If it wasn’t already clear that North West, the scion of the West-Kardashian throne, had inherited serious star power, it only takes roughly 10 minutes for her to prove it on her debut EP. Over an efficient five tracks, West traverses the sonic styles of her generation — from nu-metal riffs to rage-rap 808s — with startling confidence. At just 12 years old, North’s debut is impressive regardless of her famous pedigree. Even for music royalty, talent still has to announce itself, and that’s what she’s done with N0rth4evr.
The EP opens with “H0w Sh0uld ! f33l,” spelled with the same chaotic eccentricity of the song titles on Playboi Carti’s Whole Lotta Red, and clocking in at just under two minutes. The song starts in emo territory, with a crooning vocal that could come from an Evanescence B-side, before launching into fast-paced drums that fit squarely in the Slayyyter universe of hyperactive pop influenced by the internet’s sprawling musical instincts. “They don’t see me, they just see the appeal,” she raps, somewhat devastatingly, as the song’s booming 808s, reminiscent of Ken Carson, glide into a Jersey Club-style rhythm.
On “#N0rth4evr,” the project’s emotional core is laid bare. It’d be easy to write North off as a novelty until you hear the angst oozing through the Slipknot-esque drums executed with startling conviction. Here is the daughter of one of the most scrutinized couples in pop-culture history, and she exhibits a self-awareness well beyond her years. North’s first single, “Piercing on My Hand,” channeled the public scrutiny over her style choices into a certifiable banger; similarly, the songs on her new EP navigate the realities of being born into fame with a sense of melodic urgency.
“How I’m younger than you, but I’m who you look up to,” she raps with a confident swagger that she’s frankly earned on “D!e.” In the spirit of both of her parents, North has already taken fame into her own hands, dictating on her own terms how she’ll engage with an increasingly adoring public. Her verse on FKA Twigs’ track “Childlike Things,” from last year’s Eusexua, exhibited West’s confidence in her creative vision; she even raps her lyrics there in Japanese, carrying a motif present throughout her work.
“Th!s t!m3” brings the EP’s emo sensibility into focus, fusing her varied sonic inspirations into something cohesive. As a producer and curator of sound, North seems less interested in recreating the past than in metabolizing the chaos of the present: ear-shattering guitars, post-punk beats colored with the gloss of hyperpop’s long tail, all with the diaristic melodrama of a generation raised online. Closing track “Aishite” feels like teen angst distilled into its most potent form. “Can’t be no one’s friend, I can’t let nobody in,” West raps, managing to tap into a universal adolescent experience while speaking to the contours of her extremely unique position.
That tension is what makes N0rth4evr so compelling. Rather than pretend to be anonymous or mysterious, she leans into the fact that her life has been public since before she had any say in the matter. But across these five songs, she begins to turn that impossible inheritance into material, shaping the noise around her into something undeniably her own. N0rth4evr is brief, but it leaves a surprisingly lasting impression: the sound of a young artist not merely entering the family business, but beginning to define the terms of her own mythology.
Ken Casey stuck around after the show in San Diego, California, talking to members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Some of the challenge-coin haul.
The band started as a bet. “My band has a show in three weeks,” Casey’s coworker told him in 1996. “I dare you to open for us.”John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Dropkick Murphys (from left): Casey, DaRosa, Webster, Kelly, Rheault, Brennan, and Lynch John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Casey is largely the voice of the band, but the other members back him up. “We’re so lucky he’s the mouthpiece,” says Brennan, left. John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
“Only the Irish can take a song about death and destruction, famine, alcoholism, and raise a glass like it’s an anthem,” says Casey. John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
“Anytime it feels like things are about to plateau for us, something gives us a little bump,” says guitarist Lynch. “It feels exciting. It feels dangerous. It feels like doing something.” John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Jay-Z performing at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis in Paris.
Jay-Z Deserves the Super Bowl Halftime Gig
Where’s the love? Jay-Z asked that question 25 years ago, in the chorus of one of many songs in his catalog that still move audiences today. If he performs “Heart of the City” as part of his Super Bowl halftime show next February, those indignant bars are sure to be a highlight: “First the Fat Boys break up, now every day I wake up, somebody got a problem with Hov…” It would be an appropriate choice, too — because then as now, any time Jay-Z notches a new achievement, people find a way to complain.
The jokes and nonsense started almost as soon as the first rumors trickled out that Jay, whose company Roc Nation has executive-produced the Super Bowl halftime show since 2019, might be choosing himself to headline next year’s show. “Jay-Z just Dick Cheney’d himself for the Super Bowl,” Puck‘s Matthew Belloni quipped on X last week, alluding to the time that the late prince of darkness, who’d been asked to run the vice-presidential search committee for George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign, put himself on the ticket. (Super hip and current reference, and not at all apples-and-oranges.) Others pointed to TMZ reports that pop stars like Harry Styles and Justin Bieber had been asked first. “How are they the frontrunners, and he end up in the front?” Cam’Ron, who’s delighted in trolling Jay for many years, wondered aloud on his podcast. “Out of all the people on the roster, they couldn’t pick nobody else?” asked Cam’Ron‘s co-host, Ma$e.
These critiques miss the point, which is that Jay-Z is one of the best choices for a high-profile gig like this. He’s a superstar with a comparable level of name recognition to any other A-lister in music. He has a deep stack of classic songs going back decades. And he’s a highly skillful live performer who knows his way around a stadium stage, as he’s spent this year reminding people on his Jay-Z 30 tour. He tore down Yankee Stadium three nights in a row this summer; just last week, he rocked SoFi Stadium, which happens to be the same place where the 2027 Super Bowl is being held. He held the crowd’s attention with ease at all of those shows, and though there were plenty of glittery guests — that’s a given at a Jay show, and it will surely be true at the Super Bowl, too — he did it mostly through the force of his own magnetic energy. Let’s state the obvious here: Jay-Z is really, really good at rapping. We’re talking about one of the slickest, sharpest talkers in the history of words, someone who made it to the top through a sustained act of myth-making, then kept going. Are we seriously asking whether he can handle a 15-minute televised performance?
And yeah, there’s a touch of self-congratulation in the way he appointed himself. So what? Praising his own gifts is arguably Jay-Z’s greatest talent of all. He made a fine art out of self-applause. He told his story again and again, retracing the steps from Marcy Projects to the corner suite, and he made us believe. It would almost be insulting to the audience if he didn’t give himself the gig at some point.
Pop culture observers in recent years surely remember the backlash to Super Bowl headliners like Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny — all of it at least culturally conservative, and much of it frankly just racist. The blowback to Jay’s announcement is mostly coming from other quarters, at least for now (let’s just wait to see what the right-wing swamps make of this one). But it’s disappointing in a different way. Jay-Z has spent his career expounding hip-hop as a mainstream commercial force. He’s not a businessman, he’s a business, man. But he’s also an artist. He’s made huge amounts of money, and gotten himself into the rarefied rooms where he even has the ability to give himself a gig like this, by spinning his experiences into compelling narrative art, one verse at a time. Let’s not lose sight of how impressive his life’s work really is. Jay-Z is not some random C-suite bro, and he’s definitely not Dick Cheney. He’s one of the greatest rappers of all time, by any measure. He’s earned that Super Bowl spot.