Idolator

By now you've probably seen "The New New Face," Jonathan Van Meter's cover story in the current issue of New York. If not, read it whenever you can: it's superb. Even if you find plastic surgery ghastly to contemplate based on the most hideous of its results, this is an amazingly light-fingered piece of work. It's an effortless read even if the subject skeeves you; it dashes any expectations you might have almost gleefully—and none more so than when Van Meter brings into the story Liz Rosenberg, Madonna and Cher's publicist. More »

As the remaining minutes of 2007 are suddenly ticking off way too fast for comfort (we hardly knew ye, etc.), the year-end lists are splintering into the minutiae of genre and sub-genre and even format, and New York's list of the ten best hip-hop mixtapes of the year, compiled by dependable rap (and otherwise) crit Chris Ryan in the "the year [mixtapes] were nearly broken" by tape impresario DJ Drama's bust by the feds at the beginning of the year, is a nice change-of-Christmas-shopping-list from the Year-End Analysis routine. Having only heard five of them, I can't exactly start asking "the whaaaa?" or talking shit about some Stack Bundles (R.I.P.) tape I've never laid ears on. So though I can vouch for the quality of, say, No. 8 pick Geek'd Up Music by Fabo and Young Dro (and I'm pretty sure dead relatives have heard Da Drought 3 at this point), perhaps members of the peanut gallery who've made multiple trips to their local mixtape spot this year can offer independent assessment on these ten. More »

From this week's normally-quite-savvy Approval Matrix. We're not one to object to running pictures of Messrs. Hall and Oates—and we have plenty of humdinger mistakes ourselves—but really, you only need to listen to the first twenty seconds of "Maneater" to figure out that it's a cover of Nelly Furtado.

It's been a while since New York ran one of its "Jukebox" features, in which three "citizen critics" review current album releases. And frankly, we were hoping that the lull meant that someone had finally put the kibosh on this lazy, impossibly smug round-up, which the magazine often publishes in lieu of actual, you know, record reviews. Why does it drive us so coconuts? Let us count thee ways. More »