Table of contents for March 2020 in Rolling Stone

Remembering Neil Peart, 1952-2020 The virtuoso drummer and lyricist for Canadian prog-rock giants Rush died on January 7th. ROLLING STONE is covering this tragic loss extensively, with new tributes including senior music editor Hank Shteamer’s essay on the intricacies of Peart’s playing (“Rock has maybe never known a greater overthinker … a player and conceptualist for whom no detail was too minuscule to sweat”) and a special episode of the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast, featuring unheard interview audio from senior writer Brian Hiatt’s 2015 RS cover story on Rush. For continuing coverage of Peart’s life and legacy, visit RollingStone.com. VIDEO The Rise of Black Pumas The Grammy-nominated soul duo talk about their surprising breakthrough on “The First Time.” “The first time that we got together,” says singer Eric…

Chika: True to Herself, No Matter What TWO YEARS AGO, Jane Chika Oranika posted a Twitter video of a freestyle rap verse admonishing Kanye West’s political antics — over West’s own “Jesus Walks” beat, no less. It’s been viewed more than 6 million times. But the 22-year-old Montgomery, Alabama, native says that even if she hadn’t gone viral for her lyrics, she would’ve found another way to get her activism across to the world. “Whatever occupation I landed in, I would’ve used that position to stand up for what I believe in,” she says. “Yes, hip-hop is wonderful, but on a human level, I’d always have to say something.” Born to Nigerian immigrants and raised in the South, Chika describes her upbringing as a black, queer, plus-size woman as…

ALL THROUGH 2019, Jatavia “JT” Johnson tracked the rise of her duo, City Girls, by watching the size of the jewelry worn by her musical partner, Caresha “Yung Miami” Brownlee, in their frequent video calls. “Things were getting bigger,” JT says with a giggle. She spent most of last year in a Florida prison, serving out a sentence for credit-card fraud that began the day after City Girls’ feature spot on Drake’s smash “In My Feelings” introduced them to the world, in 2018. Hearing from Yung Miami, who handled all of the duo’s performances and promotional work on her own during JT’s time behind bars, was a lifeline. JT has been living in an Atlanta halfway house since October, and her sentence officially ends this month. After that, the…

AS PRIMARY SEASON continues, troubling questions and palpable dismay linger on the minds of many voters. The same tired fights of 2016 are playing out yet again four years later, as Donald Trump’s approval rating creeps higher while the Democratic unity looks like a pipe dream. Defeating Trump was always going to require a once-in-a-generation campaign. Now, it’s beginning to feel like Trump could run away with this thing. What happened? Think back to the summer of 2019. The field of 20-odd contenders was a rowdy and diverse lot, a true cross-section of the modern Democratic Party. Senators and House members, governors and mayors. Young and old, black and white and Asian and brown, gay and straight. They were, as DNC Chairman Tom Perez said, “the most diverse field…

The Plot Against America NETWORK HBO AIR DATE March 16th STARRING Zoe Kazan Morgan Spector John Turturro Winona Ryder WHEN PHILIP ROTH published The Plot Against America in 2004 — an alternate history where pilot Charles Lindbergh is elected president in 1940 on an anti-war and barely veiled anti-Semitic platform — George W. Bush was nearing re-election and NBC was debuting the second season of The Apprentice, a game show judged by cartoonish New York real estate mogul Donald Trump. With the country at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, this wasn’t a happy time for the U.S., but Roth’s story read more like a path thankfully avoided (the real Lindbergh was an isolationist and anti-Semite, but never ran for office) than as an ominous prophecy. With HBO’s six-part miniseries…

THE FONTAINES D.C. began five years ago when bassist Conor Deegan III texted his classmates at British and Irish Modern Music Institute in Dublin a big idea: “Do you want to start a band that sounds like punk Beatles?” Soon, they got to work developing a sound that indeed fused the “Please Please Me”-era charm of the Fab Four with the frenetic energy of the Clash — which they fully realized on their 2019 debut, Dogrel, one of the most acclaimed rock albums of the year. Songs like “Big” and “Dublin City Sky” are packed with references to their boundless ambition (“My childhood was small/But I’m gonna be big”), their hometown, and the destructive forces of gentrification ripping it apart (“Money is the sandpit of the soul”). The group’s…

Roddy Ricch’s Surprise Smash At the beginning of this year, the Compton rapper’s ‘The Box’ was untouchable on the RS 100, holding off Drake, Future, and Justin Bieber with help from a squeaky ad-lib IT WAS SIX IN THE MORNING at Manhattan’s Jungle City Studios when Roddy Ricch asked his engineer to load up a beat that producer 30 Roc had sent over the previous night. Roddy had something special to add. “Eeeh-uuuur, eeeh-uuuur,” the Compton rapper squeaked into the microphone, sounding something like a broken windshield wiper or a door in dire need of WD-40. “I was sitting there looking at him, laughing, like ‘Yo, you crazy,’” recalls Keefa Black, Roddy’s Atlantic Records A&R. “He was just like, ‘Bro, trust me. This shit gon’ go.’” Two months and…

