Damon Albarn was prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic. In 1995, after his band Blur’s first paycheck from the success of their third album—1994’s Parklife—he bought a farmhouse in the countryside by the sea. “Everyone thought I was mad,” says the Blur frontman, and one half of the creative duo behind virtual band Gorillaz. “Everyone said, […]

Jorja Smith is lounging in her childhood bedroom in Walsall, her hometown 14 kilometres northwest of Birmingham, UK. “I feel bad that I’m feeling good. People have lost lives, jobs—some people don’t have homes,” she says. Smith has been non-stop since she released her debut single, “Blue Lights” in 2016. In the following months, her […]

From the moment Popcaan pops up on our Zoom call, the international dancehall star and CEO of Unruly Entertainment is on his best behaviour—for the most part. It’s an overcast day with light showers in Kingston, Jamaica and the 32-year-old is sitting shotgun in his Range Rover Sport, on his way to pick up some […]

Journalists make me nervous,” Maya Hawke confesses one afternoon from her family home in upstate New York, where she’s been holed up since March. She recently packed up her belongings from her just-rented Manhattan apartment to move back indefinitely with her mother and siblings.  The 21-year-old actress and singer-songwriter tells me that her apprehension in […]

I don’t have a wild only-with-Diplo interview story to tell you. We are, as you know, in the midst of a big world event that’s relegated us to our living room-turned-offices. But I do have an imagination, and technology. Today Diplo is my penpal. In my mind, the TikTok-loving multihyphenate is shirtless (his most natural […]

When Matty Healy answers the phone, he’s driving through the rainy English countryside, somewhere between Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire past these “big fucking windmill things,” not too far from the studio compound where The 1975 frontman and his bandmates spent the last year working on their latest album—the soon-to-be-released Notes On A Conditional Form. “I’m driving […]

Afro-Colombian Toronto-based singer, Lido Pimienta, recently joined a growing number of artists, entertainers, and musicians in canceling the release tour for her upcoming Miss Colombia album due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a darkness that has bestowed itself on one of the most colorful releases of the year. The world as we once knew it […]