Taters Gonna Tate. . .But Do Platforms Have to Platform?: Listening to the Manosphere
In March 2025, shortly after returning to the United States from Romania, where he and his brother Tristan had been held under house arrest for two years after being charged with human trafficking, rape, and forming a criminal group to sexually exploit women, the social media influencer and self-described misogynist Andrew Tate’s podcast, Pimping H**s Degree was removed from Spotify for violating that platform’s policies.
According to the technology media outlet 404 Media, which first reported the news, some Spotify employees had complained in an internal Slack channel about the availability of Tate’s shows on their platform. “Pretty vile that we’re hosting Andrew Tate’s content,” wrote one. “Happy Women’s History Month, everybody!” wrote another. A change.org petition to call on Spotify to remove harmful Andrew Tate content, meanwhile, received over 150,000 signatures.
When asked for comment by the U.K. Independent, a Spotify spokesperson clarified that they removed the content in question because it violated the company’s policies, not because of any internal employee discussion. These policies state, in part, that content hosted on the platform should not “promote violence, incite hatred, harass, bully, or engage in any other behavior that may place people at risk of serious physical harm or death.”
Still, there is a veritable fire hose of Tate content available on Spotify. A search for the name “Andrew Tate” on the platform yields upwards of 15 feeds (and a music account) associated with the pro kickboxer-turned-self-help guru, many of which seem to be updated on a sporadic basis or not at all. Apple Podcasts, meanwhile, features an equally wide spectrum of shows with titles like Tatecast, Tate Speech, Andrew Tate Motivation, and Tate Talk [Ed. Note: Normally there’d be links to this media–and the author has provided all of his sources, but we at SO! does not want to drive idle traffic to these sites or pingbacks to/from them. If you want to follow Andrew Salvati’s path, all these titles are readily findable with a quick cut-and-paste Google search.–JS]
With so many different feeds out there, wading into the Andrew Tate audio ecosystem can be a bewildering experience. There isn’t just one podcast; there’s a continuous unfolding of feeds populated by short clips of content pulled from other sources.
But this may be the point exactly.
As I learned from this article in the Guardian and these interviews with YouTuber and entrepreneur MrBeast (“MrBeast On Andrew Tate’s MARKETING” and “MrBeast Reveals Andrew Tate’s Strategy”), Tate achieved TikTok virality, in part, by encouraging fans to share clips of video podcast interviews – rather than the whole interview itself – on the platform.
“Now is the best time to do podcasts than ever before,” MrBeast said in one interview. “Now it’s like the clips are re-uploaded for months on months. It gets so many views outside of the actual podcast … I would call it the ‘Tate Model’ … Like I think if you’re an influencer, you should go on like a couple dozen podcasts. You should clip all the best parts and just put it on a folder and just give it to your fans. Like literally promote you for free.” Though it can be hard to tell exactly who uploaded a podcast to Spotify, it seems that something like this is happening on the platform – that fans of Tate are sharing their favorite clips of his interviews and monologues pulled from other sources.
In its “About” section, for instance, a Spotify feed called Andrew Tate Motivational Speech declares that “this is a mix of the most powerful motivational speeches I’ve found from Andrew Tate. He’s a 4 time [sic] kickboxing world champion and he’s been having a big impact on social media.” In another Spotify feed called Tate Therapy, posters are careful to note that they “do not represent Mr. Tate in any way. We simply love his message. So we put together some of his best speeches.”
Given that Spotify is increasingly a social media platform, rather than simply an audio streaming service–users can collaborate on playlists and see what their friends are listening to–it follows that this practice of clipping and sharing Tate content may potentially expand the influencer’s online footprint. It may also serve as insurance against the company’s attempts to remove content or completely deplatform Tate: surely Spotify can’t police all the feeds that it hosts
So, what is it that Andrew Tate is saying – and how is he saying it?
To get a sense of why he has been called the “King of Toxic Masculinity,” and a “divisive social media star,” I had a listen to several of the interviews and monologues posted to Andrew Tate Speech Daily on Apple Podcasts, which, of all of the Andrew Tate audio feeds, is the most consistently updated.
