Inspecth Rocing Maganize by Mia Morales

Inspectah Rocking Magazine June 2019 Edition #45

Ariana Grande

Her most Successful year in her career, taking over the world in her Sweetner World Tour plus more....

Childish Gambino tells all in an EXCLUSIVE interview with Inspectah Magazine

Exclusive Information on your favorite festivals

Ariana Grande in her most Suvccessful time of her career.

Ariana Grande is milly rocking in her seat behind the massive mixing console

The singer proceeded to do all she could to reach superstardom, and logged time

at Los Angeles’ Record Plant studio, a wide grin revealing the single dimple in her in the teeny-bopper trenches at Nickelodeon. In 2011, she signed with Republic Releft cheek. Her new single, “Thank U, Next,” will not officially become her first

cords; not long after, she met Mac Miller. He was 20 and she was 19, so naturally

Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 for another three days, but its explosive success is already they first talked on Twitter. The pair became fast friends, and she invited him to do making headlines. For Grande, the milestone is especially meaningful. It’s the exact a verse on her first album’s lead single, 2013’s bouncy ’90s throwback “The Way.” kind of music she has wanted to make all along.

Grande told Billboard at the time that Miller was giving her Pro Tools pointers as

“It’s a Tommy Brown single!” she exclaims, hitting the arm of her chair for em-

they recorded. She added, “If you want to motivate Mac Miller to do anything, just

phasis. Brown, a producer and songwriter, has been working with Grande since

bake cookies.”

her 2013 debut, Yours Truly, and Grande is positively giddy at the prospect of their Now, she looks back on the song as the first time she really captured her own mushared musical breakthrough. “I can’t believe it but, like, so can. It’s me and my

sical style, what she had been searching for while growing up idolizing India.Arie.

besties tipsy off champagne -- and me with a broken heart -- just letting it out and “When we made ‘The Way,’ I was like, ‘Oh, wow, I’m onto something here,’” says having fun. I love this more than any other song I’ve ever put out.” That kind of

Grande. Her face dims slightly; just before this interview, she was working on a

joy has been tough to come by in the past few months for Billboard’s Woman Of

new song, which, when she plays it for me later, I realize is about Miller. “It felt

The Year, despite the fact that she has never had more career momentum. Grande’s like, ‘I should do this forever.’” fourth album, Sweetener, became her third No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in August,

“The Way” reached No. 9 on the Hot 100, and like the rest of her debut, it holds

breaking streaming records while earning critical acclaim. So far it has produced

up remarkably well. Babyface, one of the album’s producers, helped legitimize

two top 10 singles on the Hot 100, with a third, “Breathin,” now at No. 13. But

Grande’s long-held R&B aspirations. Nevertheless, when she released Yours Truly,

while she was in the middle of promoting the project, her dear friend, collaborator Grande was still viewed as a preteen idol, thanks to her history on kiddie TV and and ex-boyfriend Mac Miller died from an accidental overdose. Just over a month diminutive size (she’s exactly 5 feet tall). So on her next two albums, she went even later, her whirlwind engagement to comedian Pete Davidson ended.

bigger, employing Max Martin and pursuing the kinds of pop hits that would make

On this November afternoon, it’s still too soon for Grande to talk about what has

her undeniable to any listener. “We started at home base -- me,” Grande says of

happened in anything other than broad strokes. “I’m really lucky and really unluckyYours Truly, “and then we went in this place where I kind of played the game for a at the same time,” says the 25-year-old.

little bit, and did the big, big, big pop records. Then we slowly started incorporating

To sing about it, though, is another story. Not long after Miller’s death, Grande

my soul back into it -- and that’s where we’ve landed again with ‘Thank U, Next.’”

started spending all of her time with her closest friends and collaborators, including Grande has put in the work, done everything that was asked of her -- all the tiny Brown, recording a new album (which she says will also be called Thank U, Next) compromises that went along with playing the game -- and kept her nose clean at a studio across the street from her New York apartment. Though she has been in (with the exception of a little doughnut glaze, which she erased from the public’s therapy since she was just a kid coping with her parents’ divorce -- and is quick to memory with a cleverly self-deprecating sketch on one of the best Saturday Night espouse its benefits -- right now the most healing comes when she’s standing be-

Live hosting debuts in recent memory). She has hit songs and high Pitchfork rat-

hind a mic.

