It’s feudin’ season

Everybody seems to be in the mood to fight.

View this email online April 13, 2024 by Jacob Ganz NPR Music's chief editor, filling in for Ann Powers this week, offers observations on celestial battles ... and the solar eclipse. Astrida Valigorsky/WireImage/Getty Images  J. Cole and Drake perform during the 2023 edition of Cole's Dreamville festival in Raleigh, N.C., last April. Their collaborative track "First Person Shooter" recently touched off a war of words with fellow MC Kendrick Lamar.   If you’ve been feeling testy lately, there’s a fair bit of evidence, as one casts one’s eyes about the world of music, that you are not alone. In recent weeks, it’s seemed like everywhere you turn, there’s a musician spoiling for a fight. Maybe it’s the political climate making us all defensive. Maybe it’s the internet. (It’s always the internet.) Perhaps this week’s solar eclipse, a brief and (depending on your proximity to totality) mildly underwhelming celestial tete-a-tete, charged something in the atmosphere. Seriously now: A dispute about art isn’t unlike an eclipse. It’s an event that turns heads toward a familiar star en masse, even if it’s only doing so because it momentarily alters the function of that star in our perception. The feud that’s been blotting out the most light lately, at least if we’re measuring celebrity megawattage or Spotify play counts, is the three-way skirmish between rappers Drake, J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar.  I’m not going to bother recounting the details of this lopsided war, which has roots that go back almost a decade and count none other than President Barack Obama among its invested observers. But if you want to know why it draws into clear focus the wildly divided aims of hip-hop’s current elite, my colleague Sheldon Pearce cut to the heart of the matter in a new essay this week.  Aside from dropping hysterically accurate characterizations of each of the three semi-combatants (Drake, who has barely acknowledged the drama, is a “teen-drama bit player turned passive-aggressive love bomber;” Kendrick is a “world-weary eyewitness;” Cole is a “self-tormented rap monk”), Sheldon argues that a defining feature of today’s “murky” hip-hop landscape is that there are no clear stakes to the feud, though you can learn plenty about each artist from the way he’s approached it. Critics aren’t above launching into the fray when it feels like something serious is at stake. The biggest fracas in classical music lately has surrounded the 28-year-old conductor Klaus Mäkelä, the future music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. (If you want to get a sense of Mäkelä himself, Ari Shapiro interviewed him on All Things Considered the day after his appointment was announced.) The problem, according to The New Yorker critic Alex Ross, is that Mäkelä already has a job. Three of them, in fact: He currently leads the Oslo Philharmonic and the Orchestre de Paris, and is scheduled to become chief conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam in 2027, the same year he’ll take charge in Chicago. Ross has been on the record as a Mäkelä skeptic, though the point of his attack was broader: to bemoan the lack of devotion from young conductors today to a single orchestra. Ross makes a case for what can be when a conductor has time to deeply influence not just a group of musicians, but a city’s artistic character — and what’s at stake when that relationship cannot be sustained.  Sometimes we get invested in musicians butting heads because the stakes are high. On the other hand, sometimes a spat is just a spat, and there are musicians can make a certain kind of art — or lifestyle — out of that as well: Think about the boys in The Black Keys, who have tiffed with each other, and with rival musicians, enough through their career that every new album cycle seems to land them in another tussle.  Maybe the collective rubbernecking we engaged in during Monday’s eclipse offers another clue. I stood on the street in Manhattan with what seemed like thousands of other office workers wandering out of our caves to witness distant titans clashing. We’d known for decades that the paths of these giant bodies would overlap at the specific time, but when it happened, the illusion of collision, even consumption, was easy to mistake for prehistoric reality. As the light dimmed I noticed birds circling and diving above the skyscrapers and wondered if it was a daily ritual or if they, like the rest of us, were under the influence of a little wildness.  Newsletter continues after sponsor message Introducing the new "Tax Toccata in C major" ...   Had enough of fighting? Welcome to the no feud zone. Over nearly three decades, Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk made a life and a deeply influential, untouchable catalog of patient, reverent music that held a spark of something feral. Parker died in 2022 after battling ovarian cancer, and in a new profile in The New Yorker, Justin Taylor follows Sparhawk as he finds his way as a musician without her. The annual NEA Jazz Masters tribute concert happens this weekend in Washington. It’s hosted by my colleague Felix Contreras, and you can stream the celebration live as it happens. ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic isn’t a guy you think of as a fighter; even Coolio couldn’t stay mad at him. He does know about the intersection of songs and jokes, though, and he joined All Songs Considered’s Robin Hilton and Stephen Thompson (who compiled a personal top 40 of Al’s own greatest hits last year) to come up with a list of the funniest songs of all time. NPR’s Jazz Night In America program has been working on a short, visual documentary of Hazel Scott for some time. It finally saw the light of day this week, and if that name doesn’t ring a bell, you really should take 8 minutes and learn about one of the most talented American musicians of the 20th century. New Music Friday Maddy Rotman/Capitol Records NPR Music's Sheldon Pearce and Nate Chinen of Philadelphia Member station WRTI chatted about their favorite albums out Friday, April 12. Listen to the episode in your preferred podcast app, or at NPR.org. You'll find an abridged list of new releases below and a longer one (as well as our New Music Friday playlists) via the link above. Maggie Rogers, Don't Forget Me Shabaka, Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace Lizz Wright, Shadow Leyla McCalla, Sun Without the Heat METZ, Up On Gravity Hill Caroline Davis & Wendy Eisenberg, Accept When girl in red, I'M DOING IT AGAIN BABY! Future & Metro Boomin, We Still Don't Trust You Nia Archives, Silence is Loud V/A, My Black Country - The Songs of Alice Randall Still House Plants, If I don​'​t make it, I love u Clarissa Connelly, World of Work Meshell Ndegeocello, Red Hot and Ra: The Magic City Dave Douglas, GIFTS Introducing NPR Music+, a new way to support what you love and explore new music and conversations sponsor-free. NPR Music+ includes two podcasts with one convenient subscription: All Songs Considered and Alt.Latino, both sponsor-free. Learn more and support us at plus.npr.org/NPRmusic Get NPR Music+ Listen to your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to hear live radio from WUFT 89.1 (edit station). Need a new playlist? 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