Tabla de contenidos para January 2023 en Rolling Stone

IN THE PARKING LOT of Anderson Memorial Park in Carson, California, just south of Compton and north of Long Beach, Ab-Soul chain-smokes Newports and speaks gently. We’re close to the houses he grew up in alongside his mother, aunts, and paternal grandparents. “I kinda like to call it the ghetto suburb,” the rapper, 35, says from the open back seat of a Tesla SUV. “Because it is a suburb, but it’s got all the other stuff, too.” And yet, as is typical of neighborhoods in the southern half of the county, it doesn’t look precisely like either: There are plenty of single-family homes, and some of the lawns sit pristine and manicured. But there are neglected stretches without commercial or residential development, and freeways snake in every direction, bisecting…

IN THE PARKING LOT OF A PANERA, just off I-95 in Stafford, Virginia, Rick Dunsford climbed into the passenger seat of a white Ford F-350 pickup. Depending whose account you believe, he was holding either $12,000 or $15,000 in cash. It was late afternoon on a Friday in July 2019. Dunsford had been driving through the night, making stops along the way—in Charlotte, North Carolina, to pickup an associate, Madeline Rose; at his sister’s house in Virginia, to collect some of the money; and at a couple of different Wells-Fargo locations to get the rest of it. Madeline was in the back seat of the F-350. In the driver’s seat was Robert Bird, who’d brought what they’d come for. * Before Bird handed it over, he offered them a…

WHAT’S NEW, WHAT’S NEXT, WHAT’S NUTS THE BREAST PUMP was waiting for Meg Remy at her Toronto home when she returned from the hospital with her twins. A friend had given it to her, even though Remy wasn’t initially sure if she’d use the machine. But with two newborns to feed, she charged it up, flipped the switch — and out came a guttural womp. “The minute I heard it, I was like, ‘What is this fucking sound?’ ” says Remy, 37, bandleader and creative force behind the always-inventive, always-evolving pop outfit U.S. Girls. She recorded the pump’s singular pulse and sampled it for “Pump,” the final song on U.S. Girls’ new album, Bless This Mess. The song’s verses are basically a “straight-up reportage of my experience in the…

THE LINE AROUND Manhattan’s S.O.B.’s is a long one as fans wait to see Ambré Perkins perform. Blunts spark outside the club, and the vibe is calm yet charged, dark yet flowy — just like the music that has made Ambré, 26, one of R&B’s most compelling new voices. Growing up in New Orleans, where she moved often through foster care, she recalls being surrounded by music. She feels her childhood “contributed to me being an observant person … having to view the world from a different perspective because I met so many people.” 10-SECOND BIO HOMETOWN New Orleans LEGENDS ONLY Her album 3000º is titled in tribute to her heroes Juvenile and Lil Wayne (specifically, their albums 400 Degreez and 500 Degreez) and André 3000.…

SEVEN MINUTES before Bruce Springsteen is scheduled to call to talk about his new R&B-covers album, Only the Strong Survive, a number I’ve never seen before, from Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, pops up on my phone. “Hey,” says a gruff, familiar voice at the other end of the line. “It’s Bruce.” He’s eager to talk about how he cut the LP at his home studio in New Jersey as a way of honoring some of his favorite R&B greats from the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties: “It started out with me saying, ‘I’ve written songs. I’ve made movies. I’m sitting here in the house. I like to record. Let me go record songs that I love.’ ” In the next 30 minutes, we also discuss his next covers album,…

WHAT TO WATCH IN 2023 We live in an age of nonstop content. Who’s to say what’s worth your time? We are! Here’s a preview of shows and movies we’ve got our eyes on BY DAVID FEAR AND ALAN SEPINWALL TOY STORIES Why make movies about flesh-and-blood humans when you can make them about plastic people? Barbie July 21 It was perhaps inevitable that Mattel’s signature doll would get her own movie — what was surprising was that the person making it would be none other than Greta Gerwig. The Lady Bird and Little Women director, who also co-wrote the script with her partner (in life and in movies), Noah Baumbach, is said to have fashioned quite a campy romp centered around the always fashion-forward blonde. And if the…

BROOKE SMITH will forever be known for her role as Buffalo Bill’s unfortunate kidnap victim, Catherine Martin, in The Silence of the Lambs. But before she “put the lotion in the basket,” Smith was a part of a hardcore punk scene that congregated at dingy New York clubs like CBGB and Great Gildersleeves for shows by Agnostic Front, Cro-Mags, Bad Brains, and other underground icons. “I was attracted by the anger of the music,” says Smith. “And the outsiderness of it all. You recognize your tribe when you meet them. I just felt, ‘This is where I’m supposed to be.’ ” From the very beginning, she brought her camera along with her and captured intimate photos of performers and fans. The pictures sat in boxes for decades before she…

“I HAVE NEVER FELT pressured to do anything in my career,” says Sheryl Lee Ralph, 66, who recently produced a Broadway play on top of winning an Emmy for her portrayal of Barbara Howard on the hit ABC sitcom Abbott Elementary. “Except excellence.” A onetime Dreamgirl with experience acting for luminaries such as Sidney Poitier, Ralph spent decades crafting quintessential roles. But a lack of mainstream recognition nearly led her to quit 15 years ago. “I wasn’t feeling seen,” she says. During a chance encounter with a casting director, Ralph was given a much-needed reality check. “Do you know who you are?” the director said. “You can do anything!” Now, her role on Abbott Elementary feels less like work and more like celebration. “The way people respond to me,…

SINCE THE FIRST popular video game was released more than 50 years ago, they have often been brushed off as niche and nerdy — the arena of the basement dweller, the outcast, the arcade-addicted kid who didn’t want to engage with the real world. But that’s never really been true — and it’s especially not now. Today, Zelda, Mario, and Sonic are household names. Epic world-building has become not just a career for game designers, but also a passion for countless creators. Hundreds of millions of people go to Twitch to watch others conquer bosses and reveal tricks, and hundreds of millions more talk about it on Discord. Viewership for League of Legends World Championships rivals that of the Super Bowl. At this point, it’s estimated that there are…

MÅNESKIN’S ROCK & ROLL CIRCUS The runway-ready Italian glam-punks wink their way to glory on their third album By DAVID BROWNE REMEMBER WHEN rock stars were flamboyant, excessive, larger-than-life libertines? Neither do we, but Måneskin want to jog everyone’s recall. Rush!, the third album by these former Eurovision winners and would-be rock saviors from Rome, works hard at living up to the exclamation point in its title. If we’re to believe them, Måneskin’s world is one wicked bacchanalia after another, where weed, beer, cocaine, and “hot chicks” are all in sight, and lead singer Damiano David is, in his words, “a lion tamer/Of indecent behavior/Making love with danger.” One minute, he’s watching a fading, coked-up Nineties supermodel steal a Basquiat off a wall, and the next, he’s being flattered:…

Your new movie Babylon is about the excesses of Hollywood’s early days. I heard that in that first crazy party scene there were extras who were actually doing coke and molly. [Laughs.] If I had seen anybody taking anything, I would’ve just assumed it was a prop. A few people were asked to leave, I guess. But I did think, “I’m not sure what my mother would think of this scene.” What was she like? My parents were both very bright and funny. My dad was a history teacher. My mother chose to stay home and raise four kids. They both grew up very, very poor in the Depression, so they knew how to do things for themselves. What’s something they taught you and your siblings that’s really mattered?…