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1. Kendrick Lamar “The Blacker the Berry” Kendrick’s subtle, impassioned new single reaches a lyrical level few MCs can come near, taking aim at racism and his own doubts: “Why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street?/When gangbanging make me kill a nigga blacker than me?” 2. Bob Dylan “That Lucky Old Sun” Shadows in the Night, Dylan’s great new set of pop standards, peaks with its final track: this tenderly crooned, richly orchestrated take on a classic melody. 3. Jack Ü feat. Kiesza “Take Ü There” Missy Elliott remix This track from Diplo and Skrillex’s EDM superduo was already pretty rave-tastic – then Missy took it to club heaven with some freaky, funky guest vocals like only she can do. 4. Speedy Ortiz “Raising the Skate”…

DOCUMENTARY A FEW YEARS BACK, KIRBY Dick was having dinner at a prestigious liberal-arts college when an administrative official timidly raised her hand and unwittingly launched the filmmaker on his next cinematic crusade. Dick was at the school for a screening of The Invisible War, his documentary about rape in the military. He wasn’t surprised by what the faculty member told him – that rape was a problem on campus – but by the way she said it. “There was a certain amount of fear in her voice,” Dick says. “I was like, ‘Really? In this liberal institution you are afraid to speak about this?’ That told me that there was a real, significant problem.” Dick’s latest film, The Hunting Ground, tackles not just the epidemic of rape on campus…

TRIBUTES LESLEY GORE, WHOSE brash, defiant teenage anthem “It’s My Party” shot her to fame in the early Sixties, died from lung cancer at a New York hospital on February 16th. She was 68. “Her records may have been about teen angst,” says her friend Paul Shaff er, “but nothing made you feel as good as listening to them.” Lesley Sue Goldstein was born in Brooklyn on May 2nd, 1946. With help from her vocal instructor, she recorded a series of demos at age 16 that grabbed the attention of Quincy Jones, who signed her to Mercury Records and produced her early singles, including “It’s My Party.” The song, about watching a boyfriend walk off with another girl, shot to Number One in 1963. Gore followed it up with the…

SHORT TAKE House of Cards Netflix If you thought Kevin Spacey was over-the-top as Sen. Frank Underwood, check him out now as the president! At first, House of Cards seemed to be gunning to become a prestige drama in the mode of Mad Men or Breaking Bad; during the second season, it took itself a lot less seriously, as Spacey cranked up the cartoon-villain factor. This season begins with him taking a whiz on his daddy’s grave while explaining to the camera, in his South Carolina purr, that he visits cemeteries only to seem more human. Spacey throws his weight around the Oval Office with an element of ham that turns out to be right for the room – at this point, House of Cards doesn’t go for political nuance,…

Toronto rapper polishes his crown on a 17-track set with few big hooks, but lots of attitude Drake If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late Cash Money/Young Money/Republic/OVO Is it an album? Is it a mixtape? Who cares? These 17 surprise-released tracks hit harder than most big-budget LPs. There’s no radio single, and not many of the seductively sung hooks that rocketed the Toronto MC to fame. Instead, there are songs like “Star67,” a sullen chomp at the hand that feeds him: “Brand-new Beretta, can’t wait to let it go/Walk up in my label like, ‘Where the check, though?’ ” It’s hard to imagine the heads of Cash Money Records shmoney-dancing to that one. But for fans of Drake’s singular aesthetic, it’s manna from heaven, or at least Canada.…

Mr. Lonelyheart WATCHING SAM SMITH’S AScent up the pop charts has been thrilling. His appearance on the cover of Rolling Stone is well-deserved [“The Liberation of Sam Smith,” RS 1228]. While he may consider Adele to be his Michael Jackson, many of us consider him to be ours. Wanda Meris, via the Internet IT’S GREAT THAT WE HAVE an openly gay pop star in Sam Smith, but I agree with him when he questions whether straights are held under the same sexual-preference microscope. I’m glad that Patrick Doyle’s nice profile focused on Smith as a self-effacing man who just happens to be able to sing the roof off the house. Shayna Lee Woodard Via the Internet NOT THAT I CARE WHO SHOWS skin and who doesn’t, and I’m sure Sam…

OLD Kris Kristoff erson “The Silver Tongued Devil and I” This came out the year I dropped out of high school. It’s every bit as important to me as any Beatles, Stones or Dylan record. Joan Baez “Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word” Joan Baez is one of those singers that you can only hope and pray sings one of your songs. I love the record this is from, Any Day Now. The Clash “Spanish Bombs” This is a weird one for me. Joe Strummer hated me. I think he misunderstood my song “Johnny Come Lately.” But “Spanish Bombs” is great. NEW Laura Marling “Short Movie” I’ve heard her name, but never her music before this song. I like the urgency to it, and it’s really intimate. I’m impressed. Gary…

