Consequence looks back into Philadelphia International Records, the staple of 1970s soul music and its house band (Mother Father Sister Brother), a cadre of more than thirty musicians who would record hits for PIR. Two of their biggest early hits were 'T.S.O.P. (The Sound of Philadelphia)' and 'Love Is The Message'. Consequence looks into the influence of those two songs, their creators and the band's second album.

"Women rappers know that their mics will be taken at a certain age, that they’ll be rendered voiceless, especially if their beauty and power has faded. They alter their ages or don’t reveal them at all, because if that’s what will allow them to extend their shelf life in this young man’s game before being pushed out, then so be it. It is a game, right?" - Bitch Media says in the interesting article about ageism in hip-hop. Rapper Eve emphasizes how it's idiosyncratic to hip-hop: “When you look at rock or a lot of other genres, they never age out. Why is it that they’re allowed to get older? Why is it that rock or country or many other genres are allowed to literally make records until they die?…. With hip hop, there’s this attitude that you’re done at a certain age".

"Having a deep-rooted love of music in the back pocket is to be able to pluck out something capable of soothing broken hearts, tortured minds or restless souls. It is an infinite source of reliability, profundity and surprise" - the Quietus writes, arguing this relationship has changed in this lockdown year. The places to discover new music have tumbled down to all but one - computer screen, and the curiosity itself has tumbled due to the claustrophobic year. However, tQ says, we need to accept, and through this acceptance that spark for music will return. It most certainly should - musically, it has been a great year, and the next might prove to be even better, if not even game-changing.

"YouTube famously hinges on an algorithm that guesses viewers' interests to keep them clicking and viewing" - Ars Technica writes about the unexpected rise in popularity of Japanese 1980s ambient music, thanks to the video social network. The most famous upload of them all came in 2017, when a video of the 1984 city pop song 'Plastic Love' by Mariya Takeuchi became "mind-bogglingly popular. It has 45 million views today, along with an Olympic swimming pool's worth of fan art, vaporwave remixes, and memes".

Guardian goes into a quest to find the heaviest music ever made, measured "in terms of the intensity of the music itself, the atmosphere it generates and how quickly it liquefies your innards". There are a few equally deserving candidates - Motörhead, Swans, Black Sabbath, Merzbow, Sun O)))...

"Openly confrontational trap and drill songs like 'Faneto' have bled into the consciousness of this summer's rebellion, capturing crowds through their fusion of righteous anger and unbothered celebration" - Scalawag magazine writes in an interesting essay about what constitutes a "protest song" today. It's a complete change of perspective, Scalamag argues - "these songs know that our systems cannot be purified through an uplifting mantra, a catchy tune, or even a structural reform—only a committed, unrelenting program of insurgency could begin to address the atrocities at the core of the state".

"There are many fans with no proximity to the streets who are seeking for a vicarious thrill through music. These people think they’re supportive fans of Black artists, but they’re really dehumanizing them. They prefer artists to be live-action manifestations of violence, not just out of a disregard for the artist’s well-being, but for that of real-life victims of gun violence and substance abuse" - Complex writes in a great essay about authenticity in rap. "No one wants to see anyone get hurt, and we carry sympathy for artists who have been victims of violence, but too many rap fans then revere the next artist for being an 'official' aggressor of the same acts. It’s time to detonate that dissonance".

29 individuals were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last weekend, with 28 of them being men (the only women inducted was Whitney Houston). Courtney E. Smith had, of course, to react to this - "Here’s who I’d like to see from a list of women that should be titled: Are You Fucking Kidding Me, She/They Haven’t Been Inducted or Even Nominated Yet???". It is really a surprise these women aren't in: The Go-Go's, Ella Fitzgerald, Doly Parton, Tina Turner, Carole King, Maria Carey. Not only them, there also needs to be a place for Mary J. Blige, Barbara Streisand, Buffy St. Marie, Björk, Alanis Morrissette, Carly Simon, Cyndi Lauper, Loretta Lynn, Hole, Chaka Khan...

A serious analysis in the Baffler of Spotify and its business model: "Over the past year, Spotify transformed its stated aspirations as a company. It used to see itself as the go-to platform providing 'music for every mood and moment' - not just a music streaming service but one that knows your taste better than you know it yourself. That changed in February 2019, when Spotify announced its acquisitions of Gimlet and Anchor in a letter declaring itself 'Audio First'". Spotify went wider with the content becoming a podcast company as well, but - "in many ways, though, the $50 billion company is treating podcasters similarly to how it has historically treated musicians, with a system that privileges the already moneyed and powerful".

