Indice dei contenuti per November 2021 in Rolling Stone

WHEN RIHANNA MET Tems, you would have thought that Tems was the newly minted billionaire. The Bajan mogul brought the 26-year-old Nigerian singer-songwriter into a firm embrace at the New York premiere of her latest Savage X Fenty fashion show in September: “Enough of that humble shit,” Rihanna was heard telling Tems as Megan Thee Stallion’s “Body” blasted in the background. “You better own that.” Rihanna isn’t the only one cheering Tems on. Earlier this year, Tems’ distinct, bassy vocals helped make “Essence” the breakout hit from Wizkid’s 2020 LP, Made in Lagos; the song so enamored Justin Bieber that he successfully campaigned to appear on its remix, propelling it to the Top 20 of ROLLING STONE’s singles chart and garnering more than 80 million Spotify streams between the…

David, any thoughts you may have regarding conspiracy theorist David McGowan, who claimed you, Frank Zappa, John Phillips, and Jim Morrison were assets of a military-industrial program to create the counterculture. Personally, I think it’s pretty ridiculous. But settle it once and for all, please. —Steve No. It’s not true, simply because I wouldn’t be in anything with Jim Morrison. Just a joke! It comes from the fact that Jim had a dad that was an admiral. It’s just another piece of unbelievably stupid shit. You have to have an IQ of a turnip to believe stuff like that. I lost my brother to suicide and deeply miss him. We were inseparable while he was here, and he made me laugh like no one else. How do you deal…

THE AMBITIOUS new Western The Harder They Fall (in theaters October 22nd and on Netflix November 3rd) begins with a winking disclaimer: “While the events of this story are fictional …” the opening title card reads, “These. People. Existed.” The feature debut of writer-director Jeymes Samuel stars Jonathan Majors as the outlaw Nat Love, one of America’s most famous Black cowboys. Around him, Samuel assembles an Avengers-like crew of real-life Black heroes from America’s frontier era — Stagecoach Mary (Zazie Beetz), “Treacherous” Trudy Smith (Regina King), and Cherokee Bill (LaKeith Stanfield), to name a few — for a shoot-’em-up adventure delivered with gory flare. “It’s not a biopic,” Samuel says via Zoom from London. “But it can change perspectives of what has been presented to us as the Old…

WHEN KEVIN CHMIELEWSKI emerged from the FBI’s fortress of a headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C., his head was spinning. It was the fall of 2017. He’d just left a classified briefing about a matter of national security. As he walked back to his office at the Environmental Protection Agency, Chmielewski knew what he had to do next: He had to tell his boss, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, to get over to the bureau and receive his own briefing as soon as possible. After all, it was Pruitt the FBI needed to speak with about a matter so urgent. Chmielewski (pronounced shim-uh-LESS-ski) had gone to work at the EPA at the urging of his friends in the Trump White House, who wanted someone they trusted to keep an eye on…

WILLOW SMITH HAS metamorphized. When she shaved her head onstage this summer, she did so while shredding through a rockified version of “Whip My Hair,” the 2010 pop hit that catapulted her — as if to say that her mane wasn’t the only thing she was shedding. Today, she’s a rule-defying force who can sling pop-punk hooks with the best of them — including one of her own inspirations, Travis Barker — but her evolution didn’t happen overnight. While Willow (who prefers to be referred to mononymously and turned 21 in October) has long experimented with rock and alternative sounds, the singer-songwriter’s fourth album, Lately I Feel Everything, is her most pointed project yet. Barker, who contributed to three of its songs, certainly boosts its credibility: In the past…

DAMIAN MARLEY BECAME a Wizkid fan after crossing paths with the Afropop star at a New York City hotel while promoting Stony Hill, his 2018 Grammy winner for Best Reggae Album. “Wiz’s melodies are off the chain,” Marley, 43, says on a Zoom call from Miami, where he lives. Wizkid, on the other hand, had been listening to Damian and his legendary father, Bob, for much longer. “Meeting him in New York, it was just like it was written,” the Nigerian singer, 31, says, joining the call from a stop on the U.S. tour for his stellar fourth album, last year’s Made in Lagos. The pair teamed up for the first time on the soothing Made in Lagos highlight “Blessed.” “When I got the call to be a part…

