Tabla de contenidos para June 2022 en Rolling Stone

MOVING THROUGH the lobby of a posh Santa Monica hotel one May afternoon, Jerrod Carmichael is not so much walking as strutting. Tall and slender, he’s wearing a black cashmere sweater, matching pants, loafers, an Afro pick, and an outsize smile. And then there’s the brooch: Stunning gold. Cursive font. The letter R. “I love it so much,” Carmichael says, gazing down to admire the pin. It was a gift from a friend a few weeks ago, for Carmichael’s 35th birthday. Ever since, he’s been “building outfits around it.” The R is a beautiful piece of jewelry, to be sure. But it’s much more than a sartorial statement piece. It represents a rebirth for the comedian. R is the first letter of his real first name, Rothaniel (Jerrod is…

IN AN OTHERWISE ORDINARY Seoul neighborhood, the headquarters of YG Entertainment rise like a giant spaceship above the Han River. YG is one of South Korea’s largest entertainment agencies, producing international K-pop stars, as well as, more recently, actors and models. Opened in 2020, its new complex extends nine stories aboveground and five below. The upper floors are brightly lit and open: meeting rooms with huge windows, an employee cafeteria, even a pho restaurant. Hundreds of YG employees walk busily about. There are screens everywhere, showcasing YG’s huge roster. The underground floors feel more like a secret den: This is where artists practice in dance studios, record music, and trainees mingle with the stars. And it’s where Blackpink, the world’s most popular girl group, are recording songs for their…

I’M KNOCKING on the door of a spacious hotel suite in midtown Manhattan, and a teasing voice on the other side calls out in Spanish: “The person you’re looking for no longer lives here!” A couple of giggles follow, and the door swings wide open. Standing in front of me is Tokischa Altagracia Peralta, 26, the Dominican force of nature whose explicit, rambunctious, and proudly queer songs about sex, drugs, and popola (or pussy) have made her one of the most talked-about figures in the Spanish-speaking music world. She’s the dembow ambassador whose star power has been expanding like the universe, who’s made Bad Bunny fangirl at award shows, who’s selling out venues with no album out. She’s controversial, outrageous, and completely beloved or relentlessly reviled, depending on who…

WHEN THE NEWS BROKE in February that 18-year-old Jayquan McKenley, who recorded under the name Chii Wvttz, had been murdered in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, it sent ripples through a city already reeling from what seemed like one violent incident after another. Many seized on the slain teen’s affiliation with the burgeoning Brooklyn drill scene, seeing an inextricable link between the music and bloodshed — including Eric Adams, New York’s recently inaugurated mayor, who condemned drill as “alarming” and blamed it for inciting violence. To the millions of fans who listen to Brooklyn drill, that couldn’t be more wrong. They see drill as a vibrant new movement representing an outlet for young people in some of New York’s most dangerous neighborhoods and beyond. “Brooklyn is on fire right…

WHEN FIREBOY DML turned 10, his mother baked him a makeshift cake. She cut up some old cardboard to make a one and a zero, then stuck the numerals on top of the cake. It wasn’t the grandest of celebrations, but it was heartfelt, and it was all the family could afford at the time. What Fireboy remembers most, though, is how sad the other kids in their neighborhood seemed as they sang “Happy Birthday” to him. “I saw so much pain and struggle in their eyes, and that gave me clarity,” says the Nigerian singer, now 26. “Like, nobody really gives a fuck. Someone [could] say, ‘It’s someone’s birthday, let us go and celebrate’ — but it doesn’t mean they’re not feeling pain, it doesn’t mean they’re not…

WHEN ‘ROLLING STONE’ was a rickety operation being run out of a San Francisco loft, and the music business was still so low-key that you could score an interview with Jim Morrison by simply bumping into him, Ben Fong-Torres was there. One of RS’ first star writers, he finally gets his own spotlight in the excellent new documentary Like a Rolling Stone: The Life & Times of Ben Fong-Torres, directed by Suzanne Joe Kai. Fong-Torres was a more-than-almost-famous figure in his own right in the Seventies, as he wrote about artists from Ike and Tina Turner to Ray Charles to Bob Dylan and George Harrison (whom he unforgettably took to task for a lackluster tour). In the film, former subjects (Elton John, Carlos Santana) and colleagues (RS founder Jann…