The first thing to take note of is his voice. It’s brisk and aggressive and carefully enunciated – it’s like he’s daring you to take issue with what he, an accomplished and eloquent man, is saying. Above all, listening to Tate feels like being spoken to like an inferior, because that is precisely what he preys on. His accent, moreover – now British, now American – is unique, lending itself to some unusual pronunciations that can be considered as a part of his system of authority and charm.
One of Tate’s main arguments about what ails men today – and it is clear from his mode of address that he assumes he is talking to men exclusively – is that they are trapped in a system of social and economic “slavery” that he unimaginatively calls “The Matrix” after the film series of the same name. Though he is somewhat vague in his descriptions, in the podcast episode “Andrew Tate on The Matrix,” he explains that power, as it actually exists in the world, is held by elites who rely on systems of representation (language, texts) to effect their will. These systems of representation, however, are prone to abuse because they are ultimately subject to human fallibility. Tangible assets, like wealth, he reasons, are susceptible to control by “The Matrix,” as they can be taken away arbitrarily by the redefinition of decisions and the printing/signing of documents. His example, though it is a little hard to follow, is that if someone says something that the government doesn’t like, a judge can simply order that their house be taken away. Instead, Tate argues that individuals can escape “The Matrix” by building intangible assets (here, he gives no examples), which cannot be taken away by elites and their bureaucracy. It is a difficult path, he cautions (and here, he sounds sympathetic), and one that not everyone has the discipline to endure.
Tate gets a little more specific in the episode “Andrew Tate on The Global Awakening. The Modern Slave System,” in which he asserts that elites are using the system of fiat currency – a term that cryptocurrency supporters like to use to disparage government-issued currencies – to keep individuals “enslaved.” In this modern version of enslavement, he explains, individuals are forced to work for currency, but, since fiat currency is subject to inflation and other forms of manipulation, only end up making the bare amount they need to survive. The result, he argues, is a system in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer (of course this ignores the real possibility of shitcoin and other crypto manipulation schemes). It’s quite a populist message for a guy who is famous for his luxurious lifestyle. Still, his message here is consistent: with the proper amount of discipline, a willingness to speak truth to power, and faith in God (he converted to Islam in October 2023) will result in an awakening of consciousness that will finally end the stranglehold that elites have on power – will finally break “The Matrix.”
On the other hand, Tate deems women incapable of the discipline required to break out of “The Matrix” – he seems to think that they are too materialistic, too distractible, too enamored of the chains that elites use to bind individuals to the system to see beyond them (see “Andrew Tate on ‘Fun’”). In his view, women are better off at home bearing children or fulfilling male sexual desires. (In an apparent demonstration of male dominance, Tate’s “girlfriends” often appear in the background of his videos cleaning house).
For his part, Tate claims that his own legal troubles, and his own vilification in the press, are part of a coordinated campaign of persecution against him for exposing the way that the world really works (see, for example, “Andrew Tate: Survival, Power, and the System Exposed”). From this vantage, Tate seems to be acting as what the ancient Greeks called a parrhesiastes, someone who, as Michel Foucault writes, not only sees it as his duty to speak the truth, but takes a risk in doing so, since what he says is opposed by the majority. Indeed, often congratulating himself on his bravery in the face of “The Matrix,” Tate has suggested that his role as a truth teller might get him sent to jail (“Andrew Tate on the Common Man”), or worse (“Survival, Power, and the System Exposed.”) In such moments, he plays the martyr, adopting a quiet, yet defiant voice.
Aside from the aspirational lifestyle he purveys – the fast cars, the money, the women, the flashy clothes, the jets, the mansions, the cigars, and the six pack – it seems to me that this parrhesia is a key part of what makes Tate popular among men and boys (as of February 2025, he had over 10 million followers on X [formerly Twitter]). What he reveals to them, though it is often muddled, is the way in which elites maintain social control under advanced capitalism. It’s all rather Gramscian in the sense that it is concerned with the hegemony of a dominant class, though, ironically, Tate seems too much of a capitalist himself to engage in Marxian social critique. Instead of offering a politics of class solidarity, Tate merely rehearses familiar neoliberal scripts about pulling oneself up by the bootstraps (see “You Must Constantly Build Yourself”), getting disciplined, going to the gym, developing skills, and starting a business. For Tate, life is a competition, a war, though most men don’t realize it.
