Trying to make sense of a fragmented, disparate musical tradition.

The mainstream narrative is that a pop star ripped up a photo of the pope on “Saturday Night Live” and derailed her life. What if the opposite were true?

Jimmy Carter pardoned Peter Yarrow for what he did to a 14-year-old girl in a D.C. hotel room in 1969. But the Peter, Paul and Mary star is accused of sexually assaulting others, too.

For nearly 17 years, the truth about the murder of Mac Dre has been one of hip-hop’s great unsolved mysteries.

“And while maybe you don’t care if Justin Bieber ever does make his way back to a kind of normalcy, perhaps you can admit there is at least something admirable, in the abstract, about someone finding a way to survive, and even to become kind, when all they’ve been taught since a young age, by millions of adoring people, is that there is no need for them to be kind at all. And if that doesn’t move you, then maybe you can at least find sociological interest in the process that Bieber is about to recount here, which is how you turn into someone you don’t want to be, and what you do about it once you decide you want to be someone else. Someone better, even.”

What will it take to get the world’s choral musicians back together again?

Musicians are in peril, at the mercy of giant monopolies that profit off their work.

The search for Guns N’ Roses’ elusive guitarist.

A trip to Kingston, Jamaica to track down Bunny Wailer, a reggae legend now living “in his own private Zion.”

The Brooklyn rapper, fresh out of prison on parole, talks about life on the inside and where he goes next.

Why did I ever believe a teen girl could hold all the power?

On Black nonchalance.

Gold and diamond grills. Stilettos you can’t walk in. Grandly arching fingernails, lovingly adorned. Such flouting of functionality is an obvious fuck-­you to the days of scrutinized teeth at auctions and picking cotton on plantations.

A profile of MF Doom.

A months-long interview with the singer-songwriter.

An interview with rapper Drakeo the Ruler after he was released from prison, having previously faced the possibility of 25 to life despite being previously acquitted of murder charges related to a 2016 killing.

Our writer nearly drowns, 236 songs later.

In 1990, there was no star bigger than the man born Robert Van Winkle. But just as quickly as he became the bestselling rapper the world had ever seen, he became a pariah.

The Puerto Rican reggaetonero has come to dominate global pop on his own terms.

On Glenn Gould.

A profile of the singer.

A visit to the Christian rock Cross-Over Festival in Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri.

Wendy Carlos’s music of the spheres.

A profile of Mariah Carey.

I don’t want my part to get skipped over, but I still don’t know how to write directly about what went down between me and M. All I can do is worry a detail like an R&B singer worries a line.

From 1968-1973, the three teenage Wiggin sisters, guided by a domineering father, played their strange music at New Hampshire ballrooms and recorded a single album. The Philosophy of the World LP goes for over $500 today, but the intervening decades have not been kind to the Wiggins.