Nigeria’s Blaqbonez is rapping to ‘beat his high score’

Editor’s pick — Culture quick take: the cultural angle (trend signal, audience insight, crossover with fashion/music/art) in 1–2 lines. Long before the seatbelt sign dimmed on the return flight from Johannesburg to Nigeria, and before a single passenger rose to disembark, all that the 29-year-old Imo, Nigeria-born rapper and singer Blaqbonez yearned for was home….

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A rare interview with POiSON GiRL FRiEND, dream pop’s future seer

Editor’s pick — Culture quick take: the cultural angle (trend signal, audience insight, crossover with fashion/music/art) in 1–2 lines. I’m convinced NORiKO, the producer-vocalist behind POiSON GiRL FRiEND, is a time traveller. Her solo debut, 1992 EP MELTING MOMENT, blended trip-hop and dream pop at a time when Massive Attack were just a little-known band…

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‘He was the ultimate canvas’: Transforming Jacob Elordi into Frankenstein

Editor’s pick — Culture quick take: the cultural angle (trend signal, audience insight, crossover with fashion/music/art) in 1–2 lines. The irony of resurrecting Frankenstein is that you have to become Dr Frankenstein yourself in order to remake the famous tale. Director Guillermo del Toro has done exactly that, and this weekend, his two-and-half-hour reinterpretation of…

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Why this artist tattooed her past lovers’ mothers’ names on her ribcage

Editor’s pick — Culture quick take: the cultural angle (trend signal, audience insight, crossover with fashion/music/art) in 1–2 lines. For most people, the list of the people they’ve slept with isn’t something physical – maybe a half-finished Notes app list or scattered between DMs and dating app chat logs. But for performance artist Harriet Richardson,…

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