Black Panther: Revolution

KENDRICK LAMAR | STEELY DAN INSIDE THE RETURN OF 'ATLANTA'
Issue 1308
March 8, 2018
The
BLACK PANTHER
Revolution
CHADWICK BOSEMAN and the
MAKING of a RADICAL SUPERHERO
F E AT UR E S
‘Black Panther’
How Chadwick Boseman and
Ryan Coogler made the most
radical superhero movie ever.
By Josh Eells ...................32
Dua Lipa
Meet the star who went from
an adolescence in Kosovo to a
billion-stream hit.
By Jonah Weiner ............38
American Exodus
Extreme weather displaced
more than a million
people in 2017. It could
reshape the nation.
By Jeff Goodell .............42
R S R EP OR TS
The Wild Crusade
for Clean Pot
The weed industry is vast,
toxic and largely unregulated.
Can a corporate exec and a
drug dealer make it safer?
By Amanda Chicago
Lewis ................................... 26
NEW RULES
RO CK & ROL L “Women are
stepping up,” says
‘Atlanta’ Gets Back Dua Lipa. “We
How the hip-hop-centric TV just have to be
show took a left turn for its given a chance.”
second season. ........................9 Page 38.
DEPA R T MEN TS
Letters......... 5 Records......51
Playlist .........6 Movies .......55
ON THE COVER Chadwick Boseman

photographed in Los Angeles on
January 28th by Norman Jean Roy.
BRYAN DERBALLA
Grooming by Saisha Beecham at Cloutier

Remix. Styling by Alison Edmond at Art
Department LA. Coat by Palace Costume.
Pants by Devil Fashion. Black Panther
necklace by Marvel.
M a r c h 8 , 2 018 RollingStone.com | R ol l i n g S t o n e | 3
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Correspondence Love Letters
& Advice
Greta Rambles On
Drugged-Out Justice stop comparing greta van
Fleet to Led Zeppelin [“Greta
In RS 1304/1305, Paul Solotaroff investigated how Van Fleet’s Misty Mountain Re-
district attorneys in Massachusetts used tainted lab tests vival,” RS 1304/1305]. I think
in thousands of drug convictions – and covered the whole it’s great that they are embrac-
mess up [“And Justice for None”]. Readers responded. ing the Sixties and Seventies,
but I want to give them time to
ou r cr i mi na l-j ust ice this tarnishes the in- hone their sound.
system utterly fails to ensure tegrity of the justice system, Debbie Walkman
that scientific testing admit- especially when it takes Via the Internet
ted in court is reliable. Until years to be corrected. It also
we take the necessary steps, devastates the individual. from my first 45, “i want
state crime labs will continue There is a dire need to cre- to Hold Your Hand,” to Tool and
to focus on convicting defen- ate a just means to address more, rock & roll has helped
dants rather than on produc- wrongful convictions. keep me going. Now Greta Van
Bono Looks Back ing accurate test results. Radha Natarajan, Boston Fleet is up there with them.
Joe St. Louis, Tucson, AZ Keeping those rocks a-rollin’!
it makes me sad as an Jeff Brown
American that there are rock & judge carey is a hero Blue Hill, ME
roll stars who are far more ar- for having the stones to
ticulate, brilliant and qualified make this ruling, and Bon Jovi Forever
for the office of the president Luke Ryan, that tena-
than Donald Trump [“Bono: cious defense attorney, i am so excited bon jovi
The Rolli ng Ston e Inter- is a superhero. Here’s made it into the Hall of Fame
view,” RS 1304/1305]. I say hoping that new laws [“Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:
Bono for president! punish those who hide Meet This Year’s Class,” RS
Anita Morris and subvert evidence. a r e w e r e a lly say i ng 1304/1305]. Songs like “Always”
Culpeper, VA Neena, via the Internet that the busts that produced still make me cry, and “Livin’ on
the evidence are irrelevant a Prayer” is as relevant now as it
it’s r are that someone as i wonder what percent- and void? The mentality that was back in the Eighties. I have
famous as Bono understands age of authorities could police and prosecutors al- moved my life-size Richie Sam-
the impact that their celebrity under oath truthfully state ways “get it wrong” is part bora poster to the ceiling above
can have on the world. His hu- that they have never broken of the problem with the vic- my bed. Well done, boys. No one
mility comes through when he the law while in uniform or tim mentality we suffer in deserves it more.
speaks, and his actions prove on the job. this culture. Ash Keir
it’s genuine. I’ve never bought J. Alexander McFarlane Jerome Lawrence Via the Internet
a U2 album, but after reading Melbourne Beach, FL Hilliard, OH
the article, I actually may go see Seger’s Deep Roots
them in concert.
Tom Galan Not unlike so many great U2 election, and in increasing fed- bob seger is real, authen-
Via the Internet songs. eral and state fuel taxes, I’m not tic music from the soul of Amer-
Kim Lower too worried about losing my job. ica [Q&A, RS 1304/1305]. He
i c a n’ t qu i t l ook i ng at Roanoke, VA Mark Washatka was “alt-country” and “Amer-
Bono’s picture on the cover. He’s Appleton, WI icana” before the terms were
still that 14-year-old kid who Keep On Truckin’ invented.
left home. Camila Breaks Out Uberman1
Rich Davis having been in the truck- Via the Internet
Citrus Heights, CA ing business since 1976, I’m al- 2018 w il l be c a mil a c a-
ways interested in the future of bello’s year [“From Cuba With
i find it sign i f ic a n t, my craft [“Death of the Amer- Pop: Camila Cabello’s Rise,” RS Contact Us
and not at all surprising, that ican Trucker,” RS 1304/1305]. 1304/1305]. I do have a feeling LETTERS to ROLLING STONE , 1290 Avenue
Bono still finds inspiration Electric trucks, state-of-the-art there will still be Fifth Harmo- of the Americas, New York, NY
10104-0298. Letters become the
from the Psalms of David. They safety enhancements and futur- ny backlash to deal with, but property of ROLLING STONE and may
are a lovely and painful narra- istic self-driving vehicles are all she’s always been the most tal- be edited for publication.
tive of the human experience: welcomed and encouraged. But ented of the five. Going solo was E-MAIL letters@rollingstone.com
self-doubt, loneliness, identity until we get politicians who are a genius career move! SUBSCRIBER SERVICES Go to
RollingStone.com/customerservice
crises, cries of injustice, and more interested in our decay- Ozziesmare •Subscribe •Renew •Cancel •Missing Issues
also hope, grace and great joy. ing infrastructure than the next Via the Internet •Give a Gift •Pay Bill •Change of Address
MY LIST
OUR FAVORITE SONGS, ALBUMS AND VIDEOS RIGHT NOW
2. John Prine
1. Stephen “Summer’s End”
Malkmus At 71, Prine will soon
release his first album of Joe
& the Jicks
“Middle
new songs in more than
a decade. “Summer’s
End” is as immediately
Elliott
America” familiar as your favorite
easy chair, a casu-
My Favorite
Glam-Rock
At this point in his ally vivid reflection on
nearly 30-year career, change as the only thing
Songs
the former Pavement you can really count on.
leader has given us Def Leppard just made
hundreds of perfect their catalog available
to stream, and they’ll
Cali-gold guitar hooks.
But the tender beauty 3. Low Cut tour with Journey this
summer.
of his latest with the Connie
Jicks is rare even by “Beverly”
his high standard.
Mott the Hoople
With echoes of Joe “All the Young Dudes”
Jackson and Billy Joel, I was enamored with Ian
these lowbrow rock & Hunter’s persona and
roll idealists hit a surpris- voice. Every time I hear
ingly moving note of the song, even now, hair
piano-pop grandeur. on my arm stands up.
T. Rex
4. Dean Summerwind 6. Kali Uchis
“Metal Guru”
This is the perfect pop
“Parked Out by the Lake”
This viral-smash country parody is a
feat. Tyler, the song. It wasn’t necessar-
ily the best song Marc
one-joke wonder (“I’m parked here by Creator, and Bolan ever wrote, but it’s
the lake/Eighty miles from Santa Fe/
And it’s the lake that you remember
Bootsy Collins stunning as a stand-alone
“After the Storm” three-minute tune.
where I park”). It’s still as catchy as
anything on real-country radio. Sweet-voiced Colombian-
American R&B singer Uchis David Bowie
teams up with a funk royal “Starman”
(Bootsy) and a hip-hop What a strange creature
absurdist (Tyler) for a sump- he was. When he did this
tuous ode to staying tough on Top of the Pops, it
COURTESY KALI UCHIS; MARC GRIMWADE/WIREIMAGE; NOAM GALAI/GETTY IMAGES

in hard times. connected with so many
people, from Boy George
to Morrissey to me. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: MIKE LAWRIE/GETTY IMAGES; KAZUYO HORIE;
Wizzard
“See My Baby Jive”
John Lennon once said,
7. Dream Wife “Glam rock is just rock
“Let’s Make Out” & roll with lipstick,” and
that’s what Wizzard was.
Dream Wife are three This song is like Phil
women who met in Spector’s Wall of Sound.
5. Blood Orange college in the U.K.
and bonded over a
“June 12th” shared love of David Gary Glitter
Blood Orange (a.k.a. U.K. art-pop Bowie and disdain for “I’m the Leader of the
explorer Dev Hynes) makes avant- patriarchal bullshit. Gang (I AM)”
R&B songs that can come on like This snarlingly catchy Nobody talks about Gary
passing moods but still manage to song from their debut Glitter, because he’s a
feel like radical political statements. LP is the kind of make- child molester, but there’s
That’s certainly the case with this out jam that bites your no doubt that in 1973 he
gauzily chill meditation on race, love tongue and sends you made a fantastic song.
and individual freedom. home bleeding.
ON NEWSSTANDS NOW
Wherever Magazines Are Sold
PROFILE MAVIS STAPLES P. 18 | TRENDS WHY ARE ALBUMS SO LONG NOW? P. 20
Rock&Roll THE NEXT

EPISODE
Lakeith
Stanfield
(left) and
Donald
Glover
on set
How ‘Atlanta’ Reloaded

F
a ns of “a t l a n t a” l e a r n e d
early on to set aside expectations.
The hip-hop-centric entirely African-American writers’ room,
connected with a bigger audience than ex-
From the very first episode, the FX show became a pected and earned Glover two Emmys.
show – about an aspiring rapper
named Paper Boi (played by Brian Tyree
surprise hit last year. But the show’s runaway success created
a problem when it came to crafting the
Henry) and his cousin-manager Earn So why did the second season, which debuts March 1st.
(played by Donald Glover, also the show’s
creator) – was a slyly odd ride: Storylines
writers take a left turn When you’ve already made an episode with
an African-American actor playing Justin
GUY D’ALEMA/FX
would appear and disappear; notes of mag- for Season Two? Bieber, what’s the most surprising thing
ical realism would crack the surface; vio- you can do? “When you set that up with the
lence would collide with absurdist humor. BY JONAT H A N R I NGE N first season,” says Stephen Glover, Don-
Its hyperspecific point of view, honed by its ald’s brother and lead writer of many of the
R&R
show’s best episodes, “keeping [view-
ers] of balance becomes harder to do.
And we didn’t want to just re-mine
the same stuf for the second season.” The New Muse: Secret Shows, Trump
Instead, the show goes in the op-
posite direction and focuses more on
linear narrative and storytelling. Earn
Bashing and a Return to Basics
begins to grow into his role as Paper Frontman Matthew Bellamy breaks down three ways the stadium prog band
Boi’s manager, while Paper Boi him- is catching up with the times and rethinking the future. By Andy Greene
self grapples with an identity crisis
as his rising fame gets in the way of
his main source of income, selling No Concept, No Problem
weed. “We’ve kind of been comparing Muse have spent the past decade crafting elaborate, symphonic concept albums
the season to a sophomore record,” that take on everything from drone warfare to political revolution. But in a
says Hiro Murai, who directs the bulk radical twist, they have decided to lose the high concepts and release new songs
of the episodes (Glover helms the individually weeks after recording them, working with diferent producers along
rest). “We’ve drawn Kanye parallels the way. “It reminds me of when the band first started, where you’re thinking about
– if the first season is College Drop- just one great song rather than a whole album,” says frontman Matthew Bellamy.
out, this one is Late Registration.” “It’ll lead to a consistently good listen throughout, since all of the tracks are
Or, as Henry puts it, “The first season going to have very individual sounds and experiences.”
created this land of absurdity, where-
as the second season is more linear – Looking for Truth in the Trump Era
our feet are definitely on the ground.” Bellamy, who was born in Cambridge, England, spent a lot of time watching cable
Atlanta’s portrayal of the music in- news while on tour last year. “It’s hard to comprehend the level of bubble that
dustry becomes deeper and more gim- the U.S. news works within,” he says. “We’re living in a time where pointing out
let-eyed this season. Paper Boi goes someone’s inaccuracies – using science, for example – is becoming increasingly
into the studio with a local MC who diicult and sometimes perceived as an insensitive thing to do.” He decided to
loads his rhymes with constant drug channel those thoughts into the new song “Thought Contagion,” a
huge anthem about the evaporation of facts.
references, in the style of current su-
perstars like Future and Young Thug,
and is dismayed to learn the MC’s Concerts for Hardcore Fans Only
clean-living reality doesn’t match his Muse will headline a series of festivals including Bonnaroo this year, but they’ve
image. “Rap started as this very black, recently begun working considerably smaller shows into their schedule. In
sociopolitical type of thing,” says Ste- August, they let their fan club vote on super-deep cuts for a show at London’s small
phen. “It’s turned into pop music – we Shepherd’s Bush Empire. They’re following it up with a Paris show where fans will
laugh about how everybody is doing pick between two thematically similar songs, like best prog song or best B side.
“I’ve been so surprised they even know some of these songs,” says Bellamy. “It’s
the same thing in their songs. They’re
a good feeling when you thought people had written something of and
all doing the same drugs, drinking the suddenly 15 years later you’re playing it and everyone loves it.”
same lean. Not all of these people are
really drinking lean! They just know
how to sell records.”
The success of Atlanta comes at
a time when there’s a growing wave
of acclaimed and hugely profitable
projects by African-American cre-
ators, including Black Panther and
Get Out. “The way Donald and I look
at it is that Hollywood is realiz-
ing, ‘Holy shit, we can make a
lot of money!’ ” Stephen says.
“But we want to get to a point
where [funding projects by “We’re living
black filmmakers and show-
runners] isn’t just something they in a time where
do to make money. Where people pointing out
don’t see us as a fad.” And if any fans inaccuracies
are worried that the shift toward lin-
ear storytelling means there won’t – using
be any surprises, the alligator that science, for
plays a key role in one of the first sec-
SCOTT DUDELSON/WIREIMAGE
ond-season episodes should set their example –

minds at ease. “Before we started Bellamy is becoming
writing, we spent a week in the writ- playing in
increasingly
ers’ room, just talking about our lives. California
And we ended up with some” – Ste- in December difficult.”
phen says, laughing – “wide-ranging
ideas for Season Two.”
Siblings at War, at
Home and on Tour
OASIS
L i a m vs. Noel Ga l l agher
In Oasis, Noel Gallagher wrote the songs and
his brother Liam (left) sang them. But they’ve
barely spoken since a vicious backstage brawl
in 2009. “He’s a fuckin’ twat,” says Liam, who
launched his first solo tour last year. “The songs
don’t belong to him.”
The Battle of the THE KINKS

R ay vs. Dav e Dav ies
Black Crowes After 30 years of tension – and an endless

debate over who is responsible for the sound
of “You Really Got Me” – Ray (left) and Dave
LECCA; PETER BYRNE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; JOSEPH OKPAKO/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES; BOBBY BANK/
Davies split in 1996 and have been touring

FROM TOP, LEFT TO RIGHT: SCOTT DUDELSON/WIREIMAGE; TIM MOSENFELDER/GETTY IMAGES; SACHA
Chris and Rich Robinson have competing tours separately ever since. A reunion seems unlikely.
GETTY IMAGES; LARRY MARANO/REX SHUTTERSTOCK; ANDREW MACCOLL/REX SHUTTERSTOCK
“It’d be lovely to do something,” says Dave.

celebrating music they made together “But he’s a bit of a control freak.”
hris robinson was not happy last year when he learned
C his brother, Rich Robinson, was taking the music of their old group, the
Black Crowes, on the road with other ex-members; Chris even called it
a “Black Crowes tribute band.” But just a year after Rich announced his
group, the Magpie Salute, Chris has formed his own spinof band, As the Crow
Flies. “Chris has a tendency to run his mouth,” says Rich. “And actions speak
louder than words. Now he’s in a Black Crowes tribute band.”
It’s just the latest chapter in the war between the brothers Rob- HARD TO
HANDLE
inson, who split for the second time after their 2013 tour, when “He’s trying to
Rich said Chris insisted on putting founding drummer Steve take everyone’s
Gorman on salary and taking a larger share for himself. “He money,” says UB40
pretends to be this peace-loving hippie that doesn’t care about Rich of Chris A l i v s. Du nc a n Ca m pbel l
Robinson (left).
money,” says Rich, “while trying to take everyone’s money.”
In 2008, UB40 frontman Ali Campbell (left)
Chris says that he has no ill will toward his brother, even though they haven’t spo- quit the group over business and personality
ken in years. The Crowes are following a long-standing tradition of sibling band conflicts. The reggae-pop band replaced him
members breaking into warring camps. “There’s a power struggle with brothers,” with his now-estranged brother, Duncan, caus-
says Rich. “And it’s pretty sad because brothers make great music, too.” ANDY GREENE ing Ali to take a competing UB40 on the road.
The brothers haven’t spoken since. “It’s bloody
awful for Mum,” said Duncan.
R&R
PARTY LINE
The phone
scene at a
Future show
in New York
Artists to Fans: Lose the Phones!

n his l ast tour, jack white thing to experience a show without any interrup-
O
decided he’d had enough. The sea tion from Snapchat,” says Jon Lieberberg, man-
of cellphones facing him had be- ager of Haim, who also have used Yondr. Not
come such a distraction that he everyone is enthusiastic. Concert exec Randy
was having trouble performing. Phillips calls outlawing phones a “bad idea,”
“The way they react tells me what to do next,” while Nashville promoter Brock Jones says so-
says White. “And if they’re not really there, I don’t cial media at shows has become a key market-
know what to do next.” Now, White has decided ing tool: “The last thing [artists] want to do is
to ban phones entirely from upcoming shows, Locked Away shut down socials during the show.” But White’s
hiring Yondr, a company that locks concertgoers’ Yondr’s pouches, used by manager Ian Montone isn’t worried: “It hasn’t
phones in pouches upon arrival; they stay inside Jack White, Haim, Chris Rock afected ticket sales at all, as we sold out almost
until venue staf unlocks them. “It adds some- and more the entire tour in less than a week.” STEVE KNOPPER
FROM TOP, LEFT TO RIGHT: SACHA LECCA; YONDR; LESTER COHEN/GETTY IMAGES; MICHAEL
KOVAC/WIREIMAGE; GARY GERSHOFF/WIREIMAGE; FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
ROCKERS SAY GOODBYE, SERIOUSLY
The rock world has never seen a rash of retirements like this. In recent weeks, some of the most legendary
performers have declared they’re giving up the endless highway. Here’s a guide to 2018’s last waltzes
Elton John Neil Diamond Paul Simon Joan Baez

