The best new songs of 2026 are unheard, half-century-old tracks that Stevie Wonder recorded during the "Songs in the Key of Life" sessions. @_djshort goes deep on this peek into Wonder's vault. powmag.net/p/the-lost-stevie…

You could very reasonably say Songs In the Key of Life is the greatest album ever recorded. Today at the magazine, @_djshort walks us through four just-released songs from that album's famously guarded sessions powmag.net/p/the-lost-stevie…

I wrote 2,000 words re: the new John Coltrane archival release The Tiberi Tapes. Here are 19 to whet your appetite: "When I finally heard Tiberi’s tapes, the first words that leapt to mind were “revelatory,” “electrifying,” and “holy shit!” @tabletmag tabletmag.com/sections/arts-…

John Coltrane at Newport, 1966. Backed by Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane, Jimmy Garrison, and Rashied Ali.

Before John Coltrane experienced the divine touch of God, he felt the fists of Miles Davis. On his 100th birthday, I wrote about Coltrane's quest to shed his demons, summon the divine through the saxophone, and make "A Love Supreme." powmag.net/p/john-coltrane-1…

John Coltrane performing “My Favorite Things” with McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums live in Belgium, 1965.

Kendrick pretty much told us in that Harper’s Bizarre interview with Sza that he was balancing his masculine & feminine by tapping into his feminine energy side & connected it to his creativity & music, it helps with things like things like vulnerability, emotional sensitivity, intuition, receptiveness & the ability to communicate from a softer place. He said, “The more I delve deeper into my music & the more expressive I get with myself…that is the feminine energy right there.” He described that side as “the soft spoken me” & said, “This is where my superpower lies.” I don’t see him dropping an r&b album but what if his next project is softer, more melodic? Y’all keep saying Kendrick needs to rap but I’ve noticed him get increasingly comfortable allowing himself to sound smooth. What if his next project is balance?Soft & hard. Sensual & aggressive. Romantic & intellectual. Masculine & feminine. Not just hardcore raps, wonder what the narrative would be then🤔

Ahead of its TIFF debut, I talked to the director of ‘Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’ about putting Mahershala Ali’s ‘Blade’ training to work to give us an even better movie. huffpost.com/entry/your-moth…

TUPAC SHAKUR. This month/year marks 30 long years since he passed, sadly, tragically. I interviewed him many times, was there in Las Vegas when he died. This is the only thing I have to say about it all publicly, for now, my newest article for NEWSWEEK: newsweek.com/the-tupac-shaku…

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YOU CAN SEARCH TELEVISION. NOT SHOW TITLES. THE ACTUAL WORDS PEOPLE SAID, ACROSS 4,430,000 BROADCASTS, GOING BACK TO 2009. archive.org/details/tv the Internet Archive has been quietly recording news channels for seventeen years and indexing every closed caption. so any sentence ever said on air is now a search box away, with the clip attached. type a phrase. get the channel, the date, the timestamp, and the thirty seconds around it. which means you can do things television never intended. watch a phrase enter the language and count it. pull up how four networks described the same hour differently. find the exact broadcast that was on while something happened to you. I tested it on the things anchors say on autopilot. "folks" is in 1,087,798 clips. "unprecedented" is in 374,273. "no one saw this coming" is in 767. "we reached out for comment", in those exact words, appears 485 times in seventeen years of television. it isn't just American channels. BBC, DW, France 24, Al Jazeera and Russian state television are all in there, all searchable the same way. free. no account. no paywall. the strangest part is that this has existed the whole time and almost nobody uses it.

Alice Coltrane explaining her connection to the harp - from the Black Journal Alice Coltrane documentary segment produced by National Educational Television (1970)

Almost exactly 20 years after the first 𝙐𝙣𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙜𝙞𝙫𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚 was uploaded to YouTube, I tracked down star/cocreator Gunnar Stansson for an in-depth oral history of how it happened, and everything that came after. Now live at my blog: elementxcinema.substack.com/…

Kendrick Lamar's Fender Rhodes Electric Piano (1960s) 🎹🥑

Back in 1995 I remember frantically calling my music industry friends hoping to get tix to see @StevieWonder at Radio City. Ultimately, Gary Harris hit me back, so I went with him, and needless to say, the show was amazing. When I got back to my apartment, my friend, Elaine, who’d been staying on my couch, told me D’Angelo had just left. He told her he hadn’t been able to get tix himself (when he was still recording Brown Sugar and before he was famous). Since he couldn’t go to the concert, he wanted to listen to Stevie with me on my couch, like we used to do for hours (and hours) on end. So this time around, if I’m lucky enough to see Stevie play, I hope Michael’s spirit is in the building.

Had the distinct honor of chatting with @Alchemist about his career impact thus far + had him break down some classics from Dilated Peoples’ “Worst Comes To Worst” to his recent work with Armand Hammer, Erykah Badu and much more for @Passionweiss 🧪🥼🔬 powmag.net/p/alchemist-break…

Love to see this!! D'Angelo looved him some Biggie. When I brought the Big-Mac sampler home (Biggie and Craig Mack snippet tape), we played it on repeat. Michael's faves were The What and The Warning, so I know he'll be smiling from ear-to-ear watching his precious son play this role.