Our weekly recap highlighting the best feature stories from around the internet.
Action Bronson performing at Coachella 2015. Photo: AFP
Where James Beard Meets Rap: The Rise of Action Bronson – by Adam Chandler, The Atlantic
“Vice—which courts a Millennial crowd, is frequently lampooned for pandering to its hipster wing, and is often critiqued for not hewing to traditional journalistic standards—stands to gain a lot from its affiliation with a brash and unpolished symbol of the minute. At his best, Bronson represents what Vice, in theory, is supposedly meant to do: make the efforts of a media-trained, overly produced, telepromptered mainstream seem a bit ridiculous, instead of the other way around.”
Forget Max Key – there are much bigger problems at George FM – by Tom McGuinness, The Spinoff
“The problem isn’t schedule or staffing changes. It’s that George FM is no longer representative of the dance / electronic / alternative music community it claims to champion. Not only that, but it actually seems to be at odds with what’s going on in the wider nightlife scene here. At the very least, it’s ignoring some of the more progressive and interesting stuff happening around the country.”
How Snapchat Built A Business By Confusing Olds – by Max Chafkin and Sarah Frier, Bloomberg Business
“If you want to understand Snapchat, the insanely fast-growing and—to people born before 1990—straight-up insane messaging app and media platform, DJ Khaled is your Virgil. If you were one of the 100 million people who logged in to Snapchat each day during Super Bowl weekend, his thick beard and full frame were impossible to miss. You would have seen clips of him at an impromptu concert where he was mobbed by several hundred screaming fans waving giant cardboard keys, or at a raucous party sponsored by PepsiCo, or in a pedicab he hailed after the game. “Ride wit me through the journey [to] more success,” he captioned that last video, as his chauffeur pedaled furiously.”
How the New Music Cartel Redefined the Music Industry – by David Drake, Complex
“Joining the NMC was about smaller sites coming together to muscle their way up against competition coming from sites with deeper pockets for premieres, like AOL and Yahoo, and then using that muscle to give artists traction. And he was becoming exceedingly successful. OnSmash helped propel both Curren$y—the site premiered his earliest solo, post-Cash Money mixtapes—and Rick Ross at a time when their careers were in doubt.”
The Last Shadow Puppets: Everything That You’ve Come to Expect — and a Little Less – by Rachel Brodsky, Spin
“Bands will be bands. Boys will be boys. Women years deep into their music careers have thrown this just-put-up-with-it rationale at me, and it has not been isolated to this one experience. In total honesty, I’m still grappling with how to feel about an interview that takes this undesirable direction. Plenty of people in my position will chalk this up to the occasional occupational hazard, not all that far removed from waking up hungover on a weekday after a late-night show. But the more just-kidding-but-not-really come-ons I absorb, the more I understand that unlike getting too sloshed at a show, this particular hazard is mostly limited to one gender.”
Ranginui Walker — no beating about the bush with him – by Moana Maniapoto, E-Tangata
“Ranginui spoke out at a time when few Māori had a platform or the opportunity to step on to it. Syd Jackson was another. Both were well-educated, articulate and didn’t suffer fools. They translated our world for readers of magazines like the Listener and Metro. They were the lonely Māori voices in the hostile environment of the ‘70s and ‘80s. Both were vilified.”