Elton, who has two kids, says he’s Anyone who saw Diamond on his Simon cited the death of his long- At 77, Baez is launching her Fare
retiring because his priorities have 50th-anniversary run knows he time guitarist Vincent N’guini as Thee Well run. “I asked my first
changed – but not before a 300- hasn’t lost a step. But he is now one reason his Homeward Bound vocal coach, ‘When will I know it’s
date, three-year tour. He swears it’s canceling the remaining dates tour will be his last: “I’d like to time to quit?’” she says. “He said,
not just a marketing tool: “I’m not after a Parkinson’s diagnosis. “This leave with a big thank-you to the ‘Your voice will tell you.’ I just don’t
Cher, even though I like wearing ride has been ‘so good, so good, many folks who’ve watched me wanna do the six-weeks-on-the-
her clothes. This is the end.” so good’ thanks to you,” he said. play over the last 50 years.” bus thing anymore.”
SP IC E U P
M E N IGH T
GA
SN A C K S!
®
PEP IT UP!
R&R
Dan Auerbach’s
Favorite Garage
Powerhouse
Who Shannon and the Clams, an
Oakland garage-pop crew whose girl-
group harmonies and raw punk power
caused Dan Auerbach to sign them
immediately after hearing their songs
in a Memphis record shop.
Sound “I’m the latest bloomer ever,”
says vocal powerhouse Shannon Shaw,
34, who didn’t start playing bass until
she was 25 and had met guitarist Cody
Blanchard. They bonded over classic
R&B. “There’s never been a better
singer than Etta James,” says Shaw.
HISTORY Clam Bake Shaw came up with their
Dacus name while playing a solo gig. “It was
in January a dumb joke – there were no Clams,”
she says. “I would have picked a
diferent name if I knew it was gonna
turn into anything.” PATRICK DOYLE
Lucy Dacus: Rock’s Shannon and

the Clams
Reluctant Hero
After struggling with success, the singer returned
home to pour her heart out on a personal new LP
BY SA R A H GR A N T
c ou pl e of y e a r s ag o, luc y she was a teenager after becoming obsessed
A Dacus was a 19-year-old indie-rock

songwriter with a day job working
in a Richmond, Virginia, photo lab
– the kind of person who was happy to kill a
Friday night by tucking into a Russian novel.
with her dad’s record collection, particularly
David Bowie. “When I heard ‘Five Years,’ of
Ziggy Stardust, I just started crying. There
was a depth to it that I just hadn’t accessed
before. It broke the mold for me.”
Soccer Mommy’s
Bedroom Dream Pop
So she needed to do some adjusting when Dacus thought a lot about Bowie while re- Who Twenty-year-old Nashville native
her debut LP, 2016’s No Burden, touched of Sophie Allison (a.k.a. Soccer Mommy)
cording her new album. “How are you going
went from being a college student
a 20-plus-label bidding war and two years to fit everything in one life?” she wonders. putting her dreamily confessional
of constant touring. “My sense of communi- “The album itself, I hope, asks people to pri- bedroom-pop songs on Bandcamp to
ty was crippled,” she says. “I wasn’t talking to oritize the things that make them content. getting a record deal and making an
my friends, and I was interacting with fans And to be aware of, but not caught up in, the album with War on Drugs producer CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: JOSH WEHLE; ALYSSE GAFKJEN; SHERVIN LAINEZ
who think they know me, but I know that eventuality of death.” Gabe Wax. “It just grew,” she says of
her rapid rise.
they don’t.” Lately, Dacus has turned her attention to
Cleaning Up Allison’s excellent studio
It’s not hard to imagine fans thinking they the idea of stability, perhaps as a reaction to debut LP, Clean, adds extra guitar
know Dacus just from her music; No Burden her hectic life on tour. “Having familiar fac- heft to the low-fi sound of her early
was full of the kind of starkly personal, sharp- ets of my life means so much more now,” she releases. But it’s her mix of swooning
ly written songs that can create a weird sense says. She just bought a house in Richmond, melodies and tough lyrics that makes
of familiarity. Her even-more-intense new her hometown, and has been focused her stand out: “Your Dog” recalls
classic Liz Phair; it begins, “I
album, Historian, isn’t likely to alleviate this on winnowing out the people in her don’t wanna be your fuck-
situation. One highlight is “Night Shift,” a sev- life who don’t make her happy. ing dog,” and only gets
en-minute distortion-soaked ballad about her “If there are people who treat more biting.
relationship with her former bassist, whom me wrong, I either talk to them Young Gun “I started
she dated for five years and broke up with the about it or I don’t talk to them playing music when
I was five,” says Al-
day after they finished touring for No Burden. anymore,” she says. “It’s been
lison, who first got
“I didn’t realize how bad he was treating me the most thoughtful and consid- interested in music
until I realized how bad he was treating my erate thing I could do for myself downloading Taylor
band,” she says. Dacus, who keeps a journal and other people. I am going to Allison Swift, 50 Cent and
she’s been updating almost every day since el- try to do that forever.” In fact, she Avril Lavigne songs from
ementary school, started writing songs when says, she wrote a song about it. iTunes. BRITTANY SPANOS
R&R
TECH
Smart-Speaker
Showdown
They’ll play anything you tell
them. But which is right for you?
BY JONAT H A N R I NGE N
Apple liter- Apple HomePod The One

ally turned is more of
speakers
$349 apple.com a classic
upside Apple completely upended standard speaker,
down, plac- speaker design, filing around 200 with a
ing seven patents for its Siri-powered speaker, tweeter
horn-load- which creates rich, room-filling sound and a
ed tweeters with zero fuss – it just works. But its midwoofer
around the stacked on
bottom and
downside is also classically Apple: Its each other.
a single smart functions are only compatible
woofer with Apple Music. If you care more In addition
firing up about sound than virtual-assistant to Alexa, the
the top. capability, HomePod is hard to beat. device will soon
be compatible
with Google
Six built-in
mics help
Sonos One $199 sonos.com Assistant,
This little speaker has surprisingly which does an
HomePod
robust sound. Want to talk to it? That even better job
adapt to
of understand-
any room’s part works well, too. It’s powered by ing natural
acoustics. Amazon’s Alexa, so you can play Ama- language.
zon Music, Spotify, Pandora and more.
APPLE HOMEPOD SONOS ONE
That openness sets it apart – plus,
you can buy two for the price of one
HomePod to create stereo sound.
The Coolest, Smallest and Smartest LET YOUR SPEAKERS

Make your existing speakers talk to you, dial up concert films and more BE YOUR BRAIN
Amazon Echo Spot Amazon Echo Dot Google Home Max 1. Search by 2. Tune
$130 AMAZON.COM $50 AMAZON.COM $399 STORE.GOOGLE.COM Lyric Tell these Your Guitar
This teensy orb has a feature What if you already have a The smartest smart speaker: speakers, “Play Alexa and
the others can’t match: a stereo you love but want to Google’s simple, elegant the song ‘I woke Google Assistant
screen. Use Amazon Prime get in on the smart-speaker device has killer voice- up naked on the both have apps
to dial up concert films like action? This hockey-puck- recognition tech – it will beach in Ibiza’” to help you tune
Grateful Dead: Truckin’ Up to size gizmo will imbue your even tailor music to whom- to hear LCD up, including
Buffalo while you make din- current sound system with a ever is in the room. Soundsystem’s standard and
ner. The 1.4-inch speaker isn’t state-of-the-art brain, so you KILLER SOUND The largest of “Losing My alternate tunings
mind-blowing, but it can be can tell it what you want to the bunch, giving it low- Edge.” like drop-D.
easily connected to others. listen to and more. frequency oomph.
BEST FOR Your kitchen or GO SOLO It also works as a
bedside table. stand-alone unit, but don’t 3. Newsy 4. Beat
expect much more than Playlists the Intro
smartphone sound quality. It’s the week In Alexa’s trivia
after the game, you’re
Grammys: Say, tested on lyrics
“Play Grammy to hits that have
music,” and any key lines bleeped
virtual assistant out. New chal-
will serve tunes lenges appear in
by the winners. the app daily.
BOOKS
Secrets of
Hip-Hop’s
One Percent
How Jay-Z, Dr. Dre and Diddy
out-hustled their peers to rule
three of music’s biggest empires
1
in the past 20 years, hip-
hop has produced enough
wanna-be Warren Buffetts
to fill the biggest strip club
3
in Atlanta. But, according to Cash Kings
Forbes editor Zack O’Malley
Greenburg’s new book, 3 (1) Jay-Z
announcing his
Kings, only a trio of artist-
purchase of
entrepreneurs have risen to Tidal, which he
a status that rivals the corporate titans: acquired in 2015
Jay-Z, Dr. Dre and Diddy. What sets them for $56 million.
apart? “[They] built their fortunes by creat- (2) Diddy at the
ing a 24/7 head-to-toe lifestyle,” Greenburg New York Stock
writes, having branched out into movies, Exchange in
sports management, alcohol, fashion, TV, 2016, where
music streaming and beyond. Greenburg he rang the
closing bell. (3)
did more than 100 interviews for the project
Dr. Dre at the
– including paying a surprise visit to Tidal’s 2004 launch
shadowy Oslo headquarters – connecting of Eminem’s
the kings’ artistic personae to their endeav- satellite channel,
ors: Dre, the laborious sonic perfectionist, Shade 45.
marketed audiophile-worthy Beats head- 2
phones to the masses; Jay, the reserved jet-
set player, has invested in luxury items like Basquiat paintings and ket in the Nineties, and the meeting by the ocean when Dre and
a company described as “Uber for private jets”; Diddy, the omni- Jimmy Iovine hatched the idea for Beats (“Fuck sneakers,” Iovine
directional hustler, will do anything from reality TV to promoting said. “Let’s sell speakers!”). The number of hundred-million-dollar
acne medication (according to most reports, Diddy is the richest, deals Greenburg chronicles is staggering. But he’s also aware that
approaching $1 billion, with Jay close behind). The book explores hip-hop’s megamogul phase is fading, as artists like Kanye West
pivotal moments in what old-school icon KRS-One has called “the and A$AP Rocky forgo chasing huge profits in a search for prestige
WIREIMAGE; FRANK MICELOTTA/GETTY IMAGES; MICHAEL PUTLAND/GETTY IMAGES
hip-hopitization of corporate America,” like how an entry-lev- (“a currency that’s becoming perhaps more valuable than the dol-
FROM TOP: SAM HODGSON/“THE NEW YORK TIMES”/REDUX; MARK SAGLIOCCO/
el rap fan at Coca-Cola helped rebrand Sprite for the urban mar- lar”). 3 Kings proves it was sweet while it lasted. JON DOLAN
YACHT ROCK’S STRANGE THE UNTOLD STORY OF VAN

VOYAGE TO REDEMPTION MORRISON’S MASTERWORK
In the late 1970s, there wasn’t a name In 1968, Van Morrison was a rock & roll
for the smooth, AM-friendly music made refugee, an Irish blues poet on the run
by the likes of Hall and Oates, Orleans, after a bitter fling with pop stardom.
Kenny Loggins and the Doobie Brothers. Down and out in Boston, he wrote one of
But a series of viral videos retroactively rock’s most beloved masterworks, Astral
dubbed it “yacht rock,” as it appealed to a Weeks – and then blew town. In this fan-
very white, upscale audience and an odd tastic chronicle, Ryan Walsh unearths the
number of songs had nautical themes. time and place behind the music. Morri-
Greg Prato’s oral history tells of the rise, son fell into a scene full of characters like
fall and semi-ironic resurgence of the genre, including Lou Reed and Peter Wolf, who was spinning the blues as
new interviews with John Oates, Jim Messina and more. an after-hours DJ. Walsh even catches up with Morrison’s
“It’s amazing this style came to be,” Fred Armisen writes long-lost flower-child bride, Janet Planet, now selling
Loggins in the foreword. “It must take an incredible amount of her love beads on Etsy, who tells him, “Being a muse is a
restraint to play that gently.” ANDY GREENE thankless job, and the pay is lousy.” ROB SHEFFIELD
THE VOICE Staples in the ’70s.
Prince said of her singing, “It’s like
when you see someone possessed
– Mavis can call that up like that.”
Dylan. They first met on the set

of a 1963 folk television special,
back when she was the lead sing-
er of gospel music’s most revolu-
tionary group, the Staple Sing-
ers. Dylan had been a fan since
high school; in 2001 he said lis-
tening to Staples’ voice on after-
hours gospel radio “made my
hair stand up.” He and Staples
had a fling in the Sixties, with
Staples famously rejecting his
marriage proposal. Since re-
uniting on their first tour to-
gether, in 2016, they realized
their chemistry never left.
The Dylan tour is the latest
chapter of Staples’ remarkable
second act, which has included
five albums, a hit documentary
and a Kennedy Center Honor.
(She’s also become kind of an
indie-rock go-to, singing on re-
cent singles with Arcade Fire
and Gorillaz.) It’s a series of
events she didn’t foresee earlier
this millennium as she reeled
from the death of her father and
musical mentor, Pops Staples,
who steered the family group
to success with early-Seventies
hits like “I’ll Take You There”
and “Respect Yourself.” Around
the same time, she quit the road
Mavis Staples’
to stay home in Chicago with
her sister and bandmate Cleedy,
who was sufering from demen-
tia. Mavis wanted to get back to
Second Act
work, but labels weren’t interest-
ed. So she reached into her sav-
ings and recorded 2004’s Have
a Little Faith, kicking of a pro-
ductive streak that intensified
Protest songs, big shows and quality time when she met Jef Tweedy, who
with Dylan: The return of a gospel-pop icon got her back to her gospel roots
while adding a modern, Wilco-
BY PAT R ICK D OY LE ish twist on 2010’s You Are Not
Alone. Tweedy went on to pro-
duce two more albums for Sta-
avis staples is sitting line “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.” ples, including last year’s If All I Was Was
M
in the lounge of her tour “He said, ‘You’re going to sing it this time. Black. “It’s hard to be sad around Mavis,”
bus outside the Tower The- I did it for you last time,’ ” Staples recalls. he says. “She came to visit my wife when
ater in Philadelphia, telling “I said, ‘You didn’t do it for me. It’s your my wife was going through cancer treat-
a story about her current song!’ ” And with the song’s seven verses, ment in the hospital, and it was a party. She
tourmate, Bob Dylan. The other day, Dylan Staples, 78, had trouble getting the lyrics just has an efortless ability to make people
asked Staples to rehearse a duet of “Gonna straight. “I asked him, ‘Do you have a tele- feel better.”
Change My Way of Thinking,” a funky gos- prompter?’ He says” – she drops her voice Staples hasn’t been so upbeat lately.
pel rocker from Slow Train Coming that to Dylan’s guttural rasp – “ ‘I’m too cheap Yvonne, her last living sister, is now suf-
MARC POKEMPNER
the pair rerecorded in 2002, earning a to buy a prompter, Mavis.’ I told him, ‘You fering from dementia too. “I’m hurting
Grammy nomination in the process. But can buy one for me, Bobby!’ ” right now,” Mavis says. She just got of the
the rehearsal hit some roadblocks. First, Staples may be one of the few people phone with her. “She said, ‘Mavis, I love
they couldn’t settle on who has to sing the alive who can good-naturedly kid Bob you. Mavis, I love you’ – and she’ll say that
over and over and over,” says Mavis. “When after being pulled over. “I had to stop sing-
I said goodbye, she said, ‘Toodle-oo,’ and ing because I got choked up,” she says. “Be-
that made me feel better.” cause when I sing a song, I visualize what Donald Fagen
Moves On
Then there’s “that filthy man in the I’m singing about.” Mavis co-wrote several
White House”: “I don’t see no good in him. of the songs, including “If All I Was Was
And the children, his boys, are snakes, Black,” about an imaginary conversation
you can tell. It’s like Satan is in the White with a racist. She also insisted the album be
House. The first thing you wanna do is stop named after the song, even when her camp “Steely Dan was just me and Walter,
immigrants from coming to the United disagreed. “It’s breathtaking to have her be really,” says Donald Fagen. “It was like
States? He’s against women. He treats la- so willing to still stick her neck out there,” a concept we had together.” But Walter
dies like nothing. He’s worse than any pres- Tweedy says. “I think it’s a bold choice for Becker died in September, leaving Fagen
to carry on, fronting Steely Dan – which
ident I’ve ever seen. I the album title.” he might call Donald Fagen and the Steely
mean, we did John F. Tweedy was a little Dan Band if not for commercial concerns
Kennedy’s inaugura- self-conscious about from “suits” – on the road with the Doobie
tion – that’s how long writing such pointed Brothers this summer. (He’s also suing
I been here!” songs in Mavis’ voice Becker’s estate, which is claiming that an
old agreement transferring band rights
She’s referring to – “I didn’t wanna
to Fagen is invalid: “We’re just trying to
the early days of the put words in her defend the contract,” he says.)
Staple Singers, just mouth that weren’t
before they made the her experience” – but LAST VISIT WITH BECKER
controversial move Mavis says he nailed “When I put a chair next to the bed, he
grabbed my hand. It was something he
away from straight it. “It makes me feel
had never done before. We had a great
gospel and toward better to sing these talk. He was very weak, but still very funny.
R&B with a strong songs because I’m I’m really glad I had those hours.”
social-justice bent. singing something
LAST DAYS OF THE DAN
The group decried that I feel like I’m
“Walter had some health problems,” Fagen
racial disparity in helping,” she says. adds. “After 2011-12, I think just being ill for
hits like “Why? (Am Staples, true to so long, he had a little bit of a personality
I Treated So Bad)” form, gives credit to change and he was much more isolated.
a nd t he rou si ng SHE’LL TAKE YOU THERE Staples onstage her collaborators: He wasn’t that interested in working on
in the Netherlands last summer Steely Dan records anymore.”
1965 Selma anthem “The Lord has real-
“Freedom Highway” ly put me with some BECKER’S LYRICAL GIFT
– favorites of Martin Luther King Jr., who geniuses.” She mentions Prince – after the “Walter had greater powers of observa-
took the group along to open rallies for him. Staple Singers stopped releasing albums tion as far as people’s psychology goes.
The Staples were routinely in danger while in the Eighties, he signed her to his Pais- He could’ve been a novelist or short-story
traveling the Southern gospel circuit, often ley Park label and wrote and produced writer – if he’d had the patience.”
getting hassled and worse. Mavis recalls two albums, 1989’s Time Waits for No One
one journey in 1964, when, as the family’s and 1993’s The Voice. (“It’s like when you
late-night driver, she went inside a Mem- see someone possessed,” Prince told writ-
phis gas station to get a receipt. The atten- er Greg Kot. “They get the Holy Ghost in
dant called her the n-word; Pops punched them and they’re overtaken by something.
him, and the family ended up in jail after Mavis can call that up just like that. I look
the attendant said he’d been robbed. “I’ve at her and I wonder if . . . she goes some-
never been so scared in my life,” says Mavis. where else.”)
“I was happy to see we were going to jail – I Three months after our first meeting,
thought they were gonna take us out into Staples calls with an update from her mod- DOING IT
the woods and lynch us.” est Chicago apartment, which is decorated AGAIN
Mavis has been reminded of those days with paintings of Prince and other heroes Fagen
lately. “There’s suddenly been a rebirth of – Miles Davis, King. She just played several
bigotry and hate,” she says. “The only dif- new songs at Chicago’s Vic Theatre, and the
FROM LEFT: DIMITRI HAKKE/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES; DANNY CLINCH
ference I saw between back in the day and response was rapturous: “A black friend of
those men marching with them torches in mine came up to me after and said, ‘Mavis,
Charlottesville was that they showed their I am so glad to see the white people are
faces, no sheets.” She expressed her outrage woke.’ I’d never heard that before!”
to Tweedy, who saw an opportunity to get The rest of the Dylan tour was a blast,
Staples back to once again singing about too, although they never got to do their THE FUTURE
what was happening in the world. He wrote song together. (Dylan’s bass player Tony “I’m feeling really good,” says Fagen, who
a series of songs in only two weeks, includ- Garnier told her Dylan couldn’t find a slot turned 70 in January. “I try to do enough
ing “Build a Bridge,” which ofers a hope- that worked with the other songs.) But she exercise to keep myself from falling apart.”
In addition to Steely Dan, he toured last
ful alternative to Trump’s border wall, and still wrote Dylan a card on the final night in year with the Nightflyers, a group of young
“We Go High,” named after the famous line New York, thanking him for sharing his au- musicians from Woodstock, and may
in Michelle Obama’s 2016 Democratic Na- dience with her. Once again, she was sum- record an album with them. “We have a
tional Convention speech. They formed If moned to his dressing room. “He wanted fantastic band,” he says. “I’ve got a couple
All I Was Was Black, Mavis’ deepest work to say goodbye in person, and we hugged,” of fantastic bands.” BRIAN HIATT
in decades. She had a diicult time singing she says. “I ain’t telling you no more. Don’t
“Little Bit,” an apocalyptic opener about an write all of my secrets. But, yeah – we did a Check out the full Fagen interview at
unarmed black teen getting shot by a cop lot of hugging.” RollingStone.com/podcast.
R&R
Mega-Album
Migos, Drake
and Future
Champions
(clockwise
from left)
have all Drake
released Views
albums that 1 hour and
pass the 21 minutes
hour mark.
Including the nine-month-old

“Hotline Bling” on Views helped drive
up traic for this album – at 2.45
billion streams, it was the most-
listened-to album on Spotify in 2016.
Chris
Brown
Heartbreak
on a Full Moon
2 hours and
38 minutes
Though none of its singles cracked
the Top 40, Brown’s eighth album still
went gold faster than any he’d ever
released, juiced by the volume of its
45 songs (57 in the deluxe edition).
Future
Pop’s New Long Game Future and

Hndrxx
2 hours and
10 minutes
The rise of hour-plus mega albums
B Y E L I A S L E IGH T “If I miss a day, I’m afraid I’ll miss
out on a smash record,” Future told
ith 24 tr acks clocking in at one hour and 46 minutes, migos’
W
ROLLING STONE in 2016 of his work
Culture II lasts long enough to listen to all of Pink Floyd’s The Wall and still ethic, which powered two back-
make it more than halfway through The Dark Side of the Moon. Its Number One to-back albums in February 2017.
debut on the Billboard album chart is the latest twist in streaming’s reshap-
ing of music consumption: the rise of mega albums. On Spotify, the duration of the top five Lil
streamed albums rose almost 10 minutes over the past five years, to an average of 60 minutes. Yachty
What’s driving the trend? “Stacking albums with extra songs is a strategic way to achieve Teenage
certain goals,” says Malcolm Manswell, a marketing manager for Atlantic Records. In 2014, Emotions
Billboard incorporated streaming into its chart calculations (1,500 on-demand streams equals 1 hour and
one LP), and two years later, the Recording Industry Association of America adopted the same 9 minutes
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: CHAD BATKA/“THE NEW YORK TIMES”/REDUX;
formula for album certifications. Longer albums that generate more streams can lead to Num-
Yachty broke through in 2016 with the
ber One chart debuts and gold and platinum plaques. Last fall, when Chris Brown released the mixtape Lil Boat – 13 tracks at a
HARMONY GERBER/GETTY IMAGES; RMV/REX SHUTTERSTOCK
45-song Heartbreak on a Full Moon, it was certified gold in less than modest 40 minutes – but his major-
10 days. Album certifications remain “the indication of a great art- label debut isn’t so lil: 21 tracks that
If you throw ist,” says Manswell. “On the sponsorship side, this stuf helps labels stretch it past the 60-minute mark.
out 100 songs a sell an artist or argue for why a brand should use an artist.”
year like you’re Mega albums can also drive revenue. “If the user preference is to Lana
buying lottery stream a whole album, there’s economic incentive for having more Del Rey
tickets, it’s not a tracks in play – real income across millions of users,” says Tracy
Maddux, CEO of CD Baby, a digital and physical distributor.
Lust for Life
good plan. Not everyone buys into the new approach. Constructing his
1 hour and
11 minutes
throwback-flavored 24K Magic, Bruno Mars went for a vinyl-length
33 minutes – and was rewarded with an Album of the Year Grammy. “More isn’t always bet-
Of the 38 Number One albums last
ter,” says Joie Manda, executive vice president of Interscope Gefen A&M, who has overseen
year, 12 ran more than an hour. Seven
releases from Rae Sremmurd and Machine Gun Kelly, among others. “If you throw out 100 were hip-hop, but three came from
songs a year like you’re buying 100 lottery tickets, that’s not a good plan – you can compromise alternative artists: LCD Sound-
the quality of your album by having more songs.” system, Brand New and Del Rey.
Q&A
t’s been more tha n a week not do because they’re scared to do it
I since Logic performed his hit