A great text by Tom Maxwell about duets by the dead (Tupac & Biggie), or with the dead (Robbie Williams and Frank Sinatra; Kanye West's birthday gift to his wife was an inspiration for the article ): "Reflected in this cultural thinking is the fairytale belief that fame is key to immortality, and therefore both are to be devoutly desired. Lurking on a deeper level is the feeling that our celebrities belong to us; that the individual is subservient to the brand; that persona trumps person". A conclusion and a plea: "In some ways, the digital age has diminished us. Recordings are now infinitely reproducible, and thus have no inherent value. Musicians have likewise been devalued — it was far easier to make money playing in a cover band pre-pandemic. It’s up to us to declare what is important and proper, beyond market value, or be forever owned".Physical graffiti

An excellent text by Matthew Ball about the connection between technology and music, how the development of tech has changed or steered the way through the future of music. He predicts that the next big step in the development of technology and music will be based on user-generated content, somebody just has to find the right model. His argument is that "almost all new music today, with exception of indie rock, is 'all digital' and thus fully separable by instrument, beat, vocals, etc. In many cases, a hit track is made up of numerous samples, beats, and sounds that come from a patchwork of creators", so everything is already there, except the model.

A great read in Tusk Is Better Than Rumours by Marshall Gu about mostly forgotten classic music composer Leo Ornstein who once, well, not so famously, said that "if his music were any good, it would survive; if not, it would be deservedly forgotten". TIBTR argues he should be remembered as the one preceding Stravinsky and Schoenberg, and the most innovative of the three. Great text - a pleasure to read!

Hyperpop pulls heavily from SoundCloud rap, emo, lo-fi trap, PC Music label, as well as from trance, dubstep and chiptune, Vice writes about the fluid genre. They hear Charli XCX, sonic fusionists/chaos-makers 100 gecs, glitchy rappers David Shawty, and animated electronic producers Gupi as representatives of hyper-pop. What is distinctive with this new genre is that its "identity is less rooted in musical genetics than it is a shared ethos of transcending genre altogether, while still operating within the context of pop".

Van magazine explores the psychedelia in classical music, through a chronological playlist featuring a select history of the relationship between classical music and psychedelic experimentation. It includes Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Wagner, Chopin and others. Check out the classic-delia list here.

Opera singer and essayist Xenia Hanusiak wrote a philosophical text in the Psyche about how music helps us understand ourselves better: "The present pandemic has brought us closer to ourselves. There is dissonance. The rhythms are haphazard. Contrary motions of jangling melodies confront us. We seem to be living in a maze of minor keys and open-ended cadences. We move chromatically, step by step. The array of discord challenges us. We’re searching for resolution. If this gamut of expressions seems familiar, you’re right. They are the building blocks of music. We might not ordinarily say to ourselves, let’s modulate, or let’s change key, but every day we unconsciously conduct our lives as a musical composition, a symphonic masterpiece, an anthem, or a slice of hip-hop".

The average size of the top 10 selling K-pop groups of the last decade is 9 members, there is even one with 23 members. The Pudding offers a few answers on why the bands became so large - it's a combination of the popularity of super-size groups, the growth of trends in casting, subunits, and survival shows, and the shifting roles within groups over time.

"I’m talking about just knowing what you like and having a lot of room to like it. I’m talking about hanging out in that space and having time to continuously renovate it. I’m talking about pleasure, of course, but also self-definition: part of who I am is my love for these things, even if you think they’re bad" - author Anne Helen Petersen wrote in an announcement of her new book 'Can't Even'. She describes how her music taste made her as a person, and how the change in music consumption made her taste less firm.

Loudwire lists 26 bands from the metal/rock realm that sound nothing like they did on their first albums. Incubus started as a funk/hip-hop rock band, and turned to alt-rock early in their career. Opeth were Iron Maiden lovers before turning to prog-metal. Ministry were a synth-pop band, a la Depeche Mode, before stepping to the side with industrial. In Flames started as a death-metal band before discovering melody...

Pitchfork's writer had two surprises with Enya in the last year. The first: her music proved itself perfect in the time of isolation - "maybe it is because her atmospheric compositions are full of imagination, of openness, each note like a new horizon coming into focus. Maybe it is because her many-layered catalog is so sad and healing at once, or because it makes the complex work of being indefinitely alone sound easy". The second - list of musicians she has influenced: Weyes Blood, FKA twigs, Nicki Minaj, Grimes, Angel Olsen, Perfume Genius, Brandy, Blood Incantation...

uDiscover Music has started a new project Black Music Reframed, where Black writers take a new look at Black music and moments that have previously either been overlooked or not properly contextualized. There are stories to uncover even with known superstars like MC Hammer, who was already an enterprising executive prior to his MC career, also Queen Latifah was a jazz artist before she turned to rap.