THE SUN HAD ONLY JUST RISEN OVER Rosarito, Mexico, on August 9th when a neighbor told Roberto Salinas Ramirez about the blood spattered across the dry creek outside his small pink home. Ramirez, 47, lives on a farm next to fields of tomatoes and lettuce, in full view of the mesa-colored Cerro el Coronel, the area’s largest mountain. It’s a quiet place, removed from the tourists who go to the oceanside restaurants and strip clubs in nearby Tijuana. Ramirez hadn’t heard anything the night before, but the neighbor looked shaken. So he went out with his son’s dog, a white mutt named Kobe, to investigate. ¶ Ramirez unlatched the fence — four strands of barbed wire wrapped around wooden stakes — and first saw the blood over a patch…

IF ANYONE CAN understand the roller coaster that Olivia Rodrigo has been on this year, it’s Alanis Morissette. The two songwriters — who are big fans of each other’s music, but have never met before today — sit facing one another in dark blazers in a San Francisco warehouse overlooking the Pacific. Morissette rocks firecracker-red heels, while Rodrigo is disco-ready in platform leather boots that she swears are comfortable. Prior to the interview, they casually discuss topics that range from Halloween (Rodrigo’s favorite holiday) to Germany (where Morissette briefly lived as a child). Soon, they get more personal, with Morissette asking Rodrigo if she has any tattoos. “No! I just turned 18!” Rodrigo says with a laugh. “I feel like if I do one, I’m going to want to…

KEHLANI CAN’T REMEMBER the first time she heard Alicia Keys — just that Keys was there, in her childhood, as both legend and blueprint. In her head, she can see the CDs and the music videos; she can hear the young girls at school belting Keys’ 2003 hit “If I Ain’t Got You” to prove their vocal bona fides. She wouldn’t have even been 10 at the time of its release. So to hear Keys explain, in a West L.A. studio this past August, the first time she heard Kehlani’s own music feels a little surreal. “It was definitely the first album for sure,” Keys recalls, referring to 2017’s SweetSexySavage, “but it was something more than that. It was almost like you have a certain energy that you carry…

IT TAKES ONLY a few minutes after they meet for Lorde and David Byrne to get in sync. The pop star, 24, and the elder statesman, 69, are on the rooftop of a photo studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, on a windy Sunday afternoon. Both are dressed in stylishly low-key all-black ensembles: Byrne is in a Hermès turtleneck, while Lorde is casually regal in a loose-fitting Saint Laurent suit. Neither is wearing shoes. They start off standing side by side with stoic expressions. Then Byrne begins swaying gently to the reggae music playing on a nearby boombox. Soon both are leaning back, striking poses, laughing, very nearly swag-surfing. “This is my dream!” Lorde confides after they go downstairs for the interview. She’s brought a phone full of questions that she…

THE MOMENT MADONNA AND MALUMA arrive at Brooklyn’s Caribbean Social Club in Williamsburg, they ignite a frenzy. Both arrive around 8 p.m. on a swampy August night at the 48-year-old neighborhood gem lovingly known as Toñitas, Madonna fresh from her 63rd birthday celebration in Italy’s southern region of Puglia and Maluma before rehearsals for his Papi Juancho tour. Throngs of neighbors and regulars, many of them Puerto Rican and Colombian, crowd along Grand Street, drinks in hand. They blast music — including several Madonna hits — and try to get a glimpse of the stars through the doors of the club. Inside, Madonna (who chose the venue) and Maluma kick off a five-hour photo shoot while blaring Wizkid over the sound system. An older woman watches with delight and…

RADIOHEAD’S DYSTOPIC CLASSIC A deluxe edition of ‘Kid A’ and ‘Amnesiac’ reminds us why this is the sound of our times By ROB SHEFFIELD Radiohead Kid A Mnesia XL RECORDINGS THERE ARE some takes that don’t pass the test of time. For centuries, the human race believed that the sun revolved around the Earth. We all got over that. People thought tomatoes were fatal to eat, and leeches were quality health care. And when Radiohead released Amnesiac in the spring of 2001, many fans thought it was infinitely better than Kid A. It rocked harder. Sharper tunes. Wider range. The ultimate one-two punch: Radiohead made two space-rock masterpieces at the same sessions, and they saved the best stuff for the sequel. Over the years, the Kid A legend just…

