Rolling Stone December 14, 2017

MUSIC MORE OF 2017’S GREATEST MUSIC Our year-end coverage continues online. Check out our expanded lists of 2017 notables, plus the best of country, hip-hop, metal and more. MOVIES THE YEAR IN HORROR FILMS Cannibals, sunken places and M. Night Shyamalan – we rank the top 10 horror movies of 2017, from Split to Get Out. CULTURE HOW WOMEN SHAPED 2017 The Women’s March began the year that ended in the #MeToo campaign. We look back at a chain reaction of advocacy. TV THE YEAR’S BEST EPISODES From Twin Peaks to Better Things, our writers run down the best stand-alone TV episodes of the year. TAYLOR’S ‘REPUTATION’ Rob Sheffield and Brittany Spanos join host Brian Hiatt for the ultimate breakdown of Swift’s new album, Reputation – and take a deep look at a wild year in pop music. Rolling Stone Music Now airs…

Cardi B’s Beauty CARDI B REPRESENTS SOMEthing that I feel is missing a lot in the music industry: unapologetic honesty [“Cardi B Uncensored,” RS 1300]! She says the stuff no one else wants to say, and she’s not afraid to make mistakes or be vulnerable. That’s beautiful to me. Royalti, via the Internet CARDI USED TO STRIP, HAD A dream, worked really hard and attained it. She is vulgar, loud, challenges gender social norms – and is wildly successful. Octavia Harris, via the Internet CARDI B HAS GOT MUCH PERsonality, and that will carry her a long way. I just hope she stands on her own – Beyoncé is already trying to ease her way into Cardi’s shine. Louise_1, via the Internet I’M CLEARLY AN OLD MAN AT age 43, but I fail to see the “hilarity…

1. Eminem feat. Beyoncé “Walk on Water” “Time to wash out the blond,” Eminem raps on what might be his most self-lacerating song ever. The gripping can’t-look-away results are so emo even the deus ex machina of a Beyoncé cameo can’t save him from himself. 2. Kamaiyah “Dope Bitch” This imperiously cool Oakland rapper – “illest chick alive in some panties and a bra” – just released a great mixtape, Before I Wake. On “Dope Bitch,” she brings it like an Eighties gangsta over a trunk-rattling beat worthy of Too $hort. 3. Nilüfer Yanya “Baby Luv” “Do you like pain?” this 22-year-old Londoner sings sweetly over just a spare, surging guitar. “Call me sometime.” She spins her pain into Saturday sunshine. 4. Superchunk “What a Time to Be Alive” More than a quarter-century after they first pogo’ed out of North Carolina,…

The singer-songwriter’s latest album, Modern Burdens, features new recordings of songs from her 1996 debut, The Burdens of Being Upright. Liz Phair “Fuck and Run” This song made me want to stop and write about real things. I realized you could have conversational lyrics and a good melody. Guided by Voices “I Am a Scientist” Robert Pollard is talking about self-discovery as a grown-up. The low-fi sound inspired me to try something similar. My Bloody Valentine “Only Shallow” I remember laying on my back with my friend, stoned, and listening to this. We could visualize the sounds coming at us on a conveyor belt. It’s superatmospheric. Tom Waits “A Little Rain” I love a good, sad, rainy-day song, but this one takes the cake. The line “a little rain never hurt no one” sounds innocuous but is deeply meaningful. Pixies “Velouria” The lyrics remind me…

1 Kendrick Lamar DAMN. Rap’s most powerful voice at the absolute top of his game, with nothing left to prove but his staying power. Lamar’s 2015 watershed To Pimp a Butterfly was a brilliant hip-hop therapy session, exploding with quick-change flows, warped introspect and kaleidoscopic beats. The chart-topping DAMN. is his bare-knuckled MC blowout, just as potent but hitting with more immediate impact. He brushes off haters on “YAH.” (“Fox News wanna use my name for percentage”), then dives deeper, musing on family and referencing the Bible. On “FEEL.” he unloads his head over a trippy slow jam, going roughly 50 lines without break on one breathless stretch, a virtuoso synaptic display that’s dense without becoming impenetrable, thanks to Lamar’s feel for flow and hooks. The single “HUMBLE.” is a tour de…

1 Harry Styles Sign of the Times Styles’ first post-One Direction solo single was a shock – an eccentric piano ballad stretching to nearly six minutes, aiming for Bowie/Queen levels of glam grandeur, with the singer hitting heavenly high notes as he broods on death and rebirth. The reckless ambition of the song is only part of what’s brilliant about it. The confidence and empathy in his voice just keep surging as the music builds. Styles was the only rock star all year (Bono excepted) to aim for such a giant-hearted sound. A high-risk move for a former boy-band star – but he made it feel real. 2 Lorde Homemade Dynamite Lorde had an astounding breakthrough with Melodrama, but “Homemade Dynamite” is her shattering peak, a nervously sexy synth-pop thriller about meeting a kindred spirit…