Tag Archives: spin magazine

Video: Waka Flocka Flame Takes Over Spin Magazine

The Big Homie Waka Flocka Flame is on the cover of Spin Magazine. Below is a hilarious video of Waka taking over Spin Magazine. Waka makes executive decisions after reading Pitchfork, makes it rain on writers, innovates their review section and herbs someone for eating his hummus. FLEX!!

Lydia Loveless: SXSW accolades, Rhapsody video

It seems hometown girl Lydia Loveless turned even more heads this year at SXSW. SPIN named her one of its “Best of SXSW,” saying she’s “one of the most badass country or Americana or rootsy-fartsy songwriters working today. Her Red Eyed Fly set at the Bloodshot Records showcase was a revelation…. Loveless may not even be a household murmur right now, but she’ll get hers soon enough, and the old alt-country guard better look out.” Greg Kot at the Chicago Tribune was similarly complimentary, and the LA Times called her Saturday night set a “high-energy, don’t-mess-with-me take from a rising young should-be-star with an outlaw bent…. [“More Like Them”] is equally relentless and stubborn, indicative of an artist who isn’t interested in hearing your advice. With songs like these, she doesn’t need it.”

Sounds like the Donewaiting fave did all right for herself. Check out the above video of Loveless and Ben Lamb doing an acoustic version of “Back on the Bottle” at SXSW for the Rhapsody “Stripped Down by the River” series.

Update (more press):
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SPIN’s redesign and why I like it

After spending some time with the newly redesigned and refocused SPIN –– the March/April edition with Sleigh Bells on the cover — I’m convinced it’s the first music magazine to finally get ahead of the curve, and it did so by embracing some things that would seem counterintuitive at first glance.

It’s large. While every magazine and newspaper in America is getting smaller and thinner, SPIN just got bigger and thicker — 9.5 inches wide and a foot long. (Most glossies, in comparison, are around 8 inches wide and between 10 and 11 inches in length.) That means big art, more art and more text. It also means that the magazine is now bimonthly, likely because even a mainstream pub like SPIN can’t afford to put out a magazine like that every month. But in adjusting to bimonthly, SPIN forced itself to become what a post-Web 2.0 music magazine should be: A place for long-form stories and analysis (with nice, wide columns of text). Even daily print publications rarely break news that wasn’t first found on the web, so a monthly or bimonthly magazine shouldn’t attempt to. The stories should hold up. They should be relevant two months after the magazine hits newsstands. Judging by this first issue, SPIN gets that.

It feels good. It’s bulky and remains perfect-bound, but the gloss is gone. The matte cover is a thick card stock, and more than half the magazine is matte. It feels special, artful, homemade and more than a bit nostalgic, but not cloying Instagram-nostalgic. (There’s still some glossy pages in the first half of the book; I’d recommend going all in and getting rid of the glossy feel entirely.)
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Spin Magazine’s “New Underground” Issue Has Cute Diagram & Info on the Next Tyler, the Creator Album

The new issue of Spin Magazine’s cover story is the New Underground in Hip Hop. Above is a humorous diagram that at some parts is a little off. I don’t think Jay Electronica sold his soul or that Nas is out of touch, but whatever, it’s still something to look at and think about.

In an article on Odd Future in the same issue, Tyler,the Creator says his next album will be out in May, and will be rape-humor free.

Wednesday: Skrillex @ The LC. SOLD OUT!

All I know about dubstep, I learned from Spin Magazine. Sort of. I mean, I’m familiar with – and have spent enough time on YouTube finding remixed and different versions of songs I like – this new-ish genre that sounds what I imagine the Transformers would sound like if they made music, but Spin provided a pretty good Clif’s Notes version of the genre and the top talents.

Skrillex, the nom de plume of former hardcore singer Sonny Moore (his band was From First to Last), is the poster boy for the dubstep movement and his shows have been selling out around the world. Live, I’m not exactly sure what a dubstep producer/artist does other than twist a bunch of knobs, pull up files on a computer, and occasionally yell into a microphone, but kids are clinging to this music the way Generation X attached itself to Nirvana and grunge.

Gotta admit, this video KICKS ASS.


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The Black Keys Finished Recording New Album Produced By Danger Mouse


photo by Kim Rottmayer

Spin Magazine is reporting that the new album by the Black Keys has been recorded, and is produced by Danger Mouse.

The Black Keys’ singer, and guitarist Dan Auerbach gave some details on the new album in the Spin Article:

The album opens with “Lonely Boy,” which is “one of the first songs we recorded,” says Auerbach. “Almost every song on the record has a foundation of live drums and guitar together in the room. It’s guitar bleeding into the drum mics. It’s pretty raw.”

Of “Little Black Submarine” Auerbach says: “We recorded it four or five different times in different ways. We would start from scratch and then start over. The version that we ended up with is weird. It starts with just acoustic guitar and vocals and by the end it sounds like Black Sabbath!”

He says that the Keys were seeking a group groove: “I’ve never been into guitar solos. I really like when every instrument in the band is a rhythm instrument. This record has a lot of that going on — guitar, bass, drums, and keyboards all working together as a rhythm instrument. But unlike Brothers, which has more of these slower songs with an open feeling, [the new LP] is definitely fast.”

Read the full article here