“1-800-273-8255” at the Gram-
mys, and he’s still taking the eve-
ning in. “Kendrick Lamar gave me
a little head nod of respect,” he says.
themselves.
Years ago, you worked at Wingstop.
What’d you do there?
I cleaned, took out the trash and
fuckin’ cut carrots and made french
“Damn, he’s one of my biggest inspi- fries. It sucked. I used to like the bone-
rations.” The performance was the less honey-barbecue wings, but I ate
culmination of a breakthrough year that shit so much I haven’t been able
for Logic (born Sir Robert Bryson to eat it for years.
Hall II), who just five years ago was a In 2015, you were hospitalized after hav-
broke rapper living on friends’ couch- ing an anxiety attack. Is your anxiety
es. But last September, his hit climbed under control these days?
to Number Three on the Hot 100, and I’ve had much less anxiety recently
it has been streamed more than a half because I’m coping with it. I never re-
billion times on Spotify. (The song ally dealt with depression, just severe
also tripled calls to the suicide preven- anxiety. I’ve been in therapy for years.
tion hotline, which it’s named after.) My therapist has even said, “You don’t
The next step? Opening an oice. He’s need to be here.” I’m handling my is-
calling from a Los Angeles comic- sues head-on, not running from them.
book store, where he’s shopping for In your songs, you talk about growing
decorations. “I want the place to look up in a house with an alcoholic mother.
like Comic-Con,” says Logic, an un- I witnessed my brother selling crack,
apologetic nerd who regularly solves even to our own dad. My mom would
a Rubik’s Cube onstage while rap- use pills. I was like, “I’m not going to
ping. He’s also planning a film, set in do this.” I knew I wasn’t going to beat
a record store, which he will star in. women, even though I saw my sisters
“I don’t want to be tied down to one and my mom getting beaten. I knew I
thing,” he says. “I’m excited to kick the was going to do the opposite.
world’s ass.” Have you let go of your anger toward
your parents?
How did you come to write a hit about I’ve let go because they were sick.
suicide prevention? They should have gotten help.
I spent six figures of my own money On “America,” you blast Trump, adding,
to get a tour bus and do a fan tour for “Shit, I’ll say what Kanye won’t.” How
my second album. I surprised fans do you square your love for Kanye’s
at their houses, and we’d eat food music with his decision to support the
and play video games. People kept president?
saying, “Your music saved my life.” I To be completely honest, he has
was like, “What the fuck?” And then I taken back the statements, apparent-
thought, “What if I tried to save a life ly, so I can’t really talk about that. I
with a song?” love Kanye. [Kanye deleted his pro-
Eric Cartman sang a parody of it on Trump tweets but never retracted his
South Park last season. How did you endorsement.]
feel about it? If you met Trump, what would you say?
It was bittersweet. At the end of the Nothing. There’s nothing to say.
day, South Park makes fun of every- And, respectfully, I’m not here to tell
body. But I wanna watch what I say: people who they can or can’t vote for.
I have a sense of humor, but there are
certain things that shouldn’t be joked
about. This is a song about suicide.
They went a little far, but they’re still
talking about suicide, so it did shed
more light on it, you know?
Logic You’re a huge Star Wars fan. What did
you think of the last movie?
I loved it. I enjoyed Episode VII
more, but I may be biased since J.J.
[Abrams] is a buddy. It was cool they
took time to tell a story instead of
What’s the biggest difference between The hitmaker discusses jumping around to a bunch of action.
Logic and Sir Robert Bryson Hall II? his painful upbringing, How do you feel about the decision to
The difference is Bobby has been kill Luke Skywalker?
neglected a bit. Now, after so much ‘Star Wars’ and what it’s like Who is to say he’s dead? Did Yoda
hard work, I get to do what I want. I’m to be mocked by Cartman really die? Did Ben Kenobi die? We
gonna start taking trips and having learned more about the Force in this
fun. I’ve always wanted to act, so I’m on ‘South Park’ movie, and it’s not something in a
making a movie. I just finished a novel BY A N DY GR E E N E bunch of books. It’s something any-
and I’m excited to get it published. You one, no matter where they come from,
can’t put my talents in a box because can have. In many ways, I feel like Rey.
my talents have put me in a mansion, It’s really cool to come from nothing
RYAN JAY
and I’ll be damned if anybody in the and essentially be a nobody and make
world can tell me what I can or can- yourself somebody.
R&R Television
TERROR
TRAIL
Daniels on
the hunt
Letterman’s
Awesomely
Ornery Return
The late-night host is
back, with a new look
and no F’s to give
David Letterman blew up the

talk-show format as soon as
he arrived on Late Night in the
1980s. So it makes a weird kind
of sense for him to blow it up
all over again, with his beard
bristling and his grumpy streak
MY NEXT GUEST NEEDS

NO INTRODUCTION
NETFLIX
untamed. His eccentric monthly
‘Looming Tower’ Looks

Netflix chatfest, My Next Guest
Needs No Introduction, is a whole
new Dave – he interviews only
fellow megastars, from Howard
Back in Anger at 9/11 Stern to George Clooney to

Barack Obama, giving each a full
episode. It’s bracing to see him
back, since his avowed reason for
Daniels and Sarsgaard are brilliant as rival quitting was that he didn’t give
a crap anymore – which wasn’t
intelligence agents on bin Laden’s trail exactly a secret to his viewers.
But now he gives less of a crap
BY ROB SH E F F I E L D than ever, skipping comedy
bits to go straight for in-depth
talk on his own cranky terms.
T
her e’s a h au n t i ng mome n t They’re too busy rumbling over turf to get
early on in Hulu’s The Looming close to bin Laden, at a time when most of the
Tower – just another night in New country would have guessed Al Qaeda was
York City, back in 1998. An FBI spe- some junior member of the Wu-Tang Clan.
cial agent watches a TV interview with a Jef Daniels is the center of The Looming
terrorist named Osama bin Laden. The in- Tower as O’Neill, the FBI agent who spent the
terview includes dire threats of attacks on Nineties on bin Laden’s trail. He’s a hard-par-
America. The agent, John O’Neill, reacts to tying blowhard who lives it up on the job, rea-
this news in the time-honored way: He goes soning, “It’s all work whether you get drunk
doing it or not.” Peter Sarsgaard is superbly Know any
THE LOOMING TOWER slimy as his CIA nemesis Martin Schmidt. good barbers,
HULU The premise is that 9/11 could have been pre- Mr. President?
vented if only these CIA and FBI dudes went
out and gets drunk, yelling into his cellphone, out for brewskis together; their mutual loath- It’s in the booming genre of
FROM TOP: JOJO WHILDEN/HULU; JOE PUGLIESE/NETFLIX
“We just got warned by Al Qaeda on national ing helped set the stage for the United States’ post-retirement vanity projects
à la Comedians in Cars Getting
TV and our director slept through it!” Behind disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Coffee, where Jerry Seinfeld
him, the World Trade Center towers sparkle Tower is an incredibly afecting portrait of accidentally invented an honor-
in the skyline. Three years later, the towers America in the Nineties. It’s a more innocent able way for veterans to get
will fall – and O’Neill will go down with them, time – as one character sneers, “All anyone back on TV without returning to
killed in the north tower on 9/11. wants to hear about is Monica’s cum-stained the ratings game. (Funny how
Letterman is doing this while
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book dress.” In 1998, with the Cold War over, for-
Jay Leno remains on CNBC in
by Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower is eign policy looked like a relic of the Eighties, Jay Leno’s Garage; this feud will
Hulu’s excellent new drama on how the U.S. like leg warmers or cassingles. America saw never die.) No Late Show gags
intelligence establishment failed to see these itself as a nation that had outlived its foes. A here – Paul Shafer only appears
attacks coming. It’s a tense flashback proce- few years later, this moment would look like via his theme music. Yet with its
dural where the FBI and the CIA have degen- a sadly squandered opportunity. And part of ornery edge, it definitely feels
like vintage Letterman. R.S.
erated into open warfare, muscling into each the poignancy of The Looming Tower is that
other’s way as they pursue rival investigations. this America is gone for good.
R E VO L U T I O N
An entirely new class of yacht
PRINCESSYACHTS.COM
HANDLES
Hello, TO MYSELF
Selena Gomez
went for a
Dolly! joyride with

friends
in L.A.
Some artists show respect
for their elders with a
loving cover song. But
Adele wanted to do
something extra-special to
honor Dolly Parton, whom
she called “the effortless
queen of song.” The singer
posted a photo of herself
on Instagram dressed as
Parton circa her “Jolene”
days. “We wish we could
possess an ounce of your
ability,” Adele said. Parton,
who name-checked Adele
on a recent album, was PUCK
overjoyed by the flattery. YOURSELF
“I thought that was me Justin Bieber
back in the day,” she said. unwound in his
own way after
attending a
service at
Hillsong
Church in L.A.
with Gomez.
Cardi’s CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ADELE/INSTAGRAM; AZ/X17ONLINE.COM; PEREZ/X17ONLINE.

COM; DAVID X PRUTTING/BFA/REX SHUTTERSTOCK; 247PAPS.TV/SPLASH NEWS
CASH KING
Migos showed
off a fat stack at
designer Philipp
Plein’s pop-up
Couture
shop in New “I couldn’t contain myself,”
York: “I see the said a star-struck Cardi B
Migos as a after hanging out with
fashion hub. Vogue editor and style
icon Anna Wintour at the
We’re very
Alexander Wang
influential.”
fall-winter show during
New York Fashion Week.
Cardi, who was out on the
town all week with her
fiance, Ofset of Migos, just
announced she’ll be joining
Bruno Mars on his
upcoming 24K victory lap.
Bruno said he’s bringing
her along on tour “so we
can really turn your city
upside down.”
HALSEY’S GOT IT
DRESS STRESS COVERED
Halsey’s entrance at Members of
a recent charity event Green Day
in New York didn’t played a Bay
go as planned, when
Area show as
a security guard
the Coverups,
stepped on the back
of her dress. After doing a set of
certain media outlets classics by the
blurred a photo to Replacements,
suggest she wasn’t Tom Petty and
wearing underwear, the Ramones.
the singer shot back:
“I had on an entire
pair of high-cut black
underwear under
the dress.... Tabloid
culture never fails
to surprise me.”
She’s playing several
festivals, including
NYC’s Governors Ball.
PLAYING IN
THE BAND
Bob Weir
teamed up with
the Preservation
Hall Jazz Band in
New York,
jamming on the
New Orleans
staple “Iko Iko.”
MOTHERSHIP IN ORBIT George Clinton brought

his Mardi Gras Madness tour to North Carolina.
“We’ve got fathers and sons bringing each other
to the shows,” says Clinton. “It feels good as hell.”
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: OUZOUNOVA/SPLASH NEWS; ALAN SNODGRASS; JEFF HAHNE/
ARCADE PARADE
Régine Chassagne and Win
Butler of Arcade Fire helped
GETTY IMAGES; ERIKA GOLDRING/GETTY IMAGES; JEN ROSENSTEIN; GRIFFIN LOTZ
put on a Haitian-themed
carnival in New Orleans.
NINETIES LEGENDS
STRIKE BACK
Shirley Manson and Fiona
Apple teamed up for a
charity show, where Apple
wore a shirt denouncing
Grammy chief Neil Portnow.
ROLLING STONE R EPORTS
The Weird and Wild

Crusade for Clean Pot
more pesticides, but without EPA guidance,
The marijuana industry is a vast, toxic and state governments are stuck making edu-
largely unregulated market – can a corporate cated guesses about what to ban.
Ziggy and Harvey figured that once the
exec and a drug dealer make it any safer? new rules kicked in, pot shops would be
so desperate to keep their shelves stocked,
they’d be willing to pay a premium. So they
BY A M A N DA CH ICAG O LE W IS decided to start a distribution company
that only dealt in clean marijuana.
ate last winter, i found myself barreling down the
L
The plan was to buy pot, edibles, vape
freeway at 80 mph with a man who goes by the name Ziggy. pens and hash oil in bulk and then sell
Ziggy has been growing weed for 43 years, since the tender everything to dispensaries for slightly
more than they’d paid. They assembled
age of 15. He may be a criminal, but in the context of Califor- an Ocean’s Eleven-style team, including
nia’s anarchic cannabis industry, he seems like a good egg, or a high-end-dispensary manager, an early
at least smarter than most. Rain falls in great sheets all around Facebook employee, and a guy they called
Doctor Farmer Fucko, a grower with a
us, but the pickup truck he calls the Beast hurtles onward, its monster-
medical degree who came from a Mafia
size tires swaying with the curves of the 101. He keeps a practiced hand on family. The goal was to make $50 million
the steering wheel and brings a small shovel of cocaine to his nose, eyes their first year, $200 million their second
never leaving the road. ¶ “That’s Colombian supreme!” Ziggy roars, and and $750 million by year five. The biggest
challenge would be finding growers who
with a jack-o’-lantern grin hands the spent Developing rules for pesticides has been had either been doing it organically all
spoon to his business partner in the back one of the trickiest tasks for states under- along or were so committed to legalization
seat, a former alcohol-industry executive taking legalization. And unfortunately, that they were willing to take a hit on their
named Michael Harvey. Harvey is a quiet pretty much all of the marijuana in the bottom line to clean up their operation.
man with thin lips and an impish smile. I United States is drenched in harmful Ziggy is not exactly the person you would
first met him in 2015, over beers at a dark chemicals. There’s no good way to quan- imagine volunteering to combat a potential
bar near the state capitol, where he was tify the problem, because the majority of public-health crisis. People refer to Califor-
meeting with a lobbyist in the lead-up to le- weed is still sold by drug dealers, and no nia’s pot industry as the Wild West, and,
galization. “I’m not here,” Harvey told me at one has done studies on what smoking or accordingly, Ziggy seems to have inherit-
the time, hoping his political string-pulling vaping these substances can do to you. But ed the self-suicient, nomadic toughness
would remain invisible. “You didn’t see me.” let’s just say that if you like pot, you have ab- of a cowboy on the frontier – motivated
Over the course of the past month and solutely exposed yourself to chemicals that by a quintessentially American desire for
a half, Ziggy and Harvey had driven more can damage your central nervous system, freedom and privacy, and operating ac-
than 10,000 miles together, crisscrossing mess with your hormones and give you can- cording to his own moral code. He man-
California in a mad dash to find uncontam- cer. There are toxicants in our vape pens, in ages to tell me in a single breath that he is
inated pot. Legalization had finally passed our fancy prepackaged edibles and in the a man of honor, and that if someone stole
a few months earlier, and regulations were soil and water near many marijuana farms. from him he would wake them in the mid-
still being worked out. Ziggy, the calculat- For legal crops, an agrochemical compa- dle of the night and smash their hand with
ing criminal, and Harvey, the weed-loving ny will create a product to combat a bug or a ball-peen hammer “to where it’s a stump,
corporate type, believed that when rules for fungus, pay for research and then submit and you can’t pick anything else up for the
pesticides went into efect, there would be the results to the Environmental Protection rest of your life.”
an immediate shortage of clean product, Agency for review. But because the federal “Is that something you’ve done before,” I
and prices would skyrocket. They had seen government is pretending the whole state- respond, “to a human being?” Yes, he says.
what happened when Oregon implemented legal weed thing isn’t happening, the EPA More than 10 times, but fewer than 50.
stringent standards for pesticides in legal won’t put money toward the approval of in- Ziggy is tall, white and skinny, with long,
pot: Hardly anyone was able to meet them. secticides or fungicides for marijuana. Le- graying hair and an unkempt mustache.
Within weeks, dispensary shelves in Port- galization has allowed pot to be grown at a He likes to say that when he’s outside of
land were nearly empty. larger scale than ever before, requiring far Northern California’s pot country, he looks
toxic chemicals – and many of
those screening systems have
proved to be inefective. Even in
pot-legal states like Oregon, Col-
orado and Washington, at least a
third of all cannabis ends up on
the black market, where profits
come before product safety. One
common pesticide among ille-
gal growers contains the chem-
ical carbofuran, which has been
banned in the U.S., Canada and
the EU for years. It takes only a
sixteenth of a teaspoon of carbo-
furan to kill a human being. A
researcher in Northern Califor-
nia found carbofuran in six out of
the 13 local watersheds he test-
ed. Andrew Freedman, former
director of marijuana coordina-
tion in Colorado, oversaw more
than 60 pesticide-related pot re-
calls in the state’s fledgling legal
market, calling it his “biggest
fight” with the industry during
his three-year tenure.
California, where legalization
went into efect on January 1st,
is set to be the front line in the
GOING GREEN Ziggy, who’s been an illicit grower for 43 years, seemed better equipped than most to battle over toxic pesticides. Lack-
navigate legalization. “We need those people,” says his partner, a former alcohol-industry executive. ing federal input, lawmakers did
their best to write strict rules to
homeless. And he does. In reality, he owns might cause blistering rash, nausea, weight keep legal pot uncontaminated, but those
a Maserati, a BMW and a 1975 Scarab loss, vomiting – nebulous symptoms that won’t be implemented until July. More im-
motorboat that can hold about $100,000 most doctors wouldn’t associate with mar- portant, no one knows how efectively the
worth of cannabis. ijuana use. And, as was the case with ciga- state will be able to enforce regulations. By
When legalization first began looming, rettes, the worst public-health consequenc- its very nature, the weed industry attracts
Ziggy planned to move to Colombia and re- es of cannabis pesticides are likely insidious people willing to break the law. Many grow-
tire. Setting up a state-licensed marijuana – we won’t understand the full extent of ers think of themselves as nonconformists
farm seemed complicated, expensive and what is happening for a few decades. and rebels – the kind of folks who hate the
not worth the efort. Then he thought he “Oftentimes, epidemiologists can’t really government and hate following rules. Not
might be bored: “What does somebody like see a pattern until enough numbers accu- to mention the monetary incentive: What’s
me do next – go bass fishing?” mulate,” says Frank Conrad, a chemist in to stop growers from continuing to sell
So he decided he would have one last ad- Colorado who was one of the first to alert their product to unregulated markets in
venture, and in the process give back to the regulators to the potential dangers of pot other states, where prices are higher? Be-
idealistic, libertarian culture he’d been a pesticides. “I’m fairly certain that 10 years cause California is the source of most of the
part of for so long, by working primarily from now, we will get clusters of certain country’s cannabis, the government’s abil-
with smaller farmers and ignoring indus- types of unusual illnesses in certain groups ity to convince illegal operators there to
trial grows funded by banker types. “It’s the of people. And those may very well depend enter the new, regulated system will have
small guy that has the ability and the hus- on who they are going to for their cannabis.” significant implications for the health of
bandry skills to produce that clean prod- Likely only seven percent of the weed millions of people. So as it stands now, our
uct,” he says, explaining that he hoped to sold in the United States is screened for best hope for safely grown marijuana in-
ofer a fair price, so more farmers might volves trusting a wayward population of
survive legalization. “It’s fostering the charlatans, opportunists and outlaws, who
moral compass of the industry as a whole.” One common pesticide have very little incentive to play nice.
When it comes to dodging the expensive
bout 42 million americans among illegal growers and bureaucratic pitfalls of legalization,
A consume cannabis regularly, but contains carbofuran –

it’s diicult to estimate how many
people have become sick from a sixteenth of a teaspoon
marijuana pesticides. Common contam- will kill a human being.
inants like myclobutanil and bifenazate
Ziggy and Harvey are in a better position
than most. Both men were separately in-
volved in conversations about California’s
legal-marijuana framework as it took shape
in Sacramento over the past few years – a
Photograph by Alex a ndr a Hootnick RollingStone.com | R ol l i n g S t o n e | 27

