Table of contents for Mar-26-15 in Rolling Stone

1. Kanye West feat. Theophilus London, Allan Kingdom and Paul McCartney “All Day” Just when you thought Kanye’s entire album was going to be full of heartfelt, reflective ballads like early singles “Only One” and “FourFiveSeconds,” he takes a sharp left turn with this five-alarm blaze of a song. It’s fast, it’s furious – and it’s got a psychedelic whistle solo from Paul McCartney, just because. 2. Mumford & Sons “Believe” The first taste of the band’s plugged-in third album is a bold declaration of its new sound, building from a moody, synth-y verse to an arena-rocking chorus with shades of U2 and Coldplay. 3. Fern Mayo “Orangina Filth” This single from the New York act is an instant basement-rock anthem, all low-figuitar noise and shout-along melodies. We can’t wait…

As a 10-year-old in Detroit, Big Sean would rap along with Notorious B.I.G. songs on the family TV. Now he’s a major star himself: His third album, Dark Sky Paradise, topped Billboard’s albums chart by selling 173,000 copies. Critics and fans have hailed the LP, executive-produced by Sean’s mentor Kanye West, as a big step up from his first two albums – and Sean agrees. “People from Jay Z to Kanye tell me, ‘I can hear you getting better,’ ” he says. “That’s tight.” West plays a big role on the set, adding vocals and/or beats to the hit “IDFWU,” the emotional “One Man Can Change the World” and more. “He always brings the best out of me,” Sean says. Also present, on the bonus track “Research,” is Sean’s girlfriend,…

HOT BOOK Paul Beatty has spent his career exploding ideas of racial authenticity. His 1996 debut novel, The White Boy Shuffle, about a black high school basketball player from Santa Monica trying to fit in the hood, got enough acclaim that Phil Jackson gifted it to a young Kobe Bryant. The 52-year-old Beatty’s excellent new novel, The Sellout – his fourth, and first in seven years – balances stereotypes like spinning plates. The book’s young black narrator is a weed and watermelon grower whose father was gunned down by the cops. He is also – in one of the novel’s many absurdist twists – a slave owner. If the subject matter is incendiary, Beatty is refreshingly casual describing its inspiration. “I was broke,” he says of his motivations for starting…

PROFILE AT 11 A.M. ON JANUARY 21ST, Christopher Poole posted a note online saying he was retiring as the administrator of 4chan, the notorious website he had founded as a high school student in upstate New York 11 years earlier. The news was as shocking as some of the site’s content: The Zuckerberg of the online underground was walking away. Poole had started 4chan as a way for fellow anime obsessives to post and discuss images. But over the next decade, it morphed into the Net’s greatest factory of memes and mayhem. LOLcats and Rickrolling started on 4chan. So did Anonymous, the international collective of hacktivists and geeks. Most recently, 4chan has been in the crosshairs of two of the biggest controversies on the Web: the celebrity nude leaks called…

COMEDY When Comedy Central’s wickedly funny Kroll Show wraps its threeseason run on March 24th, it will be going out on Nick Kroll’s terms. “A lot of the storylines had reached their natural conclusions,” Kroll says of his decision to end the series, which overflows with spot-on reality-TV parodies and a cast of outsize, progressively more intertwined characters. In advance of the finale, Kroll reveals the classic sketch shows that influenced his own. The ‘2000 Year Old Man’ albums 1961-1997 Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner’s albums are almost like a sketch show. I loved that element of trying to make your friend laugh. Whether it’s me and [John] Mulaney, or me and Jenny [Slate], I do my best work when I have a partner. Saturday Night Live 1975-present Around 12,…

SHORT TAKE The Last Man on Earth Sundays, 9:30 p.m., Fox The Last Man on Earth is an admirably insane idea for a sitcom: Will Forte is an American schmo who might be the only known survivor of an epidemic that wipes out the human race circa 2020. Forte turns it into a dark solo show. He grows a Manson-like beard, stops wearing pants, soaks in a giant margarita and plans to consume the world’s Twinkie supply. It’s basically the Steely Dan classic “King of the World” as a comedy. After Forte tools around America looting in his RV, he ends up in Arizona, looking to find some company in Kristen Schaal. Last Man on Earth was created by Forte with Phil Lord and Chris Miller (who made The Lego…

Courtney Barnett Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit Mom + Pop ★★★★½ Courtney Barnett is only on her first proper album, but she’s already setting herself apart as one of the sharpest, most original songwriters around – at any level, in any genre. The Australian singer-guitarist, 27, is a self-strafing humorist à la Lena Dunham who’s also a Dylanstyle word ninja, spooling out honest, funny, indelible stories wrung from the everyday stuff even a good novelist might overlook. Her loose, conversational lyrics are full of images you can’t shake and characters you need to know more about. You don’t just quote a Courtney Barnett song, you recap it. Barnett started getting attention with her 2013 release The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas, with…