And I think this is the key to understanding Tate’s parrhesia – it’s not only that he is speaking truth to power in his criticism of “The Matrix”; he also sees himself as speaking an uncomfortable truth to his listeners, truths that they might not be ready to hear. As in the movie, The Matrix, he says in “Andrew Tate on the Global Awakening,” some minds are not ready to have the true nature of reality revealed to them. In his perorations, therefore, Tate often takes a sharp and combative tone, accusing his listeners of being guilty of complacency and complicity in the face of “The Matrix.”
“If I were to explain to you right here, right now, in a compendious and concise way, most of you wouldn’t understand,” he says in “Andrew Tate on The Matrix.” “And those of you who do understand will not be prepared to do the work it takes to then actually genuinely escape. But those of you who are truly unhappy inside of your hearts, those of you who understand there’s something more to life, there’s a different level of reality you’ve yet to experience … But if your mind is ready to be free, if you’re ready to truly understand how the world operates and become a person who is difficult to kill, hard to damage, and escape The Matrix truly, once and for all, then I am willing to teach you.”
For those persuaded by this line of thinking, or who are otherwise made to feel guilty about their complicity in “The Matrix,” Tate offers a special “Real World” course at $49 per month, which teaches students how they can leverage AI and e-commerce tools to earn their own money and finally be free.
And that’s really what it’s all about – all the social media influencing, all the clip sharing, all the obnoxious antics, and deliberately controversial statements – they are all calculated to raise his public profile (good or bad) so that he can sell the online courses that have made him and his brother Tristan fabulously wealthy.
It is for this reason that I don’t think that Spotify’s deplatforming of one of Tate’s shows will ultimately do anything meaningful to stem his popularity. If anything, the added controversy will likely confirm to his fans that he has been right all along – that the elites who are in control of “The Matrix” are so threatened by the truth that he tells about the world and about women that they will first deplatform him and then send him to jail.
No, we will only rid ourselves of Tate when he becomes irrelevant. This may happen if he ends up going to prison in Romania or in the UK (where he also faces charges of rape and human trafficking). But even then, there are many vying to take his place.
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Featured Image: Close-up and remixed image of Andrew Tate’s mouth and arm, Image by Heute, CC BY 4.0
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Andrew J. Salvati is an adjunct professor in the Media and Communications program at Drew University, where he teaches courses on podcasting and television studies. His research interests include media and cultural memory, television history, and mediated masculinity. He is the co-founder and occasional co-host of Inside the Box: The TV History Podcast, and Drew Archives in 10.
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This post also benefitted from the review of Spring 2025 Sounding Out! interns Sean Broder and Alex Calovi. Thank you!
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“I am Thinking Of Your Voice”: Gender, Audio Compression, and a Cyberfeminist Theory of Oppression: Robin James
DIY Histories: Podcasting the Past: Andrew Salvati
Listening to MAGA Politics within US/Mexico’s Lucha Libre –Esther Díaz Martín and Rebeca Rivas
Gendered Sonic Violence, from the Waiting Room to the Locker Room–Rebecca Lentjes
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The Sonic Rhetoric of Quincy Jones (feat. Nasir Jones)
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The passing of Quincy Jones has left a silence that feels almost impossible to fill. Every time I play Thriller at home now, it’s no longer just a celebration of his unparalleled artistry. It’s a ritual to sit with his legacy, listen more closely, and honor how his music shaped the sound of memory itself. With each spin of the record, my family and I find ourselves inside his arrangements, held by their richness, precision, and sense of story as though the music is breathing with us, speaking back across time. Jones’s work was never just production; it was communication. A language of sound connected us to melody and beat and the fuller spectrum of emotion, culture, and memory that lives in Black music.
