Table of contents for Apr-23-15 in Rolling Stone

Rap Genius HIP-HOP’S CROWN PRINCE on the cover of ROLLING STONE [“The Trials of Kendrick Lamar,” RS 1231]! Josh Eells did a stunning job taking us inside Kendrick’s head, the place where the richest rhymes in the universe are born. Yvette Mason Via the Internet I HAVEN’T ANTICIPATED AN album this much since Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. I can’t wait to hear what Kendrick’s got cooking: unapologetically black? Funk, spoken-word poetry and free jazz? Miles Davis and Parliament? Mix it with the Black Hippy aesthetic, and you can’t go wrong. Kendrick’s continuing to slay all comers. Miles C., via the Internet EELLS WROTE A GREAT PIECE – rich with the kind of detailed imagery Kendrick brings to his own work. Michael Pollock Wilmington, DE ISIS at the Gates…

TV PREVIEW THE LAST TWO SEASONS OF Game of Thrones have featured a Red Wedding, literal head-crushings and bow-and-arrow-wielding ice giants. But it turns out that showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were just getting warmed up – according to the pair, the upcoming fifth season is going to be the most epic to date. “We’re building to a crescendo now,” Benioff says. What can we expect from this season? Benioff: For four seasons, you’ve had all these characters who’ve been separated by geography – from Daenerys and her band of warriors roaming around to everyone in Westeros. Now, these storylines are starting to merge. It’s going to be a big Eastmeets-West season. Weiss: It’ll be easier to keep things straight for the viewers – and for us. Do you…

MOVIES Star Oscar Isaac has offered the most succinct summary of the relentlessly clever new sci-fifilm Ex Machina, out April 10th: “I’m building fuckbots!” But no one will confuse this tense drama with Weird Science – Ex Machina, which marks the directorial debut of 28 Days Later writer Alex Garland, is an unnerving meditation on the ethics of artificial intelligence, the ever-growing power of Silicon Valley (Isaac plays the reclusive founder of a search-engine company), the nature of human desire and more. “People have a sense they’ve given up more than they knew to big tech companies, that they’ve given their humanity,” says Garland, noting the sudden Hollywood prevalence of A.I. plots and tech villains. “It bothers them.” There are only four main characters in the film, and two of…

Q&A ‘THIS IS THE MEAT OF WHAT I DO,” VAN Morrison says of his new record, Duets: Re-Working the Catalogue. “I like working with challenges. And I like working with other singers.” Morrison, 69, resurrects deep tracks from albums like 1977’s A Period of Transition and 1991’s Hymns to the Silence with heroes and friends including Steve Winwood, Mavis Staples, Taj Mahal and the late Bobby Womack. Morrison also reunites with peers from Britain’s Sixties-R&B boom like Chris Farlowe and P.J. Proby, who turns up in a new take on the 2002 tribute “Whatever Happened to P.J. Proby.” Morrison subtitled his new album like a memo. “It’s the reality of working the catalog,” he says, “having fun but being practical, too. Because nobody else is working it.” The opening track…

‘A Rape on Campus’ Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism LAST JULY 8TH, SABRINA RUBIN Erdely, a writer for Rolling Stone, telephoned Emily Renda, a rape survivor working on sexual-assault issues as a staff member at the University of Virginia. Erdely said she was searching for a single, emblematic college rape case that would show “what it’s like to be on campus now . . . where not only is rape so prevalent but also that there’s this pervasive culture of sexual harassment/rape culture,” according to Erdely’s notes of the conversation. Renda told Erdely that many assaults take place during parties where “the goal is to get everyone blackout drunk.” Yet “there may be a much darker side of this” at some fraternities, Renda continued. “One girl I worked with…

THREE DAYS BEFORE THE PREMIERE AT THE Sundance Film Festival in January, Courtney Love, the widow of Nirvana singer-guitarist Kurt Cobain, and Frances Bean Cobain, the couple’s only child, watched the final cut of Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck in a private screening room in Burbank, California. Brett Morgen, who wrote, directed and produced the documentary, was also present. It was an uneasy occasion. Frances, 22, had already seen Montage of Heck; she is an executive producer. Her mother – who set the project in motion eight years ago but had no role in its production – had not. Frances says Love “asked me to see it with her, because she had been putting it off for months and months.” In the screening room, the two sat together on a…

