‘Arab people can be an industry in and of ourselves’: photography by Carmen Zografou I am a musician, a woman, and a Lebanese first-generation immigrant. By these labels, I am the epitome of cool, the type of person everyone wants to support and empower. But my reality is very different.  Like many Lebanese of my […]

Five on it photography – BTS press photo This has been a surreal week in music – on the one hand, the BRITs (for all the lack of women nominees), actually seemed to be a pretty good time, and given that Tyler, Dave and Stormzy won awards, it wasn’t a bad haul. On the other […]

I don’t think that I’ve found my place here, I think I made it. I don’t think that waiting for someone to give me the green light to say “you can call this home” was healthy or practical or made sense, and it took me a long time to realize that we are all learning […]

If you’re a professional musician, the day after your album is released might be a temporary reprieve – from touring, coming up with new material, working with a huge crew of people to generate a live show. Not so for producer, singer and visual artist E.Jane. The day after they put out their LP Fantasii […]

Five on it photograph via Arlo Parks video screenshot My standard five on it intro spiel will be void of a Valentine’s message – because I did that over here with our self-love playlist already. Though I have been thinking about the lost art of mixtapes and mix CDs after reading this great piece over […]

With Valentine’s Day here, we figured we ought to make a playlist. But – while we are all suckers for a good love song, and while I am always up for a heartbreak song too (yes, I am a Pisces with a Scorpio Moon, what of it) – we’ve been thinking about self-love a lot […]

Five on it photography credit: Dana Trippe The sun is softly out, the days are slightly longer, daffodils are quietly shooting up from beneath the ground – the more hubristic among us would say that spring is here. I am way more pessimistic though and don’t want to curse us with snow and a return […]

Photography via Eastern Margins Eastern Margins are quick to get in their shoutouts: “daikon* zine, The Bitten Peach, Indigo Magazine, Chinabot… we’re really inspired by these collectives and we all collaborate – like we’re building this rich ecosystem of East and South-East Asian space.” Over a crackly phone line, I’m speaking to Lumi, one of […]

Okay, sure, it’s February, and everyone else did their “ones to watch” in January. But why should that mean we can’t share some of the artists we’re excited about? There’s so much talent coming from across the globe and even whittling it down to 20 names was hard. As with last year, we looked across […]

Five on it photography: screenshot of Raveena ‘Headaches’ Is it me, or has January been moving fast and slow? On the one hand, it’s already the fifth music round-up of the year, I am shook that it’s February tomorrow because it feels like 2020 is passing me by already; on the other hand, the Grammys […]

Situated in the corner of Hackney’s Gillett Square is NTS studios, home of the online radio station renowned for supporting underground music across the globe. It’s here that I manage to catch Kanyin, professionally known as OK Williams, finishing off a shift in the studio – she has a monthly show on the station. Still […]

Before the Spice Girls screamed “Girl Power!” and before Destiny’s Child had us all chanting about being “independent women”, there was another girl group on the pop scene whose talent and unique voice had already cemented their status as legends in the music game. From their debut 1992 album, Ooooooohhh… On the TLC Tip, where […]