The story of Deso Dogg, a German rapper-turned-ISIS propagandist who may or may not have been killed in an airstrike.

How Mozart’s starling impacted his music.

The lip-syncing app Musical.ly claims that it has signed up 50% of American teens.

“Life has a soundtrack. And certain music is a soundtrack to a certain type of identity or feeling. 50 Cent, the Game, and those kinds of guys—they made us feel like our lives were worth nothing, basically.”

The people at Apple, Spotify, and Google who decide what you listen to.

Twenty-seven-year-old Mike Will Made It and the rise of the super-producer.

Steve Miller had a clear-cut legal case when the Geto Boys used his guitar-hook in their raunchy 1990 single “Gangster of Love.” The racial implications weren’t so simple.

Excerpted from The Geto Boys(Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 series, 2016) .

The 22-year-old rapper on escaping North Long Beach and his desire to be a “regular” guy.

When the music was real, but the bands were fake.

In Brooklyn’s Brownsville, being in a gang can mean as little as being born on a specific block. Ackquille Pollard spent his final free days as a viral rap sensation, before being jailed as the leader of a sect of Crips.

How a group of Queens high schoolers changed music forever while barely managing to remain on speaking terms.

An oral history of Aaliyah.

The fabled venue where the Replacements, Hüsker Dü, and Prince emerged.

“A paean 2 Prince.”

A conversation with Prince.

A profile of Erykah Badu.

How 23-year-old Metro Boomin became every rapper’s favorite producer.

How Irv Teibel pioneered the capturing and repackaging of nature’s acoustics.

A profile of Merle Haggard.

Philip Johnson was a promising musical prodigy. Then he stole a teacher’s prized Stradivarius.

“Thug is alone even in a room full of people. He is unapproachable. He radiates volatility. I can't even imagine him making actual, on-purpose eye contact with another human. Looking into a person's eyes—seeking some kind of a connection—is an admission of neediness, and Young Thug would rather be shot dead in the street than need a thing from another human being.”

“It is a story that seems almost impossible to believe: a group of female convicts, few of whom had ever played a musical instrument or taken voice lessons, forming a country and western band and becoming, at least in Texas, the Dixie Chicks of their day.”

“I’ll tell you what freedom is to me: no fear. I mean really, no fear!”

“Word choice is hard here. Should we say “raped” automatically if a grown man has sex with a teenager? Does it matter at all if the 15-year-old, now much older, describes their encounter as one of the best nights of her life? What is our word for a ‘yes’ given on a plane that’s almost vertically unequal? Does contemporary morality dictate that we trust a young woman when she says she consented freely, or believe that she couldn’t have, no matter what she says?”

A conversation about God, anxiety, and the monkey.