Table of contents for December 2023 in Rolling Stone

COVER STORY DJ Khaled’s Go-To Photographer Devin Christopher Photographer In the mid-2000s, Devin Christopher was a teenager working at a Miami car wash when DJ Khaled, then a local radio host with a decent following, rolled up in a green Escalade complete with a custom headrest sporting his name. Now, more than a decade after that first meeting, Christopher is an established photographer who just shot Khaled for the December cover of Rolling Stone. This is Christopher’s third shoot with the producer, but handling Khaled’s Rolling Stone cover feels especially memorable. “It doesn’t feel real,” Christopher says of the full-circle moment. After Christopher shot Khaled for Variety over the summer, the producer’s team hoped they could keep working with their fellow Floridian. “This is not a mistake,” Christoper says.…

THINK ABOUT THE MOST revolutionary inventions of all time. Is the photocopier on your list? Starting as far back as the 1930s, when sci-fi readers and comic-book buffs used DIY newsletters to connect with their fellow fans, the zine movement took off in the decades that followed, becoming a powerful voice for marginalized communities and subcultures of all kinds. That evolution is captured in the new Brooklyn Museum exhibit “Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines,” the first North American show dedicated to the zine art form. Encompassing more than 800 publications and art pieces, the exhibit stretches from the Seventies punk explosion to the interconnected queer and feminist underground movements of the Eighties, Nineties, and 2000s, all the way up to the zine’s current place in popular culture.…

TIFFANY FONG stands among a gaggle of reporters in the gray-tiled plaza of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse in downtown Manhattan. It’s just past dawn, but members of the media are already queued up for the start of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial. Fong, 29, takes periodic hits from her vape while chatting up reporters, doling out her number and self-deprecating one-liners for stories. She looks like a grown-up version of a college It girl, wearing a black sweater vest, Nike Air Force 1 sneakers, and a leather blazer tied around her petite waist. She whips out her phone and starts vlogging, documenting the experience for her legion of more than 95,000 followers on X (formerly known as Twitter) and nearly 40,000 subscribers on YouTube. Fong, according to…

In your new memoir, you write that you were “an introverted kid.” Would you still describe yourself that way now? Yes, definitely. Sometimes to a fault. It’s a gift and a curse. Through that introversion and in that pause, I’m able to answer the call: That’s where the ideation takes place, and that’s where the imagination kicks in. If I always had that outside stimulus of interacting with actual people, I don’t know that I would be as deep a thinker or as in tune with myself as I am. But the opposite side of the coin is the social expense. ‘The Upcycled Self’ is out now. People might assume that someone who’s as comfortable on the mic as you would love talking to people. One would think that.…

LISTEN TO BRENT Faiyaz’s music long enough and his life starts to sound like a movie. He’s the director, screenwriter, and main character in an imaginary film born from late nights in big cities, hushed conversations with women at loud parties, and emotions felt without penitence. Faiyaz doesn’t see himself as a villain, even when he sings about sending those “You up?” texts that he probably shouldn’t, or upending a good thing to see if the grass is greener on the other side. But he isn’t all that sorry if you see him that way. His catalog to date has earned a stunning 7.2 billion global on-demand streams, according to Luminate data. For his third studio album, Larger Than Life, he stayed true to his vision. “This is how…

LATELY, DJ KHALED has been listening to a lot of Jay-Z. Namely The Blueprint, the 2001 opus that helped solidify Hov as a commercial juggernaut in hip-hop. On an August afternoon in Miami, in the living room of the more-than-12,000-square-foot South Beach mansion he’s affectionately dubbed “the Resort,” Khaled cues up “Heart of the City.” He says it’s the type of energy that he wants from his upcoming 14th studio album, Til Next Time. The kind of music people play “to motivate themselves, to sing or rap along to,” he says. “Anthems.” Khaled, 47, has made a life out of motivation. In the rap community, he’s been a reliable source of hits rooted in the rags-to-riches ethos of the genre. All he does is win, as he emphatically told…

‘I HONESTLY JUST NEEDED to hear Corin sing.” Carrie Brownstein was headed into a studio in Los Angeles last fall when her friend and longtime Sleater-Kinney bandmate Corin Tucker called to give her the name and number of someone at the U.S. Embassy in Italy. The embassy had been urgently trying to contact Brownstein and her sister for a few days, but neither had current phone numbers attached to their passports, and since Tucker is listed as Brownstein’s emergency contact, the embassy got ahold of her. Tucker suspected some kind of scam or prank, but just in case it wasn’t, she made the call. Brownstein gave her sister the info and headed in to work. About two hours later, when she took a break, she saw a missed call…

For more suggestions from the Rolling Stone 2023 Holiday Gift Guide, visit RollingStone.com. The Gift of Experience Consumer items are cool. Life-changing moments are better Big Nights Out Music-promotion giant Live Nation offers concert, VIP, and festival packages — whether you’re gifting a night with Olivia Rodrigo or a trip to Coachello. LiveNation.com/feature/gifts New Adventures Airbnb’s new “Experiences” packages can help you browse guided hikes, informational tours, and day-trip excursions, whether you’re staying local or heading abroad. Airbnb.com/experiences Open Roads Been digging your neighbor’s new ride? Now you can borrow it. Car-share rentals through Turo allow you to browse inventory and rent cars directly from people in your community. Turo.com…

I AM SITTING IN A BALLET STUDIO IN A DRAB, LABYRINTHINE OFFICE BUILDING in Los Angeles with Lil Tay, talking about what it feels like to die — or, at least, have everyone think you did. That’s what happened to her on Aug. 9, 2023, when a short chunk of Times New Roman text appeared on the former child influencer’s Instagram account, informing her more than 5 million followers of the “devastating news” of her and her brother Jason’s “sudden and tragic passing.” “We kindly ask for privacy as we grieve this overwhelming loss,” the post reads. People were shocked, and for good reason. In 2018, a prepubescent Lil Tay had gone massively viral for her videos flaunting designer watches, ranting about “broke-ass bitches,” and making outrageous claims about…

DANNY BROWN COMES DOWN The fearless Detroit rapper faces his demons on one of his most intense LPs yet By MOSI REEVES Danny Brown Quaranta WARP SINCE EXPLODING INTO popular consciousness with XXX, a 2011 masterwork detailing his crazed life of sex, pills, and weed, Danny Brown has served as a lodestar for modern rap’s perilous embrace of hard drugs. The Detroit rapper utilized a manic, strangely hyper cadence seemingly fueled by too much Molly. More important, he created music with fearlessness, seemingly unconcerned with how the oft-conservative rap world perceived him. When EDM soared in popularity, he penned Old, a wildly exuberant 2013 valentine to getting wasted as an elderly thirtysomething. Then, this past March, Brown used an episode of his podcast, The Danny Brown Show, to complain…