Pop Culture

Bobby decided then to take rapping and his music career seriously: “I didn’t really care too much for it until I went to jail and I seen how the fans were loyal,” he tells me. “I can’t name a week that I didn’t see at least 10 [pieces] of fan mail, throughout the whole bid.”

This story is part of GQ’s Modern Lovers issue.  Online dating is tricky enough when you’re not famous and often naked on the internet. But having potential suitors mistake your real dating profile for a catfish is just one of the many occupational hazards that the adult performer, activist, and—coincidentally—my new Brooklyn neighbor Janice Griffith

This story is part of GQ’s Modern Lovers issue.  “It’s a no,” said the door girl. “No chance. Zero.” Dan* and I shivered at the threshold of a queer warehouse party somewhere in Berlin. It was 5 a.m. on the ninth September morning I’d spent with Dan since our first date, across the ocean nine

Lee Daniels felt a sense of urgency to direct and produce The United States vs. Billie Holiday after reading the script (and the Johann Hari book, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, that it was based on) a few years ago. Before that, he didn’t really know that

This story is part of GQ’s Modern Lovers issue.  I’m a vampire, essentially. I do the later weddings: 11 p.m., midnight. The Elvis who works at A Little White Wedding Chapel during the day, he doesn’t like doing anything late. My standard wedding is usually one song, the written ceremony, and then another song. You

Entertainment is, among other things, an escape. An absorbing story, enriching world and compelling characters can help us forget our problems and fears for a brief time. In Disney+’s Marvel Cinematic Universe spin-off WandaVision, Wanda Maximof—the ex-Avenger with the power to influence behavior and reality—has made television, quite literally, her life in order to escape

The origins of Daft Punk, the French dance music juggernaut who announced their dissolution this morning, go all the way back to the 8th grade, where Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo first met. They started making music together in Bangalter’s bedroom around 1993; in 1995, they released “Da Funk,” which married the nascent thump

Yes. And that’s not what I’m interested in. But, there were questions about what this portrait of a relationship meant and what it looked like. So, what I remember being struck by the whole film was I really just wanted Zendaya’s character, Marie, to have a friend who’s like, “girl, come over, I’mma make some

Myrick first came to Ithaca a decade and a half ago to attend Cornell University. Initially he planned to become a journalist, but before long he was working as the assistant to a member of the city’s Common Council. He’d long been fascinated by the concept of public service. His family had been in and

The most interesting development of the Quality recording sessions was my burgeoning relationship with a young producer named Kanye West. One night late into the recording of the album, Kanye walked thru the studio door looking for Yasiin Bey. Yasiin had said he was showing up to record vocals for “Joy” that night, but he

This story is part of GQ’s Modern Lovers issue.  Making art about your family is uncomfortable. “You don’t want to do your partner injustice,” photographer Erik Madigan Heck says. “You’re almost like, ‘How could I ever capture what we have?’ ” But his latest book, The Garden, does just that. Part of a larger project

The great American filmmaker Ken Burns is known for many things: His oeuvre of engrossing and award-winning documentary series on topics as varied as baseball, jazz, the Shakers, national parks, and the Civil War. His eponymous panning shots and zoom effects. And, of course, his trademark bowl cut. A New Yorker profile from a few

I understand you’ve given some recommendations to the Biden transition team. Can you say more about that, and why you feel better about passing the torch? AM: The number one thing is that the people we have been pressuring at HHS to deliver have really been delivering. When we first made contact with people there,

What did you think of the finished movie? I’m hoping to see the story of nomads, but of course, it’s a story and the story takes precedence. The story is really about grief and healing and I think it’s a fantastic story for all who have suffered and been involved with grief and the healing

WandaVision, Marvel’s first Disney+ series, initially appeared to be a parody or satire of traditional sitcoms: The first two episodes played out in the style of 60s shows like I Love Lucy and Bewitched down to being filmed in black and white, and each episode since has advanced a decade with a corresponding homage: The

This story is part of GQ’s Modern Lovers issue.  Desperate Times He moved to Nashville to make it as a singer but wound up working as a barback, a job that in three years had gone from tolerable to marginal to almost unbearable. At 26, his dream of a career in music had already begun

This story is part of GQ’s Modern Lovers issue.  It was the first week of summer 2018 when Richie Shazam spotted Ben Draghi gyrating on the dance floor at Brooklyn’s Spectrum. Neither of them had been in a serious relationship: Draghi had just graduated from college and was acclimating himself to New York’s queer scene,

This story is part of GQ’s Modern Lovers issue.  “I love your work,” Mikaela Straus, the 22-year-old musician known as King Princess, once impulsively sent into the direct-message abyss while staring longingly at Quinn Wilson’s Instagram avatar. For her part, Wilson, the 27-year-old, Minneapolis-born director, had recently been introduced to Straus’s music through a friend.

Clive Chin probably should have expected a little bit of turbulence when he caught a flight from Kingston Jamaica to New York City with Peter Tosh as his traveling companion. The weather wasn’t a problem, but when the captain turned off the No Smoking sign and the reggae legend sparked up the ornate ganja pipe

Fox, on the other hand, has leaned further into a particular brand of soft, nerdy style that Matutina clocked as instantly attractive when they first met—think corduroy, printed fleece zips, high-water pants. He says he likes to look “aerodynamic” but admits it’s closer to “divorced dad” than cyberpunk. “I look like I work at Blick,