"When I was a kid, I had all sorts of options for cultivating my rap palate in a way that fell under the rules my parents had... As an adult, I’ve carried on the no-cursing rule in my own house. But despite an explosion of ways to hear music — between streaming services and YouTube, any song you can imagine is at the other end of typing its name — my kids’ options are even more limited than mine were... It’s hard to listen to rap with my kids. Unlike when I was coming up, edited rap music is much harder to come by" - Level author wrote about lack of edited versions of rap albums in times of supposed diversity.

Critic Briana Younger and NPR Music have launched The South Got Something To Say, a project about Southern hip-hop. It goes into the idea of it, the history, the dirty side (twerking), etc.

"If we are looking at the charts as a barometer for nationwide popularity, non-English-language music rarely features... Yes, Despacito reached No 1 here, but it was only after Justin Bieber appeared on it" - the Guardian analyzes UK music taste. First of all, the British are the third least likely nation in Europe to speak a foreign language. That's not all, people of color like Samm Henshaw, and women that don't fit the norm (white complexion) like Rina Sawayama, won't have the same success as their white counterparts. Guardian argues it's due to "so much systemic hostility, xenophobia and outright racism in this sector".

For a while, heavy metal and electronic remained sequestered to separate subcultures that rarely cross-pollinated creatively, but for a new generation of electronic artists for whom the internet has been a vital hub for exchange and hybridization, this separation has run its course - Electronic Beats wrote in a cool article about how former metal-heads incorporate metal music elements in their DJ sets. Since the beginning of 2010s - "it wasn’t uncommon to hear a club DJ slip the cheeky metal breakdown in mid-set... In the last year, this progression has come to a head, with a string of releases illuminating the strength of this intersection".

There are around 40,000 songs added to Spotify each day, so most of the music uploaded there and other streaming services every day sinks without a trace - Rolling Stone says in a great article about new artists trying to reach out to the audience. There is a way to reach them, in certain numbers, for money - for $250 an artist will be placed on playlists with a total of 50,000 followers, while $4,000 promises a playlist reach of one million, and around half a million streams.

A great article in The Pudding about the songs that define the 1990s, not necessarily the best music from the decade, rather the songs that the people recognize the most. Some of the most recognized songs are Britney Spears' '...Baby One More Time', Spice Girls' 'Wannabe', R.E.M.'s 'Losing my Religion', although they vary slightly depending of the year of the birth. Great graphs in the article as well.

"Women have long been overlooked for their artistry in the industry and their historical contributions to the scene have been ignored... There is regular vilification of hip-hop models and influencers, with biased assumptions that these women are destructive. Rather than esteeming these women as established moguls in their own right, they’re often only valued for their physical appearances and for mothering the children of rappers" - Gal-Dem says in an essay about women in hip-hop, concluding that "women have been the forerunners of hip-hop culture in terms of marketability, but the sexism in hip-hop has long overstayed its welcome. While the complexity of being a woman in hip-hop is evident, they deserve to be nurtured and valued in the industry. It’s the only way to dismantle the misogynistic standards that still pervade".

"In just over a decade it changed the record business completely. Twice. It also paved the way for streaming – all streaming, not just music streaming – to become the default way to, drawing on the industry’s own terminology, 'consume' 'content'" - the Quietus argues in an essay about the importance of MP3. It's, tQ is convinced, more influential than vinyl because - "all formats before the MP3 were designed specifically to plump up the profitability of the music business; the MP3 ripped it to shreds".

Thanks to the United States’ current perfect storm of dire and radical socioeconomic conditions, the country music industry must immediately broaden its social perspective. For both the genre’s economic preservation and, more importantly, to highlight an intrinsic, industry-wide acceptance of the empathetic kindness needed to define America's future, it's necessary - The Boot argues in a brave text about unity.

"I love schlager, and unironically so" - Guardian's Angelica Frey writes in favor of one Germany's biggest cultural exports. Why does she? - "I love the frequently occurring one-two rhythm – the oompah! – and the cheerful, sweet melodies and lyrics, which, while lacking wit and bite, are unbridled expressions of joy". Finally -"I also love the way this bright, shiny thread is woven so closely into the fabric of pop music".