Table of contents for November 2023 in Rolling Stone

ROLLING STONE was founded in 1967 in San Francisco by a music critic and his 21-year-old protégé, a Berkeley dropout who borrowed money from his future in-laws to get it off the ground. For decades, ROLLING STONE gripped tight to the beliefs and cultural blinders of that boomer beginning. Most of its rocker heroes from that Haight-Ashbury autumn were white and male, and those were the kind of people who stayed center stage at ROLLING STONE. The misogyny and racism of that founding era lingered longer. But there’s a second strain in ROLLING STONE’s DNA. The magazine helped launch Bob Marley into global superstardom, championed Jimi Hendrix and Diana Ross, stood up for hip-hop in the early Nineties, when politicians tried to carpet-bomb it, and put Tina Turner on…

IT’S THE BROKEN RECORD that continues to play despite repeated forewarnings: An influential white man says something racist and sexist, instant public backlash ensues, and swift consequence occurs. As a Black queer millennial journalist, Jann Wenner’s offensive remarks to The New York Times weren’t shocking to me at all. His gatekeeping has for decades seeped into my understanding of pop culture. Growing up in the late-2000s and early-2010s, I can remember the covers having only a few Black people — namely former President Barack Obama, with sprinkles of Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, Chris Rock, Kendrick Lamar, and Kanye West. But musicians like Bono and U2, Bruce Springsteen, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Adele, Eminem, Lady Gaga, and Taylor Swift dominated the front page. I can only recall one solo Beyoncé cover,…

PINKPANTHERESS lets out a groan as we approach the pier. We seem to have noticed in unison that we are the only Black people around, maybe for miles; we’re also the youngest people in the queue we join, by at least 35 years. It’s 4 p.m. on a Wednesday, and we’re in Kew Gardens, in southwest London, preparing to board a riverboat cruise down the Thames. “I love doing an activity,” she says, in a tone so deadpan it almost sounds sarcastic. “I actually wanted to go see Magic Mike [Live] today, but I didn’t end up getting tickets.” Dressed unassumingly in black leggings and a plain black top, with fluffy moon boots, the perpetually viral singer-songwriter-producer is just in from L.A., where she lives part of the time,…

MR EAZI has been a leading figure in the world of Afrobeats for years, and he’s always had an expansive definition of that ever-rising music’s sonic and cultural possibilities. The Nigerian-born artist, who now mainly lives in Accra, Ghana, has collaborated with Beyoncé and Diplo, and among his most popular songs is a 2019 cut with J Balvin and Bad Bunny. In fact, as Afrobeats’ profile has grown, he’s bristled at broad catchall genre terms to characterize music from throughout Africa, arguing for less reductive treatment. ​​ “I think it is unfair to even put everything [in] Afropop,” he recently told ROLLING STONE. “Korean pop is pop music from Korea. We’re not calling it ‘Asia pop.’ ” A sense of Mr Eazi as both a curator and an ambassador…

How has the writers’ strike changed your view? People said “Content is king,” but now I think “Audience is king.” And the ones who will find an audience will be more in control of their fate. Ziwe is a great example from a couple of years ago — she built an audience for herself and then Showtime came. The writers’ strike forced a lot of people into looking at “What can I do in the meantime till my job comes back?” And I think people are going to discover that they are happier doing other things than their old job. Are you describing yourself there? Oh, yeah. I spent some time this summer thinking, “What would I want to do in this space?” “What would actually get greenlit?” “And,…

WHEN “ROLLING STONE” co-founder Jann Wenner made offensive comments in The New York Times about women and Black artists, the Black Rock Coalition, which has battled stereotypes and musical categorizations about what rock is “supposed to be” since 1985, felt obligated to speak out and condemn his misogynistic and racist statements. While we were among many organizations and individuals to call out Wenner, he also had a number of supporters, citing his contributions to popular culture and to the world of music journalism. But Wenner’s defenders slavishly miss the point. Let’s be clear: Nobody is “silencing” Jann Wenner — no one is even remotely in any position to do so. This isn’t about so-called cancel culture or political correctness. This is about failed cultural stewardship, which has been perpetrated…

THE GREATEST Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighter in the world is looking to fight me. “Put your hands up,” Rickson Gracie tells me as he advances. “Like you’re talking like an Italian.” I raise my hands as he lunges toward my head. “Don’t let me touch your face.” Gracie — the 63-year-old legend with shorn hair and tanned skin — is wearing gray shorts and a black T-shirt. He’s muscular and compact. I’m taller, but that’s about it. He can choke me unconscious with little to no effort. His hands shoot out, but I guide them away using leverage and his own momentum, mimicking the techniques he showed me seconds before. There is an intensity to the way he coaches me through the movements: how to shift my weight to address…

PLEASE ALLOW THIS Asian American music writer to articulate this at the level it deserves: Egregious racism and misogyny have a long history in rock & roll — from those on the industry side who have appropriated Black artists’ work to those at the top of the publications who dictated what has been featured. The gatekeepers have always been a boys’ club — specifically a white boys’ club. Among the earliest influential U.S. music magazines, ROLLING STONE was helmed by Jann Wenner from 1967 to 2018; Barry Kramer launched Creem in 1969 and published it until his death in 1981; and there was Spin, run by Bob Guccione Jr. from 1985 to 1997. So, many of us weren’t surprised when RS founder Wenner said he didn’t include women and…

WHAT’S NEW, WHAT’S NEXT, WHAT’S NUTS IT’S A LITTLE MORE THAN three hours before Mannequin Pussy take the stage at Brooklyn Steel in front of a near-capacity crowd. A long line of fans is already stretching down the block, waiting for the doors to open. But the four members of the punk band are unable to focus on much right now besides their desperate desire to get some rest. They’ve spent the past month crammed together in a Ford Transit van, putting roughly 5,200 miles on the dashboard and playing practically every night. They slump down on a dressing-room couch, surrounded by piles of luggage, coffee mugs, a carton of Marlboro cigarettes, and a sad little Hormel platter of pepperoni and hard salami. They’re here to talk about their…

IN SOFIA COPPOLA’S eighth feature, the seductive, unsettling Priscilla, she shoots tail-finned Cadillacs as lovingly as she does her latest extraordinary lead actress (Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla Presley), capturing the beauty and hidden darkness inside Graceland — and in America writ large. Along the way, Coppola tells her most haunting coming-of-age tale since her directorial debut, The Virgin Suicides. This time, it’s the true story of a teenager drawn into the all-consuming world of Elvis Presley (Euphoria’s Jacob Elordi, taller and scarier than Austin Butler) at the height of his fame, presenting without overt judgment a scenario most modern viewers will find horrific. Priscilla feels like the culmination of Coppola’s two and a half decades of filmmaking so far, and the latest confirmation that she’s one of Gen X’s…

THE 911 CALL CAME IN AROUND 2:30 A.M. ON APRIL 4. “Help, someone stabbed me,” said the voice on the phone. Police and paramedics rushed to the address he gave near the downtown waterfront, beneath the hulking steel beams of the Bay Bridge. By the time first responders arrived at the 300 block of Main Street, the man who made the 911 call was lying bloody and unconscious on the sidewalk, his unmoving figure illuminated by the lights lining the doorway of a data-server company. He was a white man in black jeans, a black T-shirt, and a black jacket. Emergency workers took him to nearby San Francisco General Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead, with a stab wound to the hip and two to the chest, including…