You host a show called The World According to Jeff Goldblum, where you delve deep into topics from ice cream to tattoos. Is that just an outgrowth of your natural curiosity? Well, the show has inflamed my already substantial curiosity. I wind up going places that I wouldn’t ordinarily go. I was in the Sequoia National Forest climbing one of those trees, talking to forest scientists and experts, and I have always highly esteemed scientists anyway. My dad was a doctor, and now I’ve gotten a chance to play scientists, too. You once said about Jurassic Park that your approach to Dr. Ian Malcolm was that “scientists are cool.” Have you always felt that way? There were things in the Michael Crichton book that made that character interesting and…

We Get It, You Love Camilo The Academy has declared the Colombian singer-songwriter Camilo its mustachioed golden child, bestowing him with 10 nominations this year. This makes sense: The Academy is trying to balance its taste for traditional pop based on criticism that it hasn’t embraced young artists enough, and Camilo’s music is solid middle ground. With his distinct, helium-high croon, the 27-year-old pulls from a range of contemporary genres to craft songs steeped in the romantic sentimentality of throwback eras — full of mass appeal, yet still pretty innocuous. C. Tangana and the Spain Question When the Spanish artist C. Tangana told his label about his idea for the labor of love that he eventually titled El Madrileño, he was met with reluctance. They came around once they…

FORMER “SILICON Valley” star Kumail Nanjiani would really like everyone to see his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut as Kingo, an immortal superhero/Bollywood star, in November 5th’s Eternals — if only because he hopes it’ll give fans something to talk about besides how jacked he is these days. Nanjiani, who is also in the upcoming Disney+ show Kenobi, has pulled off a career transformation that’s already exceeding his wildest action-star dreams, but he’s far from ready to give up on making people laugh. “I see a lot of comedians who do a dramatic thing or two and then just want to stay in that world,” says Nanjiani, who hopes to return to stand-up and comedic acting as soon as possible. “I love comedy too much. I want to keep doing…

‘I REALLY WANT A lot more Asian pop stars,” says CL. The South Korean pop singer, 30, is already doing her part to meet that demand — as is the woman she’s talking to, Jhené Aiko, 33. Both artists started making music at a young age, and they’re both still reaching brand-new peaks in their careers. Though this is their first time meeting, they immediately find a bond, learning they share a sign (“When I found out you were a Pisces, I said, ‘Yes!’” Aiko exclaims) and an outlook on making music that doesn’t conform to any set genre or industry mold. As Aiko explains partway through their conversation, “There’s always another layer with us.” A Los Angeles native whose background includes Japanese, European, and African American roots, Aiko…

CAMBEL MCLAUGHLIN THOUGHT HE WAS BEING punked. An unapologetic opponent of lockdowns and Covid-19 vaccine skeptic — he is, as he puts it, “pro-medical choice”— the 27-year-old Brit is founder of Jam for Freedom, a group of U.K. musicians that plays for free in public spaces, spreading the anti-lockdown word and sometimes singing songs with lyrics like “You can stick your poison vaccine up your arse.” For their efforts, Jam for Freedom are often hassled by police, and McLaughlin himself says he was arrested for what he calls “breach of Covid regulations” during one show. This past spring, the car the group used to transport its gear was rendered nearly unusable after an accident, so McLaughlin started a GoFundMe page to help pay for transportation, gas, and legal fees.…

REBOOTS Haunted by the Ghosts of TV’s Past In the streaming era, an army of undead series finds new life in revivals — even ones that don’t deserve it By ALAN SEPINWALL THEY MADE DEXTER into a lumberjack. They burned down the Iron Throne. They killed off the Mother. And these people want second chances? In the age of 500-plus scripted series per year, networks and streamers have gravitated toward familiar titles for a variety of remakes, revivals, and spinoffs that have a better chance of grabbing the attention of choice-fatigued viewers. As Theon Greyjoy’s people liked to say on Game of Thrones, what is dead may never die. Which means that no TV show from the past — Thrones included — is ever truly dead, so long as…