Rolling Stone March 2022

RHIAN TEASDALE AND HESTER CHAMBERS don’t take themselves too seriously — even the name of their band, Wet Leg, came from combining random emojis on a keyboard. “It’s a really good way to find band names,” confirms Chambers, 27. With songs that drip in post-punk riffs and witty sexual innuendos, the U.K. duo are one of the year’s buzziest acts. At a recent show in Brooklyn, fans screamed along to “Chaise Longue,” which they wrote over Christmas 2019, freestyling Mean Girls references (“Would you like us to assign someone to butter your muffin?”) and a call-and-response of “Excuse me?” and “What?” Teasdale, 28, explains their chemistry with typical sarcasm: “It takes a lot of effort to look this chill.”…

THE TWO ATLANTA rappers in Earthgang know their music has a tendency to cover a lot of ground. So this year, Olu (a.k.a. Johnny Venus) and WowGr8 (born Eian Parker) — the duo who have spent the past few years reinventing Southern rap at a pace as dizzying as it’s been dazzling — decided to give listeners a road map to their next project. It started with shooting a sequence of five music videos to get across the sounds and themes of their second major-label album, Ghetto Gods. “We’re so creative, and we have so many great ideas and so many great stories to tell,” Olu, 32, explains over Zoom. “We feel like it would be to our betterment that we put it in forms where people are able to…

TUPAC SHAKUR WAS more than just one of the most influential rappers of the Nineties. He was also a poet and activist who became one of his era’s most revolutionary voices. The new exhibit Tupac Shakur: Wake Me When I’m Free showcases those aspects of his life in a stunning, immersive display of handwritten poems, song lyrics, previously unseen photographs, and more. “Hopefully, people are feeling that they have a one-on-one experience with Tupac as they go through this, and they walk away feeling a lot more inspired,” says Jeremy Hodges, the exhibit’s creative director. “But more importantly, I want them to love this man for who he was and what he was fighting for.” TUPAC SHAKUR: WAKE ME WHEN I’M FREE is open now at L.A. Live in Los Angeles,…

ALBUM 1. Stromae’s ‘Multitude’ Laced with experimental sounds from all over the world, this LP marks the Belgian singer’s return to music after eight years. With tracks like “Santé,” a tribute to overlooked workers, it’s a lyrical collage inspired by everyday people. FILM 2. ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Michelle Yeoh plays a dry cleaner taking on an evil tax auditor (Jamie Lee Curtis) with the help of alternate-timeline versions of herself. From A24 and the Daniels, the directors of Lil Jon’s WTF video “Turn Down for What.” BOOK 3. ‘Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure’ In tandem with an upcoming NYC exhibition of the same name, this book offers exclusive art, as well as anecdotes from the late artist’s family, reliving the influences of his early life with this intimate volume. TOUR 4. Jawbreaker This spring, post-hardcore firebrands Jawbreaker will play the…

DANI MILLER, the Rainbow Brite singer of riotous punk group Surfbort, doesn’t skateboard much anymore. Growing up in California, she and her friends would swipe extra wood from construction sites to build ramps, but these days Miller, 27, mostly uses her board for transport. “I can’t really do any tricks,” she admits. Still, the singer and sometime Gucci Beauty model is reconnecting with the sport in a new video, “Lot Lizard 93” — directed by and co-starring Olympian skater Lizzie Armanto. “It was a song about finding myself,” says Miller. “She took that and she came up with little snippets of my life.” In the video, Armanto briefly takes on Miller’s persona so “Dani” can hit a half-pipe — ending in a fall that takes Miller back on her journey. “Having…

IN A COZY CABIN OFF the coast of Seattle, Sasami Ashworth hammered out the heaviest metal riffs she could. It was February 2020, and the Los Angeles-based musician had decamped to a songwriting retreat with her ears still ringing from a devastating death-metal show she’d attended the night before. “I went so hard,” Ashworth, 31, recalls with a laugh. “I was throwing elbows alone.” Ashworth grew up playing French horn and studied classical music before working with acts like Cherry Glazerr and Vagabon. Her 2019 solo debut as Sasami was an intimate set of indie and shoegaze — but soon she began to itch for louder sounds. “I’ve always toured with an all-femme band, and that can be this physical battle of convincing the sound people you’re worthy of their attention,” she…