music - Anil Dash

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A collection of 101 posts

How Prince won the Super Bowl

How Prince won the Super Bowl

On this day in 2007, Prince won Super Bowl XLI with a soaring halftime performance that climaxed with the skies opening up to honor his guitar solo. It is not just the best-regarded halftime show ever, but was to that point the most-viewed musical performance in American history. Prince’s

Every Single Video Prince Ever Made

Every Single Video Prince Ever Made

Prince was an astoundingly prolific artist, releasing nearly 40 albums under his own name(s), and thousands of songs for himself and others. His concerts were legendary, spellbinding from arenas to intimate clubs, flooring audiences around the world. But videos? Prince was a lot more ambivalent about videos. He made

It's like Shazam — for your face!

It's like Shazam — for your face!

Today's most fun new Glitch app is Record Player, which lets you upload a photo, then uses Google Cloud's Vision API to recognize the image and play it on Spotify. It works really well, but the real fun starts when you upload a selfie or a picture of yourself. I

Have the Hip Hop BBQ

Have the Hip Hop BBQ

I keep having to explain a principle I arrived at a few years ago when I realized the modern conservative movement is grounded almost entirely in a contrived sense of grievance, predicated on a false victimhood of its supporters. (That’s not to say some haven’t genuinely suffered some

Dig, If U Will...

Dig, If U Will...

I was delighted to get to talk to Ben Greenman for an episode of “Dig If You Will The Podcast,” his series in honor of his book “Dig If You Will The Picture”. We go deep into Prince’s influence on transforming the music industry, and if you like it,

It's time to discover Prince

It's time to discover Prince

With the recent availability of nearly all of Prince’s catalog on the most popular streaming services, it’s a great time to (re?)discover the breadth of Prince’s incredible body of work. The full scale of Prince’s music is probably too much for any unfamiliar listener to

Coloring Books

Red Book, Yellow Book, Green Book Stay within the lines. The Red Book There’s a specification that Phillips published in 1981, for optical digital encoding of audio. They teamed up with Sony to create the standard, and by the following year hardware was on the market in the new

Set Adrift: Beneath the Surface of P.M. Dawn

Set Adrift: Beneath the Surface of P.M. Dawn

Today, P.M. Dawn exists as a faded memory for most music fans, if they’re remembered at all. But Attrell Cordes made songs like nothing that came before. Beautiful, sweeping melodies paired with lyrics of regret, remorse, heartache and profound loss. And then there were those surreal, recurring images

Prince's Own Liner Notes On His Greatest Hits

Prince's Own Liner Notes On His Greatest Hits

When Prince’s first greatest hits collection was released, Prince made private comments as a guide for the liner notes. Later briefly posted on his website thedawn.com in 1996, Prince’s comments have been lost for the last 20 years, but now provide a rare first-person insight into how

A little less rocking with you...

After talking to a friend about how Michael Jackson’s “Rock With You” is so romantic if you just focus on the strings, bass and vocals, I was inspired to mix down the tracks to feature just those elements. Obviously the original is a perfect masterpiece, but there’s a

I Know Times Are Changing

I Know Times Are Changing

0:00 — 0:10In the summer of 1983, Wendy Melvoin was just 19 years old. She’d flown halfway across the country from Los Angeles for her first professional gig as a guitar player, joining her girlfriend Lisa Coleman in the band where Lisa had been playing keyboards. Almost from

My Favorite Floppy of All Time

My Favorite Floppy of All Time

After at least 15 years of debating whether I should spend money on this, I recently took the plunge and acquired one of my most-desired Prince collectibles. Added to my collection: 3.5" floppy given to press when Prince changed his name. Contains a font w/ one symbol in

Prince on New Girl

[11:05pm] Well, that’s a wrap. It’s hard for me to say how that ranked as a New Girl episode, but it seemed the narrative of the show may have been subordinated to getting Prince some good lines. That being said, the little man certainly acquitted himself well,

You can't spell "Questlove" without "love"

[[View the story “You can’t spell \”Questlove\” without \”love\”” on Storify](//storify.com/anildash/you-can-t-spell-questlove-without-love)]

Heaven, Hell, Marvin, Prince and the Party

Heaven, Hell, Marvin, Prince and the Party

Every great career in rhythm and blues leads only to heaven or hell. The path to hell is obvious: From Sam Cooke gunned down to James Brown leading a multi-state police chase to Sly Stone strung out on crack and living in a van to Whitney Houston’s body lying

A Golden Era of Prince Scholarship

Despite his obviously profound impact on popular culture, Prince has generally not been the subject of nearly as much academic study as his peers such as Michael Jackson, his influences like James Brown, or even contemporary hip hop acts from Biggie to Tupac to Jay-Z. Fortunately, that odd omission is

A Decade After Aaliyah

Ten years ago, my friend Andre had been experimenting with an instant messenger bot that sent out news headlines; Up late on a Saturday night I got a message that stopped me cold: A link to MetaFilter with the simple headline Singer Aaliyah Killed in Plane Crash. I found myself

Fact-Check: Britney Spears' "3"

Recently, it has come to our attention here at Dashes.com that the lyrics to Britney Spears’ single “3” contain some inaccuracies and poor decisions, and as a result, we’d like to offer some corrections, as a public service to Britney and her staff. First, the chorus: 1, 2,

Jamaica Avenue!

Everyone claims to be at the Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell: And yet, this venue has no mayor! THE BLOGOSPHERE IS FACT-CHECKING YOUR ASS, Das Racist! As you might expect, Foursquare shows some delightful results if you check the venue “On A Boat“. Finally, if you’re really interested

The Best Music Video Michael Jackson Ever Released

Though he was arguably the most popular solo artist of all time, one of the great joys of being a serious Michael Jackson fan is that some of his best work is remarkably obscure, even after he had already achieved legendary status. For example, after Michael had ad-libbed an a

Just let me fill your heart with joy and laughter...

This was probably the one clip of Michael Jackson I wish everybody had seen.

First!

Jay Smooth, “Please stop calling everyone and their mother ‘The First Rapper’“: U-Roy may be one of rap’s predecessors, and among the influences that laid the foundation for rap, but he did not invent it…any more than Jocko Henderson, Gil Scott Heron, Lord Buckley or the West African

Video Computer System

A lot of folks seemed to like the Little Red Riding Hood video I linked to the other day, so I thought I’d reach way back into the archives (anybody still hanging around who was reading this site in 2000?) and dig out an old favorite. Behold, “Video Computer

The Dream of Being Discoverable

I’m a fan of The-Dream, the producer-turned-singer who was born Terius Nash and is responsible for pop gems ranging from Rihanna’s “Umbrella” to Mariah’s “Touch My Body”. His solo albums have been genuinely entertaining and well-produced, a fact that is particularly fortunate given that nearly all of

How many quarks in a Zune?

My friend Nick is good at answering the questions I didn’t even know I wanted to ask. For example, how many electrons per song on an iPod? At approximately 4 minutes per song (Apple’s average), we can play through 150 songs in 10 hours (far less than the