Earl Sweatshirt I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside Tan Cressida/Columbia On his first studio album, 2013’s Doris, the most mysterious member of L.A. shock-rap gremlins Odd Future proved himself by exploring real-life alienation. On his excellent second LP, Earl Sweatshirt keeps deepening his game – spooling out dense, mordant rhymes over zombifically blunted tracks as he somehow sucks you into his sunless reality. It’s amazing that music so claustrophobic can be this engrossing. As always, Sweatshirt is most compelling when he’s going toe to toe with his own demons. “I spent the day drinking and missing my grandmother,” he raps on “Huey,” perfectly summing up the music’s desolate vibe. “Mantra” opens with some maniac grandstanding (“With a cleaver and a .30 and some twisted weed/I pick one…

1. Brandon Flowers “Can’t Deny My Love” The first taste of the Killers frontman’s The Desired Effect is this oh-so-Eighties synthrock anthem. When the fireworks in the chorus hit, you can almost see the John Hughes movie credits rolling across the screen. 2. Celestial Shore “Gloria” This twistedly catchy tune from the rising Brooklyn garage crew hits like the Pixies plus a big burst of psychedelic stardust. Watch it climb into your head and stay there for weeks. 3. Ceremony “The Separation” These Northern California punks are best known for heavy-hitting hardcore, but on this preview of their upcoming The L-Shaped Man, they’ve gone full Joy Division. Enjoy the elegant gloom. 4. Led Zeppelin “Trampled Under Foot (Brandy & Coke)” video Wander through a haunted house – haunted by rock!…

THE ROLLING STONES ARE COMing back – sooner than you thought and bigger than ever. This summer, the band will play stadiums in North America for the first time in nine years. The 15-date run, which kicks o_ May 24th at San Diego’s Petco Park, also marks the Stones’ third tour of North America since 2012, following five years o_ the road. “Everybody’s really been enjoying the last few years,” says Keith Richards. “We’re all feeling energized.” The stadium tour will see the Stones play markets they missed on American arena tours in 2012 and 2013, like Columbus, Ohio, and Bu_ alo, New York. The tour also marks the first time the band has taken to the road to celebrate the rerelease of a classic album: Sticky Fingers, which comes…

NOW STREAMING When Netflix needed a star for Daredevil, a new series based on the Marvel comic book, they looked to Charlie Cox, a 32-year-old British actor best known for the 2007 cult film Stardust. There was one problem: Cox didn’t see himself as superhero material. “I remember Skype-ing with the producers and thinking, ‘I don’t know if I’m the right guy for this,’ ” he says. The gangly Cox didn’t look like an action hero, and he was more interested in doing Pinter plays than putting on a cape. “Then [Marvel head of television] Jeph Loeb told me, ‘Episode Two begins with you half-dead in a dumpster.’ That was a very exciting prospect for me.” The TV series, about a blind lawyer blessed with a radarlike sixth sense and…

ENCOUNTER THE WICHITA STATE UNIVERSITY MASCOT IS AN anthropomorphized stalk of wheat called the Wu-Shock. It has a choppy thatch of fried yellow hair, a sinister sideways smirk and weirdly bulbous cheekbones – and Conan O’Brien, looking at its picture, needs no more than five seconds to nail the thing’s unique grotesqueness: “It looks like John Tesh after he’s been dead for four days.” O’Brien is on the campus of a different college, University of California, Irvine, to tape a comedy segment that will run during the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. UCI’s mascot, which has Dwayne Johnson biceps and a bullhorn-shaped nose, is Peter the Anteater. The basic premise of O’Brien’s visit here is twofold: 1) Learn from Peter how to rally a team to victory, and 2) Make fun…

SHORT TAKE Daredevil Netflix Although Daredevil might have been the most film noir of the Marvel superheroes, he’s always posed a challenge for TV and the movies – witness the ill-fated 2003 Ben Affleck-in-spandex version. Netflix’s Daredevil turns the blind Hell’s Kitchen vigilante into an entertaining meat-and-potatoes network-style crime show. Charlie Cox is the hero – by day, he’s Matt Murdock, idealistic New York defense attorney; by night, he fights crime as the hooded Man Without Fear. Blinded in childhood, he has acutely developed his other senses – he can tell if somebody’s lying just by sonaring their heartbeat. The villains he battles are pure cartoons, from the street thugs to the limo-riding slimeball suits; their conspiracy mixes union corruption and sex trafficking – basically a tribute to Season Two…