PROFILE WHEN RANDALL PARK WAS first approached about starring in a sitcom called Fresh Off the Boat, he was skeptical. The show involved a Taiwanese family struggling to adjust after moving to Florida; the last sitcom with an Asian cast was Margaret Cho’s All-American Girl, more than 20 years ago. “There are many theories as to why that is,” says Park, a 40-year-old Korean-American, “but in simple terms it’s just racism.” But not only did Fresh Off the Boat get picked up by ABC as a midseason replacement, it also became a surprise hit, averaging 8.4 million viewers per episode. The show, set in 1995, is based on a memoir by chef and restaurateur Eddie Huang. Park, who plays Eddie’s father with great warmth and a light comedic touch, says…

I WENT TO HIGH SCHOOL IN HARLEM, SO I’D GO TO the Apollo once a week and see guys like Ben E. King, Solomon Burke, Joe Tex and Wilson Pickett. They all needed songs, and Don Covay had this incredible reputation among them as a writer. His songs were primal, street primal, and they had an honesty about them – “Mercy, Mercy,” “Chain of Fools,” “See Saw” and “Sookie Sookie.” Like all soul greats, Don grew up in the church – his father was a minister in South Carolina. In the late Fifties, Don got his start working with Little Richard, who nicknamed him “Pretty Boy.” Don used Richard’s band, the Upsetters, on his early Atlantic recordings, including an amazing guitar player called Jimmy James, a.k.a. Jimi Hendrix. Don told…

BOOKS There aren’t many people who were writing brilliantly about the Beatles in 1967 and just as brilliantly about Taylor Swift in 2015. Actually, there’s just one: Robert Christgau, a rock critic so esteemed John Lennon once called him up to hang out and talk pop. Now, at 72, Christgau is publishing an excellent memoir, Going Into the City. “I’ve spoken to people in their twenties who use this term: ‘What are you doing tonight?’ ‘I’m going into the city,’_” he says. “That started for me when I was in high school buying cheap records on 42nd Street.” Christgau, who grew up in Queens in a fundamentalist Presbyterian family, arrived on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the Sixties. “One thing that distinguished me from most of the early rock critics:…

Both the pope and the Pentagon agree that climate change is a threat to humanity, but thanks to the folks featured in Robert Kenner’s scathing documentary, millions of Americans don’t. Merchants of Doubt shows how conservative think tanks (funded by Exxon Mobil and the Koch brothers) borrowed the Big Tobacco playbook and marketed a small army of flacks as science experts to networks like Fox News and CNN. Merchants – inspired by the 2010 book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway – plays like a sequel to Food, Inc., Kenner’s 2008 film about the perils of industrial farming. “Food, Inc. isn’t just about food – it’s about transparency,” he says. “Merchants isn’t a film about climate change – it’s a film about deceit.”…

THROUGH THE ROACH-rife lobby, where bold bugs nose the soles of your shoes and scores of black women sit stiff -backed for hours in scoop chairs shushing their toddlers; through the pat-down room, where the beetle-eyed guard rifles your groin and buttocks; through the metal detectors and slab-steel doors and second and third sets of guards, you enter a room in which young black men are slouched in seating pods, the sleeves of their orange jumpsuits rolled up tight. There, at the back, by the bolt-barred windows, waits the luckiest – and unluckiest – inmate here, a man so bedeviled by the state of Pennsylvania that he inspired famous lawyers in two different states to fight like Hessians for his release. A kid of 20 when the murder cops came…

Kid Rock First Kiss Top Dog/Warner Bros. “I got them red-blooded whiteboy blues,” Kid Rock sings. Now 44, he finds himself looking back wistfully, tracking the passage of time. He laments that “we can’t fight this getting older” – but the LP’s muscular rock & roll tells another story. The Kid has no intention of aging gracefully – happily, he’s as ornery and open-hearted as ever. First Kiss kicks off with the title track, a killerhook echo of Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” that memorializes early days rocking to “Tom Petty on the radio.” Hank Williams Jr. stands proudly next to the Savior in the fiddle-and-organ ballad “Jesus and Bocephus.” And depending on which piece of the Rock you prefer – sentimental or irascible – you get your choice of…

RS 189 JUNE 19TH, 1975 The day before he would play Madison Square Garden while on tour in support of his 1974 album, Fulfillingness’ First Finale, Stevie Wonder sat in a Manhattan hotel surrounded by instruments and recording equipment, complaining about the unkempt room (“Blind people are messy,” he said) and sparring with a reporter from a black newspaper about his social responsibilities as a performer. “I’m not a politician or a minister,” said Wonder as ROLLING STONE writer O’Connell Driscoll watched, “but at the same time I can enlighten a little.” (The photo above was taken later at a Harlem theater.) For the cover image, RS turned to famous graphic artist Milton Glaser, best known for designing the “I Love New York” heart logo. “I decided to step away…

ALBUQUERQUE’S PD IS fully out of step with our community. How chilling that 28 of our citizens were killed by cops in the past five years, but that until last month, not one officer has been held accountable. The brutal assassination of James Boyd changed that – sadly because it was caught on tape. Thank you for an enraging story about the systemic abuse of power. Marisa Vasquez Via the Internet NICK PINTO DID A good job with this piece. The psychological demands of being a cop call for above-average impulse control. Police academies use psychological vetting to figure out who can be trained for policing. As Pinto revealed, the APD’s psychological-vetting process was loosened as the force was grown. It’s predictable, then, that problems with psychological fitness escalated in…