This piece joins a tradition of Black sonic remembrance that Sounding Out! has previously offered in moments of profound cultural loss, from Regina Bradley’s remembrances of listening to Whitney Houston on the radio with her mother to Ben Tausig’s reflection on Prince’s passing to Kristin Moriah’s meditation on Savion Glover’s tap dance tribute to Amiri Baraka. Such pieces remind us that mourning Black artists is not only about personal grief; it’s about listening to the soundscapes they left behind, tracing how their artistry shaped how we collectively move, mourn, and remember. Houston’s voice, much like Jones’s production, was a vessel of Black sonic innovation, shaping how we collectively move, mourn, and remember. Like Prince, Jones’s catalog is a vast archive of Black sonic innovation, where every horn line, bass groove, and percussive hit tells part of a larger story about Black life, joy, survival, and creativity. Jones, like Baraka, understood the radical potential of sound to entertain and agitate, educate, and summon history into the present. Writing about Jones now in the quiet left by his absence is a mourning and a celebration, an offering of flowers in the form of careful attention, deep gratitude, and collective remembrance. This is a way of honoring him as a producer or composer and as a practitioner of sonic rhetoric, a storyteller who spoke through sound and whose language of rhythm and harmony shaped how we feel, remember, and belong.
Two new books published in 2024, Matthew D. Morrison’s Black Sound and Earl H. Brooks’s On Rhetoric and Black Music, arrived at a particularly poignant moment, offering critical frameworks for understanding sonic rhetoric as a vital Black cultural practice. Morrison positions Black music as a vessel for cultural identity and history, emphasizing how it carries narratives that transcend mere auditory pleasure. Brooks extends this argument, demonstrating how Black music functions as a living, breathing rhetorical form, shaping and reshaping cultural identity and narrative with each performance, each recording, and each arrangement. That these books emerged in the same year the world lost Quincy Jones feels deeply significant, a reminder that his life’s work embodies precisely what they describe. Jones mastered using rhythm, melody, and arrangement to shape cultural memory and invite reflection. His genius does not reside solely in his ability to create captivating music but rather in his ability to layer each note with history, emotion, and meaning, sound as storytelling, sound as cultural conversation.
As I reflect on Quincy Jones’s legacy, I realize that his production and compositional skills have profoundly changed my understanding of sound. My admiration for Jones’s mastery of sound and his unique way of using music to communicate drove me to explore sound rhetoric more profoundly, especially how his work became the foundation of new sonic storytelling. His work allows me to imagine myself as a young Black boy, playing with sound and allowing it to communicate in ways that speak to the world. I am grateful for his inspiration, enabling us to envision the possibilities of sound and its power to connect us all. To honor Quincy Jones in rhetoric and sound, we must recognize his pioneering contributions to music as a form of communication. By studying his innovative approaches and the sonic landscapes he crafted, we can deepen our understanding of how sound shapes cultural narratives and personal identities. Engaging with his work encourages us to appreciate music’s profound impact on our lives and the stories it tells, ensuring that his legacy continues to inspire future generations of artists and listeners alike.
For readers who may not be as familiar with his legacy, Quincy Jones is one of the most influential and celebrated figures in music history. His career spans more than seven decades, marked by numerous Grammy Awards, groundbreaking collaborations, and an ability to shape the sound of entire musical eras. Jones’s journey into music began with a chance discovery that would define the course of his life. As a young boy, he broke into an armory and found an upright piano, sparking his lifelong passion for music. This serendipitous moment led him to explore various instruments, from percussion to trombone, sousaphone, and eventually the trumpet, which would become his instrument of choice. These formative experiences gave Jones a diverse and rich understanding of sound that he would later weave into his compositions. His journey through different musical styles, be it jazz, R&B, or orchestral arrangements, allowed him to develop a unique ability to merge genres and cultures, creating works that resonated on a global scale. Jones’s work as a producer, composer, and arranger redefined what it meant to be a producer in the music industry, elevating the role to that of a creative force, an artist in their own right. Most famously known for his work with Michael Jackson, Jones’s sonic contributions to Thriller transformed pop music and how producers and artists interact to create timeless music. His groundbreaking approach to music production changed how the world listens to music, showing how sound can transcend entertainment and become a powerful form of cultural communication.
