Table of contents for February 2023 in Rolling Stone

ON A BRISK DECEMBER evening, in a lounge at West Hollywood’s Westlake Studios, Lil Tjay and his five-person entourage halfway watch a boxing match as they plan the night’s next move. Amid the plush couches, love seats, and a giant TV, his security guard, also a boxer, extols the discipline and confidence needed to get into the ring. One of Tjay’s managers, Deon Douglas, notes that “you couldn’t pay me to get punched in the face.” They all laugh, and Tjay points out that the object of boxing is to hit, not get hit. “You gotta go into the fight thinking you gonna win,” he says. It’s a reality he’s familiar with. At just 21 years old, Lil Tjay has already racked up 14 platinum singles. His first session…

WHAT’S NEW, WHAT’S NEXT, WHAT’S NUTS WHEN ARLO PARKS set out to make her second album, she wanted to make sure everyone knew that she was singing about her lived experiences, and no one else’s. “The first record was attributing a lot of things to characters and to people in my life,” says the British musician, 22, who has won widespread acclaim for her novelistic songwriting, with characters who burst into vivid life in each verse. “I wanted to be brave in the sense of being very clear that I was talking about the world through my eyes and my heart — [with] the sense of joy and pain and confusion and real kind of melting pot of emotion coming from me.” Parks first began writing her new album,…

AS REGGAETON continues to reach new heights, Don Omar is reminding the world of his rightful place in the genre he helped to shape. His new album, Forever King, is out in February and features guests such as Maluma and Gente de Zona, as well as fellow stars who emerged in the early 2000s like Calle 13 rapper Residente and reggaeton mainstay Wisin. The record blends Don Omar’s signature old-school perreo with the Caribbean styles dominating música urbana today. The anticipated project, his first in three years, comes after Don retired (and unretired) from music and ended his previous label contract. Now, he’s back with the breezy energy of someone done with drama. “I feel fulfilled. I feel changed. I’m a new guy,” he says. “I’m not trying to…

SHOOTING STAR 1 STEVE LACY NEWCOMER HOW DOES SOMEONE go from budding R&B star to full-fledged fashion king? In the case of Steve Lacy, it’s with a daring disregard for the sartorial status quo. The “Bad Habit” singer knows his way around an outfit like he knows his way around a Number One hit, and in 2023, few people exude — and celebrate — style like he does. Lacy effortlessly incorporates fashion into his onstage and offstage personas, treating clothing as an extension of his artistic identity. Consider the way he turned heads last year in spray-painted pants by Mowalola, artisanal boots by R.G.B., sculptured hair by Malcolm Marquez, and wool kilts by Stefan Cooke. It’s the mark of someone who understands shape and proportion and who can balance…

IN THE FINAL MOMENTS OF BRANDON BERNARD’S LIFE, before he was executed by lethal injection at a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, on Dec. 10, 2020, President Donald Trump picked up the phone to entertain a final plea for mercy on Bernard’s behalf. The call was not with Bernard’s family or his attorneys. Nor was it with representatives from the Justice Department’s Pardon Attorney office, who had recommended just days earlier that Trump spare Bernard’s life. Rather, the call was with Jamal Fincher Jones, better known as Polow da Don, a music producer responsible for hits like Ludacris’ “Pimpin’ All Over the World” and Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda.” Jones didn’t know Bernard, but he had publicly endorsed Trump for reelection — and that, Bernard’s advocates had correctly suspected, gave…

PARAMORE have mastered the art of maturing gracefully. Beginning with the band’s self-titled 2013 album, it has slowly peeled itself away from the mainstream emo/pop-punk world it once dominated (all while dealing with constant lineup shake-ups). In the process, Paramore have found themselves attached to a different kind of musical nostalgia, zeroing in on the slick sounds of Eighties rock and New Wave without so much as a hint of corny pastiche. As omnivorous fans and champions of younger artists, they always remain steeped in pop’s ever-evolving present. Now, nearly two decades since the band released its debut album, All We Know Is Falling, the Tennessee-born group is exerting more of an indelible influence on current pop music than ever before (see the high-polished angst of Olivia Rodrigo and…

NO ONE BOTHERED to tell Terry Hall about the rules for would-be pop stars — and chances are he would have ignored them anyway. Start with the Specials, the multiracial U.K. ska band that first introduced Hall to the world in the late 1970s. One of the most musically and physically kinetic bands of their time, the Specials donned sharp suits and porkpie hats and played like they were on trampolines. All except for the sullen, brooding Hall, whose sunken eyes and seeming inability to dance onstage often made it seem as if he’d drifted there from an entirely different band. In fact, Hall was the ideal frontman for the Specials. Articulating the racial tensions, crashed economy, and no-future prospects of his country, he mirrored the hollowed-out feeling of…

WHEN ROSS ROGGIO and his then-mistress arrived at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport in February 2017, officers from several U.S. government agencies were waiting for them. The federal agents interviewed Roggio in one of the airport’s small offices, and the American businessman told them a frightening tale. Tall and skinny, Roggio was in his late forties, well-dressed with close-cut gray hair and glasses. A product of the Nirvana era, he was decades removed from his grunge phase. In that cramped office, he explained that he had tried to leave Iraqi Kurdistan two months earlier, but had been snatched out of the city of Sulaymaniyah’s airport by associates of a former business partner who held him incommunicado, tortured him, and extorted him. He had escaped only a day earlier,…

ON THE EVENING of Sept. 28, 1979, Caesars Palace in Las Vegas felt like the center of the universe. Sugar Ray Leonard was fighting Andy Price for the North American Boxing Federation welterweight title. In the crowd, sports legends like Joe DiMaggio and Joe Louis mingled with entertainers like Smokey Robinson and Cary Grant. Diana Ross sat ringside, next to Motown founder Berry Gordy. And in Price’s corner, amid the television cameras and cigar smoke, sat Price’s manager, Marvin Gaye, feeling like his whole life was on the line. Gaye often spoke in boxing metaphors, and in 1979 — in the wake of a costly divorce from his first wife, estranged from his second, gripped by cocaine addiction, and badly in debt to the IRS — the image of…

You live on a ranch in Colorado. What do you love about country life? I’m an independent woman, always ready for an emergency: clothes, keys, boots by the door, and a 20-inch chain saw, oiled and ready to go. I saw a tree fallen over the only access road around. All these truckers were standing around, then I get out and I see their faces. “Uh-oooh — here comes Foxy Brown with her chain saw!” I pick up my dates at Home Depot and Lowe’s. I can name 10 tractor companies. I can drive a forklift. I ain’t no fool. What was it like to be a pioneer for Black women in Hollywood? I did nudity in Coffy and Foxy Brown to help create the audience. I wanted everyone…