ROLLING STONE R EPORTS
key advantage at a time when consumers, valuable crop in the state from something ing to get away with whatever would bring
law enforcement and businesses alike reproduced illegally on backcountry hills into the most cash in the short term, they want
main confused about what is and isn’t legal. a normal, lab-tested commodity? to raise the bar and impose higher stan-
California State Board of Equalization dards on themselves. After all, Miller was
member Fiona Ma, who helps oversee tax t ’s a lr e a dy da r k by the time doing pesticide testing long before it was
collection for the state, says Ziggy is one
of her favorite people she’s met in the past
three years. Ma has been a crucial voice in
the process of legalization, and Ziggy’s rad-
ical honesty about what California’s weed
I Ziggy parks behind a generic commer-
cial building in Santa Rosa, about 60
miles north of San Francisco. He and
Harvey are three hours late to a meeting
at Pure Analytics, a marijuana-testing lab.
mainstream.
In California, as in every state with legal
weed, there is a shortage of reliable testing
labs. A 2015 investigation in The Oregonian
found that many Oregon labs had been mo-
barons are thinking helped her understand The lab’s founder is an enterprising bio- tivated by profit to rubber-stamp contam-
the business. “Whatever rumors I hear, I chemist, product engineer and cannabis inated products, and everyone at the table
call Ziggy, and he either knows the answer farmer named Samantha Miller. She and knew things were the same in California.
or he gets right back to me,” Ma says. her husband warmly greet Ziggy and Har- Some labs lack proper equipment and ex-
Even with this advantage, getting the vey and lead them into a conference room, pertise, but others are simply lenient, in an
company of the ground would be a chal- where Doctor Farmer Fucko is waiting. efort to please customers.
lenge. When I caught up with Ziggy and Ziggy takes the chair at the head of the “Oversight is necessary at all stages,” says
Harvey last winter, they were not only look- table and Miller passes out samples of a Rodger Voelker, a chemist who worked at
ing for farmers they could the Oregon Department of
trust to grow without pesti- Agriculture and then ran
cides but a lab that could help a cannabis lab called OG
them guarantee the clean-pot Analytical. “Without labs
promise their business model being accredited, quite hon-
depended on. They also need- estly, you can’t trust them.”
ed to prove their value as Voelker’s whistle-blowing
middlemen, so growers and helped lead to changes in
manufacturers would work state law; Oregon labs are
with them rather than sell now subject to random au-
and transport their products dits and are required to be
to dispensaries themselves. certified by the National
All this in a market that has Environmental Laboratory
been operating for decades Accreditation Program.
under no rules whatsoever. Labs in California won’t
“People who have been in need to be accredited for at
this quasi-legitimate busi- least another year.
ness, they’re comfortable There is very little reli-
being criminals, and that cre- able data about marijua-
FROM LEFT: CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND WILDLIFE/AP IMAGES; COURTESY OF PURE ANALYTICS
ates this untrustworthy el- na in California, but last
ement where you can’t keep February, NBC Los Ange-
anybody accountable for anything,” says WEED KILLER les found that more than 90 percent of
Meital Manzuri, a Los Angeles attorney Unregulated pesticides (left) contaminate pot products randomly purchased from 15
who represents cannabis businesses. “The pot and seep into the soil, impacting the food local dispensaries tested positive for pesti-
trustworthiness of where the product is chain. There’s a shortage of testing labs, like cides known to cause health problems. In
coming from is the worst part. I recently Pure Analytics (right), to monitor toxicants. October 2016, the Berkeley-based Steep
had a grower say to me something so hor- Hill Labs found that more than 83 per-
rific, which was, ‘Well, yeah, I know that high-end vape pen she helped develop. cent of the products they were given over
there’s probably some really nasty shit in Each pen is meant to trigger a specific ef- a 30-day period would have failed under
here, but I’ve gotta offload it, and nobody’s fect. Harvey takes a hit of Calm while Doc- Oregon’s new regulations. And pesticides
testing it anyway.’ ” tor Farmer Fucko tries Arouse. aren’t the only problem. Last April, the
With so much uncertainty, many mari- “We have to be absolutely stellar on journal Clinical Microbiology and Infec-
juana entrepreneurs in California still have transparency,” Ziggy says. “Our business tion published a letter from scientists at
one foot in the black market, or at least in model is taking dope from point A to point the University of California Davis Medi-
a black-market mentality. This ambiguity B. But it has to be clean dope. And that’s cal Center who found that the 20 samples
was part of what drew Harvey and Ziggy where you come in.” of medical marijuana they collected from
together. Ziggy understands the illicit mar- Miller tells them that she’s already been California dispensaries all contained a va-
ket; Harvey understands legal markets. approached about doing testing for five riety of infection-causing fungi and bacte-
Their partnership seems like a microcosm other distribution companies. “Contamina- ria – including E. coli.
of legalization writ large: Could a person tion was worse this past year than it’s ever Miller says she’s doing her best to help
like Ziggy, a lifelong outlaw, truly change been,” she says. It becomes clear, as they clients clean up their cannabis products,
his ways? Was it even possible to establish a exchange information and opinions, that but it isn’t easy. Pesticide residue can lin-
supply chain of clean weed in a market full Miller, Ziggy and Harvey situated them- ger, she says, in soil, in extraction equip-
of hustlers and snakes? Were we really just selves similarly within the slipshod can- ment and in five generations of plants. This
going to snap our fingers and turn the most nabis market of California. Instead of try- sounds similar to the findings of Mourad
Gabriel, a research scientist who has been ning growers behind a pot brand called its, RVR made $26 million in 2016 and for
studying the environmental efects of ille- Nameless Genetics. a while seemed poised to take over Califor-
gal marijuana grows in Northern Califor- As the farmer approaches, he sees his nia marijuana.
nia. Gabriel has found chemical runof as horse is nuzzling Harvey’s arm. “Her name But the weed industry doesn’t work like
much as four years after a cultivation site is Miss Priss,” he says. “She’s kind of a other industries. Barging in with strong-
was abandoned – killing protected species, cunt.” Harvey laughs nervously. He left the arm corporate tactics, RVR rubbed a lot of
seeping into other agricultural areas and alcohol industry for weed a few years back, people the wrong way, and despite its mas-
making its way up the food chain. but there are still parts of this world that sive lobbying efort, third-party distrib-
The chief of California’s Bureau of Can- seem to catch him of guard. utors did not become mandatory, which
nabis Control, Lori Ajax, has said that out Inside, the shades are drawn and jazz is meant people like Ziggy and Harvey still
of the hundreds of pages of pot-related playing softly. A two-inch-thick book about needed to prove their worth. They try to
rules developed by state agencies, covering mushrooms sits on the cofee table, next to make it clear to the farmer that they un-
everything from edibles dosage to licens- a half-trimmed marijuana branch, some derstand the market – and the culture – far
ing costs, the regulations around pesti- nugs and an ashtray. better than their well-known competitor
cides and testing labs had been the hard- “What would you expect from us, as (whom Harvey actually worked for before
est to develop. “There are no pesticides, a distributor, to work with you?” Ziggy joining up with Ziggy). After a few hours
herbicides or fungicides that have been ap- asks. “Proof of funds,” the Nameless farm- of negotiations, the farmer seems sold. But
proved for use [in marijuana farming] by er responds. “Show me the money. A lot of when I check in several months later, Ziggy
the EPA, the agency that determines pes- these distributors talk a lot of game, but if tells me the deal fell apart.
ticide use by crop type,” Ajax says. “Addi- you pay . . .” And as time goes by, Ziggy sounds more
tionally, there are no crops that are exact- Most pot farmers, manufacturers and glum each time I call. “The weaselry and
ly like cannabis, which makes it diicult dispensaries initially hated the idea of dis- the tomfuckery is really starting to get out
to utilize standards set for other agricul- tributors coming in to mediate sales and of control,” he says.
tural products.” Legalization had become too diicult,
Most of the information available on too expensive, and a lot of his friends had
these chemicals has to do with inhalation gone back to doing things illegally. “The
in an industrial environment or eating “People in this quasi- black-market infrastructure has been in
them in food – not on how much might be legitimate business, place for eternity,” Ziggy tells me. “The
too much to smoke or vape. Take myclobu- supply chain is already entrenched.”
tanil, the active ingredient in a commonly
they’re comfortable Then I call Harvey. He sighs. Growers
used fungicide called Eagle 20. The feder- being criminals,” says had started complaining that they weren’t
al government allows small amounts of my-
clobutanil on produce like grapes, but when
an L.A. attorney. getting paid, he says. Ziggy denies he had
anything to do with this. “He’s lucky they
myclobutanil is heated to temperatures “You can’t keep anybody didn’t beat the crap out of him,” Harvey
above 396 degrees – say, with a lighter – it accountable for anything.” says.
produces hydrogen cyanide. The two are now speaking to each other
“If you inhale hydrogen cyanide and it through lawyers, the company on hold.
doesn’t kill you immediately by shutting cut in on their profits. When the Califor- “Going through the compliance and
down your respiration, your body will clear nia Legislature began developing rules for dealing with the law enforcement, I think
it and convert it to thiocyanate,” explains the marijuana industry in 2015, requir- it was a little bit too much for him,” Har-
Conrad, the chemist in Colorado. “But if ing third-party distributors emerged as a vey says. But the experience hasn’t soured
you’re continually getting exposed to hy- compromise between unions, law enforce- his opinion of outlaws who are trying to go
drogen cyanide and making thiocyanate, ment, weed lobbyists and tax collectors. legal: “We need those people.”
it can lead to diferent types of symptoms, The choke point of distribution was meant That need, of course, is the entire prob-
like headache, nausea and vomiting.” The to ensure taxes would be accurately col- lem. For legalization to work, and for con-
best information he found about long-term lected and contaminated products would sumers to have access to uncontaminated
exposure came from a study of Egyptian not end up in the marketplace. weed, people like Ziggy need to start fol-
silver workers: “They had wasting away of But producers like the Nameless farm- lowing rules. But as long as there are plac-
organs, poor health and organ atrophy.” er are skeptical. He pummels Ziggy’s team es where marijuana is illicit, there is a fi-
with questions: How much would they be nancial incentive for drug dealers to stay
he morning after visiting willing to spend per pound? How many dis- underground and sell potentially toxic
T Pure Analytics, Ziggy and Har-

vey are back on the road. They
head several hours north, start-
ing on the freeway, but soon switch to local
roads and then to a series of dirt paths. The
pensary relationships had they established?
And, perhaps most important, would farm-
ers get screwed so Ziggy and Harvey could
increase their profit margins?
Part of the weed world’s reluctance to
pot. And as long as federal agencies like
the EPA decline to study cannabis, what
we know about its impact on our health
will remain largely theoretical. With ille-
gality comes uncertainty. There’s no guar-
Beast comes to a stop in a muddy clear- accept third-party distribution comes antee that the weed you’re buying is clean.
ing, next to a horse, some goats and a Ford from the dislike some felt for a company There’s no way to know whether the small
Thunderbird. A bearded man comes out of that lobbied aggressively to make distrib- amounts of chemicals that you’ve been
a one-story house, wearing dirty boots and utors mandatory – a firm called RVR (pro- consuming for years are going to accumu-
a camouflage-print jacket. He is a member nounced “river”). Started in 2015 by a re- late and make you sick.
of the self-described Nameless Posse, the tired executive from the country’s largest It’s enough to leave any pothead, in any
group of High Times Cannabis Cup-win- alcohol distributor, Southern Wine & Spir- part of the country, feeling paranoid.
assistant manager making
just $24,000 can be denied
HIGHER TAXES overtime pay. An Obama-era
rule would have required
overtime for anyone earning
Hikes for workers less than $48,000, boosting
The $1.5 trillion GOP tax take-home pay for more
bill gives permanent cuts than 4 million working-class
to corporations and mil- Americans. But the rule’s
lionaires. But the tax cuts 2016 implementation was
for workers expire after just blocked by a lawsuit. The
a few years. By 2027, 83 Trump administration has
percent of tax benefits ac- refused to defend it in court.
crue to the top one percent,
while Americans earning
less than $75,000 – 86 mil- Tipping employers
lion households in all – will
face tax hikes. A proposed rule by the
Trump Department of Labor
would allow employers
Breaks for robots to “pool” tips, ostensibly
to then redistribute the
Trump billed his tax plan gratuities so that back-of-
as a boon to workers: “Our the-house employees like
plan can be simplified in dishwashers earn a little
three simple words: jobs, more. But the proposed
jobs, jobs.” But the new Trump rule does not require
law ofers a deep tax cut pooled tips to be redistrib-
for capital investments, uted. Owners could legally
creating a perverse incen- take them as profit. The Eco-
tive to replace workers nomic Policy Institute esti-
with robots. If previously mates that employers might
the cost of employing five pocket $5.8 billion a year if
people or investing in au- the rule goes through.
tomation might have been
equal, the tax break tips the
economic scales to robots – Contract employees
and leaves workers holding Trump ended Labor
pink slips. Department guidance that
prevented many big cor-
Jobs sent overseas porations from classifying
employees as “independent
The Trump law taxes profits contractors.” The shift in
from American subsidiaries status from employee to
abroad at just 10.5 percent contractor will leave many
– half the rate for domestic workers without benefits
corporate profits. That cre- – including unemployment
n his inaugur al address, donald trump vowed to
I
ates a powerful incentive to insurance – and saddle them
champion America’s “forgotten men and women.” But in Wash- ofshore factories and jobs. with self-employment taxes.
One prominent economist
ington – and at Mar-a-Lago, Bedminster and Davos – he has has called Trump’s top legis-
lative victory an “America-
governed for the rich. He opened his presidency badgering com- last tax policy.” COSTLY LIVING
panies for shipping jobs overseas. But outsourcing accelerated
in his first year in oice. He touts the GOP’s corporate tax cuts, but this High housing costs
LOWER WAGES In his first act as president,
PR campaign obscures the billions that will be spent on stock buybacks
Trump blocked a rate cut
to enrich investors. Indeed, the president has put Wall Street execs in on the federal insurance re-
Overtime denied quired for many mortgages.
charge of the economy – and pursued policies that lower pay, raise taxes In 1975, 62 percent of The move cost nearly 1
and strip protections for the struggling American worker. Here’s a salaried workers got manda- million American homeown-
tory overtime; today it’s just ers an average of $500 in
breakdown of how Trump’s undermining the middle class. TIM DICKINSON seven percent. A fast-food 2017 alone.
30 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com Illustrations by Victor Juhasz

payday lenders and stalled funds addiction treatment
Slashed deductions CFPB’s probe of the massive for thousands. (It took more
The Trump tax bill limits data breach at Equifax. than a year, and the work of
the deductibility of state Democrats in the Senate, to
property and income taxes appropriate $6 billion for the
to $10,000. In high-tax
No class action opioid fight.)
states like New Jersey, the Trump signed legislation to
yearly property-tax bill for overturn a ban on “forced
a modest $400,000 home arbitration.” This is a boon
can easily top $10,000. That to bad financial actors BURNING JOBS
means middle-class workers like Wells Fargo, the bank
will be subject to double that fraudulently opened
taxation – long a Repub- accounts for thousands of Kneecapping solar
lican bugbear – paying its customers. Individuals In his first major trade
federal taxes on the money seeking justice can now be ofensive, Trump imposed
they used to pay of their forced into arbitration hear- a 30 percent import tax on
state tax burden. ings, alone, against a giant solar panels. While doing
corporation, and halted little to ensure a future for
from banding together with U.S. solar-panel factories,
others to sue in a class- the tax is projected to
FINANCIAL action lawsuit. destroy 23,000 well-paid
EXPLOITATION jobs among solar installers
and the manufacturers
Tax cuts for the rich of equipment needed to
High investor fees mount solar arrays and plug
Trump has blocked the Trump’s tax reform was them into the grid.
obtain health insurance blocking reimbursements
“fiduciary rule” that would supposed to ensure that “no
under Obamacare. The to insurers for mandated
require many advisers to corporation or individual,
mandate had spurred mil- cost controls – has already
work in the financial inter- no matter how wealthy, is Cruel cuts
lions into plans that were caused the price of “silver”-
ests of their clients, rather given an unfair advantage.”
highly subsidized – or free. tier plans to jump as much In his latest budget, Trump
than maximize their own And he vowed to do away
Many lower-income working as 38 percent. eliminates a rural-economic-
earnings through fees or with the carried-interest
Americans, for example, do development program, and
juicy commissions. The rule loophole – a tax break for
not realize they qualify for cuts hundreds of millions of
would save mom-and-pop the wealthiest investors –
investors $17 billion a year. insisting, “The hedge-fund
Medicaid. Without the push DIPLOMA DEBT dollars from job retraining
of the mandate, a projected and programs for laid-of
guys are getting away with
5 million Americans will factory workers.
murder.” But Trump’s tax
Gutting consumers drop of the Medicaid rolls, Loan repayment
reform left the lucrative in-
forgoing $179 billion in
Trump’s budget director, vestor loophole untouched. Under Education Secretary
benefits. The tax bill will
Mick Mulvaney, now helms The new law also created Betsy DeVos, the administra-
or expanded loopholes
lead to 13 million Americans
tion has rolled back protec-
DANGEROUS
the Consumer Financial Pro- in all losing coverage.
tection Bureau, the watch- that will benefit the Trump tions for students swindled WORKPLACES
dog agency conceived by family – including breaks by for-profit colleges. An
now-Sen. Elizabeth Warren. for private-jet owners, real Obama-era rule let student
Mulvaney is a fierce critic estate investors and heirs of Spiking premiums borrowers defrauded by for- Lax contracts
of CFPB, which he’s called the nation’s richest estates. Ending the insurance man- profit colleges cancel their Trump rolled back Obama’s
a “sick, sad” joke, and he date will lead fewer young, student-loan debt. DeVos is “Fair Pay and Safe Work-
wasted no time in flipping healthy Americans to enroll, keeping the burden of proof places” executive order.
CFPB’s mission statement, leaving an older, sicker on students to show that the It had forced businesses
seeking now to identify and NO HEALTH CARE population in the Obam- college harmed them. She’s seeking government work
address “outdated, unneces- acare markets. This will also moved to scratch an to disclose compliance with
sary, or unduly burdensome drive a spike in premiums, Obama-era regulation that federal workplace-protec-
regulations” on business. In Lost benefits according to the Congres- forced for-profit colleges tion laws before getting a
his short tenure, Mulvaney The Trump tax bill ended sional Budget Oice. A to demonstrate employ- government contract.
has blocked a crackdown on the individual mandate to separate Trump move – ment success for graduates
or lose eligibility to accept
federal loan dollars. Unsafe conditions
The Trump administration
has repeatedly favored cor-
OPIOID CRISIS porate profits over human
health. For the coal industry,
the administration moved to
weaken coal-dust standards,
Little done on drugs ended a rule to prevent
Trump made the deadly mining waste from being
opioid scourge a focal point dumped in streams and
of his campaign, vowing to halted a study on the health
“dramatically expand access impacts of mountaintop-
to treatment.” As president, removal mining. For Big Oil,
Trump declared a national Trump rolled back deep-
emergency on opioids – water drilling protections
but made no moves on designed to prevent another
treatment, while placing an explosion like the one that
unqualified 24-year-old at a killed and injured dozens on
top post in the drug czar’s the Deepwater Horizon rig,
oice. Trump championed and threatened to open drill-
GOP eforts to end the ex- ing in coastal waters from
pansion of Medicaid, which California to Maine.
T H E
How Chadwick Boseman and Ryan Coogler created
B L AC K
the most radical superhero movie of all time
PA N T H E R
BY JOSH EEL L S | PHOTOGR A PH BY NOR M A N JE A N ROY
R E VO LU T I O N
RETURN OF THE KING

Chadwick Boseman
Ë
cludes other people, too. far back as 2012. “It’s perfect cast-
Everybody comes to see ing,” director Ryan Coogler says.
the Marvel movie.” “His physicality, his reserved per-
He’s not exaggerating. sonality, the way he looks younger
The film broke a ticket- than he is, wise beyond his years.”
T
presales record for su- “Chad gave a hell of a perfor-
perhero movies, and at mance,” says Michael B. Jordan,
press time it was track- who co-stars as his archnemesis,
ing toward a $165 mil- Killmonger. “I couldn’t imagine any-
lion opening – better body else.”
than every Marvel non- A few weeks before the movie
sequel except The Aveng- opens, Boseman is trying to lay low,
ers and possibly enough sipping peppermint tea at the hip-
to crack the top 10 movie ster L.A. cofee shop where he used
opening weekends of all to come to write, back when he was
time. an aspiring screenwriter freshly ar-
A quick primer: Bose- rived from New York. He’s in head-
man plays T’Challa, king to-toe black – cardigan, T-shirt, chi-
of the fictional African nos, socks – except for some suede
nation of Wakanda – the Valentino sneakers and a beaded
richest and most techno- necklace of Pan-African red, gold
logically advanced civili- and green. He’s tall and lean, with
zation on Earth. He also long, elegant fingers and the knuck-
wo years ago, chadwick bose- moonlights as Black Panther, an Af- les of a boxer. (Coogler says they
man was in a movie called Gods of ro-futurist warrior with superhu- would sometimes spar on set to get
Egypt. It was not a very good movie. man powers charged with protecting amped up.) One of his strengths as
But in addition to its not-goodness, his people. According to Marvel Stu- an actor is a quiet, intense watchful-
it also became infamous for white- dios boss Kevin Feige, Boseman was ness, and he’s the same in real life,
washing – casting, as ancient African their only choice for the role. And taking in the world with a skepti-
deities, a white guy from Scotland, a when the call came, he was ready. cal half-squint. (“I see everything,”
white guy from Denmark and at least “He said yes on the phone,” recalls Boseman says.) When he does speak,
seven white people from Australia. he’s invariably thoughtful and thor-
Boseman, the sole black lead, played ough. “You’re saying I’m long-wind-
Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom ed!” he says, laughing.
and inventor of mathematics. Before In some ways, Boseman is a funny
the movie came out, an interviewer “I T ’S A SE A- CH A NGE fit for a blockbuster action star. He’s
asked him about the criticism, and “90 percent” vegan, casually name-
Boseman said that not only did he checks radical black intellectu-
agree with it, it was why he took the MOM E N T,” BO SE M A N als like Yosef Ben-Jochannan and
part – so audiences would see at least Frantz Fanon, and says he gets anx-
one god of African descent. “But, ious onstage or in front of crowds.
yeah,” he added dryly. “People don’t SAYS. “I T ’S A RE NA IS - (“Going on a talk show? Oh, my God.
make $140 million movies starring Nah.”) But he also knows he’s a con-
PREVIOUS SPREAD: CROWN BY CECILIO DESIGNS AT THE RESIDENCY. BRACELET BY PALACE COSTUME.
black and brown people.” duit for something bigger: “I truly
What a difference two years SA NCE OF BL ACK believe there’s a truth that needs to
makes. Because now we have Black enter the world at a particular time.
Panther – not just a $140 million And that’s why people are excited
movie starring black and brown peo- F I L M. BU T I T ’ S ST I L L about Panther. This is the time.”
ple, but a $200 million one. It’s very It’s a watershed moment for Af-
overdue. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby rican-Americans and Hollywood.
created Panther, the first black su- NOT E NOUGH.” The cast is a murderers’ row of tal-
perhero, way back in 1966, but he ent – in addition to Boseman and
didn’t show up on the big screen Jordan, there’s Angela Bassett, For-
until 50 years later, when Boseman est Whitaker and several actors
stole Captain America: Civil War. Feige. “I didn’t sense a lot of hesita- of immediate African descent, in-
Now, after a decade of Marvel Uni- tion on his part.” cluding Star Wars’ Lupita Nyong’o
verse films starring a demographi- Up until now, Boseman, 41, was (who grew up in Kenya), The Walk-
cally disproportionate number of most famous for being the biopic ing Dead’s Danai Gurira (who was
white Chrises, the world finally has guy, playing an unprecedented run raised in Zimbabwe) and Get Out’s
its first African superhero movie. of trailblazing African-American Daniel Kaluuya (whose parents im-
“It’s a sea-change moment,” Bose- icons: Jackie Robinson (42), James migrated to England from Uganda).
man says. “I still remember the ex- Brown (Get On Up), Thurgood Mar- And it’s not just the first superhero
citement people had seeing Malcolm shall (Marshall). In a way, Black movie with a predominantly black
X. And this is greater, because it in- Panther is the logical next step – cast – it’s the first with a black di-
Thurgood Marshall with vibranium rector, black writers, black costume
Contributing editor Josh Eells claws and a stealth jet. Boseman has and production designers, and a
wrote about Dave Grohl and Foo for years wanted to play the charac- black executive producer. Commu-
Fighters in September. ter, keeping a journal with notes as nity groups are renting out whole
theaters to screen it; people are run- Panther terial (“Very often, the humanity “Hey,” he says when she answers.
ning crowd-funding campaigns to Power for black characters is not there”) “I’m good, I’m just checking on you.
buy tickets for black kids who might “I remember and Hollywood’s double standard Did you figure out what you’re gonna
not be able to see it otherwise. the excitement when it comes to identifying young wear to the premiere? The African
“We were making a film about people had black talent. (“Every year, agents fly skirt. Did I bring that back from
what it means to be African,” Coog- seeing Malcolm to Australia to find the next great Ghana? OK. Tell her to take a picture
X,” Boseman
ler says. “It was a spirit that we all says. “And this white actor. But where are they tak- and send it to me.”
brought to it, regardless of heritage. is greater.” ing 14-hour flights to find the next They spend a few minutes talking
The code name for the project was black person?”) about a Panther screening Boseman
Motherland, and that’s what it was. “There’s a lot of great things hap- is setting up for 150 or so kids in his
We all went to school on Africa.” pening,” Boseman allows. “If you hometown. “All right,” Boseman
“The money and manpower it think about Barry [Jenkins], Ava says. “I gotta go do this TV inter-
takes to create this entire African [DuVernay], Ryan – it’s a renais- view.” He starts to hang up, but his
world – it’s a huge production,” says sance of black film. But it’s still not mom stops him. “I love you, too,” he
Boseman. “But this is not Star Wars enough. It’s a numbers thing. If you says. “Bye.”
– this is a black superhero movie!” have 15 shots, I got three. If you have Boseman grew up in South Caro-
On one hand, he still can’t believe it’s nine chances to mess up, I have one. lina, in a small city called Anderson.
happening. But on the other hand – Each one of us knows that if you His mom, Carolyn, was a nurse; his
why shouldn’t it happen? Moreover, mess up, your career is done. I see dad, Leroy, worked at a textile fac-
says Boseman, “What would it mean the intensity. I see how Ryan is. If tory and had an upholstery business
if it didn’t happen? You’d be saying you have a dud, you’ll never work in on the side. They still live there.
there’s a second class of Marvel mov- this town again.” Chad, as he was called (“I actu-
ies. A second-class citizenship.” He laughs. “Correct me if I’m ally don’t know why my mom chose
For Boseman, the film’s black- wrong!” Chadwick – it’s a weird name for
ness is inseparable from its appeal. a black man”), was the youngest
“Some [black] actors will say, ‘I e l e av e t h e of three sons. His middle brother,
don’t want to play a character just
W cofee shop, and Kevin, is a dancer and singer who’s

