An essay on Beyoncé and her fans.

“On paper, [DJ Khaled] doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. He’s released eight full-length albums but doesn’t actually rap on any of them. He’s perhaps the most quoted figure in hip-hop, able to create viral catch phrases with an ease that marketing executives dream about. He’s played a serious role in the hip-hop industry throughout his career, yet he’s perceived almost exclusively as a meme by fans across the nation.”

On the road with Quarterbacks, a young band at the bottom of the music industry.

“This is a story about an entertainer named R. Kelly. It is a story about the remarkable, but also very strange, pop talent he has. It is a story about the difficult places he came from and the ways they may, or may not, have shaped who he has become. It is also the story of a man who has been publicly accused of multiple sexual offenses with underage women, and who stood trial for making child pornography. He was eventually acquitted of that charge, and his career has continued uninterrupted, but for the most part he has evaded even the most basic questions that might help people understand what is true about him. For this story, R. Kelly agreed to speak about his whole life without restrictions.”

How a hanger-on at the fringe of San Francisco’s rock scene built the Rolling Stone empire.

Looking for the ghosts of the Allman Brothers Band in Macon.

Nobody noticed Connie Converse when she was trying to get a record deal in New York in the 1950s. Nobody stopped her when she left her life in Michigan in 1974, never to be seen again. Today, her music is heard by tens of thousands.

When James Brown died on Christmas Day 2006, he left behind a fortune worth tens, maybe hundreds, of millions of dollars. The problem is, he also left behind fourteen children, sixteen grandchildren, eight mothers of his children, several mistresses, thirty lawyers, a former manager, an aging dancer, a longtime valet, and a sister who’s really not a sister but calls herself the Godsister of Soul anyway.

Life as the most famous children’s musician on earth.

“I don’t know what other singers feel when they articulate lyrics, but being an 18-karat manic-depressive and having lived a life of violent emotional contradictions, I have an overacute capacity for sadness as well as elation. I know what the cat who wrote the song is trying to say. I’ve been there—and back. I guess the audience feels it along with me. They can’t help it. Sentimentality, after all, is an emotion common to all humanity.”

A profile of Killer Mike, the self-described “gangsta rap suburban father” whose speech about Ferguson went viral last fall.

A trip to Enya’s castle in Ireland.

The musicians of Mali find themselves in the middle of a civil war.

Kaskade is a 44-year-old devout Mormon father of three who has never touched a drink. He makes over $500,000 a night as an EDM performer.

“Missy (Misdemeanor) Elliott, the twenty-five-year-old hip-hop performer who is energetically redefining the boundaries of rap music, is a singer, a songwriter, an arranger, a producer, and a talent scout. Six months ago, few people outside the music industry had heard of her; six months from now, it will be necessary to pretend that you’ve known about Missy Elliott for years.”

While on a string of tour dates opening for Radiohead, interaction between Mark Linkous’ antidepressants and the Rohypnol he took to sleep caused him to pass out. A hotel maid found him the next morning bent into a position where his legs had been cut off from circulation. When they untangled, built-up potassium shot from his lower body upward, triggering a harmful chain reaction that caused a heart attack and kidney failure.

“My career is not my life. It’s a hobby.”

In what will likely be his last political act, Willie Nelson declares war on corporate marijuana.

A conversation with “the most popular human alive.”

An interview with Joanna Newsom.

He created the template for contemporary hit-making, made Ace of Base the biggest group in the world, and mentored the most successful songwriter since the Beatles. Why have you never heard of Denniz Pop? Excerpted from The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory.

An oral history of Gucci Mane’s many rises and falls.

The most successful songwriter of the last twenty years is a forty-four year old Swede, Max Martin.

The producer of Big Star’s Third and piano player on ‘Wild Horses’ recounts a life of music in Memphis.

An interview with Steve Albini on art, commerce, and ethic.