Hip-hop was a different kind of music that needed a different kind of writer to cover it. This is how Michael A. Gonzales came of age in a time when Black writers began breaking the white ceiling.
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The Paths of Rhythm
A Tribe Called Quest’s pioneering music is one of many filaments that connects Americans of color with each other now and back through time.
Selling Vintage Records in Tokyo
Listening to music with a Tokyo record store owner forges a deeper bond than any shared language.
You Don’t Own Me
Some fans prefer small club shows, others like arena rock shows, but do we care what the bands prefer?
They Wanted Her Body
Thinking of Qandeel Baloch’s murder as an honor killing doesn’t capture the whole truth. She was silenced for revealing men’s hypocrisy.
Alexa de Paris
Miles Marshall Lewis remembers a love of Prince and Paris.
A History of American Protest Music: Which Side Are You On?
Just as we were in the 1930s and ’60s, America is suffering a moral crisis. We have to decide which side we are on: hate and exclusion, or justice, inclusion, and democracy?
On Blackface, Bert Williams, and Excellence
A complicated racial anxiety rests at the heart of American entertainment.
The Light Years
After his parents pushed him out of their home, a teenager descended into the drug-fueled counterculture of the 1970s American West.
A Woman’s Work: The Outside Story
Carolita Johnson catalogues her efforts to maintain her appearance from about 1970 to 2018.
