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland: “Have I gone mad?”

I want to go home, but feel reluctant to leave. One of the most famous actors in the world is now smoking dope with a writer and his lawyer while his cook makes dinner and his bodyguards watch television. There is no one around him who isn’t getting paid.

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‘I Love What Human Voices Do Together’: An Interview with Neko Case

AP Photo/Tony Avelar, Getty, Photo illustration by Katie Kosma

Will Hermes | Longreads | June 2018 | 16 minutes (3,994 words)

 

Neko Case’s powerhouse voice often seems like it might level buildings. But during a 20-plus-year career, she’s put it to more constructive use, both as singular solo act and poster child for collective creativity. She formed the ultra-meta power-pop band The New Pornographers with kindred singer-songwriters Carl Newman and Dan Bejar in 1997, the same year she released her own debut LP, The Virginian, an eclectic, country-rock-leaning set of originals and deep-catalog covers: Everly Brothers, Loretta Lynn, hard-rock-era Queen. Since then she’s worked alternately with the Pornographers and under her own name, with occasional side projects like The Corn Sisters (with Carolyn Mark) and Case/Lang/Viers (a low-key supergroup with k.d. lang and Laura Viers).

Hell-On, Case’s new solo album, is as gorgeous, imaginative, and potent as any she’s made, and for a lyricist given to imagistic fables and emotional meditations, it responds to the cultural-environmental moment vividly. Songs address nature’s ruthlessness (it’s worth noting Case’s Vermont home was destroyed in a fire when she was out of the country recording songs), along with the vagaries and tyrannies of gender, the endless negotiations of love, and even the attributes of the Almighty. “God is not a contract or a guy,” she sings on the title track, a faintly hallucinatory waltz that tilts into an empowered come-on (“I am not a mess/I’m a wilderness, yes/The undiscovered continent/For you to undress/But you’ll not be my master/You’re barely my guest,” she instructs). Another standout, “Halls of Sarah,” casts a #metoo side-eye at the trope of woman-as-muse (“Our poets do an odious business loving womankind/As lions love Christians”). At the same time, “Sleep All Summer,” a song by ex-bandmate Eric Bachmann, is a heartbreaker about faded love that feels like a forgotten classic.

The recording sessions enlisted a busload of other fellow travelers: Viers and lang, punk/pop/queer/ feminist/fashion icon Beth Ditto, veteran grunge crooner Mark Lanegan, Swedish indie-pop scientist Bjorn Yttling, various Pornographers and other long-time associates, a squadron of whom are on the road with her this year. At a tour stop in Brooklyn in May, bandmates Rachel Flotard and Shelly Short formed a powerhouse frontline with Case at the club Littlefield, delivering new songs like a trio of wisecracking Valkyries.

I spoke to Case on the phone some days later, as she was idling in San Diego before another show. She spoke about the album, the fire that recently destroyed her house, and the 2016 WOMANPRODUCER conference, which she described as “the highlight of my professional career.” This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

(You can listen to an audio version of this interview on the Longreads Podcast here:

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Meet the New Mormons

Illustration by Lizzie Gill

Sarah Scoles| Longreads | June 2018 | 23 minutes (5,714 words)

It’s a summer day in Salt Lake City, and tourists are resting inside the Mormon Tabernacle, staring at the enormous, golden pipes of the Tabernacle organ, which are topped with carved wooden finials that appear to scrape the ceiling. These are the same pipes I stared at on a satellite feed from my hometown chapel in central Florida twice a year until I was 18. Although I’d remotely watched the church’s semiannual conference religiously as a kid, I’d never been inside the building until now, more than 12 years after leaving the church and becoming an atheist, and 10 after coming out as a lesbian. My parents have spent those years trying to come to terms with these shifts, but our détente has involved not talking much about any of it. This is the Mormon way.

It’s strange then to find myself in this Tabernacle, waiting for my mom’s plane to arrive in Salt Lake so that she and I can attend the Sunstone Symposium, a yearly gathering that includes liberal Mormons and ex-Mormons who are redefining their relationship with the church. But here I am.