THE GUTTED TEDDY BEARS WERE TOSSED everywhere, the slit carcasses and polyester innards strewn on the floor and kitchen table along with tens of thousands of dollars in fifties and hundreds – stacks of notes being tallied in an automatic money counter. On the table, there was a Glock .45, a Remington .308 sniper rifle, and scores of pharmaceutical vials containing thousands of opiate pills. 􀁑 Standing at the threshold of a luxury condo in Tampa, Florida, Doug Dodd looked on in horror at the spectacle of a drug dealer’s den of inequity. Dodd was only 19, a student taking business courses at a local community college – when he wasn’t busy being a big-time narcotics trafficker – but he could see the obvious: His best friend was out of…

FROM THE VAULT A SHIRTLESS, DISHEVELED KURT COBAIN PAUSES ON the backstage stairway leading to Nirvana’s dressing room at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, off ers a visitor a sip of his après-gig tea, and says in a deadpan voice, “I’m really glad you could make it for the shittiest show on the tour.” He’s right. Tonight’s concert – a week into the band’s first U.S. tour in two years – is a real stinker. The venue’s cavernous sound turns songs like “Territorial Pissings” into riff pudding, and Cobain is bedeviled all night by guitar- and vocal-monitor problems. There are moments of prickly brilliance, but there is no “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and when the house lights go up, so does a loud chorus of boos. According to the Cobain…

Tori Amos Little Earthquakes: Deluxe Edition Rhino Tori Amos Under the Pink: Deluxe Edition Rhino Tori Amos arrived in 1991 like the cool older sister of a million alt-rock fans’ dreams, hair aflame in a shade unattainable by Manic Panic. The pop charts had never heard a female voice quite like the one on Little Earthquakes, from the sharp mix of desire and frustration in “Precious Things” (“So you can make me come/That doesn’t make you Jesus”) to the raw pain in the instrument-free, rapesurvivor inner dialogue of “Me and a Gun.” Nearly 25 years later, the album’s emotional highs and lows seem even more impressive for a debut. These deluxe reissues flesh out Little Earthquakes and 1994’s more piano-heavy Under the Pink with worthy B sides…

Jim James With a new My Morning Jacket album, The Waterfall, coming in May, we asked James what he thought of five songs. OLD Neil Young “Don’t Be Denied” I remember finding this on vinyl 15 years ago and being floored by the rough sound of the truth. The Rolling Stones “Memory Motel” Mick was such a beautiful woman, and Keith the perfect husband – the way he sings backup is perhaps the greatest ever. NEW Courtney Barnett “Depreston” Courtney is one of the great new surrealists. I am so glad she is here, writing about apartments and remodeling homes from her unique rooftop vantage point. Nick Jonas “Chains” Definitive proof that computers have taken over the world. Nothing is real in this arctic-tundra frozen landscape of a ringtonecommercial song.…

TRIBUTE CYNTHIA LENNON, JOHN Lennon’s first wife and the mother of their son, Julian, died of cancer at her home in Mallorca, Spain, on April 1st. She was 75. “She showed that through life’s toughest adversities, one can remain kind, loving, generous, poised, graceful and classy,” Julian tells Rolling Stone. “[And have] an incredibly naughty and cheeky wit, too.” In a eulogy, Paul McCartney called her “a lovely lady” and “a good mother,” and Yoko Ono wrote, “She had such a strong zest for life, and I felt proud how we two women stood firm in the Beatles family.” Born Cynthia Powell, Lennon met her future husband at art school in Liverpool in 1957. Beatlemania wasn’t easy for Cynthia: She and Lennon married in 1962 after she learned she was…

