Welcome back to AVQ&A, where we throw out a question for discussion among the staff and readers. Consider this a prompt to compare notes on your interface with pop culture, to reveal your embarrassing tastes and experiences, and to ponder how our diverse lives all led us to convene here together. Got a question you’d…
Earlier this month, Vince Staples fired an orbital laser of passive-aggressive snark with a GoFundMe page for people who haven’t liked his recent shows, saying he’d “shut the fuck up forever” if he could raise $2 million in donations. Or, as he put it: “Get off of my dick, or fund my lifestyle; the choice is yours.”…
We can now add “passive aggressive kung-fu” to rapper Vince Staples’ considerable list of skills; the Big Fish Theory superstar launched a new GoFundMe account today, aimed at critics of his recent tours, and offering them a chance to pay him $2 million to just fuck off out of their lives altogether.
Most Black Panther fans nationwide still have to wait until February 16 to visit Wakanda, but they can already stream the soundtrack album curated by Kendrick Lamar and Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith. The 14-track compilation, Black Panther: The Album, is now out on Apple Music and Spotify, and features SZA, Khalid, Vince…
Last night, Marvel released the new trailer for Black Panther, showing off a bunch of appealing new stuff from Ryan Coogler’s upcoming flick: painterly African vistas punctuated by spaceships, Forest Whitaker doing the groan-talk thing, a lot of high-flying action, and so on. But the clip also doubles as our second…
There was too much to listen to in 2017—not just albums, of which there were once again thousands, a barrage of releases from major-label veterans and SoundCloud up-and-comers alike, all vying for your attention. There was just too much of everything: a persistent, buzzing storm of push notifications and free-floating…
Vince Staples, responsible for two of the best albums of the decade, is as good to listen to in music as outside of it. He takes interviews just seriously enough not to be a jerk, but seems to remember, too, that the vast majority of a press junket is too much of a circus not to have fun with. (A personal favorite and…
Priests, 1:45 p.m.
Even at just over six months old, 2017 has already given us more than enough good music to fill playlists from here until December—enough that it would be fine, really, if everyone just took a knee until next year. It’s also been an unusually busy year for comebacks: High-profile returns from the ’00s indie-rock class…
“Interesting anecdotes don’t always make for interesting movies; your story may kill at parties, but that doesn’t mean it belongs on the big screen. In The Big Sick, stand-up comedian Kumail Nanjiani, who plays Dinesh on Silicon Valley, and Emily V. Gordon, the writer and former therapist he married, dramatize the…
You don’t want to write about Vince Staples. Few modern musicians have made playing with the press such an essential part of their appeal. There is, on the one hand, his endless trolling: sardonic tweets about American Apparel and 3 Ninjas; his sarcastic sponsorship of Sprite, which is almost long-form performance art…
Every Friday, dozens of new records are released into the wild. Some make big splashes, and others sink almost immediately. For most music consumers, it’s almost too much information, and save for those precious few who spend their hours glued to review sites and release calendars, it’s hard to know what’s coming out…
For about a year now, Marvel has been exploring the intersection between rap and comics via a series of hip-hop variant covers, transplanting characters like Ant-Man and Black Widow into the world of influential rap artists like Missy Elliott or The Notorious B.I.G. The series has garnered strong positive reactions…
Rapper Vince Staples has already established that he’s not a particularly big fan of Spotify, but apparently one thing that he is a fan of is Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. That’s based on the tour announcement he just posted on Twitter, at least, which features an image of Staples and opener Kilo…
Whenever a new art form starts to become established, there has to be a bit of a learning period before critics can start to pick out why and how a particular piece is good. It’s not like people walked out of that movie where the train comes right at the audience and instantly started critiquing its character…
Last week, The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney became the latest musician to speak out about YouTube’s purportedly freewheeling use of unlicensed content, following in the footsteps of Trent Reznor and Thom Yorke. Carney went on a Twitter tear about music streaming services, even those without a free tier, which is how he…
Plenty of musicians have spoken out against Spotify, but few of them have had the guts to do it while standing on a stage sponsored by Spotify, in front of a huge Spotify logo, and while accepting money from Spotify to be there in the first place. Apparently, that kind of power move is reserved for rapper Vince…
It might sound cliché at this point, but in 2015, the music industry bounced back. Maybe not all the way back to its mid-’90s peaks of excess, but relatively speaking in today’s terms. Taylor Swift made buckets of money touring her 1989 record, Adele broke long-held sales records with 25, and everyone with a radio and…
Although they have fairly distinctive styles and hail from opposing coasts, A$AP Rocky and Tyler, the Creator are something of kindred spirits, at least in terms of career trajectory. There also happens to be a pretty big overlap between their fan bases, and they are taking advantage of that fact by trekking across…
Few rappers sound less impressed by their own talent than Vince Staples. The 21-year-old Long Beach native raps with switchblade precision, in a contemptuous sneer that casts judgment on every word out of his mouth. He’s a born natural orator, yet he never plays up his best lyrics, or builds in pauses to allow…