Two young missionaries step up to the pulpit to demonstrate the building’s acoustics for those in attendance. One rips a newspaper, and I can hear the tear from my perch in the shadows at the back of the room. It sounds soft and wet, like the stories it contains might be smeared. The demonstration ends and the missionaries walk offstage, accompanied by a recording of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir: God be with you till we meet again. The harmonies burrow into my chest like they belong there, which in some sense they always will. The Mormon worldview shaped mine — I could speak in King James English at age 4 — even though the two now stand apart, like puzzle pieces where the outcropping of one is the cavern of the other. Only together do Mormonism and I make a full picture. Read more…

The High Price of Being a #MeToo Whistleblower

Seth Wenig / AP Photo, Photo illustration by Katie Kosma

Tricia Romano | Longreads | May 2018 | 7 minutes (1,770 words)

 

A few weeks ago I was at dinner in New York with an old friend, an editor at the New York Times. She thrust out her phone. “Oh my god, did you see? Tanya!”

Tanya was Tanya Selvaratnam, one of the four women who’d accused New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman of physical abuse in a New Yorker story by Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow. She and I knew Tanya well. I’d met Tanya 15 years ago when I was a nightlife reporter for the Village Voice. We were fast friends and gallivanted around town together. Now, we had a few bazillion mutual close friends and acquaintances. In fact, right after dinner, I’d be going to her apartment to sleep, as I often did when I came back to New York to visit from Seattle, where I now live. Until that moment, I had thought I would be meeting up with her. She had texted that morning that she’d be home late, as she was going to a party. “Cool,” I wrote. “See you then.”

Instead, my phone started blowing up with messages from our mutual friends.

“Holy cow. Just finished reading the Eric Schneiderman NYer story. What a psycho. Are there any NYC AGs who go after the ‘bad guys’ that aren’t totally twisted? It’s worse than an episode of ‘Billions.’ Glad Tanya is ok.”

“I’m really sorry this happened to her and think she’s seriously brave for talking.”

“Ugh.”

I wrote Tanya and asked if she was ok.

She replied: “I won’t be staying at home tonight. If anyone asks about me, don’t say anything. If the buzzer rings or someone knocks on door, don’t answer. I’ll explain later. At dinner now. I’ll call after. Sorry I didn’t tell you before what was going on xo.”

My dinner date and I sat at the table, our eyes glued to our phones, as we read through the New Yorker story and its horrific details.

“Oh my god,” she said, “I just got to Tanya’s section.”

“Same.”

Silence.

Over dinner, we tried to process it. Some things became clearer to me in retrospect. Tanya had always been a pretty guarded person, and when I asked her how the demise of her relationship with her high-profile boyfriend had come about, she offered vague comments: “I’m glad it’s over.” “Happy to be free.” “Never dating a politician again. Always on.” No sturm, no drang, and devoid of details.

It turned out she’d been staying quiet for a specific reason — and had been cooperating with the New Yorker for many months.

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When Will Hip-Hop Have Its #MeToo Reckoning?

Kelis performs in Paris, 2014. (David Wolff-Patrick/Redferns via Getty Images)

In a recent interview with the celebrity news site Hollywood Unlocked, singer Kelis discussed her seven-year relationship with ex-husband, Nas, the legendary Queens rapper, with a level of detail she never had publicly. She described a mix of “intense highs and really intense lows,” including bruises from physical fights, alcoholic binges, cheating, and emotional abuse. Kelis also made claims that, since the divorce in 2010, Nas had been a difficult and unreliable co-parent to their 8-year-old son. At more than an hour long, the interview is a marvel of a testimony and rings with emotional honesty. Kelis seemed weary of keeping quiet about her past, saying she simply woke up and thought “not today.” Read more…

A Kendrick Lamar Syllabus

Kendrick Lamar performs at the Grammys on January 28, 2018. (Christopher Polk/Getty Images for NARAS)

Last month, Kendrick Lamar Duckworth won the Pulitzer Prize in music for his 2017 album DAMN. It’s the first work of hip-hop to be commended since the award for musical composition was created in 1943. Most winners have been classical musicians, and a few, like Wynton Marsalis and Ornette Coleman, composers of jazz.

The Pulitzer board noted that DAMN. “offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life.” The album’s selection updates and redefines conceptions of music and high culture — it is canon expanding and its reverberations and aftershocks should be significant.

DAMN. is Lamar’s third album, and while it is spectacular, I don’t think it’s his most thrilling. good kid m.A.A.d. city, from 2012, succeeds more on the plane of hip-hop aesthetics, with its structurally sound story arc. To Pimp a Butterfly, from 2015, was more melodically lush, and it magnetized a rising tide of political fervor: The single “Alright” became a protest anthem, and every major release by a popular black musician afterward seemed to form a politically-charged chorus.