FETTY WAP Hometown: Paterson, New Jersey Sound: Buoyant, hook-heavy hip-hop from a double threat. Fetty (real name: Willie Maxwell) often rhymes with tough-guy bravado, but “Trap Queen,” his Top 10 single, showcases his high, tender croon. “Where I’m from, everybody wants to be rappers,” the 23-year-old says. “So I started singing [too].” Backstory: “Trap Queen” – an ode to an ex-girlfriend he used to deal drugs with – was among the first songs Wap ever wrote; he promoted it by handing out CDs to tourists in Times Square. At a show in February, Kanye West told the crowd it was his favorite song and invited Wap onstage. “He said, ‘Keep your head and keep doing what you’re doing,’” Wap says. Small setback: Wap is missing his left eye – the…

COUNTRY At 8:46 p.m. on August 13th, 2011, Kristian Bush thought a bomb went o_ . His band, Sugarland, was set to take the main stage at the Indiana State Fair in Indianapolis but was told to hold off at the last minute. Suddenly, winds caused the stage’s roofing structure, rigging and lighting to collapse – killing seven of the country duo’s fans and injuring nearly 100 more. Sugarland were among 18 defendants in a lawsuit that was recently settled, which meant Bush couldn’t comment on the tragedy until now. “I wasn’t able to contact anyone who got hurt,” laments Bush. “We were famous for a terrible thing, and we couldn’t talk about it.” (The court sealed details on how the $39 million settlement was split among the defendants; Bush…

ON MAY 19TH, A DAY BEFORE THE WHO’S 50TH- ANNIVERSARY tour arrives a t Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, Pete Town shend will celebrate his 70th birthday. “I’m not going to make a big deal out of it,” he says, before adding, somewhat mysteriously, “I’ve made a few promises to my self that I want to keep private. I think I owe myself quite a lot now.” ¶ It’s two days before kickoff, and Townshend is calling from London, where he has settled into his comfort able pre-tour routine. Each morning, he gets picked up at his home in Richmond by his security man Mark Squires, who takes him to a rehearsal space at Pinewood Studios, a historic studio 40 minutes away. There, he is greeted by familiar faces. “When…

Alabama Shakes Sound & Color ATO BY WILL HERMES On their 2012 debut, Boys & Girls, Alabama Shakes coined a hot retro mix of black Southern soul and white rock & roll that connected. It was the kind of instant-vintage album that college kids and their recordbuying grandpas could love, and it made the Shakes a rare success story among new guitar bands in the streaming era. Sticking to that formula must have been tempting, but Sound & Color shows that this band aspires to be much more than roots-rock poster children. This is a weirder, woozier, fiercer and sexier record than their debut in nearly every way. Yes, singer-guitarist Brittany Howard still taps classic R&B vocal moves, those spirit-channeling shouts and moans; guitarist Heath Fogg still echoes licks…

BOOKS The Underground Is Massive: How Electronic Dance Music Conquered America Michaelangelo Matos Dey Street Now that EDM is the new rock & roll – a seditious grassroots movement that went on to become the frenzied soundtrack of its era – the time has come for a cleareyed, authoritative account of the music. Using everything from now-ancient mailing-list posts to fresh interviews with DJs, scene-makers and promoters, Michaelangelo Matos (an RS contributor) unfurls this epic saga in style. From the pioneering Chicago house-music scene of the early Eighties through the sight of Daft Punk winning Grammys three decades later, Matos methodically recounts the way the music gradually seeped into pop and the culture at large, hand in hand with the rise of the Internet and as many drugs as on…

RS 993 FEBRUARY 9TH, 2006 Five months after he released Late Registration and told a TV audience that George Bush doesn’t care about black people, Kanye West sat with photographer David LaChapelle for his first ROLLING STONE cover. “I wanted it to look exactly like the DVD cover of The Passion of the Christ,” LaChapelle explained. “Right down to the individual thorns.” The story’s inside photo depicting West as Muhammad Ali was the rapper’s idea. “He understands the importance of making imagery interesting,” said LaChapelle. For more from our archives, visit RollingStone.com/coverwall. Chart Flashback 1 Check on It Beyoncé, Columbia 2 Grillz Nelly, Derrty/Universal 3 Be Without You Mary J. Blige, Geffen 4 Breaking Free Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens, Walt Disney 5 You’re Beautiful James Blunt, Custard/Atlantic…