Modest Mouse Strangers to Ourselves Epic ★★★½ Welcome to alternative rock’s Chinese Democracy. Modest Mouse’s sixth studio album is the Washington state band’s first full-length work of new songs since 2007; it may also be the longest hour of music you hear this year. Singer-songwriter Isaac Brock and drummer Jeremiah Green, aided by a cast of dozens, including the Shins’ James Mercer, have stuff ed Strangers to Ourselves to infinity with textural detail and manic leaps in style: the chamber-folk title song, the rococo hip-hop of “Lampshades on Fire,” the ’79-Talking Heads sprint “The Ground Walks, With Time in a Box.” The eff ect is a riot of craft that never coheres but rewards committed listening, thrilling in bolts and spurts like a good multiband compilation. KEY TRACK: “Lampshades on…

‘SNL’ at 40 SUCH AN ENTERTAINING AND INTRIGUING piece [“Saturday Night Live. 40 Years. 141 Cast Members. We Rank Them All,” RS 1229]. Rob Sheffield’s breakdown of SNL’s great (and disappointing) moments captured the highs and lows of a show that still defines and influences American pop culture. Here’s to 40 more years of astounding TV. Ainsley MacDougall Calgary, Alberta NEARLY CANCELED MY SUBscription – not really – when I saw your SNL rankings. Probably the biggest injustice was Norm Macdonald and Michael O’Donoghue placed virtually at the bottom of the list. Watch Macdonald’s portrayal of Bob Dole, or Burt Reynolds on Jeopardy! And O’Donoghue’s “Mr. Mike” character remains legendary four decades removed. Eric J. Smith Bloomfield, MI ROB SHEFFIELD’S COUNTdown of SNL cast members was the first thing I…

OLD Mahalia Jackson “Take My Hand Precious Lord” Sister Mahalia Jackson was one of the first ladies’ voices I ever heard when I was a little girl. My pops told me I’d start rocking when her music came on. Sly and the Family Stone “I Want to Take You Higher” Sly takes me to church when he sings this one. He’s like an old deacon. Jump up and clap your hands – that’s the feeling. Bob Dylan “Lay, Lady, Lay” He’s my first love, me and Bobby. We were close. Every time I hear this song, I think, “He’s singing that to me.” NEW Alabama Shakes “Don’t Wanna Fight” Brittany Howard is my girl! She has this smooth voice, and then all of a sudden she breaks out and gives…

COMEBACK ‘THERE HAVE BEEN A COUPLE of times I’ve been drunk and attacked pretty viciously,” says Isaac Brock. “But there’s one I replay in my head.” Describing one of his low points of the past decade, Brock recalls the night his band Modest Mouse played a show in Nottingham, England, in May 2007. After the gig, he remembers, “some shitbag and his friend who fancied themselves gangsters” started heckling Brock and his guitar tech in an alley. “They said, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ I’m like, ‘I’m just going to get kabobs, man!’ ” A shoving match ensued, and Brock threw the first punch. “The next thing I know, I’m dropping to my knees,” he says. “He smashed me in the face with a bottle. I actually saw a…

‘BREAKING BAD” AND ITS IMPROBABLY great new spinoff , Better Call Saul, both stories of lives knocked off -course, have sparked a similarly radical real-life metamorphosis for Saul star Bob Odenkirk. Before taking what was supposed to be a small role on Breaking Bad as cravenly corrupt attorney Saul Goodman, Odenkirk, 52, was a cult-favorite comedy writer-performer (of Mr. Show fame) with near-zero dramatic acting experience. Since then, he’s been in Alexander Payne’s Nebraska and FX’s Fargo, and now displays more range than ever as a younger Saul, a.k.a. Jimmy McGill, in a show he says co-creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould started planning as early as 2009 or 2010. “I think it was the last episode of the third season,” says Odenkirk, “that Vince came to me in the…

Crazed DJ Commandeers Cruise Ship “Make some noise so the fuckin’ world can hear you!” Skrillex screamed to 4,000 fans and a few seagulls as he rocked the fifth Holy Ship! cruise from Miami to the Bahamas; his mates on the voyage included Fatboy Slim and Kaskade. Back on land, Skrillex hit the charts with Jack Ü, his duo with Diplo. “We aren’t afraid to fail,” says Skrillex. “We didn’t overthink anything, and we got our friends to just come in and do it with us.” KATY’S TUSCAN TAKEOVER Katy Perry captured every moment of her tour stop in Italy, taking selfies on a carousel, at the famous Uffizi Gallery as she took in Titian classics, and on the streets of Florence. “Bravo for not letting corporate companies bulldoze your…