Lamar has made a career of delivering prescient, complex work that is sometimes fiery and discordant, and other times deeply meditative or grief-stricken. But his work always feels honest. With the significance of his Pulitzer in sight, I offer a small selection of the insightful writing on Lamar that has published in the years since his debut.
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It’s Like This and Like That and Like What?

Death Row / Interscope Records, Photo illustration by Katie Kosma

Rebecca Schuman | Longreads | May 2018 | 11 minutes (2,912 words)

 

The ’90s Are Old is a Longreads series by Rebecca Schuman, wherein she unpacks the cultural legacy of a decade that refuses to age gracefully.

* * *

In the entirety of 1990, exactly one hip-hop single made it to the top spot on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. This was “Ice Ice Baby,” and the LP whence its dope melodies came, To the Extreme, also ruled the Billboard album charts for the final eight weeks of that year — knocking off the previous number one, another rap record, Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em. (It turned out that if U were Vanilla Ice, U could, in fact, touch this.) As the nineties rush-rushed in, aching to break out of the previous decade’s noxious forcefield of Aqua Net, one thing was clear: American Top 40 radio was ready for hip hop — so long as it was squeaky clean, or, failing that, performed by a white guy with the wackest eyebrows in history.

By the end of the decade, the landscape had shifted almost beyond recognition. Synth-pop was the stuff of nostalgia nights; rock was emitting the first gurgle of its death rattle (which sounded like this); and what had heretofore been called “hardcore” hip hop was so ubiquitous in “mainstream” (read: white) culture that its ubiquity became a bit in Mike Judge’s 1999 cult classic Office Space.

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Born Again

Illustrations by Karen Barbour

Michelle Dean Topic | April 2017 | 13 minutes (3,100 words)

This story is featured in collaboration with Topic, a digital storytelling platform that delivers an original story to your inbox each and every week. Sign up for Topic’s newsletter now.

Candace Newmaker was 10 years old when she died in 2000. There are only a few pictures of her, and even fewer biographical details. Here is what we do know: she had dark brown hair and eyes, she liked dogs and horses, and she enjoyed arts and crafts. Candace had been a ward of the state of North Carolina since she was about 5 the daughter of a very young mother who hadn’t been able to hold her own life together, and who had lost her very young children to the Department of Children and Family Services. Jeane Newmaker, a kindly nurse-practitioner who was single and in her early 40s, found Candace in the system when she was 6 and adopted her in 1996. It’s not clear exactly when things got difficult between Newmaker and her adopted daughter. Maybe things were difficult from the start. (Newmaker declined to comment for this article; this account is based on contemporaneous press reports in the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News.) Candace, one of the girl’s therapists later said, could be sweet, but she could also be “mean.” One therapist said it just seemed like Candace had a “defense mechanism for being through so many places” — that “it was like having the average 18-year-old adolescent in your house,” one who was trapped in a 10-year-old’s body. Read more…

Is Journalism a Form of Activism?

Portrait of journalist and suffragist Ida B. Wells, 1920. (Photo by Chicago History Museum/Getty Images)

Danielle Tcholakian | Longreads | March 2018 | 17 minutes (4,071 words)

Last weekend, as March For Our Lives protests took place all across the country, the student co-editor-in-chief of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School newspaper said on the CNN show “Reliable Sources” that journalism is a form of activism.

I was not surprised to see her quickly criticized on Twitter. Josh Kraushaar of the National Journal tweeted that the belief the student espoused is what’s “killing trust in our profession,” adding in a second tweet that the mentality the student shared “is more common among younger journalists.”

But I was surprised to see how many journalists came to the students’ defense, agreeing that journalism is a form of activism. They were highly respected, solid, investigative journalists. Los Angeles Times writer Matt Pearce asked, “Does anybody think that even the fairest and most diligent of investigative reporters wrote their horrifying stories hoping that nothing would change?” The Washington Post‘s Wesley Lowery asserted, “Even beyond big, long investigations, journalists perform acts of activism every day. Any good journalist is an activist for truth, in favor of transparency, on the behalf of accountability. It is our literal job to pressure powerful people and institutions via our questions.” Nikole Hannah-Jones, a reporter for The New York Times Magazine and arguably one of the greatest living reporters today, quoted Lowery’s tweet, agreeing with it. Read more…