Tabla de contenidos para January 2025 en Rolling Stone

Nikki Glaser is turned on. That the comedian is, at full volume, discussing her level of arousal in a restaurant — she is “damp downstairs,” to be precise — is probably not surprising to anyone who has seen her four stand-up specials. In her most recent, Someday You’ll Die, Glaser describes her boyfriend of roughly 10 years, Chris Convy (who also produces Glaser’s work), blindfolding and restraining her while pretending to be a parade of men coming in to … actually, like Glaser, feel free to use your imagination here. The Golden Globe–nominated HBO special came out in May, less than a week after The Roast of Tom Brady, a starry, live Netflix production where Glaser had a career-changing set, ridiculing her fellow roasters, making fun of Brady for…

The world’s biggest drill rapper may spend the rest of his life behind bars — and no one should want his crown. In November, Chicago rapper Lil Durk was indicted in an alleged murder-for-hire plot to kill Quando Rondo of Savannah, Georgia, in L.A. in August 2022. Quando’s cousin Lul Pab was murdered instead, spurring Quando’s anguished cries at the crime scene. Then Durk put Quando’s “no” wail on the original version of his “Same Side” song, to the awe of the same voyeurs who are now calling Durk foolish for engaging in the beef that they giddily spectated. Durk’s arrest punctuates the feud between him and his friend King Von (who was killed in 2020) and their rivals YoungBoy Never Broke Again (currently incarcerated) and Quando Rondo (recently…

Dan Nigro’s emo-inflected ’00s indie band, As Tall As Lions, always hovered on the edge of mass success, but Nigro has since decided they were missing one thing: a great producer. “I always wish that I had somebody when I was younger that just helped shift me a little bit,” he says. “Like, ‘That’s cool, but you should listen to this Neil Young song.’ ” Nigro ended up playing that very role for two of the most exciting new pop stars in years, Chappell Roan and Olivia Rodrigo, serving as producer, co-writer, and key collaborator to both. He recently scored six Grammy nominations, including Producer of the Year, mostly for his work on Roan’s instant-classic debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, and her follow-up single…

1 THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD This 2017 Nintendo title reinvented the ways players see and interact with games. The Legend of Zelda is a series defined by reinvention. With some exceptions, each game stars a different hero named Link, in a different era, trapped in a perpetual loop in the fight between good and evil. Each version presents new innovations, new mechanics, and new worlds, down to their art, style, and tone. But Breath of the Wild was revolutionary. It took the very simple premise of the original — a hero dropped cold into an unfathomably huge world — and ran with it. Other open-world games let you feel like you’re exploring, but Breath of the Wild makes every action a puzzle to solve. Leaving…

Sophie Allison is at the wheel of her Toyota Venza, a quarter-size translucent crystal dangling from her rearview mirror. Cruising through Nashville’s Berry Hill area, she decelerates to gaze at a suburban house framed by artfully landscaped flowers. “I used to get so annoyed with my mom,” she says. “She would be driving and she’d slow down and be like, ‘This house is so pretty. That bird in that tree is so pretty.’ And I’d be like, ‘Drive, bitch!’ And now, that’s me. Aging: You turn into your mother.” It’s a realization that some people spend a lifetime arriving at, but Allison, who records as Soccer Mommy, seems to have it figured out at 27. The concept of adulthood comes up frequently during our sunny October day in her…

YANA YATSUK Photographer Yana Yatsuk fought the pull of the ocean in order to capture Coldplay’s Chris Martin swimming in the Pacific for the cover. “Gravity felt like it was against me the whole time,” says Yatsuk. It was her first time using a housing device, a casing that allows cameras to venture safely underwater, and the 22-pound aluminum equipment didn’t make the task any easier. Between that and racing against the setting sun, the odds were stacked against the award-winning photographer — and her subject. Yatsuk credits Martin’s perseverance for helping to yield timeless, beautiful photos: “It was really cool to have him down to do something that’s risky and not easy,” she says. Previously, Yatsuk photographed Billie Eilish for the July-August 2021 cover of Rolling Stone. WAISS…

America is in a weird moment as we head into the new year: grappling with the malcontent that’s led Donald Trump to the White House again, bracing for deportations, corporate marauding, and more cultural upheaval. Most of the writers here are each unpacking what it all means through searing fiction or incisive essays — and a couple are just going for pure escapism. DEATH OF THE AUTHOR Nnedi Okorafor HARPERCOLLINS, JANUARY Afrofuturist superstar Nnedi Okorafor weaves a meta tale about a Nigerian author named Zelu whose latest work — a sci-fi epic about robots and AI overlords — skyrockets her to literary fame, but also begins to escape her grasp. This embedded narrative changes more than Zelu’s life; it changes what the entire world could be. HOW TO…

