Music Features

Music & Culture

Stonecoldboldness: A many-sided memorial to the writing of Greg Tate

9:37am December 11, 2021

A critic whose writing was nearly music itself, Greg Tate — who died this week at 64 — influenced generations of writers. His colleagues, peers and followers offer a guide to his essential works.

Nesmith with his bandmates Davy Jones, Mickey Dolenz and Peter Tork, photographed in Los Angeles in 1967

Michael Nesmith — considerably more than a Monkee — dies at 78

2:04pm December 10, 2021

Nesmith rose to fame as one of the Pre-Fab Four — but he had a long and influential career after the Monkees. He helped invent the format that became MTV, and produced the cult film Repo Man.

Projects released by Young Thug, Tyler, the Creator and Little Simz are included in NPR Music's best hip-hop albums of 2021.

Music & Culture

The 25 Best Hip-Hop Albums of 2021

10:46am December 10, 2021

This year's best hip-hop — including Westside Gunn, Mach-Hommy and Moor Mother — comes from death and defiance, erotic power and provocation, Black joy and pain — and that's just the shortlist.

Iphigenia, played by esperanza spalding, prepares for her sacrifice. From Wayne Shorter and spalding's opera, ...(Iphigenia).

Wayne Shorter and esperanza spalding crack open the old world in new opera

10:00am December 10, 2021

by Nate Chinen

The pair took a close look at the subtexts of Euripides' sad, epic tale of Iphigenia — agency, testosterone, violence, faith — and, through a suite of new music, hold them up to the light.

Projects released by Summer Walker, Shelley FKA DRAM and Jazmine Sullivan are included in NPR Music's best R&B albums of 2021.

Music & Culture

The Best R&B Albums of 2021

2:46pm December 09, 2021

From Dijon and Figmore to Mereba and Cleo Sol, the best R&B albums of the year were born out of reshaped perspectives in the face of the post-pandemic facade we're now calling reality.

Radiohead circa 2000. Singer Thom Yorke (second from right) says that as much as the albums Kid A and Amnesiac channel the dread that loomed over their moment, they are also full of hope that another world is possible.

Music & Culture

20 Years After The End Of The World

12:57pm December 09, 2021

At the turn of the millennium, Radiohead turned creeping melancholy and desolation into two albums that changed the band's career. Two decades later, maybe we've caught up to their prophetic vision.

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Three of the student authors of Who Is Florence Price? (left to right: Sebastián Núñez, Hazel Peebles and Sophia Shao), joined by their English teacher, Shannon Potts.

These NYC kids have written the history of an overlooked Black female composer

4:18pm December 07, 2021

by Anastasia Tsioulcas

A group of sixth, seventh and eighth grade students realized there was no children's book about the composer Florence Price. So they wrote, illustrated and published their own.

Meric Long of the Bay Area band The Dodos found his voice in a distinctive guitar style. While writing the new album Grizzly Peak, he watched that ability begin to slip away.

When Making Music Breaks Your Body

11:50am December 04, 2021

by Grayson Haver Currin

An arthritis diagnosis means the latest album by the Bay Area band The Dodos is likely its last. It is a striking reminder of the oft-overlooked physical strains of music careers.

Strata-East Records founders, from left: Trumpeter Charles Tolliver and pianist Stanley Cowell, photographed in 1970.

Music & Culture

Strata-East at 50: How a revolutionary record label put control in artists' hands

10:34am December 03, 2021

To celebrate their 50-year anniversary, we trace the history and legacy of the independent jazz record label Strata-East founded by trumpeter Charles Tolliver and the late pianist Stanley Cowell.

Music & Culture

The 100 Best Songs of 2021

8:07pm December 02, 2021

Think of the best songs of 2021 as a playlist catering to the most basic human urges. Within it, booties were called, muffins were buttered and bloody revenge was contemplated. It was quite a year.