Our weekly recap highlighting the best feature stories from around the internet.
Photo: Drake Photo: Drake
Stakes Is High: Drake Ghostwriting Accusations Matter More Than You Think – Kris Ex, NPR
“Drake has never contradicted (or even addressed) the evidence head on and Funkmaster Flex seems to have been silenced on the matter more than once, while the existence of Drake reference tracks has become an open secret in the music industry. The existence of those tracks and the purported assistance doesn't make Drake disposable — saying Drake isn't a talented musician is akin to saying Alex Rodriquez isn't a formidable athlete. But, as Rodriguez's legacy has been called into question by many due to his admission of steroid use, Drake's catalog would carry an asterisk that is not in line with the legacy he's been building for the past 10 years.”
We need to give students more, not less – by Henry Cooke, Stuff
“For young people today, a degree is more essential than ever. It's also more expensive than ever. Even if we ignore the absurdly high course costs that make tertiary education a serious financial risk rather than a logical next step, day-to-day life is close to impossible without some help.”
Why we need to stop talking about inequality – by Kirk Serpes, Public Address
“Let’s start by looking at how we currently communicate about inequality. Most of what you hear is about how bad it’s getting, how “the gap between rich and poor is widening”; the top 1% and their ever-increasing share of the wealth, and so on. This is problem-focused messaging that’s aimed at “raising awareness of the problem”. Of course, simply making people aware of a problem doesn’t mean they will want to take action to fix it, and it definitely doesn’t mean they will automatically connect the dots and come up with the appropriate solutions to the problem.”
Have 3 Undergrads Just Created An Instagram For Music? – by Denali Tietjen, Forbes
“Think of Cymbal as an Instagram for music. The app adopts a simple interface embracing a “less is more” vibe, allowing users to post just one song, illustrated by colorful album art. Like Instagram, Cymbal involves a home feed, personal profile, followers, likes, comments, hashtags and tags. Your Cymbal is your song of the moment–that throwback you’d jam to in your basement in high school, that song your friend’s band just released on SoundCloud. Your home feed, then, becomes an updated playlist curated by your friends, your profile: the soundtrack to your life.”
Putin v Punk Pussy – The Economist
“Though dedicated to ending Mr Putin’s reign and vociferous in her condemnation of his policy towards Ukraine, she can hardly be labelled a Western stooge. Indeed, she is happy to be called a punk and even an anarchist. All the same, she is plainly conscious that the publicity she gets in the West may well be her best protection. “I am a punk who reads The Economist,” she says.”
We’ve Reached Peak Outrage—Now What? – by Aimee Cliff, The Fader
“Now that music journalism has moved online, though, an artist doesn’t have to release a sub-par album to receive a backlash; everything they do is up for grabs. And whenever something headline-worthy happens, there seems to be some sort of an unwritten rule that every publication has to declare whether they’re down with it or over it.”
On criticism as a form of living – by Giovanni Tiso, Beat Bean Beam
“The phrase belongs to Masha Tupitsyn, in the dedication of her 2011 book Laconia to the late film critic Robin Wood, for whom she tells us that ‘criticism was a form of living’. Tupitsyn’s book – a collection of 12,000 tweets about film – is a mirror of that life, and an exploration of the daily practice and discipline it requires. And because she crafted each entry ‘as though it was for and part of a book’, it is also a critical meditation on the nature of our mediums, new and old. What does it mean to tweet about film or literature or art? What kind of act it is to string the resulting tweets into a book, and how does one text differ from the other, if at all?