ings, to say nothing of her devoted fans, the Arianators. Grande’s late-night TV

“When I felt myself saying, ‘’Cause her name is Ari,’ I knew it was a special line, appearances -- routine promotional stops for most stars -- are events, thanks to her but part of me was like, ‘Oh, my God, that’s kind of corny,’” says Grande, refer-

natural sense of comic timing and gift for impressions both sung and spoken (Goo-

ring to the “Thank U, Next” lyric, a declaration of self-love. She tucks her bare legs gle her doing Jennifer Coolidge). She followed all the rules, and arrived at what inside a light-blue hoodie that reads “Beau Souci” (French for “beautiful worry”)

seemed like the top.

and wraps her arms around them. “But the other part of me was like, ‘That’s beau- The singer has no regrets. “I got myself to a place where I would be able to do tiful and I need to keep it in.’ I know that once I put something into a song, then

things like drop a surprise record and have it be the biggest single I’ve ever had,”

it’s real.” Fittingly, the control room is decked out like a refuge: a small bouquet

she says now. But five years into her career, she hadn’t yet had a No. 1 Hot 100

of white flowers, a single candle, a light projecting water ripples onto the ceiling.

song, and hadn’t found the ubiquity that she knew deep down she deserved.

Grande, sporting an extension-less version of her signature ponytail, sips from a

Then, on May 22, 2017, a suicide bomber killed 23 people and injured 139 outside

Starbucks iced soy latte while animatedly chatting about the music she has been

the arena in Manchester, England, where Grande had just finished performing as

working on -- the only thing she’s really interested in discussing, the only thing that part of her Dangerous Woman Tour. Many of the victims were children. matters to her right now. As it turns out, a series of tragedies has given the star two Within weeks Grande was back, not just onstage but in Manchester, visiting surunexpected gifts: the freedom to channel her hurt into the most raw and untemperedvivors in the hospital and hosting the One Love Manchester benefit, which helped music of her career, and the audacity to buck the pop music establishment -- which, raise 23 million pounds (about $29 million) for the victims. She released her live as Grande will note more quickly than anyone, is particularly entrenched when

rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from the benefit, during which she

it comes to women. She had the talent: the four-octave range and effortless vocal

broke down in tears -- though she still finished the performance -- and donated the

agility that led Gloria Estefan, after hearing the 8-year-old Grande sing “My Heart proceeds to the Red Cross. “Our response to this violence must be to come closer Will Go On” at a cruise-ship karaoke night, to tell her she was gifted. She had the together, to help each other, to love more, to sing louder and to live more kindly support system: her close-knit family, familiar to anyone who follows the singer on social media. And she had the work ethic, performing in public regularly before the age of 10 and on Broadway by age 15. “When I was 6 years old, I just kind of decided that’s what I’m going to do with my life, period,” says Grande, who grew up in Boca Raton, Fla. “I manifested it. I knew I would. There was never really a doubt in my mind.”

and generously than we did before,” she wrote at the time.

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Childish Gambino 1 Based on your more recent public appearances, you seem to be coming from a darker place.

We were in the airport and I was waiting in line at the ATM and there was a guy in

front of me getting money. I came up and he got nervous, so I went to the side and waited for him to finish. I said to my group of friends, “I don’t think white people know how much effort in my day is put into making them feel comfortable.” In

general, people don’t know how much of my time is dedicated to making them feel comfortable.Maybe it has to do with being older, but I just didn’t want to do it anymore. I don’t want to make people comfortable all the time. Plus, we just feel like we’re going to die soon.

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Like, in a hedonistic way? Or the world is doomed?

We’re just around death a lot. Since I started hanging out with Fam I just stopped trying to make it OK. People want you to think that it’s OK, you’re OK, take these pills, you’ll be OK. But it’s not OK. And

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instead of trying to make it OK and being told that I need to do certain things to cope, I’ve decided that maybe nothing is wrong and everybody feels this way. So maybe I should go with it. And since I’ve adopted that view, I wouldn’t say that things are working great, but I’m less tired

But isn’t the flip side of the internet the fact that it allows for people like me to be here interviewing you, or for you to have a career?

Don’t get me wrong, I love the internet. I think it’s great and it’s the only reason I’m here, I’m just like everyone else. I love watching Worldstar and all that shit.

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the good in that lies. Other than us being more aware of stuff, but

What would your immediate reaction be to someone yelling out “Worldstar!” when you’re in public?

I’m not more aware—I only pay attention to what’s on my timeline.

Hit the deck. If I hear it and it’s close to me, I’m just

Why are you in Toronto?

