The Public Enemy frontman has always been one of rap music’s most articulate advocates, but in 2022 he shifted career from MC to university lecturer. In an exclusive extract from his new book, In The Hour of Chaos, Chuck D talks about the cultural politics of hip hop and what it means for the future

Chuck D speaks to students as the sessions begins. May 4, 2022. Photo by Bad Man’s Son

My nearly four-decade career as a professional has been in truth and honesty for the culture. I don’t think I remember a time that we, as Black people, were not in an hour of chaos. But the culture, the art, the music, and the people are what I’ve always been…

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Litany For The Border takes place in Berwick this month

As anyone who has taken the East Coast Main Line between the east of Scotland and England will know, one of the finest parts of the journey is when the train curves around the estuary of the River Tweed, giving an incredible view of the ancient and sometime-contested border town on the far bank. If they’re able to see through the permanent rain lashing the carriage windows, travellers in February might be able to see the view lit up by a major new installation from artists Gareth Hudson and Toby Thirling, while those on the banks can also hear musical accompaniment by composer Eleanor Cully Boehringer. The collaboration takes place with light…

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The author of Human Punk and The Football Factory trilogy speaks to Tariq Goddard about class, Greek prisons and his new novella Peekaboo Bosh

John’s King’s The Football Factory was a novel for people who thought reading might not be for them, the power of those first discomforting pages as transportive as waking up in the Gulag with Solzhenitsyn or thumbing a lift with Kerouac. Beginning in the mind of a character literary fiction had taken care to avoid, the novel explored a sensibility that had traditionally been the province of pulp, its portraits as fully realised those found in McEwan or Barnes, but with none of that pair’s decorative courtesy or insistence that lead personae ought to be middle-class professionals….

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Brian Coney celebrates the raging isolationism and precision destructiveness of the Canadian jazz punk trio’s first essential album, Sex Mad

Sex Mad by Nomeansno

To parse the logic of Sex Mad, one must first inhabit the isolation of 1985 Victoria, British Columbia: a provincial capital where middle-class security doubled as a picturesque cemetery for the newly wed and nearly dead. Here, as the looming artifice of Expo 86 threatened to modernize the coast, the Pacific horizon acted as a literal dead-end and the Wright brothers’ basement as a laboratory. While the global hardcore scene was calcifying into a thudding caricature – The Exploited’s gurning pantomime merging with the metal-hocked bluster of the US crossover set – Rob and John Wright were busy…

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Jill Scott

To Whom This May Concern

A decade on from her last album, the influential neo-soul pioneer returns with an album of deft storytelling, rich jazz instrumentation and a cast of collaborators including Tierra Whack, Trombone Shorty and Maha Adachi Earth

There’s real power in the act of stepping back and taking a breather. In our fast-paced, mile-a-minute everyday, we’re not often afforded such an opportunity but having time and space can be transformative, especially in a creative context. For actress and singer Jill Scott, who makes her long-awaited return with her first album since 2015’s Woman, her new project is a product of having had that room to step back, live life and reflect on the world at large. The end…

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The eight-track record will be released via PAN

Photo by Bruno Aiello Destombes

Upsammy and Valentina Magaletti are releasing a collaborative album.

Spanning eight tracks, the roots of Seismo lay in a commission by Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, which saw the two artists soundtrack an exhibition featuring work from the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam. A number of joint live shows between the pair followed, and a full-length album soon started to take shape.

Listen to lead track ‘Superimposed’ below.

PAN will release Seismo on April 10, 2026.

Seismo by upsammy & Valentina Magaletti
…

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Songs To Remember has been remastered for its updated release

Photo by Chris Dawes

Scritti Politti’s 1982 debut album, Songs To Remember, is being reissued.

A remastered version of the LP, which is currently not available on streaming platforms and has been out of print on vinyl since 1985, is set to be released across digital, vinyl and CD formats.

Rough Trade is overseeing the reissue, and the label’s founder, Geoff Travis, said in a statement: “Mark E. Smith, a Rough Trade artist at the time, once said to me, ‘Scritti have the best rhythm section in rock music’. He didn’t mention Green Gartside, so I don’t know what he thought of him. I do know that at Rough Trade we were all in…

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It’s the second song to be unveiled from forthcoming album PLAY ME

Photo by Moni Haworth

Kim Gordon has shared a new song, titled ‘DIRTY TECH’.

Offering a critique of artificial intelligence and the use of some modern technology, the track retains the trap leanings of some of the material found on her past solo albums. In a statement about the song, Gordon said: “I was kind of musing about, is my next boss going to be an AI chatbot? We’re the first ones whose lights are going to go out – not the tech billionaires. It’s so abstract that people can’t comprehend.”

Watch a video for ‘DIRTY TECH’, made by director Moni Haworth, below.

Comprised of 12 tracks, PLAY ME is the follow-up to…

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The Radiohead guitarist said Universal licensed one of his songs for use in the film without his permission

Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood has criticised major label Universal for licensing a piece of his music to be included in Melania, the recent film about Melania Trump, without his permission.

The movie includes an extended excerpt of Greenwood’s song ‘Barbara Rose’, which he composed for the score for the Paul Thomas Anderson film Phantom Thread. Neither Greenwood nor Anderson approved the use of the song, and have now jointly requested that it be removed from the film.

A statement released on their behalf said: “It has come to our attention that a piece of music from Phantom Thread has been used in the Melania documentary. While…

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In the second pod of 2026, John and Luke dive into the game changing waters of Missy Elliott’s third album

Missy Elliott (along with Timbaland) meets The Quietus’ benchmark for genius, not necessarily via the route of producing three all time great albums in a row but as someone who changed popular music decisively, twice. And it is the exemplification of the second of these occasions, the stupendous Miss E… So Addictive album from 2001, which creates the Low Culture conversational glue of this months’ podcast. John and Luke consider the scenius of late 80s early 90s Virginia (compared to Oslo in the same period!) and the years of hard graft that eventually made Missy Elliott and Timbaland’s talent look so effortlessly achieved….

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