I’m not a patient man, but I’ve mellowed in my 30’s. In the heyday of leaks, I wasn’t the plug, but damn if I wasn’t the intermediary. I knew exactly where and when to find them. It was like clockwork. That was a good decade ago. Nowadays I don’t feel […]
Very little has been written about Aretha Franklin’s 1977 album Sweet Passion. Of the three most significant written accounts of Aretha’s life, none of them dedicate more than a paragraph to the album, focusing instead on her budding romance with second husband Glynn Turman and the resurgence she experienced with […]
Most people have never heard Aretha Franklin’s sophomore album, 1962’s The Electrifying Aretha Franklin. The same goes for her debut album, 1961’s Aretha With The Ray Bryant Combo, and the half dozen albums that followed. Columbia Records did a knockout job of holding onto their recordings of Aretha Franklin, modestly […]
For a while there, there was an upward trend in the life and catalog of Mary J. Blige. She seemed to transcend her biggest demons on No More Drama, find love on Love & Life, and begin navigating the pains of life beyond love on The Breakthrough and Growing Pains. […]
In celebration of 40 years of Janet Jackson as a recording artist, our team compiled a playlist of our favorite Janet “deep cuts,” consisting of our favorite underrated, lesser known Janet tracks that a casual listener may have never heard. If you’re like us, watching Janet’s eponymous new documentary on […]
Death of a King On June 25, 2009, news broke of Michael Jackson’s death, leaving fans and millions of mourners around the world in shock and disbelief. His sister Janet was at home in New York, ready to begin production on the sequel film, Why Did I Get Married Too? […]
Janet Jackson’s career had been the golden standard up until one very famous performance, with another very famous singer, during the most famous sporting event of the year. Nipplegate The year was 2004. Janet Jackson was selected as the headline performer for the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show. The world […]
I was around 8 or 9 when I got my copy of Aretha Franklin’s Young, Gifted and Black. It arrived via one of the storied, long-defunct CD clubs (some do still exist but now exclusively push DVDs). For those who weren’t attune to those clubs, they would send alluring catalogs […]
After taking control of her life, her music and her career, Janet Jackson was about to transform herself yet again. This time, as the new decade’s new face of pop music. 90’s Vixen After closing out the decade on the highest of highs, Jackson entered the 90’s as a solidified […]
In just seven brief years, Aaliyah rose from a young ingenue to a respected artist who repeatedly captured and held the attention of the late 90s / turn of the millennium zeitgeist. It’s clear from Aaliyah’s output that she realized her identity through her art. Age Ain’t Nothing But A […]