We’re here to do some interviews with radio stations, but I don’t believe in doing traditional interviews anymore. It’s so easy to twist words around, and I feel like with what we’re doing, the truth will eventually just come to light anyway. I’m not worried about the internet anymore.

It speeds up everything and we get information faster, and I don’t see the flip side of that. Like, people calling me a nigger or a faggot isn’t new—the internet just makes it easier. I don’t see where

going to duck because someone is about to get hit.

But niggas was screaming “Worldstar!” when we were in Atlanta and someone was shooting.

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You could make the argument that we’re at least more informed. Look at the KONY thing.

We more informed, but there are so many opposing viewpoints. Some people say he’s helping, others say he’s supplying militias. Nobody knows who to believe or who to trust.

Music

Weekend 1 of Coachella wound to an end Sunday night with pop acts the big story of the festival.

Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish and Janelle Monåe drew huge crowds each of the three nights, and hit-driven, multi-media acts like Childish Gambino, Tame Impala and The 1975 blurred the lines between what is pop and what is niche genre music.

Pop star Katy Perry took pop at Coachella to another level when she made a surprise appearance with electronic artist Zedd. She has publicly declared that she has long wanted to play Coachella, after having attended as a festivalgoer for 17 years.

With a renewed women’s empowerment movement in full effect (Lizzo lit up the Mojave stage earlier) Perry’s appearance with Zedd singing their collaborative hit “365” seemed like a breakthrough.

Her appearance came as another celebration was taking place on a smaller stage. This one was a celebration of Coachella the city, not the festival.

J Balvin headlining Lollapalooza is just another example that the world of music festivals is evolving.

The “Mi Gente” singer will be one of the eight artists headlining the music festival August 1-4 at Chicago’s Grant Park. More importantly, he’ll be the first Latino headliner in Lollapalooza’s 28-year history.

Latino artists have performed at the festival before but never as a headliner, which is what makes this year’s lineup different from the rest.

Like Beyoncé was for Coachella, J Balvin’s performance will show that Lolla finally recognizes there’s a large audience in the United States not only for reggaeton but for Spanish-language music.

Festivals

The 18th annual throwdown in Austin, Texas’ Zilker

Park will take place on Oct. 4-6 and again on Oct. 11-13.

The fest marks GNR’s first show in Austin in 25 years, and their first-ever appearance at ACL. It’s also the ACL debut for Cardi (who will perform on the first weekend), Eilish and Robyn (second weekend only), and a reboot for Donald Glover’s Gambino rap alter ego, who was forced to cancel his appearance last year due to a foot injury. Other acts on tap include: Kacey Musgraves, The Raconteurs, Gary Clark Jr., Lizzo, Thom Yorke Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, James Blake, Lil Uzi Vert, 21 Savage, Tyler Childers, Third Eye Blind (Weekend Two), Rebelution, GRiZ, RL Grime, Jenny Lewis, BANKS, The Kooks (Weekend One), Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers, Chris Shiflett and more.

After taking last year off, Foam Wonderland is returning to soak San Antonio in suds and EDM sounds this September.

Known as the “ultimate foam party experience,” Foam Wonderland will take over the Sunken Garden Theater on Sept. 30 from 6 p.m. to 12 a.m. according to the event’s website.

The lineup has not been announced yet, but the festival boasts the “world’s biggest foam production and lasers.”

“It’s an event for everyone, not just dance music lovers,” he said.

Tickets sales begin May 12 with prices ranging from $20 to $42.

Upcoming Ashley Nicolette Frangipane, who is popularly known by her alias, Halsey, is an American pop artist and songwriter.

Her singing career began in 2012 with a parody of the Taylor Swift song named ‘I Knew You Were Trouble.’ Her debut extended play ‘Room 93’ was released in 2014. It peaked at No. 159 at US Billboard 200. The next year she released her debut studio album which was titled ‘Badlands.’ It became a huge hit, selling 97,000 copies in the US within the first week. It stood at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart and was also reviewed positively by critics. She chose her professional name “Halsey”—a rearrangement of her first name Ashley—because it reminded her of a street in B rooklyn where she used to spend a lot of time during her teenage years. She started writing songs at the early age of seventeen. Having been nominated for several awards, Halsey won the Rising Star award by Billboard Women in Music in 2016, which is awarded to women in the music industry who have not only made a significant contribution but also have inspired others. By early 2017 Halsey had released one studio album, one extended play, five singles and five music videos.

