Sidney Madden

🙏🏽 thanks for reading

Oh yeah, this is one of my favorite articles about Kendrick and the beef thus far. Thanks @sidmadden.bsky.social .

Reporting on sexual violence for years has at least acclimated me to the reality that laws don’t get enforced unless the crimes threaten the status quo protecting the powerful

The real MeToo “cancel culture” was what happened to the women and other victims who came forward. They were retraumatized, harassed, humiliated, sued, fired, and blacklisted. Then they were the subject of a revisionist history that MeToo went “too far” and deserved a reactionary backlash

Kendrick Lamar brought West Coast hip hop, Uncle Sam and Serena Williams to the Super Bowl With the biggest captive audience of his career, Lamar's performance conjures a medley of hits that spans his 15-year discography, and featured R&B star SZA as a special guest.

✍️ @sidmadden.bsky.social for NPR

I wrote this

that’s right.

I haven't been posting because I'm literally lost for words.

Beyoncé finally won album of the year. Don't mistake this moment for her peak Her Grammy win for Cowboy Carter will rightly be seen as historic. But for the artist, it's part of a grander thesis long in the making.

Decades from now, this will be immortalized by lazy historians as Beyoncé's peak. But it will be ahistorical, askew.
Bey's *been* lightyears ahead in ways the #Grammys couldn't comprehend. Her artistic vision persisted through institutional blindness. My full review 🐎 : www.npr.org/2025/02/03/n...

Beyoncé becomes the first black woman to win Album of the Year at the #GRAMMYs  since Lauryn Hill in 1999.

Please buy books and read them. It will matter moving forward.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Jan. 6 sedition defendants, Oath Keepers' Rhodes and Proud Boys' Tarrio, are released from prison after Trump clemency.

Me and @biglatto777.bsky.social talked about Big Mama Tingz for EBONY Dec 2024 issue. Cover story out now! thank you to this whole team 💪🏽🍑

And we can never forget Big Glo! GloRilla’s Glorious takes me from church to the trap to the PJ and back. I need all of it.

Keeping with the Naija vibes, Rema’s HEIS was one of the best surprises of the year. This is a career-fortifying album.

Next, one of my most anticipated albums of 2024, Tems Baby’s Born In The Wild. She remade R&B in her image and gave us a classic.

First off: Bey. Beyoncé. Cowboy Carter. The country dissertation we all needed. I definitely put two hands to heaven for this one.

The 50 Best Albums Of 2024 You can't always know that it's a great year for new music while it's happening, but there was a sense from the very start of 2024 that we were in for a ride.

IT'S BEST LIST SEASON B*&CHES! NPR Music's albums list has the best blurbs, the most variety, the most expansive energy. CHECK IT OUT www.npr.org/2024/12/02/g...

@npr.org dropped its 2024 Best Albums of the Year list today. Wrote about of few of the best of the best. You already know how I’m coming. www.npr.org/2024/12/02/g...

as much of a bummer as it is to see de la distance themselves from this book, i'm more disappointed by the fans who are twisting themselves into knots to act like the book is some gross cash grab rather than a love letter from a fan who happens to be one of the best hip-hop and jazz writers we have

Most Definitely. He’s showing us he’s revving up. There’s more otw, prbly right before or after the SB

I definitely don’t think this is his release for the Super Bowl. There’s more otw. He’s about to own 2025

Ironic how Drake’s main shot at Kendrick in his version of “Heart Pt 6” (back in May) was all about Kendrick’s unfit fathering, stunted growth as a leader and label head bc of childhood traumas

Kendrick working thru the guilt and growing pains of having to become a mogul for his own evolution:

“place my skill set as a Black exec I jog / my memory knowing Black Hippy didn’t work because of me / Creatively I moved on with new concepts in reach”

‘you talking money? need a hearing aid. you talking bout me? i don’t see the shade.’

the tracklist for GNX, a new project by Kendrick Lamar.

Luther, man at the garden, reincarnated.

If I have to get nerdy for a second. When Christian missionaries came to West Africa, they incorrectly translated Esu to Satan. And when we think about the garden, Adam, and Eve in Christianity. Lucifer is also there.

The glittery 80s club synths. The syrupy g funk, the regional Mexican music nods. This is so LA. This is his love letter.

Shoutout INK. got fingerprints on two of the definitive albums of 2024. Super producer tings.

The portal that Katt Williams opened this year, my God