Miami Nice Diddy recently said he “semi-retired from music.” But he didn’t have any problem firing up the crowd at ROLLING STONE’s Super Bowl bash in Miami, as he performed a brief set of Bad Boy Records classics with his protégé DJ Khaled. “He’s the blueprint,” Khaled said of Diddy. Beck to the Future Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s annual Roc Nation brunch was the most exclusive party of Grammy weekend, but there were plenty of other star-studded events going on all over L.A. The night before the show, Beck hung out at CAA’s Grammy party with Texas soulman Leon Bridges, who will hit the road opening stadium shows for Maroon 5 later this year. RANDOM QUOTE “I’m not some horrible monster to work with, you know what I mean? I’m…

SQUAD GOALS Twenties NETWORK BET AIR DATE March 4th In the premiere of this dramedy about friends negotiating love, life, and showbiz, Marie (Christina Elmore) praises a black movie simply for existing, arguing, “We should support black shit.” Hattie (Jonica T. Gibbs) replies, “We should support good shit that just happens to be black.” Hattie is laying down a gauntlet on behalf of Twenties creator Lena Waithe, for whom she’s an obvious stand-in. Waithe doesn’t want us to like the show just because it’s about black female friendship, nor because Hattie is a rare gay woman of color on TV. Fortunately, Twenties is good shit that just happens to be black, and queer. It’s not always as funny as it aspires to be — outside of a great running…

EXHIBIT 1. Studio 54: Night Magic As the epicenter of New York nightlife at the peak of the disco era, Studio 54 has become synonymous with Seventies decadence. This exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum celebrates the club’s coked-up legend while examining its impact on pop culture and the sexual revolution. DOCUSERIES 2. Hillary Decades after she first entered public life, Hillary Clinton remains a polarizing figure. Hulu’s revealing new series tells her life story, including a uniquely unfiltered glimpse of the 2016 campaign. SINGLE 3. Dixie Chicks’ “Gaslighter” A pop-music lifetime after their anti-Bush views made them Nashville exiles, the Chicks are about to release a bold new LP. Its first single is personal, not political, chronicling the slow collapse of singer Natalie Maines’ marriage. BOOK 4. Broken Faith…

ELVIS PRESLEY may have died 43 years ago, but on a recent morning in midtown New York, plans were underway to resurrect him. In a conference room in the offices of Authentic Brands Group, the firm in charge of licensing and marketing Presley, executives are discussing the many projects they have been working on since taking over the estate in 2013. There’s an Elvis filter on Snapchat, which gives you his face, pompadour, and bedazzled jacket. There’s a plan to release a video of Elvis and all of his beloved animals on the Dodo, a popular pet site (you will also be able to buy CBD-infused Hound Dog treats). There are film and TV projects, including Agent King, an offbeat animated series coming to Netflix next year. Co-created by…

PEOPLE USED TO try to dismiss Selena Gomez as a mere Disney moppet who stumbled into the pop-star racket. But nobody makes this many brilliant records by accident. Her new single, “Rare,” is her best ever: She hiccups in her breathy ASMR whisper, a shy girl riding a bass line that’s pure confidence. Selena always sings about her feelings like she’s terrified of them, which is why some of us relate. She wants to run and hide, but the bass urges her to stay and fight. It’s yet another perfect song about getting bombarded with way more drama than one girl should ever be asked to handle. Selena might seem like an enigmatic blank slate at times, but she’s stuck around for years, while so many pushier personalities just…

MATT GAETZ DOESN’T WANT to shake my hand when I walk into his office. Considering what he is doing, I’m glad he doesn’t. “I don’t want to get concealer on you,” he explains, turning away from his mirror to greet me. “I promise I’m not doing this for effect for your interview.” A MAC Cosmetics case sits open on a nearby table. He turns back to the mirror and resumes dabbing his face. “Go right ahead with your questions,” he says. MGaetz, a 37-year-old Republican congressman from Florida, is in a rush. It’s mid-January and a House procedural vote related to President Trump’s impeachment had run long. Now he’s due in a neighboring House office building for a Fox Business appearance. Before the vote, he’d done a hit for…

EVERY HUMAN ON EARTH is ingesting nearly 2,000 particles of plastic a week. These tiny pieces enter our unwitting bodies from tap water, food, and even the air, according to an alarming academic study sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, dosing us with five grams of plastics, many cut with chemicals linked to cancers, hormone disruption, and developmental delays. Since the paper’s publication last year, Sen. Tom Udall, a plain-spoken New Mexico Democrat with a fondness for white cowboy hats and turquoise bolo ties, has been trumpeting the risk: “We are consuming a credit card’s worth of plastic each week,” Udall says. At events with constituents, he will brandish a Visa from his wallet and declare, “You’re eating this, folks!” With new legislation, the Break Free From…

The Glorias STARRING Julianne Moore, Alicia Vikander, Bette Midler, Janelle Monáe, Lorraine Toussaint, Lulu Wilson, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Timothy Hutton DIRECTED BY Julie Taymor HAVING BEEN famously shut out by the sexist Oscars this year, women directors are again making their presence felt. You can find their artistry on display at the multiplex, on streaming services, and at film festivals such as Sundance 2020, where nearly half of the competition films were directed by women. Look hard at The Glorias, which premiered at the film fest: a riveting rambling of a road movie from director Julie Taymor that encompasses the turbulent life and times of feminist groundbreaker Gloria Steinem, an advocate for women’s rights since the 1960s. Taymor has cast four actresses as Gloria: Ryan Kiera Armstrong plays her…