Robert Bryson Hall is an American rapper, singer, songwriter and music producer better known by his stage name Logic. Coming from a broken family, he has had unfortunate experiences as a child. Growing up, he witnessed his brothers selling drugs, his father buying those drugs, his alcoholic mother and sisters getting beaten up by men.

However, even at that age, he tried to see t he positivity of the situation and made those experiences a lesson as to what not to do with his own life. To escape his abusive mother, he left home when he was 17 years old and took up two odd jobs. He found relief through music, and started to express himself with his raps. He doesn’t shy away from writing about his experiences in his songs, which makes most of his songs extremely personal, but he never glorifies his tumultuous upbringing. He has been heavily influenced

by Frank Sinatra’s vocal jazz, even though he is more into hip-hop music. Quentin Tarantino has been another big influence on him. He got recognition through his mixtapes, ‘Young, Broke & Infamous’ and the ‘Young Sinatra’ trilogy.

Both his studio albums, ‘Under Pressure’ and ‘The Incredible True Story’, have received critical and commercial success.

Artists Khalid is an American singer and songwriter, who rose to fame with his debut single ‘Location’ which peaked at No. 16 on the ‘US Billboard Hot 100’ chart. His debut studio album ‘American Teen’, which was consciously named such to combat stereotypical views on ‘proper American’, was equally successful and reached No. 4 on ‘US Billboard 200’ albums chart. Raised by a single mother, who worked in military, he moved from one place to another and often paints painful pictures of teenage loneliness, as well as of love, through his songs. While talking about fragile relationships, the millennial makes generous references to technology – cell phones, photo albums, GPS, ride-sharing apps – and sometimes to marijuana. According to him, even though he has written songs about friends who dealt with suicidal tho ughts, he did not feel the same way, but has wanted to “disappear” at times.

While he had felt rootless all throughout his childhood and teenage years, he found a sense of belonging after relocating to El Paso, Texas. While his music has been influenced by artists like Kendrick Lamar, A$AP Rocky, Father John Misty, Frank Ocean, Grizzly Bear, Chance the Rapper, Lorde, India.

Arie, and James Blake, he considers his mother to be his biggest musical inspiration.

Normani Hamilton, or popularly known as Normani Kordei is a part of the girl group, Fifth Harmony, which was formed on The X Factor US, the popular American reality music TV-series.

Prior to participating in The X Factor, Normani had reached the finals of Miss Texas. She is famous for her career as a pop singer.

She is known as a mezzo soprano singer with 4 octaves and 3 notes. Although she is popularly known for her cover songs,her talent is not only limited to her vocal skills. She has also worked as an actress and appeared in the HBO series ‘Treme’ and the movie ‘WrestleMania’. As a part of the popular band Fifth Harmony, Normani has made platinum certified hit tracks like Boss, Sledgehammer and Worth It. Recently, she has been in the spotlight for quitting her Twitter account due to the unimaginable amount of criticizing she received from some users. She says that she has a thick skin when it comes to critics. However, when the criticism got racial, she said she wanted to avoid the ugliness and took a break from Twitter.

Summer The release of “7 rings” as a single last month brought scandal anew. She was immediately accused of both theft and appropriation, and an unfortunate misspelled tattoo punctuated the episode. And while she kinda-sorta engineered her own absolution in the form of a 2 Chainz remix, Grande’s collaborators on the song—Victoria Monét and Tayla Parx—are also her longtime friends and co-writers, not simply anonymous voices hired because black slang and Atlanta rap rhythms are trendy. In general, thank u, next is a calling card for Monét and Parx, both signed artists with forthcoming projects of their own, who have helped Grande capture the zeitgeist in clever lines and melodies. (Almost too perfectly, “thank u, next” producer Tommy Brown is co-writer Monét’s ex.) But “7 rings,” frankly, is just as good as any track on the last album or this one. I suspect it was actually the jarring shift in her tone that left people confused and disarmed; It seemed she’d ditched the inspiring moral high ground, luxuriating instead in Tiffany’s jewelry and pink Veuve Clicquot.

Grande explained in a recent Billboard interview that her motivation is “to release music like rappers do”—without the burden or unwieldiness of the major label machine, but certainly with much of its power. For all its spontaneity, thank u, next still registers as a big event. She has bragged that the album was written in a week and recorded in a couple more, and while that expediency gives it its weightlessness, it also accounts for the occasional notes of sloppy writing; I can’t get past, for example, the premise of “bloodline,” which seems to confuse genealogy with hypothetical procreation. But in the rare spots where the production is grating and the writing limp, Grande makes up for it with skill and intuition. thank u, next may be an imperfect album but it’s a perfect next chapter.