For example, celebrating the Thriller album with my children has been an ongoing discovery. I am captivated by their responses to the music. They quickly catch specific sounds, anticipate instrumental flourishes, and react to subtle details, proving the immersive quality of Quincy Jones’s work. His production goes beyond entertainment; it engages listeners, inviting even young ears to feel part of the experience. The power of sonic storytelling is the ability to craft a narrative or evoke emotion purely through sound without relying on visuals or lyrics alone. Quincy Jones’s genius lies in how he layers instruments, sound effects, and vocal textures to create mood and atmosphere, building stories that listeners can feel unfolding around them. Sonic storytelling turns production into a cinematic experience, where a sudden bassline shift, a carefully placed synth, or an eerie silence all contribute to the larger emotional arc of a song. Jones doesn’t just produce songs. He builds immersive worlds through sound, showing how music, at its best, can tell stories as vividly as any film or novel. Songs such as “Thriller,” “Beat It,” and “Billie Jean” epitomize Jones’s mastery of this craft. Thriller is a prime example of his brilliance, each track meticulously balancing complex soundscapes with universal appeal.
With eerie beats, haunting synths, and Vincent Price’s chilling monologue, “Thriller” has become synonymous with Halloween, transforming it into an auditory icon that reshapes how we experience the holiday. It has a layered, cinematic arrangement, where Jones fuses a creeping synthesizer line with lush orchestral swells and Vincent Price’s velvety horror monologue. Each sonic element functions as a narrative device, placing the listener inside a haunted space where sound, the creak of a door, and the hiss of wind become part of the story. Brooks’s On Rhetoric and Black Music reminds us that sound arrangements can evoke emotion and memory, and Jones’s work exemplifies that power.
Then, consider the storytelling pulsing in the bassline of “Billie Jean,” a throbbing heartbeat grounding the song’s tale of obsession, fame, and denial in something bodily, felt in the chest and gut before the mind catches up. With every layered texture, from the crisp snap of the drum machine to the soaring, wordless vocal harmonies, Jones does not simply produce music; he scripts sonic stories where Black creativity and cultural history converge in every beat.
Jones’s approach to production embodies this idea, transforming how we listen and engage with music. Take “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” where layered percussion, call and response vocals, and a pulsing bassline create a sonic landscape that feels alive, constantly shifting and evolving. The song’s now iconic “Mama say mama sa mama coo sa” chant reaches back to the Cameroonian makossa tradition, embedding a diasporic history within a global pop hit (listen to the opening seconds of Manu Dijbango’s 1972 “Soul Makossa” to hear the resonance).
Then, in “Human Nature,” Jones works in the opposite direction, crafting an atmospheric, dreamlike arrangement where gentle synth pads and delicate electric guitar melodies wrap around Michael Jackson’s voice like mist, evoking a sense of vulnerability and wonder. These tracks, like so many in Jones’s catalog, do not merely present melodies and rhythms. They create spaces where memory, emotion, and history converge.
Jones’s ability to craft soundscapes has long extended beyond Thriller, both backward and forward in time. His track “Soul Bossa Nova” (1962), famously featured in the Austin Powers films, evokes nostalgia and joy, transporting listeners to memories of sunny beach days and family vacations. But there’s a deeper story behind this piece that’s often overlooked that spoke volumes in its original context. Originally released on Jones’s album Big Band Bossa Nova, the track arrived when the genre and the term “bossa nova” were being culturally sanitized and marketed to white audiences, particularly in the U.S. As scholars have noted, Black Brazilian musicians whose innovative work laid the foundation for bossa nova, were often erased from the story as the genre’s global fame became linked to lighter-skinned artists palatable to international audiences.
Jones’s decision to title the track “Soul Bossa Nova” at the height of the Civil Rights Movement and during the global rise of Bossa Nova was not merely clever branding. It bridged the emerging coolness of Bossa Nova with the distinct sensibilities and innovations of African American music, at a time when both the U.S. and Brazil were grappling with deep racial segregation and the commodification of Black art. It was also a subtle reclamation, insisting on Black presence in a genre already experiencing the erasure of Black Brazilian pioneers such as Johnny Alf. In “Soul Bossa Nova,” Jones fused the light bounce of Brazilian rhythms with a brassy, big-band jazz sensibility, centering Black sonic playfulness and cultural hybridity at a time when both were under threat from the forces of segregation and global anti-Blackness. The track’s instantly recognizable piccolo flute riff, playful, mischievous, and a little sly, becomes, in this light, not only catchy but also defiant, a declaration that Black sound is limitless, able to traverse continents and contexts while carrying the weight of memory, history, and joy.
