TuneDig

Episode 80: Between the Buried and Me's "Colors"

Music can be this?! Five North Carolina dudes took the full range of the human spirit and musical styles into the woodshed, and from the loom came a technicolor dreamcoat

Episode 79: FKA Twigs's "LP1"

As the 2010s cleaved culture into fractals and alienated humans from their being, Tahliah Barnett beamed down from the cosmos, a biblically accurate angel contorting into

Episode 78: The Chemical Brothers's "Exit Planet Dust"

Time's funny, innit? As today's youth excavate the nineteen hundred and nineties for the ecstasy of seemingly simpler times, here lies a fossil record containing so much

Episode 77: Otoboke Beaver's "Super Champon"

For our money, this is what running through the halls of your high school and screaming at the top of your lungs actually feels like. And why shouldn’t the unreal world b

Episode 76: Chic's "C'est Chic"

This episode’s meaning is neither deep nor hidden: the Nile is a river. To good times, that is. If the savoir faire, stellar musicianship, and seismic influence of Nile R

Episode 75: Nas's "Illmatic"

Illmatic’s impact on hip-hop is a foregone conclusion — one listen and it ain’t hard to tell why. But as we unpacked the lyrical density, the layered samples, and the hyp

Episode 74: N.E.R.D's "In Search Of..."

It may be true that No One Ever Really Dies, but at the turn of the millennium, a young, wild, and free new wave in culture most certainly came alive. Whether or not you

Episode 73: Odetta's "It's a Mighty World"

Odetta — a must-know titan of American music and culture — once noted that young people “learn about American history through battles.” But her dream of liberation was sh

Episode 72: R.D. Burman's "Shalimar"

Once upon a time in Bollywood, one magical man made enough music to fill a million moments—and made space for hundreds of other artists along the way. Of the 331 scores “

Episode 71: Marianne Faithfull's "Broken English"

“That’s the thing about pretty faces… We don’t expect them to belong to the fighters— the junkies and monks and cockroaches who’ll survive every atomic bomb and suicide a

Episode 70: Sade's "Love Deluxe"

Any denier that all art is political need look no further than the smoothed-out soul slipstream of Sade, a group defined by its economics. Rare output, minimal arrangemen

Episode 69: Charles Mingus's "The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady"

When you think of true "artists" in music, who comes to mind? Charles Mingus embodied its romantic ideal, for better and for worse. His magnum opus "Black Saint" is more

Episode 68: Gang of Four's "Entertainment!"

“Entertainment!” is described by Gang of Four’s Jon King as “a record about young people smiling and dancing in the face of disaster.” Uh oh, sound familiar? This Leeds-b

Episode 67: Brooks & Dunn's "Brand New Man"

This is the tale of two lonesome cowboys who got down, turned around, and went to town catching lightning in a bottle on their first try together. Whether or not their de

Episode 66: Oumou Sangaré's "Moussolou"

The name "Oumou" derives from an Arabic word meaning "mother of." It is associated with dignity, wisdom, and maternal strength. Southern Mali’s Oumou Sangare has come to

Episode 65: Missy Elliott's "Supa Dupa Fly"

In the words of one of her groundbreaking forebears, “You feel free? You want to try some wild s**t? Thank Missy.” Since the very first frame of “The Rain” entered our ey

Episode 64: The Cramps's "...Off the Bone"

God is a woman and she plays the guitar loud … y’all come catch some Holy Ghost in your hips.  Hear our hallelujah for the love story of the queen of rock ‘n roll and th

Episode 63: Black Moth Super Rainbow's "Dandelion Gum"

Life’s a bit heavy to chew on these days, so we reached into the pocket of our mid-2000s jeans and found an old piece of Dandelion Gum to chew on instead. As soon as its

Episode 62: Project Pat's "Mista Don't Play: Everythangs Workin"

This life we're livin' is oh so beautiful. Take it from Patrick Houston, who has spread the gospel of the real for three decades, followed by a discipleship that has shap

Episode 61: Grace Jones's "Nightclubbing"

Not a woman. Not a man. A revolution. Music’s long history is littered with larger-than-life characters whose mythology shapes reality for the masses — and few loom large