ETHAN PHELAN MELZER’S secret life of hate ran deep. The 24-year-old private in the 173rd Airborne Brigade appeared to be just another young soldier, trying to find his way through military life at Fort Benning, Georgia. However, in his private time, prosecutors allege, Melzer had another, sinister side: He said he liked to perform macabre blood rituals; read obscure, gruesome tracts about torture and child abuse; collected violent iconography; and found like minds in the depths of Telegram, an encrypted messaging app so favored by extremists of all stripes that it is often referred to as “Terrorgram.” His handle was “Etil Reggad” — a near anadrome for “Elite Dagger.” By Melzer’s own account, enlisting in the Army was a ruse — on the encrypted app, he wrote that he…

BARTEES STRANGE needs a new hobby. Back when he wasn’t playing football in high school, studying communications in college, or working a nine-to-five at the FCC, he devoted every free hour to music. Now, his only job is writing, recording, and performing songs that defy the gravity of genre to scale some of the highest ambitions on the planet — and that leaves him with time to kill. He’s thinking of taking up rock climbing. “I’ve been watching all the documentaries,” Strange, 33, says between spoonfuls of pho on a gray March afternoon in Brooklyn. He’s never actually been rock climbing, he’s quick to add: “I’m horrified of heights, which is probably why I want to do it.” Whatever Strange wants to do, odds are he’ll pull it off.…

HARRY THROWS A HOUSE PARTY Harry Styles delivers sleek, heartfelt pop pleasures on his great third album By JON DOLAN Harry Styles Harry’s House SONY WHEN HARRY STYLES left the U.K. boy band One Direction he was eager to prove his musical ambition and historical knowledge. His debut 2017 single was the brazenly enormous Bowie/Queen-style ballad “Sign of the Times.” An artist in his position could’ve come off as insecure or overreaching, but Styles has relaxed with winning ease into his role as a gender-fluid, genre-fluid megastar, a new-look rock & roll gentleman who can flip from guitar raunch to soul to soft rock and convincingly pull off a come-on like “I know that you’re scared because I’m so open.” He’s a Mick Jagger for our more enlightened age.…

Your new album, Changeup, includes an acoustic remake of “Bad Reputation.” Why do you think that song still resonates with people all these years later? Everyone feels maybe they’ve got a bad reputation in one area of their life or another, or maybe [have been] unfairly accused — or just a misconception of who you are, and people throw that label at you. I always wore it as a badge of honor, because what people were saying to me was I had a bad reputation because I played an electric guitar and I had black hair and a leather jacket, and maybe I swore. … So I turned around the meaning of it, and I’m proud of my bad reputation, if that’s what it is — making people uncomfortable…

A FEW YEARS AGO, British indie-label owner Jonny Trunk grew nostalgic for his vinyl-shopping days: “You come across records you bought that might still have the stickers on them, but the shop’s gone.” He began collecting the bags that stores handed out with purchases — ending up with the 560 examples in his new book, A-Z of Record Shop Bags: 1940s to 1990s, each one recalling the days when record stores had their own aesthetics and personalities. “The bags conjure up very fond moments,” Trunk says. “People see bags from shops where they bought their first record, where they first heard a certain artist, met their girlfriend or boyfriend, first saw their first town punk or a local goth, or first got ripped off buying a reissue, not an…

‘NOBODY LIKES YOU when you’re 23,” as Blink-182 used to sing on MTV — 23 summers ago. But all these years later, pop punk isn’t merely all grown-up. In 2022, pop punk is back from the dead, more popular and influential than ever — suddenly, it’s the Teenager of the Year. It’s a massive resurgence for the music style that always fetishized the ideal of permanent adolescence, turning a bratty sneer into a way of life. But now, pop punk is downright respectable. How the hell did this happen? It’s beautifully bizarre, since pop punk was never about aiming for cultural significance. The whole artistic goal was encouraging listeners to take off their pants and jacket. But nobody could have predicted this music’s weird legacy, whether that means Avril…

SOPHIE ALLISON listens to a lot of country radio. “I hear all these songs about guys and their trucks,” the singer-songwriter behind Soccer Mommy says, calling from her Tennessee home a few weeks before her 25th birthday. “It’s so goofy, but it speaks to you, especially when you’re from the South.” That imagery inspired Allison to write “Feel It All the Time,” a hazy rocker about her own pickup. “It was a challenge to myself,” she says. “The idea of mentioning my truck in a song and having it not be, like, the cheesiest thing you’ve ever heard.” She won that bet and then some. “Feel It All the Time” appears on her third studio LP, Sometimes, Forever, produced by avant-garde noisemaker Daniel Lopatin. “It’s important to constantly be…