And the story did not end there. Decades later, Ludacris and various hip-hop artists paid homage to Jones’s legacy in Jones’s last album, the 2010 project Q: Soul Bossa Nostra. This playful yet reverent tribute sampled and reimagined Jones’s catalog for a new generation. Soul Bossa Nostra is a clever play on “Cosa Nostra,” merging the sonic underworld of Jones’s orchestrations with the familial pride and intergenerational respect that defines hip hop’s tribute culture.
This interweaving of “Soul Bossa Nova”‘s history, from its quiet defiance in 1962 to its unexpected resurgence through Austin Powers to its embrace by Ludacris, exemplifies the lasting power of Jones’s compositions to connect across eras and genres, all while telling a much larger story about race, ownership, and the endurance of Black sonic innovation.
In Thriller and “Soul Bossa Nova,” Jones’s compositions offer listeners an immersive experience that connects personal and cultural narratives, proving that his work is more than entertainment. It is a powerful form of artistic communication that resonates across generations. I have experienced this firsthand, listening to these songs with my children, not just once or twice, but as an ongoing, evolving family ritual. Their responses, the way they anticipate certain flourishes, react to subtle shifts, or sing along with total abandon, remind me that Jones’s work does not sit still in time. It moves through us, binding my children’s joy to my own memories of discovery, just as it ties us all to the larger, unfolding story of Black sonic creativity. Through Jones’s soundscapes, we are not only hearing songs. We are participating in cultural memory, shaping it anew with every listen.
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Being known as an unparalleled intergenerational sonic storyteller is already a feat, but Quincy Jones’s influence is embedded in the DNA of contemporary music production in other important ways. From the way producers are now seen as creative equals to artists to the expectation that producers bring their signature sound to every project they touch, every time a contemporary music producer is celebrated as a vital voice in shaping a record, they stand on the foundation Quincy Jones laid. Long before the term “producer” carried the weight and cultural significance it does today, Jones redefined what it meant to hold that title.
In today’s music landscape, the constructive collaboration between an artist and producer can be a defining force, shaping careers and setting entire musical eras into motion. This reality exists in large part because of Jones, who was not just arranging instruments or overseeing technical sessions but building entire sonic worlds, shaping the emotional architecture of songs, and helping artists translate their most personal visions into soundscapes that could speak to the world. His work with Michael Jackson epitomizes the collaborative alchemy possible when a producer steps into the role of creative partner, cultural interpreter, and sonic architect all at once. With Thriller Jones did not merely produce an album, he co-authored a cultural phenomenon. Jones and Jackson’s collaboration not only redefined pop music but also set a lasting standard for artist-producer dynamics, showcasing the brilliance that can arise when two creative minds align. Jones’s legacy as a producer is one of vision, trust, and translation, helping artists hear possibilities in their work they could not fully imagine and giving the listening public music that defined moments and movements.
Hip Hop, in particular, has carved out a prominent role for music producers in the style of Quincy Jones, something that Nas pays homage to in his track “Michael and Quincy” from King’s Disease III (2022). In doing so, Nas directly parallels the collaborative genius between Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson with his recent creative collaboration with producer Hit-Boy, now running 6 albums strong.
This is not just a passing reference. It is part of Nas’s more prominent, ongoing project of honoring hip hop creators and the artistic lineages that shaped his career. Across the King’s Disease trilogy and in his The Bridge podcast (which he co-hosts with Miss Info), Nas has taken deliberate care to uplift the cultural architects of hip hop, weaving their stories into his narrative and preserving their legacies for future generations. On “Michael and Quincy,” Nas celebrates the power of collaboration, positioning the artist-producer relationship as a crucible for innovation and cultural impact. The track’s lyrics paint vivid images of creative combustion, with Nas rapping, “Smoke steaming off the microphone,” evoking the almost supernatural energy that fueled Michael and Quincy’s sessions. This imagery extends to Nas and Hit-Boy, capturing the intensity and urgency they bring to their creative process.