© MARVEL STUDIOS 2018
because he’s black,’ ” he says. “And Boseman climbs toured in a production of The Lion
that’s great, I’m not saying they’re into the back of King and danced with the Alvin
wrong. But that’s missing all the an Escalade, en Ailey company. His oldest brother,
richness that’s been whitewashed.” route to Larry King Now. “Let me Derrick, is a preacher in Tennessee.
He speaks passionately about just call my mom real quick so I don’t “I think it’s Baptist,” Boseman says
black actors’ struggle for good ma- get in trouble,” he says. sheepishly. “I just gave them money,
CHADWICK B OSEMAN
but I can’t remember what I wrote be recruited to play college ball. “At a historically black college,
on the check.” But during his junior year of high you’re getting turned on to all these
Racism was a fact of life. His school, a boy on his team was shot things – the pantheon of our cul-
school district was still segregat- and killed. Boseman coped with ture,” he says. “It’s John Coltrane,
ed until just a few years before he the tragedy by writing a play in re- it’s James Baldwin. And it’s Black
was born. “I’ve been called ‘nig- sponse to the incident, which he Panther.”
ger,’ run off the road by a red- called Crossroads and staged at his Boseman took extra acting classes
neck, like, ‘Fuck you, nigger’ – of school. He realized he liked telling to help improve his directing. One
course,” he says. “Seen trucks fly- stories. “I just had a feeling that this of his teachers was Phylicia Rashad,
ing Confederate f lags on the way was something that was calling me,” a.k.a. Clair Huxtable from The Cosby
to school. I’m not saying it was he says. “Suddenly, playing basket- Show. She became his mentor. “She
an everyday occurrence – but if ball wasn’t as important.” would do a play in D.C. and you’d go
see it, and she’d drive you home and
talk to you,” he says. “ ‘How you eat-
Ryan ing? You look too skinny. You need
Coogler’s a pork chop.’ We were just trying to
Rising Star aspire to her excellence.”
Rashad has fond memories of
Boseman. “Chad was this lanky
Fruitvale
Station young man with big eyes and an en-
2013 dearing smile and a very gentle way,”
$900,000 budget she says. “What I saw in him was the
sky was the limit. He never asked me
Creed to introduce him to anyone – that’s
2015 not his way. He was going to make it
$35 million
on his own merits.”
While taking Rashad’s class,
Black Panther Boseman and some of his class-
2018 mates applied to a prestigious sum-
$200 million
mer program at Oxford to study
theater. They were accepted, but
they didn’t have the money to go.
“She pushed for us,” Boseman says.
ON A MISSION Coogler and Boseman on location last year. “We were “She essentially got some celebrity
making a film about what it means to be African,” Coogler says. friends to pay for us to go.” (“I don’t
want to say who paid for me,” he
adds. “No, it’s not Bill Cosby.”)
While he was at Oxford, he stud-
ied the Western canon: Shake-
speare, Beckett, Pinter. “But I al-
“ T HE CODE NA ME FOR T H E PROJ ECT ways felt like black writers were just
as classical,” he says. “It’s just as dif-
ficult to do August Wilson, and the
WA S MOT H E RL A N D,” COOGL E R SAYS. stories he’s telling are just as epic.”
A f ter g raduation, Boseman
moved to Bed-Stuy, in Brooklyn,
“W E W E N T TO SCHOOL ON A F RICA .” where he fell in with New York’s
hip-hop theater scene, writing and
directing plays featuring rapping
stars and beatboxing Greek chorus-
somebody was feeling tradition He applied to study directing at es. “What Hamilton is doing now,”
that day . . .” Howard, the historically black uni- he says with pride, “we were doing
In the summer of 2015, two versity in Washington, D.C., afec- 15 years ago.” To pay the bills, he also
weeks after a white supremacist tionately known as “the Mecca.” In taught acting to kids at the Schom-
gunned down nine worshippers his book Between the World and Me, burg Center, a black research li-
at the Emanuel AME Church in writer Ta-Nehisi Coates – a con- brary in Harlem. (“He was so proud
Charleston, South Carolina, Bose- temporary of Boseman’s at Howard and fulfilled by that,” says Rashad.
man, who was in Atlanta filming and, coincidentally, a writer of the “When he talked about it, he became
MATT KENNEDY/© MARVEL STUDIOS 2018
Captain America: Civil War, drove Black Panther comics – calls it “the like sunshine – he loved it so much.”)
home to see his family. “My cousins crossroads of the black diaspora,” Eventually he started booking gigs
hit me, like, ‘Don’t go this way, be- where “scions of Nigerian aristo- on the usual shows – Law & Order,
cause they’re doing a Klan rally in crats in their business suits [give] CSI: NY, Cold Case – before his big
the parking lot,’ ” he says. “So it’s not dap to bald-headed Q’s in purple break playing Robinson in 42. But
a thing of the past.” windbreakers.” Boseman ate it up. through it all, he always looked for
Boseman was a quiet kid who He got a job at an African book- projects that had the same emotion-
loved drawing and wanted to be store and took a trip to Ghana. He al weight he felt when he was 17 and
an architect. He also loved bas- also learned about a certain African a bullet took his friend and inspired
ketball, and was good enough to superhero. his first play.
“For me, doing this, it has to be United States. “I think his pres-
meaningful,” Boseman says. “Be- ence opened the door for it in a
cause that’s how it started.” way,” Boseman says. He borrowed
hen bosem a n Marvel’s First from Obama the concept of “a

leader who’s not going to respond
W got the role of

Black Panther,
one of the first
things he did
was ask his father to take a DNA
test. He wanted to know more about
his roots. “AfricanAncestry.com,” he
Black Superhero
Since Black Panther’s 1966 debut, he’s been one of
the most political characters in the comics universe
to criticism – the type of person
who can hold his tongue and hold
his ground.” He also says he and
Coogler talked about vibranium –
the ultravaluable metal that pro-
vides Wakanda its wealth and
technological prowess – as a kind
Enter the
says. “They get specific about what of nuclear weapon. “So it’s a sim-
Panther
ethnic group you come from, as op- ilar thing,” he says. “Who would
The creation
posed to just what country.” (For the you want to get the call at three
of Stan Lee
record: Yoruba from Nigeria, Limba and Jack in the morning? I’d rather it be
and Mende from Sierra Leone, and Kirby, T’Challa someone like [Obama] or T’Challa
Jola from Guinea-Bissau.) He says first appeared than . . . somebody else.”
he’s also traced his American lin- as a guest Which brings us to the current
eage as far back as he could. “To go star in The oiceholder. What does Boseman
any farther,” he says with a wry smile, Fantastic Four, think T’Challa – the genius trillion-
“I’d have to go to property records.” fighting an aire monarch of Africa’s most so-
Boseman drew from a wide range army of phisticated kingdom – would make
mercenaries
of real-life influences for T’Challa: of President Trump referring to
out to exploit
Shaka Zulu and Patrice Lumumba, his African certain nations in Africa as “shit-
Mandela speeches and Fela Kuti homeland for hole countries”?
songs. He read about Masai warriors its resources. Boseman – who last year said
and talked to a Yoruba babalawo. Trump was “giving voice to white
For his fight scenes, he trained in supremacy” – today just smiles. “I’d
African martial arts – Dambe box- love to answer that,” he says. “But I
ing, Zulu stick fighting and Angolan don’t want to give him Panther time.”
capoeira. He also made two trips to
South Africa for research. On one
Solo Series few days l ater,
A
Kirby took his
trip, a Cape Town street musician Black Panther has its
iconic creation for a
bestowed on him a Xhosa name: 1970s-style science-
world premiere at a
Mxolisi, or “Peacemaker.” fiction thrill ride. theater in L.A. It feels
“I think it was his way of saying, like half of black Holly-
‘As an African-American, I know wood is there: Don Cheadle munch-
you’re disconnected from your an- ing popcorn in the balcony, Lau-
cestors and your culture and your rence Fishburne giving fist-bumps
traditions,’ ” Boseman says. “ ‘Here’s on the staircase, Donald Glover
FROM TOP: COURTESY OF MARVEL ENTERPRISES, 3; COURTESY OF BRIAN STELFREEZE/MARVEL ENTERPRISES
my way of welcoming you back.’ ” flossing resplendently in a tanger-

The most important thing to ine suit, Jamie Foxx in a T-shirt that
him was the accent. In the movie, reads wak anda forever. When
the Wakandans essentially speak Nineties Reboot the movie plays, there are cheers,
Xhosa, one of the oicial languages tears, laughter and multiple stand-
Christopher Priest was
of South Africa, and when Wakan- the Panther’s first black ing ovations. It’s a celebration. Peo-
dans speak English, it’s with a writer. His run helped ple are feeling it.
Xhosa accent. “I had to push for form the film’s basis. Later that week, Coogler is sit-
that,” Boseman says. “I felt there ting on a hotel balcony in Beverly
was no way in the world I could do Hills, trying to process it all. “Pre-
the movie without an accent. But I mieres are emotionally overwhelm-
had to convince [the studio] it was Literary ing, man,” he says. He was most-
something we couldn’t be afraid of. Leap ly focused on the 50 or so family
My argument was that we train the members who came from the Bay
In 2016, Ta-Nehisi
audience’s ear in the first five min- Coates began
Area to see it, some of them, like his
utes – give them subtitles, give them writing an grandmother, elderly and in wheel-
whatever they need – and I believe acclaimed version chairs. “I was just trying to make
they’ll follow it the same way they’ll of the comic. sure they’re OK,” he says. “My mind
follow an Irish accent or a Cock- “What he’s [done] was on ramps.”
ney accent. We watch movies all the with Panther is just Much has been made about
time when this happens,” he adds. incredible,” Coogler being the first black direc-
“Why all of a sudden is it ‘We can’t Coogler said at the tor on a Marvel movie, but compar-
time. “He’s my
follow it’ when it’s African?” atively little has been made about
favorite writer.”
And then, of course, there was his youth. He’s only 31 – shockingly
Obama. When the idea for a Black young to be helming a movie this gi-
Panther movie was first hatched, gantic. “He’s the youngest filmmak-
a black man was president of the er we’ve ever hired,” [Cont. on 57]
Pop’s
Gangster
of Love
How Dua Lipa went from
an adolescence in Kosovo to
a billion-stream hit
By JONAH WEINER
PHO T O GR A PH BY BRYA N DE R BA L L A
Dua Lipa
I would probably choose Kanye over any- Del Rey. He signed her, and “literally the
one.” The result was a barrage of hate from day after” booked her into the studio with
the Swift faithful. “They were sending me what would become a parade of various
snake emojis for, like, three days straight. writers. Lipa said she did have a rough no-
They’re like, ‘I hope you die.’ I’m like, ‘Yo! I tion of what she wanted to sound like, in-
literally didn’t say anything.’ ” spired by her twinned loves of pop and hip-
Now, rehearsing at SNL, Lipa’s wor- hop, but its oddness would throw people for
ries about “Homesick” turn out to have a loop: “I’d go into the studio, like, ‘I want
merit. Legs crossed tight, back straight, to sound like Nelly Furtado and J. Cole,’
she holds a cordless mic with her left hand and people would be like, ‘What the fuck?’ ”
and plants her right hand stiff ly on the Inspiration came from unlikely places.
piano, not because it’s what feels the most While co-writing with the London-based
natural, necessarily, but because her vocal electronic act RITUAL, Lipa struggled to
coach, Lorna, told her that this pose would crack the code of an unfinished track: “I
help give her strength to catapult into the was going through a tough breakup. Some-
song’s early, hard-to-hit high notes. The one who made me feel like I wasn’t good
performance feels of, and, when it’s over, enough. But when I wrote this song, I want-
Lipa grimaces: One particularly high note ed it to seem like he couldn’t get enough of
proved irksomely out of her reach. me.” The song “was good, but the chorus
Within seconds, she’s in a huddle with wasn’t quite there. We were like, ‘Let’s scrap
her team. Jules presses play on the video he it.’ And I was scrolling through Tumblr, and
shot; Lorna launches into vocal drills. Lipa I see the words ‘Hotter than Hell’ in red on
scrutinizes the phone and makes strange a black background. And I go, ‘That’s cool!’
noises for Lorna, then the SNL camera What if he thought I was hotter than hell,
crew is back in position and it’s time for an- and I just didn’t want him?” The single,
other go. This time, when the second verse “Hotter Than Hell,” went gold in the U.K.
days from now, Lipa will take this stage as starts, Lipa clutches the mic two-handed, With that song, Lipa says she finally
the evening’s musical guest. She has reason holds it to her chest, then brings her left found a track that felt uniquely like her. It
to feel confident: A 22-year-old pop singer palm up beside her cheek, where, captured introduced her to fans as a sort of warrior
from London, Lipa was the most-streamed in close-up, it trembles and grabs, helping of love: Moments of vulnerability and long-
female musician in the U.K. last year; fans to put some more drama into the perfor- ing dot her lyrics, but her prevailing mode
include Coldplay’s Chris Martin and Bruno mance. It’s a minuscule tweak, but Lipa is to take no bullshit and take no prison-
Mars; and her biggest single, “New Rules,” could tell from Jules’ video that ers. “New Rules” is framed
has more than a billion YouTube views. it would make a big diference. as a three-point battle plan
Lipa starts into “Homesick,” a wounded (Come Saturday, she will repeat for cutting of a bad-news
ballad she wrote with Martin, which is
far and away the sparest song in her cata-
these motions almost exactly.)
Some three dozen crew mem-
“I’d say, dude; a more recent single,
“IDGAF,” plays almost like
log – a slow, spotlit showcase for her rich, bers and assorted hangers-on ‘I want to the sequel, where a former
PREVIOUS SPREAD: HAIR BY SAMI KNIGHT. MAKEUP BY FRANCESCA BRAZZO. LOCATION: THE LUDLOW HOTEL, NEW YORK.
smoky voice, whereas most of her songs watch, rapt. When she’s done,
tend toward brash, uptempo thumpers. the room breaks into applause. sound romantic tormentor crawls
out of the woodwork, inter-
Lipa’s day-to-day manager, Jules, aims
his phone at a monitor, shooting video of
Looking efortless takes work.
like Nelly ested in rekindling things,
and Lipa mercilessly sends
Furtado
D
the rehearsal for reference, because Lipa’s u a l i pa h a s n ’ t him packing.
plan is to sit on the piano near-motionless per for med for a These songs aren’t ex-
for the entire song, and although she hopes
this will register as subtly powerful, she
room this small in a
while. Last fall, she and J. actly autobiographical, but
Lipa says she’s got ample
also worries it might just come of as inert.
Lipa has learned that, when you’re in
played two nights at Madison
Square Garden while open-
Cole.’ experience in the chump-
boy f r iend depar tment.
the public eye, even the tiniest gestures can
resonate. For instance: Last October, she
ing a bunch of arena shows for
Bruno Mars. She has a sound
People Sometimes her exes were
“emotionally manipula-
borrowed a Taylor Swift Speak Now T-shirt
from Jules and wore it to a soundcheck and
suited to vast spaces: big beats,
big hooks and even bigger vo-
would tive”; sometimes their fail-
ings were more comical. “I
meet-and-greet in Germany. Photos made
it to Instagram, and Swift’s fans spotted
cals. She started posting You-
Tube covers from a friend’s
be like, dated this guy who literal-
ly would never eat a single
it and giddily circulated the shots. Soon
Swift herself posted a euphoric comment
bedroom when she was 15, and
even then she was unafraid
‘What vegetable,” she recalls. “I
was like, ‘This is terrible.
online in response: “I AM SCREECHING
WITH JOY.” The next month, however, all
to tackle full-throated mate-
rial from heroes like Christina
the You eat like a five-year-old.
her goodwill with Team Taylor went up

in flames when some of those same Swift
Aguilera and Joss Stone. These
covers were part of a conscious
fuck?’ ” I’m fucking out.’ ”
A couple of weeks ago,
Lipa was watching the
fans discovered a 2016 video interview in strategy: “It was like a port- Grammys, blown away by
which Lipa, engaged in a cats-or-dogs-style folio. I would go out to gigs and make Kendrick Lamar’s performance. The event
quiz, was asked to choose between Swift friends, and if someone was like, ‘I’m a was criticized for the preposterous facts
and Kanye West – and went with Yeezy, producer’ or ‘I’m a songwriter,’ I’d be like, that Alessia Cara was the only woman to
emphatically and unhesitatingly. “I wasn’t ‘Well, I have these covers. . . .’ ” win an award during the entire show and
thinking about their beef,” she says. “I was A string of such encounters, in person that Lorde hadn’t been ofered a solo per-
thinking about their music, and Taylor is and online, led her to Ben Mawson, a music formance despite an Album of the Year
amazing, but I’m such a hip-hop fan that manager whose client roster includes Lana nomination. Recording Academy president
says. “I knew the only thing I wanted to do
was music. So I was like, ‘Let me just take
a year out and see what happens.’ ” Before
that year was through, she’d landed her
major-label deal.
hen she’s done rehears-
W ing at SNL, Lipa gets into