ON DECEMBER 4TH, L IL Wayne hit send on a series of tweets that rocked the music world. “I am a prisoner and so is my creativity,” he wrote, blaming Cash Money Records and its co-founder, Bryan “Birdman” Williams, for refusing to release his long-delayed album Tha Carter V. “I want off this label and nothing to do with these people.” Eight weeks later, the 32-year-old rapper dropped another bombshell. In a 21-page document filed in a federal court in New York on January 28th, Wayne sued Cash Money for $51 million, alleging a wide range of financial misdeeds – including a claim that the label owes him $8 million for Tha Carter V under a 2012 deal that guaranteed a $10 million advance per album. (Cash Money reps did…

CHECKING IN Jorma Kaukonen is as amazed as anybody that he’s still in business. “I never imagined I’d last this long,” says the former Jeff erson Airplane and Hot Tuna guitarist, who battled heroin addiction in the 1980s. “For a lot of our friends, that didn’t happen.” But at 74, Kaukonen is enjoying a rare second wind. His new album, Ain’t in No Hurry, returns to the acoustic format of his 1974 solo set, Quah. One highlight is “Suff er Little Children to Come Unto Me,” with new music by Kaukonen and previously unpublished lyrics by Woody Guthrie. “Now I’ve co-written a song with Woody Guthrie!” he says. These days, Kaukonen spends much of his time on the Fur Peace Ranch, the guitar school and theater he runs in southeastern…

PROFILE IN LATE 2011, KIM GORDON ENdured two life-upending events. First, she and her husband of many decades, Thurston Moore – who co-founded and co-fronted Sonic Youth with her and guitarist Lee Ranaldo – announced their divorce. A month later, Ranaldo heralded the dissolution of Sonic Youth itself. For the group’s cult of admirers – a category that over the years has included Kurt Cobain, Michael Stipe, Kathleen Hanna and Carrie Brownstein – both pieces of news were fairly earthshaking. In 1989, MTV had declared Sonic Youth the “standard-bearers for alternative rock,” and it was taken for granted that the band, and the romantic partnership at its core, must surely be immortal. Gordon, for her part, had established herself as an unlikely fashion icon, resilient tastemaker and allaround feminist badass.…

‘NOT GREAT, NOT bad, just a fucking ’nother day,” Noel Gallagher says with a bored sigh. It’s midday in London, and the famously sour-tongued songwriter is calling while on a break from tour rehearsals for Chasing Yesterday, the second album by Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, the solo project he began after Oasis’ 2009 split. Gallagher produced the LP himself, calling in session players to create a lush psychedelic vibe unlike anything he’s ever done. “I’m loving the solitary aspect of being in the studio on my own,” he says. “I spent 20 years in a band making records by committee. I’m fucked if I’m going to do that now. I think Oasis was at its best when I was solely in charge, anyway.” How are rehearsals going? Are you…

A DE ATH KNELL MAY BE ringing for the Keystone XL pipeline. In February, the Republican Congress teed up a presidential veto of the export pipeline for filthy Canadian tar-sands crude. The same month, the Environmental Protection Agency revealed Keystone could spur 1.37 billion tons of excess carbon emissions, providing the State Department with all the scientific evidence required to spike the project, permanently. If the news cheered climate activists across the globe, it also underscored the folly of Canada’s catastrophic quest, in recent years, to transform itself into a dirty-energy “superpower.” In the minds of many American rightwingers, Canada may be a socialist hellscape of universal health care and quasi-European welfare policies. But it is also home to 168 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the third-largest in the…

Madonna Rebel Heart Boy Toy/Live Nation/Interscope For many years, Madonna avoided the Internet like gluten. But in December, the Internet decided to stop waiting for Madonna, and everything went wrong: Her music was stolen and leaked; her hasty, emotional responses on Instagram used terms like “rape” and “terrorism,” provoking (you guessed it) Internet outrage. Her swift solution was to put six songs online immediately, with a promise that 13 more would follow in March. But some of those 13 new songs have turned what might have been a modern-day pop treasure into a diamond struggling to escape the rough. Rebel Heart is a long, passionate, self-referential meditation on losing love and finding purpose in chilling times. It’s also a chance for the Queen of Pop to floss a bit…

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds Chasing Yesterday Sour Mash You cannot accuse Noel Gallagher, the former singer-guitarist and domineering songwriter in Oasis, of lacking self-awareness. The title of his second album since that British band’s implosion in 2009 gets right to Gallagher’s stubbornly retrospective passions – anything by the Beatles; Seventies glam; the Eighties boom in paisley jangle, led in his native Manchester by the Smiths and Stone Roses – with a light swipe at anyone still pining for an Oasis reunion. Their savage charm is reprised here to satisfying eff ect in the stony “Lock All the Doors” and, with a twist of wry, “You Know We Can’t Go Back.” KEY TRACK: “The Dying of the Light” The greater appeal of Chasing Yesterday is in the way Gallagher,…