‘How many of you know that I’m suing the state of Louisiana?” teacher Chris Dier asks his AP U.S. history class. Twenty-two hands shoot up in the air — all but one student have heard the news about Dier’s lawsuit. Most had seen the Times-Picayune article two weeks earlier circulated on social media, with the headline “Louisiana’s 2020 Teacher of the Year Sues State to Stop Ten Commandments Law” above a photo of Dier and his thick clear glasses, tattoos peeking out of his navy polo shirt. A student asks Dier to explain the law. “The law says that every teacher, all public-school teachers, have to post the Ten Commandments in the front of their classroom, in a certain size font, and that they’re legally obligated to do this.…

West Los Angeles’ Gjusta Bakery is bustling on a sunny Friday afternoon. Seven-foot-high stacks of flour bags lay near the entrance, soon to be turned into pastries. The main room is full of locals seeking an early-afternoon pick-me-up, but the backyard is quieter, with rustic tables and large plants under a makeshift roof made of golden tarp. ● André 3000 walks in unassumingly, dapping me and joking that our shared first name is a great one. I agree as we sit and get acquainted over matcha lattes. Dressed in a camouflage jacket, pants in a different camo pattern, and his trademark red beanie, André mentions that he’s been under the weather after traveling home from Japan, where he and his bandmates recently played six improvised instrumental shows at Blue…

Dylan Fact vs. Fiction The “totally inaccurate moment” you mention [in your Timothée Chalamet cover story, December 2024] is diabolical. As in Don’t Look Back. What a great piece. @realjanetmaslin, via the internet Life Imitating Art I liked this profile, particularly the part where Chalamet likens Dune to his own personal “going electric” moment. One could also say that Bob Dylan was also deeply into “the spice” at the time of his life. @Steven_Hyden, via the internet For Walk Hard Fans Great story, and 200,000 bonus points for the Dewey Cox reference. @ericschuras, via the internet Justice for the Good Old Boys In response to the essay about Southern rock in your December issue: Southern rock was popular for a whole lot longer than just “a hot Seventies minute.”…

When Ringo Starr was gearing up to record his first country-music album in 54 years, he was in tune with the genre’s surging popularity, including Beyoncé’s twangy pivot, Cowboy Carter. “We were all aware of Beyoncé. I think it’s great she made that move,” Starr, 84, tells Rolling Stone. But the former Beatles drummer says Look Up, his collection of 11 new rootsy songs (out Jan. 10), was inspired not by country mania, but by a chance meeting with old-timey music champion T Bone Burnett at a book reading by George Harrison’s widow, Olivia. “I said, ‘I’m doing these EPs, and if you’ve got a song, why don’t you send it to me?’ And he sent me this beautiful country song,” Starr remembers. Burnett, the mastermind producer behind the…

Donald Trump’s big victory and horrific agenda — for military-led mass deportation, accelerating climate change, rolling back reproductive rights, and pursuing dictatorial powers — sent Democratic governors leaping to the barricades. Or, at least, the microphones. In the days following the 2024 election, California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared he’d invoke a special session of the state legislature to help Trump-proof the Golden State. Gov. Tim Walz, the vanquished vice presidential candidate, returned home quoting Bob Dylan — promising Minnesota would be a “shelter from the storm” — and pledging to “stand up and fight” Trump’s “hateful agenda.” Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois delivered a message directly to Trump: “You come for my people, you come through me.” For the governors, talking tough to Trump mixes principle, policy, and —…

Kendrick Ruled 2024. What Does He Do Next? In 2024, the world of rap be-longed to Kendrick Lamar. It’s not just that he scored two of the year’s defining hits, one alongside Future and Metro Boomin, “Like That,” and a second on his own, “Not Like Us” — and delivered another unforgettable highlight of the year with the Top Five hit “Euphoria.” Nor is it that he was named as the halftime-show performer at Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans. By sparking his long-running tensions with former collaborator Drake into a super-ugly cataclysm of diss tracks and unsubstantiated allegations, Lamar effectively remade his public persona from a poetic, imaginative, and enigmatic superstar to a scrappy, vengeful, and prideful fulcrum of West Coast rap, leaving older admirers straining to understand…

“I don’t have no boundaries.” What is the biggest misconception about you? People underestimate my power of knowledge. People tend to try to take advantage of me with the things that I don’t know. But with the things that I do know, I can see how shocked they are once it comes out of me, and they’ll be like, “Whoa.” You’re constantly busy, from sponsoring the Olympic water-polo team to being Taylor Swift’s “King Swiftie.” What do you do to relax? I don’t even know what relaxed means right now. The way that my manager has me running around, I don’t even know how to spell the word. Long as I feel like the direction is good enough for me to go in, then I’ll go in that direction.…