the back of a car and heads
to her hotel, on the Lower
East Side. Paparazzi have been waiting for
her here on and of, but none are in sight at
the moment. We try to grab a table at the
hotel restaurant, but they don’t open for
another half-hour. We stand in the lobby,
plotting our next move.
Downtime is rare for Lipa these days.
A few nights ago, she was up in Montreal
for a headlining concert. Not long before
that, she was in Jamaica, at the venerable
Geejam Studios, hashing out songs for her
next album. “I want it to still be pop, but
lean more toward soulful,” she says of the
project. “My voice kind of lends itself to
that genre.” She lists some of the things
she’s been drawing on for inspiration:
Lipa Faith “Electric Chair,” by Prince; the new Fran-
cis and the Lights album; a lot of Outkast.
Above: Lipa has been working She’s put in time in the studio in recent
on new music with Mark Ronson
months with platinum-certified hitmak-
(left) and Diplo. Left: In Pristina,
Kosovo, with her father, who ers like Mark Ronson and pop master-
used to play in a Kosovar rock mind Max Martin. “I spent a week with
band called Oda. Max, and it was the first time where I felt
like there was a lot more method to the
things I was writing about. First with him
Music filled the Lipa house- you lay down the melodies, listen to them
hold thanks to her father, who over and over again, and say, ‘Maybe we
sang lead, on the side, in a Kos- should change this note.’ ” When it came
ovar rock band called Oda. to writing lyrics, “You couldn’t use the
“They did it for fun,” she says, same words too often, next to each other.
Neil Portnow dug the hole deeper when “but then they had a really big song called And not everything can start on the one,
he remarked on this disparity by telling ‘Beso ne Diell,’ which means ‘Believe in because it doesn’t keep it as interesting. I
women music-makers to “step up.” Lipa’s the sun.’ I did a show in Kosovo two sum- played him some of the stuf I did in Ja-
eyes go wide discussing this. “Women are mers ago and me and my band decided to maica, and he’d say, ‘You could totally sim-
stepping up,” she says. “We just need to surprise my dad and sing it. It was so sur- plify this. Just repeat that twice. Make it
be given a chance.” (Portnow later apolo- real, because everyone in the audience was easier for the listener.’ He has, like, a lot of
gized for his wording.) She shakes her head. singing along.” rules and theories.”
“These men in power should be supporting In her early adolescence, the Lipas That sort of systematic approach ap-
everything that’s happening, supporting moved back to Kosovo’s capital, Pristina: peals to Lipa, who keeps dozens of run-
equality, rather than saying, ‘You’re just not “I could speak the language, but I couldn’t ning lists on her phone, which she pulls out
FROM TOP: COURTESY OF DUA LIPA; ARMEND NIMANI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
working hard enough.’ ” read or write, so moving there was daunt- to show me: “This is, like, the 100 books
Lipa says that, growing up, she learned ing – the other kids weren’t going to be I should read before I die. I bought all of
firsthand what work means. Born in Lon- making spelling mistakes on their home- them, and my goal is to read them all.”
don, she comes from a family of Alba- work. Not only that, but just being the new She just finished Emma Cline’s Manson-
nians from Kosovo who left their home- girl in school, once everyone has formed murders-inspired The Girls and loved it.
land when it became engulfed in conflict. their friendships. It was nerve-wracking.” Now she’s in the middle of The Unbearable
Her parents were immigrant strivers who But she made friends, and they put her on Lightness of Being. “I think it helps with my
“worked in, like, restaurants and bars to hip-hop. Her first concert was Method songwriting,” she says.
and little cofee shops,” she says, making Man and Redman. Second was 50 Cent. There’s still time to kill before the res-
ends meet as London transplants. “They At 15, intent on taking a shot at a music taurant will seat us. “Are you opposed to
worked really, really hard, and while they career, Lipa convinced her parents to let eating dessert before you eat dinner?” she
were doing that, my dad went to night her move back to London without them, asks. We walk down the block to an ice
school to get a business degree, then a staying with a family friend and enrolling cream parlor. “This is, like, the third day
master’s in journalism, then started get- at the Sylvia Young Theatre School, whose in a row I’ve come here,” she notes, digging
ting into advertising. My mom was getting alumni include Amy Winehouse and Rita a spoon into a cup of vegan vanilla some-
her law degree before the war started, and Ora. A few years later, “it came to the point thing-or-other. “I don’t want to ruin my ap-
when we moved to London she studied where I had to decide what I wanted to petite,” she says. “But sometimes you’ve got
travel and tourism.” do for university, and I didn’t know,” Lipa to break the rules.”
EXTREME WEATHER DUE TO CLIMATE CHANGE DISPLACED MORE THAN A MILLION
PEOPLE FROM THEIR HOMES LAST YEAR. IT COULD SOON RESHAPE THE NATION
BY JEFF GOODELL
ILLUSTRATION BY SEAN McCABE
urricane harvey, which hit tex as and louisiana l ast august, causing $125
billion in damage, dumped more water out of the sky than any storm in U.S. history. By one
calculation, roughly a million gallons fell for every person in Texas. The water rained down on
a flat former bayou that had become a concrete and asphalt empire of more than 2.3 million
people. Highways turned into rivers and shopping malls into lakes. As the water rose, people
scrambled for safe refuge – into attics, onto rooftops and overpasses. A Texas game warden
captured a nine-foot-long alligator in the dining room of a home near Lake Houston. Snakes
swam into kitchens. A hawk flew into a taxicab and wouldn’t leave. ¶ As the deluge continued,
tens of thousands of people fled – some in fishing boats down suburban streets, some in canoes,
some on Jet Skis. Others risked a harrowing drive through water, fallen trees and swimming dogs. More
than 30,000 people ended up in shelters. Thousands more headed up Interstate 45, toward Dallas, where
parking lots at IHOPs and McDonalds were full of desperate people wondering how their suburban neigh-
borhoods had turned into Waterworld. Many of them lived in their cars until the floods receded, and even-
tually returned to devastated homes. ¶ Some people who hit the road during the storm kept going. A few
days after the waters drained away, I was driving across central Arizona on old Route 66, which novelist
42 | R ol l i n g S t o n e
S
John Steinbeck called “the Mother Road” n 2017, a string of climate di- than 1.5 billion people currently live in
I
– it was the route that hundreds of thou- sasters – six big hurricanes in the At- these regions. In the U.S., a recent study
sands of people took to escape America’s lantic, wildfires in the West, horrific by Mathew Hauer, a demographer at the
first man-made environmental catastro- mudslides, high-temperature records University of Georgia, estimates that 13
phe. Today, the ghosts of the Dust Bowl, breaking all over the country – caused million people will be displaced by sea-
the 1930s drought that caused a region $306 billion in damage, killing more level rise alone by the year 2100 (about
roughly the size of Pennsylvania to dry up than 300 people. After Hurricane Maria, the number of African-Americans who
and blow away, haunt every gas station and 300,000 Puerto Ricans f led to Florida, moved out of the South during the Great
roadside ice cream shop. and disaster experts estimate that climate Migration of the 20th century). In Hauer’s
Near Flagstaf, I pulled into a service and weather events displaced more than 1 study, about 2.5 million will flee the region
station and parked next to a Subaru with million Americans from their homes last that includes Miami, Fort Lauderdale and
the words “We Survived Hurricane Har- year. These statistics don’t begin to capture West Palm Beach. Greater New Orleans
vey, Orange, Texas” scrawled on the back the emotional and financial toll on survi- loses up to 500,000 people; the New York
window in bright-pink letters. The mud- vors who have to dig through ashes and City area loses 50,000. The biggest win-
splattered car was loaded with luggage, flooded debris to rebuild their lives. Men- ners are nearby cities on high ground with
boxes and a guitar case. A middle-aged tal-health workers often see spikes in de- mild climates, good infrastructure and
woman and a scrufy man with wild brown pression, PTSD and suicides in the months strong economies: Atlanta; Austin; Madi-
hair pulled themselves out, looking road- that follow a natural disaster. After Har- son, Wisconsin; and Memphis.
weary and haggard. The man popped open vey, one study found that 30 percent of res- “Most people don’t realize how much
the hood and fiddled with some wiring. idents in flooded areas had fallen behind climate affects everything, from their
I nodded to the words on their back on their rent or mortgage. One in four re- property values to how hard people work,”
window. “How bad was Harvey?” spondents said they were having problems says Solomon Hsiang, a professor of pub-
“Bad,” the woman said. She introduced paying for food. lic policy at the University of California,
herself as Melanie Elliott. “We had to get Politicians inevitably vow to rebuild, to Berkeley, who led a recent study that pre-
out of there.” make their city stronger than before. But in dicts, as the climate warms, there will be
“a large transfer of value northward
and westward.” And the wealthy,
who can aford to adapt, will ben-
“CLIMATE CHANGE MAY RESULT IN THE LARGEST efit, while the poor, who will likely
be left behind, will sufer. “If we con-
TRANSFER OF WEALTH FROM POOR tinue on the current path,” Hsiang
says, “our analysis suggests that cli-
TO RICH IN U.S. HISTORY.” mate change may result in the larg-
est transfer of wealth from the poor
to the rich in the country’s history.”
“It was a fucking disaster,” the man said, the coming years, as the climate gets hot- The Southeast will be the biggest loser
bent under the hood. His name was An- ter, the seas keep rising and storms grow due to damage from increased flooding,
drew McGowan. “We got swamped.” more intense, those vows will become less higher heat mortality and lower agri-
Orange, I later learned, is an old indus- and less credible. Climate change is going cultural yield – in some of the poorest
trial seaport near the Louisiana border, to remap our world, changing not just how counties in the region, the study predicts,
population 18,643. The town has been hit we live but where we live. As scientist Peter income will fall by up to one-third. In con-
repeatedly by recent hurricanes: In 2005, Gleick, co-founder of the Pacific Institute, trast, the Northwest will see increased ag-
Rita savaged the city; three years later, Ike puts it, “There is a shocking, unreported, ricultural yields, lower energy costs (due to
breached the city’s levee and flooded the fundamental change coming to the habit- milder winters) and higher worker produc-
streets with as much as 15 feet of water. ability of many parts of the planet, includ- tivity. “The lesson of this study is, the fu-
Three people died. “We were just dealing ing the U.S.A.” ture looks good for the Pacific Northwest,
with water all the time, constant flooding,” In the not-so-distant future, places like especially cities west of the Cascades, like
McGowan continued. “The whole place is Phoenix and Tucson will become so hot Seattle and Portland,” says Hsiang’s co-
going under.” that just walking across the street will author Amir Jina, an economist at the
“Harvey was it for us,” Elliott added. be a life-threatening event. Parts of the University of Chicago. “For the Southeast,
“Too much water, we can’t deal with this upper Middle West will become a per- it’s not a very pretty picture.”
anymore. We are going to San Diego.” manent dust bowl. South Florida and There are plenty of unknowns in how
REUTERS; STEPHEN YANG/REUTERS; NOAH BERGER/AP IMAGES
PREVIOUS PAGE: IMAGES IN ILLUSTRATION BY RICK WILKING/
“What are you going to do there?” I low-lying sections of the Gulf Coast will this will play out, including unforeseen
asked. be underwater. Some people may try to climate tipping points, technological in-
“We don’t know,” McGowan said. “I’m stick around and fight it out with Mother novations that help us adapt, and out-
gonna play some guitar and see what Nature, but most will not. “People will breaks of war and disease. But without
comes along.” do what they have done for thousands of a doubt, climate change is not only alter-
As they piled back into their Subaru years,” says Vivak Shandas, a professor of ing the physical boundaries of our world,
and headed toward the highway, I thought urban studies and planning at Portland it is challenging the very 20th-century
of the old Woody Guthrie song about the State University. “They will migrate to idea that we can engineer our way out of
farmers fleeing the Dust Bowl: “We loaded better climates.” whatever chaos comes our way; the big
our jalopies and piled our families in/We One recent study in the journal Nature lesson of this century may be that we can-
rattled down that highway to never come Climate Change predicts that by 2050, not. As the seas rise and the temperatures
back again.” as much as 30 percent of the world’s land soar, we will have to give up ground. We
surface could face desertlike conditions, will learn that “retreat” is not a dirty word.
Contributing editor Jeff Goodell including large swaths of Asia, Europe, And we will become, more and more, a na-
wrote about Scott Pruitt in 2017. Africa and southern Australia. More tion of refugees.
390,000, roughly 100,000 fewer people
than before Katrina hit.
In the Lower Ninth, rebuilding has been
diicult. Despite hundreds of millions of
dollars in aid, large parts of the neigh-
borhood are still abandoned: empty lots,
sidewalks that lead nowhere, trash blow-
ing in the streets. New Orleans’ oicial sta-
tistics estimate that the population of the
Lower Ninth is 37 percent of what it was
before Katrina, but Laura Paul, founder
of Lowernine.org, a nonprofit devoted to
rebuilding the neighborhood, contends the
reality is much closer to 25 percent. The
federally funded storm-recovery program
made it almost impossible for homeown-
ers there to get enough money to rebuild,
she says; instead, many people took their
1 measly settlements and started over else-
2 where. “Every impediment to recovery that
could have been thrown up in the path of
SEA CHANGE low-wealth black families was thrown up,”
(1) Flooding in downtown Paul says. “It was basically a form of insti-
Miami after Hurricane Irma in tutionalized racism.”
September 2017. (2) A number Still, there are hopeful signs: more than
of houses in New Orleans’ 100 pastel-colored solar-powered homes
Ninth Ward remain boarded built by Brad Pitt’s Make It Right foun-
and abandoned more than a
decade after Hurricane
dation; 85 or so more traditional houses
Katrina devastated the city. rebuilt with the sweat of volunteers from
(3) Tens of thousands of organizations like Lowernine.org. “We are
residents fled after Hurricane absolutely committed to the long-term fu-
Harvey dumped 33 trillion ture of this neighborhood for as many pre-
gallons of water on the Katrina residents as wish to return,” says
Houston area in August. Paul. But given the risks that New Orleans
faces from rising seas and increasingly in-
tense storms, that long-term future is in
3 question. When I bring this up with Paul,
she balks: “Worrying about the future is a
luxury for privileged people. My friends
here are worried about putting dinner on
the table tonight, not what is going to hap-
pen in the city 20 or 30 years from now.”
The likelihood of another catastrophic
levee collapse has been greatly reduced,
thanks to $14.5 billion spent in the after-
math of Katrina on bigger, stronger barri-
ers against the sea. But the city has other
problems. For one thing, the protective
coastline around it is vanishing. Loui-
siana is losing a football field of land to
the sea every hour, due to a combination
of subsidence, sea-level rise and reduced
FROM TOP: KADIR VAN LOHUIZEN/NOOR/REDUX; MAGGIE STEBER/
sediment flow from the Mississippi River.

REDUX; MELISSA PHILLIP/“HOUSTON CHRONICLE”/AP IMAGES
For another, large parts of New Orleans,

which was originally built on a swamp,
t a bou t 5 p.m. on august The Lower Ninth was ground zero, but have been sinking for 100 years – some
A
29th, 2005, Hurricane Katrina Katrina devastated a wide area in and parts of the city have subsided as much
broke through the levee protect- around New Orleans. About 1,800 people as 15 feet. As a result, even ordinary rain-
ing New Orleans’ Lower Ninth died; another 400,000 were displaced. storms are becoming existential threats.
Ward. Ten feet of raging seawa- This wave of displaced people became Last August, nine inches of rain fell on the
ter tore into this working-class known as the “Katrina diaspora,” and re- city in three hours, and it looked like Ka-
black neighborhood, trapping people in searchers are still trying to come to grips trina all over again. “The city is like a big
their homes without warning. About 80 with exactly what impact it had on the bathtub,” says Ed Link, a professor of civil
people were killed by the storm in the demographics of the city. By most mea- engineering at the University of Maryland
Lower Ninth, the highest f lood fatality sures, New Orleans is thriving again, but who led the efort to rebuild after Katrina.
rate in the city. Virtually every structure it is a richer, whiter city than it had been “You can build barriers to protect it from
in the 25-square-block neighborhood was before the storm. It is also smaller: The storm surges, but when it rains, you still
destroyed. population of New Orleans today is about have big problems.”
Back in the 1910s and ’20s, a system of The decision to move to safer climates is To shore up confidence in the future,
pumps powered by steam turbines was in- obviously deeply personal, influenced by a at-risk cities like Miami and Phoenix
stalled around the city to help with drain- person’s connection with the community tout everything from LED streetlights to
age. Most of those pumps and turbines, they live in, their financial situation and carbon-ofset programs. But for some cli-
poorly maintained and poorly designed their tolerance for risk. But for city oicials mate-savvy residents of these cities, what’s
for 21st-century mega-rainfall events, are in at-risk cities, homeowners like Brown coming is all too clear. “I’ve loved living in
still in operation today. At the time of the are terrifying. “Once people start thinking Miami Beach,” the poet Chase Twitchell
flooding last August, only two of the five about the long-term value of their homes wrote recently. “We had a beautiful apart-
turbines that power the pumps were work- and how they will be impacted by climate ment overlooking the bay, with endless
ing; a week later, a fourth failed. change, that changes the game completely,” crazy human activity to watch, and aston-
It will cost billions of dollars to upgrade a county attorney in Florida says. What ishing sunsets. But the ecology of the area
the system. But city officials can’t even happens to the value of a house in, for in- is so damaged that I can no longer see the
find the money to keep the storm drains stance, Fort Lauderdale, when the cost beauty. I see impending chaos and sufer-
and canals free of debris and function- of flood insurance triples? “When I think ing. Time to go.”
ing correctly. At a council meeting after about the future of South Florida, it’s flood
the floods, public-works oicials admit- insurance that scares me the most,” Wayne here w ere boxes all ov er
T
ted the city could aford to clear only 68 Pathman, a prominent Miami lawyer and Robert Stevens’ apartment in
of the 1,300 miles of canals in 2017. And board member of Miami Beach’s chamber north Phoenix. Some were sealed
as the climate heats up, rainfall is likely to of commerce, tells me. Many oicials fear tight with packing tape, marked
become increasingly intense. “If you are a climate-driven exodus that pushes down “kitchen” or “bedroom,” others
asking me to drain nine inches of rain, I property values, which in turn reduces open, spilling out shirts, or piled
need six times the pumping capacity, six property-tax revenues, which are central high with heavy programming textbooks.
times the drainage pumps and six times to funding city services like police and Stevens, 29, a slightly manic software pro-
the canals,” Joseph Becker, the former su- teachers, not to mention road repair and grammer, was wearing jeans, a T-shirt
perintendent of the New Orleans Sewer- infrastructure maintenance, at precisely and flip-flops as he carried his possessions
age & Water Board, told the city council the moment when the city needs to spend out to a dusty RAV4. “I never realized how
much shit I own,” he muttered
to himself. The next morning, he
would be driving to Minneapolis
“IT’S JUST LIKE THE STOCK MARKET. to move in with his sister and do
some freelance coding. “I must
THE LONGER YOU HOLD ON, admit,” Stevens said, motioning
to the jagged desert mountains,
THE MORE YOU HAVE TO LOSE.” “it’s kinda beautiful here.”
He had grown up in Bufalo
and followed his girlfriend to
shortly after the August floods. “I don’t more to adapt to climate change. Phoenix four years ago. He loved the sun-
need three or four more pumps, I need 400 It’s a downward spiral for real estate rises, and often got up early to hike in the
or 500 more.” that’s very hard to reverse. “It’s just like Phoenix Mountain Preserve. In fact, it was
At a certain point you have to ask: How the dynamic in the stock market,” says U.C. while hiking that his romance with Arizo-
long can New Orleans, a city already below Berkeley’s Hsiang. “The longer you hold on, na ended. “I was out on a trail last summer,
sea level, keep pumping? Lisanne Brown, the more you have to lose.” And, in many and it was ridiculously hot, and I had gone
director of evaluation and research at the cases, the regions of the country where too far, and, I don’t know, I just collapsed,”
Louisiana Public Health Institute, thinks climate-change denial is strongest, such he said. “I totally fainted. Banged my head
about that a lot. She moved to New Or- as the Southeast, are exactly the regions on a rock. Scared the hell out of my girl-
leans with her husband 30 years ago and where residents have the most to lose. “In friend. She gave me water, and I was OK,
raised two kids there. They bought a his- many places, climate denial is going to but it made me think – what am I doing
toric house in Bywater, a neighborhood by turn out to have big economic consequenc- living here? Maybe it’s a genetic thing or
the river that is on slightly higher ground es,” Hsiang says. whatever, but I can’t take it. This heat is
than most of the city, and so less suscepti- Some cities and counties already feel dangerous.”
ble to flooding. Nevertheless, Katrina had the financial noose tightening. In Monroe Obviously, lots of people feel diferently.
a big impact on how they think about life County, Florida, which includes the entire Maricopa County, where Phoenix is locat-
in New Orleans. “My husband and I talk Florida Keys, a recent study estimated 150 ed, had the highest population growth in
about leaving more often now,” Brown tells miles of roads need to be raised in the com- the country in 2016. People come for the
me. “We have really come to realize how ing years to prevent flooding. Road-raising jobs, the relatively inexpensive housing,
vulnerable we are. We have more anxiety costs in Monroe County run as much as $7 and some, yes, for the weather. In the win-
about rising seas and bigger storms. Hur- million a mile, potentially putting the over- ter, it’s lovely. But in the summer, it’s bru-
ricane season is six months long now – all price tag up to $1 billion. In 2018, the tal. Last year was the hottest on record in
that’s a lot of time to feel stress.” budget for all road work and repair in the Phoenix. The city’s hot season – when tem-
For Brown and her family, the big con- county was only $25 million. At the same peratures can exceed 100 degrees – starts
cern is the value of their home. “It’s our one time, the longer places like Monroe County an average of almost three weeks earlier
asset,” she admits. “We are wondering if wait to adapt to rising seas, the more it than it did 100 years ago and lasts two to
we should unload it and move away while will cost. Moody’s Investor’s Service, the three weeks longer in the fall. The heat
it’s still worth something.” In part because influential credit-rating agency, recently sucks the moisture out of the soil and turns
she lives in a gentrifying neighborhood, announced that it will weigh climate risks forests into stacks of kindling wood. Great
the value of her home has doubled since when analyzing ratings for states and cities, dust storms, known as haboobs, billow in
Katrina. It’s worth $500,000 to $600,000 thus making borrowing money more ex- from the desert. The air gets so hot, planes
now. “But my worry is, for how long?” pensive for places that ignore climate risks. at Phoenix International Airport can’t get
The Winners and Losers of Climate Migration *
A look at the movement of wealth and people among American cities by 2080
Madison, WI
Seattle, WA Climate Outlook:
Climate Outlook: A cool Northern college
A hilly, temper- town with a stellar
ate climate with climate-change plan.
plenty of fresh Population: +50K
water – and no
GDP: +5 percent
hurricanes.
Population:
+200K
GDP: +10 percent
Asheville, NC
Climate Outlook:
A mountain town in
Total Southern Appalachia,
Economic it’s the “capital of
Change
(% county climate-change
GDP) science.”
15 Population: +50K
10
GDP: +15 percent
5
0
-5 conomicPhoenix,
DamageAZ Miami, FL
-10(% countyClimate
GDP)Outlook: Climate Outlook:
-15 Dwindling fresh-water Rising sea levels
-20 supplies and summer tem- New Orleans, LA routinely flood the
-25 peratures that may soon low-lying city – and
0 5 1013015 20 or25more.
28 Climate Outlook: The region
hit degrees it will only get worse
is sinking, the coastline is
Population: +50K disappearing, and it’s in in coming years.
GDP: -15 percent prime hurricane country. Population: -500K
Population: -500K GDP: -10 percent
*As Measured by GDP GDP: -10 percent
enough lift under their wings to take of. ing the city into a kiln. Depending on the tiated complex agreements to “bank” water
Forests burst into flames, creating some season, urban nighttime temperatures in underground aquifers, and point out, ac-
of the worst wildfires in the nation. In the can be as much as 22 degrees hotter than curately, that the city may end up recycling
coming years, researchers expect Phoenix’s the surrounding rural areas. City oicials water – i.e., treating wastewater from toi-
temperatures to soar. Summer days above have launched a tree-planting campaign to lets and other sources. They have also un-
122 degrees, the record high for the area, increase shade, and designated air-condi- veiled a campaign to “green” the city: The
will become the norm, with the hottest tioned spaces like community centers and Phoenix City Council approved an ambi-
days spiking above 134 degrees, the high- firehouses as cooling refuges. These refuges tious new goal to reduce carbon pollution
est temperature ever recorded on Earth work fine as emergency shelters during heat by 30 percent below 2012 levels by 2025,
(Death Valley, California, in 1913). waves for people who can get to them, but and a larger goal to achieve an 80 percent
In 2016, there were 150 deaths in Phoe- many of the most vulnerable cannot. greenhouse-gas reduction by 2050, which
nix from excessive heat, hitting people of Lack of water is another issue. Right allows Phoenix to exceed the requirements
all ages: Rita Ortiz, 62, died of acute heat now, Arizona gets 40 percent of its water of the Paris Climate Accord. They passed
stress after the air conditioner in her apart- from the Colorado River, 40 percent from an initiative to divert 40 percent of waste
ment broke on a day when the temperature groundwater, and the rest from smaller riv- away from the landfill by 2020 and reach
reached 108; Katilynn Taylor-Marie Dan- ers and water recycling. Arizona’s access to zero waste by 2050. The city is in the midst
iel, a 14-year-old visiting Arizona from the Colorado River is particularly vulner- of replacing nearly 100,000 streetlights
Washington state, went for a hike with her able, both from declining snowpack that with energy-eicient LED lights.
grandmother on a hot July day and died of feeds the river and for complex political and Implicit in all of this is the notion that,
heat exposure. “If there were an extended historical reasons – California has first dibs however bad things get, Phoenix and the
power outage during a hot summer spell, on water from the river, leaving Arizona surrounding area will find ways to adapt.
there could be dozens, even hundreds of subject to the ever-increasing demands of But in many cases, this is just another form
fatalities,” says Gregg Garfin, a climatolo- its western neighbor. of denial. One big factor is agriculture,
gist at the University of Arizona. In the In Phoenix, city oicials are not oblivi- which consumes about 70 percent of the
urban areas of the city, temperatures are ous to what lies ahead. Water planners water in Arizona. Especially problematic
amplified by a phenomenon called the have made a big push for water eiciency are water-intensive crops like alfalfa, which
“urban-heat-island efect.” Concrete and – a typical household uses one-third less require up to 10 feet of water on the fields
asphalt absorb and radiate heat, turn- water than it did in 1990. They have nego- every year. At the same time, smaller Arizo-
Illustration by Haisa m Hussein RollingStone.com | R ol l i n g S t o n e | 47

