Music

Finding Mr. Q

The search for the man behind the first Canadian hip hop single reveals the inequity in how creative contributions are remembered.

I Press Execute

Kate Bush invented the internet?

The Man Behind Meat Loaf

Songwriter Jim Steinman found his muse in the performer—and, forty years ago, they released their iconic, operatic rock album, Bat Out of Hell.

Dead Time

The temporal shift from serving in the Army to my formless but chaotic life in New York had unmoored me. Then I started listening to the Grateful Dead.

Lil' Kim and the New Possibility Model

Power broker, sex symbol, and kingpin of the block: reflecting on the rapper, who reconfigured familiar faces into something wholly unfamiliar, 20 years after the release of her debut album.

Gateway Spice

On the 20th anniversary of the Spice Girls' first album, I reflect on two decades of defending their commercial approach to feminism. 

A Singer Must Die

Leonard Cohen was our man, a guy who joked about eternal life and died a month later.

In The Air Again

My thirty-five-year love-hate-love relationship with Phil Collins.

Pushing the 'Ye Button

The archetypical Kanye fan is no longer the person who listened to Dipset but also watched Def Poetry Jam. They have been essentially priced out of fandom.

Yer Favourites

How an obnoxious subset of their fan base led me away from the Tragically Hip, and Gord Downie brought me back.