Jack Ü Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü Owsla/Mad Decent ★★★½ Skrillex and Diplo’s first album together has one purpose: moving bodies. But that simple quest has led the duo to a wonderfully trim set that’s as forward-sounding as any dance release in recent memory. Though they begin most of its 10 tracks in familiar territory, they quickly push on to new ground, or at least new levels of intensity. Early highlight “Beats Knockin’ ” adds industrial distortion and whiplash-inducing tempo changes to a frenzied New Orleans bounce reminiscent of Diplo’s “Express Yourself,” and “Jungle Bae” (featuring Trinidadian star Bunji Garlin) brings additional firepower to the Carnivalready soca-EDM hybrid of Diplo’s Major Lazer project. KEY TRACKS: “Jungle Bae,” “Take Ü There” In dubstep’s peak days, Skrillex blasted through songs like…

In RS 1229, Jeff Goodell reported on one of our most pressing national-security issues: climate change. It’s a challenge that the Pentagon takes seriously, but the brass has found itself hamstrung by deniers in Congress [“The Pentagon and Climate Change”]. The Navy plugged our story on social media as ROLLING STONE readers wrote in to comment. THE MILITARY HAS COME through as the voice of reason here, taking an apolitical stance in a starkly politicized debate. The 2016 presidential election is approaching. If the GOP wants to move into the 21st century and make their revisionist candidates (Jeb Bush’s advisers include Paul Wolfowitz) appeal to the open-minded , they should nominate a realist, not a denialist. The rest of the world is watching. M. Bud, London GOODELL’S MULTILAYered story on…

WHEN MUMFORD & SONS bassist Ted Dwane showed up at his London studio early last year to begin work on the group’s third album, he was confronted with a surprise: a room full of synthesizers. “It was bizarre,” he says. “I didn’t expect we were going to do the same thing again – but this was crazy!” On their new album, Wilder Mind (out May 4th), Mumford & Sons have mostly removed their signature elements – banjo, acoustic strumming, stomping kick drum – and replaced them with U2-size guitars, synths, spacey Mellotrons and even drum machines. “We felt that doing the same thing, or the same instrumentation again, just wasn’t for us,” says frontman Marcus Mumford. “We’ve got a broader taste in music than just that.” Adds Dwane, “None of…

CHECKING IN FOR 38 NIGHTS LAST FALL, Dwight Yoakam brought his rhinestone-bedazzled honky-tonk show to arenas for the first time in more than a decade – but instead of headlining, Yoakam was the opening act on Eric Church’s Outsiders tour. “A lot of the audience was new to anything older than three or four years old in country music,” says Yoakam, 58. “It was almost like walking out and playing early in my career when people were just getting to know me.” The feeling of plunging into his past extends to Yoakam’s upcoming album, Second Hand Heart (due April 14th). It’s a return to Yoakam’s fiery “cowpunk” sound, which he discovered in the late Seventies, after striking out in Nashville, moving to L.A., and opening for punk and rock bands…

HOT PRODUCER One of the biggest reasons for the monster success of Empire, Fox’s over-the-top hip-hop soap opera, is its original music – five songs performed by the show’s characters have even climbed into the Top 30 on the R&B charts. The original songs are supervised by Timbaland, but mostly created by Jim Beanz, a 35-year-old protégé whom Timbaland calls “a multitasking superhero.” Beanz usually has about a day to write and record a track for the show, based on story information relayed by Empire’s producers. The show isn’t just content to turn out Top 40 facsimiles – Beanz wants innovation. “Tim told me, ‘If it sounds like something you’ve heard before, don’t do it,’_” says the Philadelphiabased Beanz. After completing a demo, Beanz sends the song to Timbaland, who’ll…

IMAGINE YOU’RE A TEENAGE GIRL who’s just been deflowered. Now pretend your partner tells you that you’re part of a chain-letter-like curse – and unless you have sex with someone else, a shapechanging embodiment of evil will hunt you down. That’s the concept behind It Follows, the lowfihorror movie whose slow-burning dread and throwback synth score have been earning comparisons to The Shining and Halloween. The longer the film’s 19-year-old heroine (Maika Monroe) and her friends look for sanctuary, the more shambling, grasping figures follow. “I used to have this recurring nightmare as a kid,” says director David Robert Mitchell, “where I was being followed by this thing. It’s slow enough that I can get away, but I always knew it was there. It. Never. Stops. Coming.”…