na cities like Flagstaf and Prescott, which apolis, I met a homeless man who looked to tween 2010 and 2016, the population grew
do not have access to the Colorado River, be in his sixties outside the Arizona Center about 7.4 percent, compared with 1 percent
depend on fragile groundwater supplies; mall. He wore shorts and an old gray T- nationwide. “Construction is going crazy,”
if they get pumped dry, those cities will shirt. Sweat beaded on his forehead. “How says Tom Barr, an Asheville businessman
have to import millions of gallons of water are you doing in this heat?” I asked. who helps rebuild urban infrastructure
a day, or become ghost towns. “People have “I’m all right,” he said. “If I get hot, I go around the country. “Realtors complain
a lot of faith in adaptation,” says Hsiang. sit in the mall until they throw me out.” that they have no houses to sell.”
“But when you go out and look at it in the He showed me a thermometer he has on Asheville also seemed like a good place
real world, it’s much less convincing. And his keychain. “I go in when it gets to 115.” to ride out climate change: lots of trees,
it costs a lot, too.” As Hsiang points out, if “Pretty close to that now,” I said. water, a cool mountain climate (average
people walked around in air-conditioned He nodded. “Heat used to not bother summer temperature is about 82 degrees)
spacesuits when the temperature soared me much. But it does now. I’m thinking and plenty of distance from rising seas.
to 130 degrees or higher in Arizona, they of moving somewhere cooler. Ever been They know it’s not immune to climate im-
would have no trouble. “But who wants to to Seattle?” pacts: In 2004, back-to-back storms sent
live that way? And who can aford it?” I told him I had. several feet of the Swannanoa River into
In Miami and other cities vulnerable to “I hear it’s nice, all green, lots of water,” a low-lying area of town; in 2016, after a
sea-level rise, there is much talk among he said, looking out over hundreds of cars drought, 60,000 acres burned in North
architects and urban planners about sea in the parking lot, sunlight glinting off Carolina, a good portion of these fires out-
walls and coastal barriers and f loating their windshields. “Maybe someday I’ll side of Asheville. “No place is without risk,”
houses. But in practice, it’s much more make it up there.” Kaplan says. “But in Asheville, the risks
seem manageable.”
Last year, the Kaplans
bought a house in West
“TAMPA’S NOT GOING TO BE HERE IN 50 Asheville, a hip, up-and-
coming area. It’s modest,
YEARS. HOW DO YOU PUT DOWN ROOTS close to the French Broad
River, but up on a hill. Before
IN A PLACE THAT WON’T EXIST?” they signed the papers, Jef
checked the elevation with
Snapchat: The house was at
complex. Dan Gelber, the recently elected eff k aplan was six years old, 2,020 feet. “That ought to do us for a few
J
mayor of Miami Beach, has already slowed living in Kendall, Florida, just south centuries,” he says.
down a $500 million project initiated by of Miami, when Hurricane Andrew Asheville is also the home of one of the
his predecessor to raise city streets and in- hit. “My dad and another guy held a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad-
stall pumping stations, in part because the mattress up against the door to keep ministration’s climate and weather data
project is so expensive, but also because it closed,” he tells me. “Every time a centers, which employ hundreds of cli-
residents are sick of living with ripped-up window would blow out in the house, my mate scientists and data experts, as well
streets and traic congestion. Longtime mother would say, ‘Oh, shit.’ ” But growing as a nonprofit incubator of climate-related
Miami Beach resident and political activ- up in Florida, Kaplan thought hurricanes startups called the Collider. “We like to
ist Dan Kipnis calls it “a populist rebellion” were just something you had to live with. think of Asheville as the intellectual capi-
against the endless construction projects. After graduating from the University tal of climate science,” says Josh Dorfman,
Kipnis, who has been trying to sell his of Florida, he found a job at a software- a Collider board member. Most important
home in Miami Beach for more than a development firm and married his college for many new residents, however, is the
year, is sick of it too. “Somebody please get sweetheart. They moved to St. Petersburg, feeling of protection by the rolling hills
me out of here!” he e-mailed me recently. where they rented a condo. “We intended that surround the city. “You just feel safe
Rather than struggle to adapt, it’s often to put down roots there,” Kaplan says. They here,” one friend told me. “Of course, when
easier just to leave. Richard Hornbeck, considered buying a house in Cofee Pot the next big storm hits and everyone flees
a professor of economics at the Univer- Bayou, a historic neighborhood near Tampa the Outer Banks and winds up here, it
sity of Chicago who has studied the Dust Bay, but it flooded so often that finding af- might feel more like a refugee camp.”
Bowl extensively, argues that farmers in fordable insurance would have been nearly Like Asheville, Flagstaff, Arizona, is
the 1930s could have adapted to changing impossible. “We looked around St. Pete seen by many as a refuge, a mountain re-
conditions by planting diferent crops or and saw the troubles they are already hav- treat from the heat of Phoenix and Tuc-
shifting their fields to pastures for cattle ing with flooding,” Kaplan explains, “and son. But it is also not immune to climate
or sheep. But they didn’t. “There was in- we realized that with rising seas, it’s not risks: It’s surrounded by ponderosa for-
ertia in staying with how things had al- going to be here in 50 years. How do you ests that are prone to wildfires, and the
ways been done, and too much investment put down roots in a place that won’t exist?” city is dependent on a diminishing aquifer
in certain kinds of farm machinery, for They started thinking about other plac- for drinking-water supplies. Nevertheless,
people to make the changes needed,” says es to live, and settled on Asheville, North Flagstaf has seen a boom in people from
Hornbeck. Instead of adapting, many just Carolina. Set at the edge of the Blue Ridge California and southern parts of the state.
headed to California. Mountains, Asheville (population 89,000) When I visited last fall, the mayor, Coral
Of course, some people are more mobile is an old railroad town known for good Evans, who grew up in a working-class
than others. As our world heats up, the line hiking, craft beer, a lively music scene and neighborhood in Flagstaff, was worried
between those who can move to milder cli- a mild climate. “When we were looking for about the inf lux. “In the coming years,
mates and those who are left behind will a place to move, the choice was obvious,” we’re likely going to have wealthier people,
become increasingly stark. Not everyone Kaplan says. Lots of other people appar- especially people who are living on the
has the cash to start over, or the fortitude ently feel that way too. Buncombe County, beach now in California and Florida, look-
to begin life again in a better place. Shortly where Asheville is located, is one of the ing for new places to live when they get
after I helped Stevens pack up for Minne- fastest-growing counties in the East – be- flooded out of where they live,” Evans told
me. “When they go higher up and inland, vation near the New Mexi- TROUBLE ON like with six or seven feet of
are they going to displace the people who co border. This region of the THE HORIZON sea-level rise.
are there? I’m concerned about that. I’m Southwest, where humans Thousands of families U.C. Berkeley’s Hsiang
concerned about the people who are going have lived for more than were forced to flee their sometimes compares cities
homes in December
to get pushed out. Climate change is going 10,000 years, is one of the after an unprecedented like Miami, Houston and
to mean gentrification. And it’s going to oldest continually inhabit- series of wildfires raged Phoenix with Angkor Wat,
mean inequity.” ed places in the continental in Ventura, California. the 12th-century city in what
In Miami, climate gentrification is al- U.S. The Anasazi, an ancient is now Cambodia. “At its
ready underway. Although most of Miami- Pueblo people, lived in the area for near- peak, Angkor Wat was the most techno-
Dade County is flat, there is some slightly ly 1,000 years. Then, in the 13th century, logically advanced city in the world,” he
higher ground downtown, as well as in his- they vanished. explains. “Their engineering skills were
torically African-American neighborhoods I toured the canyon with TJ Hunter, a remarkable.” But despite all that prow-
like Overtown. Jesse Keenan, a researcher Navajo guide who grew up nearby. There ess, when a mega-drought came, that was
on urban development and climate adapta- are no roads to speak of, just Jeep tracks on the end of their city. “Ten years before the
tion at Harvard’s Graduate School of De- the banks of the river that runs through the drought hit, the people of Angkor Wat
sign, tracked the price-appreciation rate bottom of the canyon. As we plowed along, probably thought they were invincible,”
for 250,000 Miami-Dade properties over Hunter pointed out the ruins of Anasazi Hsiang says. “They probably thought they
the past four decades. Keenan found that dwellings high in the sandstone clifs and were the biggest badasses on the planet.”
properties at high elevations have long ap- spooky petroglyphs that are still visible on When I got back to Phoenix the next
preciated faster, mostly due to nonclimate the canyon walls. Most anthropologists day, I couldn’t help but notice all the for
factors. However, since 2000, the correla- think drought, and perhaps the ancient sale signs in suburban yards. President
tion between elevation and price apprecia- equivalent of water wars with neighboring Trump was on the radio, talking about
tion has grown more robust, which Keenan tribes, ended the Anasazi civilization. “The immigration reform, stoking fears of ref-
suggests is “early signaling” of preference Navajo believe their spirits still live in the ugees and displaced people. By noon, the
MARCUS YAM/“LOS ANGELES TIMES”/GETTY IMAGES
for properties that may fare better dur- canyon,” Hunter says. temperature had hit 110 degrees, and the
ing rising tides and climate change. Albert It seems absurd to compare the Anasazi sky was hazy with smoke from wildfires
Slap, president and co-founder of Coastal ruins with a modern city like Phoenix. farther west. Hsiang’s work projects a
Risk Consulting, a Fort Lauderdale-based After all, we have iPhones, we have solar near-total collapse of agricultural yields
firm that advises property owners on flood panels, we have all this great technol- in the region, part of a decline from sear-
risks, has found a similar trend. “Prop- ogy. But that may be a profound miscal- ing heat and drought that will reduce eco-
erty buyers are getting smarter,” Slap says. culation, especially after you look at the nomic output by 25 percent. As I drove, I
“They are moving to higher elevations, one damage Hurricane Harvey did to Hous- wondered if future humans – or human-
foot at a time.” ton, or the way that the California wild- like machines – would interpret the ruins
fires burned through areas no one thought of these shopping malls and car dealer-
while i was in arizona, i stopped at were even at risk, or you wade through the ships as 21st-century petroglyphs. What
Canyon de Chelly National Monument, streets of Miami Beach during high tide stories, if any, would they tell about the
a sandstone canyon on the Navajo reser- and try to imagine what the city will look people who had once lived here?
JUNE 1st - 3rd 2018 • RANDALL'S ISLAND PARK • NEW YORK CITY
FRIDAY JACK WHITE JUNE 1

YEAH YEAH YEAHS •• POST MALONE •• JAMES BLAKE
DAMIAN ‘JR. GONG’ MARLEY •• THE GLITCH MOB •• MAGGIE ROGERS •• 6LACK
DRAM •• GOLDLINK •• TASH SULTANA •• ALVVAYS •• WOLF ALICE •• BELLY
FLIGHT FACILITIES •• POND •• TWO FEET •• SIR SLY •• A$AP TWELVYY
LOU THE HUMAN •• LOPHIILE •• SLAVES (UK)
SATURDAY TRAVIS SCOTT JUNE 2
HALSEY •• SILK CITY (DIPLO + MARK RONSON)
THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM (PERFORMING THE ‘59 SOUND)
2 CHAINZ •• CUT COPY •• GALANTIS •• RUSS •• MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA
JAPANDROIDS •• KELELA •• BROCKHAMPTON •• LANY •• THE MENZINGERS
JAY ELECTRONICA •• MOSES SUMNEY •• AURORA •• VHS COLLECTION •• CUCO
THE SPENCER LEE BAND •• MIKKY EKKO •• THE REGRETTES
SUNDAY EMINEM JUNE 3

N.E.R.D •• KHALID •• CHVRCHES •• LIL UZI VERT •• SYLVAN ESSO
DIRTY PROJECTORS •• AMINÉ •• KALI UCHIS •• MARGO PRICE •• VIC MENSA
THIRD EYE BLIND •• BILLIE EILISH •• QUINN XCII •• THE STRUTS
MIDDLE KIDS •• KNOX FORTUNE •• WESTSIDE GUNN & CONWAY
BERHANA •• ALICE MERTON •• CONFIDENCE MAN
Reviews
“I fight the world, I fight you,
I fight myself, I fight God.
Just tell me
How many burdens left.”
—K endr ick L a m a r, “Pray for Me”
Kendrick
Flexes
His
Super-
Powers
On the ‘Black Panther’
soundtrack, hip-hop’s
most important voice
tries a new role: curator
Various Artists
Black Panther:
Original Soundtrack
Top Dawg/Aftermath/Interscope
HHHH
BY JODY ROSEN
It’s not every day that the mar-
keting machinations of a multi-
billion-dollar Walt Disney sub-
sidiary align with the utopian
imagination of the black artistic
vanguard. But we live in strange
times. Thus does Black Panther,
the latest entry in the Marvel
superhero movie franchise, ar-
rive amid Star Wars-level hype.
The Black Panther soundtrack
album has been nearly as fe-
verishly anticipated as the film,
and no wonder: It is helmed
by another improbable strad-
dler of cultural categories, Ken-
drick Lamar, A-list pop star and
Black Lives Matter-era protest
poet nonpareil.
It’s tempting to compare
Black Panther to Curtis May-
field’s Superf ly and Marvin
Gaye’s Trouble Man, classic
blaxploitation soundtracks that
channeled the social conscious-
ness and sonic adventurism of
early-Seventies soul. But the
Illustration by Martin A nsen RollingStone.com | R ol l i n g S t o n e | 51

Reviews
analogy is imprecise. Lamar co-
executive-produced the album,
has writing credits on all 14
tracks and appears throughout.
His main job, though, is a defin-
itively 21st-century one: musi- Dashboard
cal curator. Lamar corrals old Confessional
friends from L.A. (Schoolboy Crooked Shadows
Q, Ab-Soul), Southern-rap hit- Fueled by Ramen
makers (Future, Travis Scott), HHH
new-soul leading lights (the The prince of emo proves he can
Weeknd, Anderson .Paak), as cut it in today’s pop world
well as musicians from Africa.
The Black Panther saga has A lot has happened in the 15
strong feminist overtones – its years since Dashboard Con-
hero, King T’Challa, is aided fessional propelled strummy,
and goaded by a corps of female perpetually wounded boyhood
warriors called the Dora Mila- drama to gold-record status.
je – and some of the best mo- But Chris Carrabba is still true
ments on the soundtrack train to the scene – “I’m always gonna
the spotlight on women. Lamar be/About us,” he sings on the
partners with SZA in the plain- Ben Goldwasser first Dashboard LP since 2009.
tive “All the Stars”; in “I Am,” (left), Andrew These songs dress up his tri-
the English singer Jorja Smith VanWyngarden umphant builds and throttled
wraps her rasp around a frac- breakdowns in contemporiz-
tured torch ballad. There is lots ing pop touches. “About Us” can
of excellent rapping on Black
Panther, but the most startling
bars belong to Yugen Blakrok,
MGMT Get sidle next to Imagine Dragons
in any playlist, and “Belong” is
the sort of song you write when
a female MC from Johannes-
burg, who gets a feature along-
side Vince Staples on “Opps”
Back to Their you see Shawn Mendes eating
the lunch you packed back when
he was larval. JESSICA HOPPER
and outshines the headliner, no

mean feat.
Most of the album is co-pro-
Old School
duced by Lamar’s longtime The wry psych-poppers deliver a set of
comrade Sounwave, whose
work here is bleak, beautiful,
bright tunes with funny anti-phone lyrics
propulsive and spacious – a sci- MGMT Little Dark Age The Breeders
fi sound for an Afro-futurist Columbia HHH½ All Nerve 4AD
fable. Above all, Black Panther HHHH
is an affirmation of Lamar’s You can never go home again, especially when Alt-rock greats bring the drama
powers, a fascinating entry in home is your college dorm room. On hits like on a sublime return
a discography that is inargu- “Kids” and “Electric Feel,” from their 2008
ably the decade’s deepest. Black debut, Oracular Spectacular, the studio scien- The first LP in 10 years by the
Panther’s comic-book mytholo- tists of MGMT mixed pokerfaced irony, light- classic Breeders lineup – led by
gy is goofy, but it resonates with ly exotic sonics and neohippie whimsy to help make indie singer-songwriter Kim Deal
Lamar’s own favorite themes. pop a brighter place – pretty good for stuf they dreamed up and her guitarist sister, Kelley
Like King T’Challa, King Ken- while still students at Wesleyan University. But their next – is everything one could hope
drick grapples with the bur- two albums – 2010’s Congratulations and 2013’s MGMT – for. Kim’s vocals and the twins’
dens and blessings of an exalt- were space-rock detours that eluded their fans. guitars prowl and growl with
ed perch: Uneasy lies the head. MGMT are back to their roots on their fourth album, grace and ferocity, creating
Perhaps the most touching with concise tunes built from cushy keyboard beats and fraught anticipation (“Nervous
song on the album is also the kiting melodies. Little Dark Age does a great job evoking Mary,” “Walking With the Kill-
most gauche, the closer, “Pray the fizzy, dizzy New Wave psychedelia that made them sur- er”) and a sputtery punk spark
for Me,” in which Lamar pours prise stars. “Me and Michael” and “James” luxuriate in open- (“Wait in the Car,” “Howl at the
out angst and bromides be- hearted Eighties-synth romanticism. “One Thing Left to Summit”), while the rhythm
tween schlocky refrains sung by Try” is the only song that’s about as catchy as their early high section noticeably deepens the
the Weeknd. “I fight the world, I points. But there’s a welcome new wrinkle: “She Works Out record’s sense of drama. Kim
fight you, I fight myself/I fight Too Much” and “TSLMP” (a.k.a. “time spent looking at my sufuses songs like the gorgeous
God, just tell me how many phone”) are funny, bemusedly cranky parodies of screen- “Spacewoman” with a lifetime’s
burdens left.” At such mo- obsessed solipsism. A more self-serious band might deliver worth of heartache and alien-
RYAN LOWRY
ments, Lamar is something that message with dour urgency. MGMT do it with a wry ation. You won’t know wheth-
grander than a superhero: he- wink, making ironic detachment seem like a totally accept- er to gasp or cry. All Nerve is a
roically human. able way to keep yourself from going nuts in 2018. JON DOLAN sublime return. CHARLES AARON
52 HHHHH Classic | HHHH Excellent | HHH Good | HH Fair | H Poor Ratings are supervised by the editors of R OLLING S TONE .
Belle and Sebastian Caitlyn Smith Palm Brian Fallon
How to Solve Our Human Starfire Monument Records Rock Island Carpark Records Sleepwalkers Island
Problems Matador HHHH HHH½ HHH
HHH½ Nashville pro/Wilco fan grabs Philly oddball-pop crew’s Roots-rock good guy grows
Scottish indie poppers bring her chance to break out confusing, catchy gems up without getting soft
wistful tunes and left-field moves
Caitlyn Smith, a 31-year-old Pulling candy-coated melo- The former Gaslight Anthem
Belle and Sebastian might not singer-songwriter who’s penned dies, stop-start rhythms and frontman’s recent solo forays
be able to solve all our prob- hits for Meghan Trainor and contorted rifs into a cohesive, have been rootsy and quiet-
lems. But they can handle the Lady Antebellum, among oth- catchy whole isn’t easy. But this er than his band’s New Jersey
ones that involve a lack of witty, ers, steps out on her own with Philadelphia band makes it punk rock. His new one nego-
tuneful indie pop. This 15-track this excellent debut. Her voice work. Palm’s second album is tiates Gaslight’s Springsteen-
set, originally released as three is as big and versatile as any of an avant-pop gem that channels meets-Clash uplift and a more
separate EPs, ofers a tasting the Nashville stars she’s worked the exploratory spirit of the El- eclectic sense of history (see
menu of their strengths – from with. On “St. Paul,” she sings ephant 6 Collective’s most out- “Etta James” or the Motown-
“Show Me the Sun,” a glammed- about being 17 and driving to there oferings into shape-shift- steeped “If Your Prayers Don’t
up throwback about faith and the city from her native Cannon ing songs that keep their hooks Get to Heaven”). Brian Fallon,
doubt, to the Sixties pop of Falls, Minnesota (“listening to front and center. On the high- 38, stares down maturity on the
“Best Friend.” They even throw the same three Wilco tracks”), light “Heavy Lifting,” vocalist- acoustic “See You on the Other
in a few surprises, like the drum and the acoustic “This Town Is guitarists Eve Alpert and Kasra Side,” and if his somewhat ge-
’n’ bass ’n’ pedal-steel romp “We Killing Me” surveys early-career Kurt accentuate their sweet neric writing can’t always keep
Were Beautiful,” which works struggles, including missing her harmonies, then fully take over up with heroically growled vo-
way better than it ought to. grandfather’s funeral because and wring a dance party out of cals, his big heart is always un-
SIMON VOZICK-LEVINSON she had to tour. JON DOLAN the chaos. MAURA K. JOHNSTON deniably in the right place. J.D.
53
Turn it up.
liberator.com
Reviews
Steely Dan: The Guide