Sonically, “Michael and Quincy” also mirrors this spirit of collaborative innovation. Hit-Boy’s production constantly shifts, blending classic boom-bap drums with more atmospheric textures, creating a soundscape that feels both reverent and forward-thinking. The beat morphs beneath Nas’s verses, never settling into predictability, much like how Quincy Jones infused “Thriller” with unexpected sonic twists. Nas and Hit-Boy’s sonic interplay echoes the Jackson-Jones dynamic, where the producer’s vision expands and amplifies the artist’s voice. In its lyrics and production, “Michael and Quincy” serves as a sonic tribute, not just to a legendary duo, but to the transformative power of artist-producer partnerships, a lineage Quincy Jones helped define and one Nas is determined to carry forward. The era-defining success of Thriller still ripples through music today.
“Nas’s tribute serves as a powerful reminder of these partnerships’ enduring impact, bridging genres and generations. The image of “smoke steaming off of the microphone” is one I carry with me, embodying the intense, creative spirit that Michael and Quincy brought to their collaborations, a legacy now celebrated and extended through Nas’s words and music. Nas draws from their example to remind us that great partnerships, whether in music or other creative endeavors, are often the spark that ignites monumental cultural shifts. Their combined energy was undeniable as they pushed each other to new artistic heights. The success of their work was not only about the music; it was also about the more profound connection to culture, identity, and collective memory. Like the tracks he produced, his music lives on, inspiring us to reflect on how we listen to and engage with the world around us. By revisiting the breadth and depth of his work and the many sonic creations it has inspired, we continue to discover new layers of meaning and artistry, ensuring that Jones’s influence will be felt for generations to come.
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Featured Image: SO! Screencap from Nas’s performance at Rolling Loud, November 11, 2024
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Jaquial Durham is a multi-hyphenate social justice champion. The South Carolina native has spent over a decade actively engaged in various outreach initiatives to uplift and empower marginalized communities. He is also a passionate cultural enthusiast dedicated to exploring the rich tapestry of African American history, which drives him to continue making a meaningful impact in the lives of those around him. His advocacy for social-political issues that encompass race, prison culture and gender have been at the forefront of his work.
As the CEO of Public Culture Entertainment Group, an entity focused on raising public awareness about the myriad of components that influence culture, Durham spearheads the company’s TV/film projects and cultivates unique apparel capsules that showcase prominent African American figures, organizations and landmarks often absent from historical dialogue. The ambitious, young go-getter prolifically uses creative activism to amplify the voices, stories and experiences of those often overlooked. His
visionary brilliance can be seen in the groundbreaking documentary Southern Prison Culture, a cinematic film highlighting the challenges individuals face within the system and fiercely advocating for much-needed reforms. As a result of the film’s success, Durham has received prestigious awards like the Milan Gold Award, the Austin Lift-Off Film Festival Award and the London International Film Festival Award.
Durham has been a driving force behind various social justice reforms, calling for equitable and inclusive policies and practices. His unwavering dedication to helping others earned him widespread recognition that included opportunities to lecture at colleges such as American University, Benedict College, Claflin University, Clemson University and Texas State University. Durham was honored by Grammy-Award Winning rapper Killer Mike, who has respect and credibility within the culture. His dedication to the development of higher education institutions in America has led him to refine his intellectual and creative genius relentlessly. While Durham received a bachelor’s in African and African American Studies with a minor in Women and Gender Studies from Winston-Salem State University, he is pursuing a Ph.D.from Clemson University in Rhetorics, Communication and Information Design.
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On Donuts, Sandwiches and Beattapes: Listening for J Dilla Six Years On–DJ Primus Luta
Unlearning Black Sound in Black Artistry: Examining the Quiet in Solange’s A Seat At the Table–Kimberly Williams
Deep Listening as Philogynoir: Playlists, Black Girl Idiom, and Love–Shakira Holt
“Heavy Airplay, All Day with No Chorus”: Classroom Sonic Consciousness in the Playlist Project–Todd Craig
Mingus Ah Um (1959) and An Ethics of Care in Jazz–Brittany Proctor
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