Pitchfork

One week after Young Thug performed alongside YSL signees at the release party for Diamond*’s new mixtape Bling Slime Vøl 1, he’s taking the entire crew on the road for the New Generation Tour, with Tezzus, 1300saint, Iyrus, Yume, Biggs, Unky, and Diamond* in tow. It kicks off in September in Rogers, Arkansas and crosses the States before completing a quick four-city run in Europe.

Jennifer Finch, longtime bassist of the ’90s grunge outfit L7, is currently undergoing treatment for brain cancer. “Unforseen complications have required Jennifer to undergo multiple surgeries that have resulted in physical limitations,” reads a press release shared by the band. A GoFundMe page has been set up to help Finch cover her medical expenses and additional at-home care.

The staff of Pitchfork listens to a lot of new music. A lot of it. On any given day our writers, editors, and contributors go through an imposing number of new releases, giving recommendations to each other and discovering new favorites along the way. Each Monday, with our Pitchfork Selects playlist, we’re sharing what our writers are playing obsessively and highlighting some of the Pitchfork staff’s favorite new music.

Since the beginning, Jay-Z’s persona has been built around the idea that he was a marked man with his back against the wall who, with his resilience, brain, and swag, escaped a doomed fate. “The shit is eternal, I rock the heavens well/Even if they won't let me in heaven, I raise hell ’til it’s heaven/Recognize the black cat with the nine lives,” he rapped in his 1995 freestyle with Big L on the Stretch & Bobbito Show, one of the earliest touchstones in the legend of Jigga.

Mastodon will return with their first album in five years—and first since the sudden death of former frontman Brent Hinds—on August 28. Marrow Deep’s lead single, “Snakes for Dinner,” features a guest turn on vocals from Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme. He also stars in the comedy-horror video, directed by Deathcats, below. Released by Loma Vista, Marrow Deep is the first album from Mastodon’s new lineup: founders Brann Dailor, Troy Sanders, and Bill Kelliher, plus new guitarist Nick Johnston.

Speaking from beyond the grave, Andy Warhol talks with Jasper Dean about the latter’s love for Beat poets and Cameron Winter. True biographical statements emerge from the charming fictional exchange, part of the 22-year-old model-musician’s self-published Communist Party Animal zine, as do heartwarming sentiments. That same blurring of artifice and sincerity informs their debut full-length, TOY COLLAGES.

In the lush opening moments of Terra Incognita, composer Pascal Bideau’s new album as Akusmi, it’s as though he were swinging a giant magnet, drawing in every sound that fascinates him. Low piano notes gather tentatively; sostenuto woodwinds hover just above ground level; a rainstick adds contour and shading. As the piano arches into a sparkling glissando, a harp follows suit, carving out space for a light, airy synthesizer drone to materialize.

I’ll leave it to others to provide Foreign Tongues with the traditional blessing that greets every new Rolling Stones album—“it’s their best since Some Girls!”—but I will say it features their best cover art since Some Girls. Created by Chicago painter Nathaniel Mary Quinn, the image mashes up caricatures of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Ron Wood into a glorious grotesquerie that channels the colorful glam-trash aesthetics of the band’s late-’70s phase.

When Twisted Teens broke through with their second album, Blame the Clown, only five months ago, the New Orleans duo’s southern-fried mix of garage rock, early punk, rockabilly, and country screamed both “First thought is absolutely best thought” and “Wait until I show you what else I can do.” But if their last album presented the band at their most gleeful and cocky, ready to call the world as they saw it, then Florida Water Blues takes place the morning after: a touch more vulnerable now...

On Friday night, more than 45,000 people gathered at Yankee Stadium not to enjoy the national pastime, but a bucket-list New York one: seeing Jay-Z perform in celebration of the 30th anniversary of Reasonable Doubt. It was the first in a three-night residency, with the Friday show dedicated to Reasonable Doubt and the Saturday show reserved for The Blueprint, which turns 25 this year.