Ranking every studio LP by the Seventies’ most sophisticated
band – from sardonic hits to lush jazz fantasias. By Jon Dolan
and Fagen make fun of all second Dan LP is their

MUST- the guitar solos they darkest, full of razor boys, FURTHER
HAVES rejected for “Peg” before
punching up Jay Graydon’s
showbiz kids and, on
“Pearl of the Quarter,” a
LISTENING
Hawaiian-tinged killer. hooker with a heart of
glass. Even the bright hit
“My Old School” ends up
being about a college drug
GOING bust. Bummer.
DEEPER
Katy Lied
1975
Steely Dan tried to be a

band in their early days,
but by 1975 Becker and
Fagen’s perfectionism had
scared of everyone but
the most seasoned session
Pretzel Logic warriors. The sleek Two Against
1974 surfaces shimmer on Katy Nature
Lied. But it’s the concise 2000
Walter Becker and Donald
grandeur of songs like
The Royal Scam
Fagen were symbiotic 1976 After their long and
buddies who met as “Bad Sneakers” and
restorative hiatus, Steely
students at Bard College “Doctor Wu” that gives The grooves got a little
Dan came back, not quite
during the late Sixties, this very moving album its too stretched out on the
Can’t Buy a Thrill as great as their Seventies
hitting it of over a shared resonance. The high point: band’s fifth album, and
peaks, but still able to
love of jazz, Bob Dylan and “Black Friday,” a boogieing 1972 the tunes a little too thin.
make a line like “I’m
post-modern humor image of stock-market But there are whole
The Dan were still figuring sizzling like an isotope/
writers like Kurt Vonnegut apocalypse. movies inside the
it out on their debut, I’m on fire” feel sweet to
and John Barth. Within a drug-dealer odyssey “Kid
handing over some of the hum between lonely sips
few years, they’d emerge Charlemagne” and “Sign
singing to flaxen-voiced of Cuervo Gold.
as the most sophisticated in Stranger,” a Western
hippie David Palmer. But
rock band of the Seventies. set in outer space.
triumphs abound, like
“We’d work on music and the sardonically wistful
lyrics together, inventing “Brooklyn,” certainly the
characters, adding musical first rock song ever to
and verbal jokes, polishing reference golf in its lyrics.
the arrangements, smoking
Turkish cigarettes,” Fagen
once recalled. Their third
LP, Pretzel Logic, is the
near-perfect realization of Aja
their beautifully strange
1977
rock & roll ideal: “Rikki
Don’t Lose That Number” The golden peak of Steely Everything
built an FM smash out of a Dan’s studio obsessiveness
Gaucho Must Go
piano bit from bop great (they’d stopped playing
1980 2003
Horace Silver, and there are live years earlier). The
loving tributes to Charlie groove on “Black Cow” is For their last LP before a Their final album stared
Parker and Duke Ellington. so smooth you could do 19-year layof, Becker and down death (“The Last
But the album’s power lies lines of it, and “Deacon Countdown to Fagen labored endlessly, Mall”) and divorce
in the way they balance Blues” is an ode to mythic turning the studio into an (“Things I Miss the Most”)
the cynicism of modern- loserdom worthy of
Ecstasy
1973 operating room. But even with tasty resignation. And
L.A. noir like “With a Gun” Kerouac. For a companion that antiseptic malaise “Slang of Ages” features a
and the sentimental piece, YouTube the VH1 Opening with the can’t quash the yacht-y rare, surly vocal from
beauty of “Any Major Dude Classic Albums episode bloody-dagger piano grace of “Babylon Sisters” Becker, who passed away
Will Tell You.” about the LP, where Becker swing of “Bodhisattva,” the and “Hey Nineteen.” last year. RIP to the god.
Movies
By Peter Travers
The New Shape of Oscar

Time’s up for Best Supporting
actresses playing Actor
victims as female Willem Dafoe The Florida
warriors take the Project
lead on Oscar night Woody Harrelson
Three Billboards
Richard Jenkins The Shape
Best Picture of Water
Christopher Plummer All the
Call Me by Your Name Money in the World
Darkest Hour Sam Rockwell
Dunkirk Three Billboards
Get Out
Lady Bird plummer wins points for
Phantom Thread replacing the disgraced Kevin
The Post Spacey. Still . . .
The Shape of Water FAVORITE: Rockwell. Some
Three Billboards Outside argue that he makes the racist
Ebbing, Missouri cop he plays too sympathetic.
Nonsense. He’s flawless.
christopher nol an’s daz-
And the SPOILER: Dafoe. An iconic film
zling Dunkirk should have been
Envelope, Please villain uncovers his heart in
a lock, with Jordan Peele’s Above: The Shape of The Florida Project and quiet-
Get Out and Greta Gerwig’s Water leads the Oscar ly (maybe too quietly for Oscar)
Lady Bird leading the indie race, with Hawkins as a breaks all of ours.
youth charge. Now the innova- mute janitor who finds
tors are out. And gay romance the ideal man in an
underwater creature.
(Call Me by Your Name) seems
Left: Three Billboards
Best Supporting
so last year, when Moonlight stars McDormand as Actress
won. With sexual predators a mother who takes
on the prowl, Academy voters on the law and an Mary J. Blige Mudbound
will want to honor a film that abusive patriarchy. Allison Janney I, Tonya
fist-bumps a strong woman. Lesley Manville
#TimesUp. Phantom Thread
FROM TOP: FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES; MERRICK MORTON/FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES
FAVORITE: The Shape of Water. Gary Oldman Darkest Hour Laurie Metcalf Lady Bird
Guillermo del Toro’s tale of Denzel Washington Best Actress Octavia Spencer The Shape
a mute cleaning lady (Sally Roman J. Israel, Esq. of Water
Hawkins) fighting government Sally Hawkins The Shape
pigs in the name of forbidden many think that academy of Water bl ige t u r n ed dow n t he
love has all the elements, plus a voters, with the force of #Times- Frances McDormand heat to play Mudbound’s good
leading 13 nominations. Up, denied James Franco (The Three Billboards mother. Still, the race belongs
SPOILER: Three Billboards. Mar- Disaster Artist) a nom due to al- Margot Robbie I, Tonya to two moms who turned it up.
tin McDonagh did not win a legations of sexual misconduct. Saoirse Ronan Lady Bird FAVORITE: Janney. Could anyone
directing nod, which hurts his FAVORITE: Oldman. As Win- Meryl Streep The Post else have mustered the searing
film’s odds. But Frances Mc- ston Churchill, the 59-year-old comic ferocity to show human-
Dormand, as a mother seeking crowned his career with a por- streep, 21 times nominat- ity in Tonya Harding’s mother
justice for her murdered child, trayal that should finally win an ed, takes on first-timer Robbie. from hell?
strikes a chord. elusive Oscar for an actor who It’s a third try for Ronan, 23. SPOILER: Metcalf. The push-pull
should have a full shelf by now. FAVORITE: McDormand. She tension a mother feels for the
Best Actor SPOILER: Chalamet, the 22-year- plays a mad-as-hell mom, bril- daughter she loves and infuri-
old who scores a breakthrough liantly defining a year in which ates finds hilarious and heart-
Timothée Chalamet as a teen in the throes of first women battled a rigged system. felt expression in a perfect Met-
Call Me by Your Name love. Too young to win? His final SPOILER: Hawkins. As a mute calf performance – celebrating
Daniel Day-Lewis scene alone is an acting tour de janitor, the Brit actress didn’t a bond between women essen-
Phantom Thread force that the veterans in his have words to take on the pa- tial to navigating a world of
Daniel Kaluuya Get Out category might envy. triarchy. The fire’s in her eyes. men. Talk about timely.
CHADWICK BOSEMAN go in there, and all you see is black and friend and trainer. They’re here to cele-
Hispanic kids. You’d see them facing an ex- brate: In addition to the movie, Coles’ lady
[Cont. from 37] says Marvel’s Feige. “It’s tended [sentence] that doesn’t make sense. is eight months pregnant with their first
a tremendous gift that he has.” Or you get family-visit day and see their child. “She’s about to pop,” Boseman says.
The wunderkind’s previous two movies family: ‘Oh, man. That’s what these kids He raises his glass of tequila: “To new life!”
– 2013 Sundance darling Fruitvale Sta- go back to? These kids don’t have a shot.’ ” While the DJ spins Tupac and Nas, they
tion, about the killing of Oscar Grant, an Some of the issues Coogler started grap- huddle in a banquette and plot what’s next.
unarmed black man shot in the back by po- pling with at YGC would become themes We’ll certainly see more of Black Panther
lice while facedown on an Oakland subway of his first two movies: broken families, this summer, when he’ll team with Captain
platform; and 2015’s Rocky reboot, Creed, over-policing and over-incarceration, the America to defend the world against an
about a young boxer who grows up in ju- dearth of opportunities for young black alien invasion in Avengers: Infinity War.
venile detention and learns to channel his men. They also show up in Black Panther. But Boseman seems most excited to get
anger in the ring – were both critical and Mainly it’s through the character of Jor- back to writing. He and Coles are about to
box-oice hits, leaving little doubt Coogler dan’s Killmonger, an abandoned member start work on a screenplay about a minister
was up to the challenge. But Jordan, who of the Wakandan royal family who grew up and anti-gang activist from Boston, whom
starred in both of those films, says it was orphaned in Oakland and became a Navy Boseman hopes to play. They’re also fine-
still “surreal” being on the set of a $200 SEAL-turned-black-ops-assassin. He re- tuning a script they wrote called Expatri-
million movie with the same director who, turns to his ancestral country to unseat ate, about a 1970s airline hijacking, which
five years ago, was shooting a $900,000 T’Challa from the throne, as well as use Oscar winner Barry Jenkins (Moonlight)
indie with, as Jordan puts it, “some duct Wakanda’s riches and weapons to spark has already signed on to direct.
tape and one camera. an international racial uprising. “Where Boseman has a lot he wants to do.
“Every so often, we’d be setting up the I’m from, when black folks started revolu- “There’s a plethora of stories in our culture
next shot,” Jordan says, “standing of to tions, they never had the firepower or the that haven’t been told, because Hollywood
the side, just the two of us like, ‘Man, this resources to fight their oppressors,” he says didn’t believe they were viable,” he says. “It
shit’s crazy!’ ” at one point. His plan is to arm people of would be cool to see slices of history that
For his part, Coogler has said he was too color worldwide, “so they can rise up and you haven’t seen with African figures. Like
stressed to really enjoy it. “But every day, kill those in power.” Africans in Europe – the Moors in Spain.
you’d see something and be like, ‘Jesus. I’m Jordan, like Boseman, drew from real- Or if you go to Portugal, they have statues
really doing this.’ ” life figures for Killmonger: Malcolm X, of black people all over the place. So not
Coogler has said Black Panther is the Marcus Garvey, Huey P. Newton, Fred only have we been here,” Boseman says,
most personal film he’s ever made – which Hampton, Tupac Shakur. “This young “but we’ve directly afected everything that
seems unlikely, until he explains. black man from Oakland, growing up you think is European.”
“I don’t know if you’ve ever listened to in systemic oppression, not having his “It’s remarkable, man,” Coles says. “I
James Cameron talk about how he made mom and dad around, going to foster care, remember sitting in a cofee shop in Bed-
Titanic?” he says. “I’ve heard interviews being a part of this system,” Jordan says. Stuy, and we might have had enough
with him, and he made Titanic because he “With [Killmonger] being African-Amer- money for two cofees. But we knew the
wanted to explore the ocean. What he was ican like myself, I understood his rage, homeboy that owned the place, they’d
really passionate about was deep-sea div- and how he could get to the point where bring us soup, and we’d be there until night
ing and finding underwater wrecks, and he he had to do what he had to do, by any working on scripts. We never imagined su-
looked at Titanic as an opportunity to do means necessary.” perhero stuf.”
that, get paid and maybe get a movie out of For Boseman, Killmonger and T’Challa The waitress delivers more shots, and
it. He got this incredibly successful movie are two sides of the same coin. Not quite Boseman proposes another toast. “To see-
as a result of one guy’s curiosity.” Malcolm and Martin – because T’Challa ing the movie,” he says. “And to knowing
Coogler’s Black Panther is about many is down to fight, too – but something simi- that it’s good!”
things: family, responsibility, fathers and lar. Radical versus diplomat, revolution- Before we part ways, Boseman has had a
sons, the power of badass women. Immi- ary versus peacemaker. “Those ideas, that change of heart. He’s talking about the Ox-
gration, borders, refugees. What it means conflict – I’ve been having that conversa- ford trip – the celebrity who gave Rashad
to be black. What it means to be African. tion almost my whole life,” he says. “But it’s money. “After we got back, we got a bene-
What it means to be a citizen of the world. never actually happened on a stage where factor letter,” he says. “Denzel paid for me.”
But it’s also a movie about America – the you can hear it. So the fact that we get to Yes, that Denzel. “I’m sure he has no
America of mandatory-minimum sentenc- have that conversation, and you get to hear idea,” says Boseman. “It was random.” He
ing and the trans-Atlantic slave trade. It’s it – and have to deal with it? That’s what wrote him a letter when he found out – “I
about how, in one character’s words, “lead- makes this movie very diferent.” couldn’t wait to write my thank-you let-
ers have been assassinated, communities In other words, enjoy your black-super- ter!” – but unless Washington is a hoarder
flooded with drugs.” And it’s about – in the hero movie. But be prepared to reckon with or has a photographic memory, there’s
haunting last words of another character – more than 500 years of systematic oppres- no reason to think he remembers an
“my ancestors that jumped from the ships, sion, too. unknown college kid from 20 years ago.
because they knew death was better than “A lot of people bought tickets,” Bose- “I’ve been waiting to meet him, so I can
bondage.” man says, grinning. “But they’re not really tell him.”
When Coogler was growing up in Oak- expecting that.” There’s a reason he didn’t want to tell me
land, his father worked at a juvenile hall before. “You never want to make someone
in San Francisco. “It’s called YGC – Youth f t e r a l ong da y of promo, feel like they owe you something else,” he
Guidance Center,” Coogler says. “It’s where
minors are incarcerated. And it’s shitty.”
When Coogler turned 21, he got a job
A Boseman is winding down at the
Dime, a hip-hop cocktail bar near
West Hollywood. He’s with Logan Coles,
says. “They’ve already given you whatever
it is they were supposed to give you. But I
realized this morning that I’ve gotten to a
there too. “Frisco is a city that’s predomi- his writing partner and close friend from point where nobody would think that.” He
nantly white and Asian,” he says. “But you Howard, and Addison Henderson, his smiles. “I don’t need any more help.”
THE
LAST
WORD
George Clinton
The Parliament-Funkadelic legend on the essence of funk,
the death of doo-wop and how to find great musicians
Who are the funkiest people who ever lived? us. We don’t know, but we’ve got to get over this shit of not getting
When I’m just tryna funk, it’s gonna be the Staple Singers, man along with each other.
– Pop Staples. And Ray Charles. Ray could take “Eleanor Rigby” You and Bootsy Collins had an alien encounter, right?
and make that funky. He ends up doing that to anything – to me, Yeah, and we wasn’t high. A light hit the car, and a substance
that’s raw funk. And then [Motown session bassist] James Jam- like mercury out of the thermometer rolled up the side of the car.
erson – that is a musician. Liquid metal that moved, like in Terminator 2?
And who is the least funky person alive? That’s exactly what it looked like.
Oh, my God! [Laughs] Probably Trump. Can’t be no funk in the How have you been able to find such consistently great musicians
Trump! [Pauses] He ain’t gonna like that. over the years?
Where did the idea of “free your mind and your ass will follow” come They usually be out of the box, but still appealing. Somebody
from? And do you stand by the advice? you can’t control, or won’t do it normal.
I think I was just saying it as a stream of consciousness, you I learned that anything that get on
know? But as I get older, I see it as the same thing as “Let your nerves – the parents don’t
go and use the Force, Luke.” If your head ain’t right, ev- like, the old musicians don’t
erything you try to fix is going to be messed up, ’cause like, and kids seem to be lik-
your brain is what you need to fix it. ing it – that’s usually the shit.
Same idea as “Maggot Brain,” really. But you then have to learn
Yeah, same thing! Same thing. If you got mag- how to balance it. It can’t go
gots in your brain, everything you think is gonna all up into the crazy, ’cause
be rotten. that’s what you’re flirting with.
What advice would you give your younger self? Parliament came from your doo-
Stop looking for anything else to be LSD. If you wop quartet, the Parliaments.
knew that it was never gonna be like that first hit, You’ve said when doo-wop was
you could’ve stopped a long time ago. dying, you were sad but excited to see
So you never regretted LSD? what was next, right?
As soon as Woodstock happened, Even though I loved the Fifties doo-
LSD was over. It became commer- wop, you couldn’t hold on to it. You had to
cial, $5 a tab. Then that mind- change, or you was gon’ be antique real quick,
manipulation thing it did be- like the Ink Spots. And then we were at Mo-
came dangerous because town and you had the Rolling Stones, sim-
anybody could program ple rock & roll became the new thing. So
your ass when you’re on it. we turned the volume up and got slick, al-
How do you feel about most jazzy musicians – Maceo Parker, Fred
white artists doing black Wesley, Bootsy playing simple, but making
music? it smooth and brand-new – with the concept
I’d bite off the Beat- of clones or whatever we was talking about.
les, or anybody else. It’s all Are you optimistic or pessimistic about
one world, one planet and the future of this country?
one groove. You’re supposed I’m optimistic about it, because
to learn from each other, whatever happened, that’s the way
blend from each other, and it’s supposed to be. If He did it, He
it moves around like that. did it all. You just have to figure
You see that rocket ship your way how to dance your way
leave yesterday? We can out of your constriction. And
maybe leave this planet. We pray, have faith and all that shit.
gonna be dealing with aliens. Would you be cool with a hologram
You think black and white gonna of yourself going on tour after you’re no
be a problem? Wait till you start longer with us?
running into motherfuckers I already made a hologram. I did it
with three or four dicks! Bug- with the whole band. Maybe they can
eyed motherfuckers! They have it start performing in Vegas or
could be ready to party, or some shit. I wanted to give something
they could be ready to eat to my family.
What do you want people to say about
Clinton and P-Funk you when you’re gone?
are touring and He made me sick, but he gave me the
working on an LP. antidote. INTERVIEW BY BRIAN HIATT
58 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com Illustration by Mark Summers

SO
SUBTLY
YOU CAN DRINK IT
NEAT
NEW STARBUCKS BLONDE ESPRESSO NOW SERVING
®
:[HYI\JRZ*VLL*VTWHU`(SSYPNO[ZYLZLY]LK
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KENDRICK LAMAR | STEELY DAN INSIDE THE RETURN OF 'ATLANTA'

ON THE COVER Chadwick Boseman

Grooming by Saisha Beecham at Cloutier

RETURN Peter Travers

PRIEST EDITORIAL STAFF: Betsy Hill

the release of their new ROLLINGSTONE.COM EDITORIAL: Jerry Portwood

PRESIDENT AND CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER:

Saoirse CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER: Michael H. Provus

THE OSCAR BILL NYE RIHANNA: Nicole Nannariello, John Stark

JULIAN CASABLANCAS MATT TAIBBI EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, LICENSING: Maureen Lamberti

CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Joseph Hutchinson

RollingStone.com/travers CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER: Ivan Chen

ROLLINGSTONE.COM/COVERWALL REGIONAL OFFICES

OUR FAVORITE SONGS, ALBUMS AND VIDEOS RIGHT NOW

COURTESY KALI UCHIS; MARC GRIMWADE/WIREIMAGE; NOAM GALAI/GETTY IMAGES

Rock&Roll THE NEXT

How ‘Atlanta’ Reloaded

ond-season episodes should set their example –

The Battle of the THE KINKS

Black Crowes After 30 years of tension – and an endless

Davies split in 1996 and have been touring

“It’d be lovely to do something,” says Dave.

hris robinson was not happy last year when he learned

Artists to Fans: Lose the Phones!

Elton John Neil Diamond Paul Simon Joan Baez

Lucy Dacus: Rock’s Shannon and

c ou pl e of y e a r s ag o, luc y she was a teenager after becoming obsessed

A Dacus was a 19-year-old indie-rock

Apple liter- Apple HomePod The One

The Coolest, Smallest and Smartest LET YOUR SPEAKERS

YACHT ROCK’S STRANGE THE UNTOLD STORY OF VAN

Dylan. They ﬁrst met on the set

Including the nine-month-old

Pop’s New Long Game Future and

I since Logic performed his hit

David Letterman blew up the

MY NEXT GUEST NEEDS

untamed. His eccentric monthly

‘Looming Tower’ Looks

Back in Anger at 9/11 Stern to George Clooney to

Dolly! joyride with

Cardi’s CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ADELE/INSTAGRAM; AZ/X17ONLINE.COM; PEREZ/X17ONLINE.

MOTHERSHIP IN ORBIT George Clinton brought

The Weird and Wild

A consume cannabis regularly, but contains carbofuran –

Photograph by Alex a ndr a Hootnick RollingStone.com | R ol l i n g S t o n e | 27

T Pure Analytics, Ziggy and Har-

30 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com Illustrations by Victor Juhasz

RETURN OF THE KING

W cofee shop, and Kevin, is a dancer and singer who’s

hen bosem a n Marvel’s First from Obama the concept of “a

W got the role of

my way of welcoming you back.’ ” ﬂossing resplendently in a tanger-

her goodwill with Team Taylor went up

hen she’s done rehears-

W ing at SNL, Lipa gets into

sediment ﬂow from the Mississippi River.

For another, large parts of New Orleans,

Illustration by Haisa m Hussein RollingStone.com | R ol l i n g S t o n e | 47

FRIDAY JACK WHITE JUNE 1

SUNDAY EMINEM JUNE 3

Illustration by Martin A nsen RollingStone.com | R ol l i n g S t o n e | 51

and outshines the headliner, no