Curated playlist
Songwriters from New York (state)
- FabolousFabolous almost wasn't called Fabolous at all. John David Jackson, born in Brooklyn on the 18th of November 1977, intended to name himself simply "Fabulous" when he freestyled his way onto DJ Clue's Hot 97 radio show as a teenager. He…
- Jay-ZJay-Z was born Shawn Corey Carter on the 4th of December 1969, in Brooklyn, New York City, and grew up in the Marcy Houses, a public housing project in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. His father, Adnis Reeves, left the family when…
- George GershwinGeorge Gershwin's last words were "Fred Astaire." He spoke them on the night of the 9th of July 1937, as he collapsed in a borrowed house in Beverly Hills, working on the score of The Goldwyn Follies. He was 38. Two days later, in the…
- Miles DavisMiles Dewey Davis III was born on the 26th of May 1926 in Alton, Illinois, to a family that owned a 200-acre estate in Arkansas with a profitable pig farm. He died on the 28th of September 1991 in Santa Monica, California, after a stroke,…
- Sean CombsSean Combs was born on the 4th of November 1969, in Harlem, New York City, and by the time he reached his mid-twenties he had reshaped American popular music from the inside. His label, Bad Boy Records, launched the career of the Notorious…
- Phil SpectorPhil Spector's father chose three words for his own gravestone: "To Know Him Was To Love Him." His son Harvey, nine years old when Benjamin Spector died by suicide in April 1949, turned that epitaph into a chart-topping song. "To Know Him…
- 50 Cent50 Cent was shot nine times at close range outside his grandmother's former home in South Jamaica, Queens, on the 24th of May 2000. The gunman fired with a 9mm handgun. The bullets struck his hand, arm, hip, both legs, chest, and left…
- LL Cool JLL Cool J was four years old when he walked in on his father's act of violence. James Todd Smith found his mother and grandfather shot and bleeding inside the family home. That moment, recounted in the Chicago Tribune, is where the story…
- Jimmy WalkerJames John Walker was remembered as Jimmy Walker and nicknamed Beau James. He once said a reformer is a guy who rides through a sewer in a glass-bottomed boat. The line captures a man who led New York City for six years with wit, charm,…
- Sylvia RobinsonIn 2022, Sylvia Robinson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Ahmet Ertegun Award category, the first woman to receive that honor unaccompanied by another person. She had been dead for eleven years. The recognition…