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The Cool Irreverence of Shamir

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May 18, 2015
Music
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(Courtesy of XL Recordings)

Shamir was first introduced to a wider audience when he released the video for “Call It Off” during the 2015 YouTube Music Awards. He went from critical darling on the Internet to having his image projected out in meatspace a la electronic billboard in Times Square. Yet, the 20-year-old from North Las Vegas was met with sideways glances rather than warm embraces. The androgyny of both his colorful appearance and his high tenor drew heteronormative vitriol, for which Shamir responded in kind on Twitter by confidently announcing his gender fluidity.

As someone who strived for country stardom, experimented with punk and is now settling into a mode constructed by synthesizers, Shamir seems almost like an avatar of attention-deficit Millennials. His inspirations range in popularity from Joyce Manor to Taylor Swift – a by-product of a generation raised on having numerous browser tabs open at once. Everything is fair game. If there was a blueprint for how a young pop star should look, sound, and act in 2015, Shamir would be it.

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Earth Blues

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November 21, 2013
Blues, Music, Rock
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Courtesy of okayplayer.com

Courtesy of okayplayer.com

Disclaimer: Since about the age of 16, I have been under the impression, which many share, that James Marshall Hendrix is the single best guitar player this world has ever seen. His musicianship continues to astound me, and I can say without a shadow of a doubt in my mind that I like, with varying degrees, every single piece of music he ever recorded. His influence is such that, even 43 years after his extremely premature death at the age of 27, guitar players today cannot even begin to imitate anything that Hendrix did with any real success. For all of Clapton’s disciples (which, if you ask any of the guys with whom I was in a band in high school, they will tell you I am, to an annoying degree), all the wannabe-hip Django-heads and the legions who trust in Jimmy Page’s mysticism, it is Hendrix’s shadow which keeps everyone searching for the light.

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Illadelph Halflife

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June 28, 2013
Music, Pop Culture
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Questlove

…well Tariq?

So begins the mid-life memoir of Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson, Mo’ Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove. Thompson, whose drumming with neo-soul outfit The Roots and, consequently, on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon has catapulted him to fringes of the American musical conscience, a place which seems hard-earned and well-deserved, yet perhaps not entirely desired. The dedication, directed toward Roots co-founder Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter, sets the tone for an exploration of Thompson’s ego, which rides a strange line between pretension, generally about the history of the music he loves, and modesty, generally about his own career and the experiences which have made him who he is.

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