Like her spirit animal, the spider, Eilish can weave something that is at once delicate and grotesque: In “you should see me in a crown,” she lulls the listener into a false idyll with her murmured lilt, then leaps off the cliff of a tectonic dubstep bass drop, her sneer fully audible. (That the title is cribbed from Moriarty, the beguiling psychopath of television’s “Sherlock,” also speaks to her pull toward the sinister.) “xanny” plumbs sincere anxiety over more marrow-shaking bass, the kind that could blast apart a few pairs of headphones. Eilish’s voice crossfades over the narcoleptic beat, and slips into full despair, whimpering her most self-aware lines on the record: “Please don’t try to kiss me on the sidewalk/On your cigarette break/I can’t afford to love someone/Who isn’t dying by mistake in Silver Lake.” Eilish’s lyrics wonderfully underscore how all teen angst is both fiercely sincere and an affect of being only partially informed.

A similar spirit drives “bury a friend,” another early single. Despite the vocoder-style distortion, Eilish’s voice feels even more intimate as she hisses, “Step on the glass, staple your tongue” in a farcical singsong. Eilish has namechecked Tyler, the Creator as one of her greatest influences; in her slightly jazzy trill, too, she also nods to her clearest pop progenitor, Lorde, who cleared much of Eilish’s path with her autonomous creative control, heavy-lidded social observations, and blithely goth aura.

Albums Khalid has no edge, so his attempts at darker songwriting come off like “Riverdale” fanfiction. “Is this heaven or armageddon?/I’ll be gettin’ high with you to watch the ending,” he sings plainly on “Free Spirit.” It’s fitting that one of the top YouTube comments praising his collaboration with country heartthrob Kane Brown on “Saturday Nights (Remix)” is, “No naked scenes, no alcohol, no drugs, no cars around but only soft and smooth voices.” Khalid, unlike an actual teenager, is afraid to cross any line—everything that leaves his mouth is bland. His relationship stories are frustrating, “Can you feel the tension? You’ve got my attention/I know we’re just friends, but I’d rather be together instead,” which he says on the John Mayer-featuring “Outta My Head” that belongs in an Old Navy commercial.

The saving grace of Free Spirit is that none of Khalid’s dull lyrics and euphemisms can take away from the high-budget production showcase. Take “Talk,” where Disclosure gifts Khalid a bubbly dance instrumental. It works, despite Khalid sounding like an R&B singer without the sex and a pop singer without the fun. Hit-Boy recently brought new life to the emorap gloom of Juice WRLD and on “Self,” the producer tries that same kick-drum magic with Khalid. That goes well when he opens up about his anxiety, but not when he’s wondering, “Does my raw emotion make me less of a man?” And of course, when record labels need to make a pop singer engaging, they call up folk-trap mainstay Charlie Handsome who uses his talents on “Bluffin’” to squeeze exactly one ounce of soul from Khalid’s monotony.

Though those songs will surely have their moment when the trio heads back out on tour, with Happiness Begins, they (wisely) don’t shoot for pure nostalgia.

If Jonas Brothers 1.0 was punk rock, and Jonas Brothers 2.0 was pop-rock, Jonas Brothers 3.0 is true pop—which is to say, a little bit of most things you could hear in today’s Top 40. They haven’t made music together since breaking up in 2013, but the brothers weren’t inactive in the interim: Nick released two albums, including a Top 10 single, on his own; Joe found success as the frontman of the electro-pop group DNCE. Reunited, the group have adjusted their sound to incorporate elements from both projects—Nick’s soulful, sexy R&B and DNCE’s light-hearted funk. In 2019, the Jonas Brothers rely on spacious synths and programmed drums; on several songs, guitars aren’t even a notable part of the mix.

Nick and Kevin’s Gibsons have never been so underworked.

Often enough, the smorgasbord approach yields solid results. “Only Human” rides a reggae beat that works surprisingly well; it’s a Shellback-produced show of brass (instrumental and otherwise), on which the boys try out new percussive cadences and punctuate their phrases with in-vogue, monosyllabic ad libs. “Don’t Throw It Away” is a feat of falsetto, with enough West Coast breeziness, synthetic shimmer, and rich harmony to recall another dominant sibling trio, Haim. The fizzy, supremely self-assured single “Cool” packages up some of the brothers’ best tricks, old and new: acoustic strums meet vocal processors and a thundering stomp-clap beat.