Hazel Cills
Hazel Cills is an editor at NPR Music, where she edits breaking music news, reviews, essays and interviews. Before coming to NPR in 2021, Hazel was a culture reporter at Jezebel, where she wrote about music and popular culture. She was also a writer for MTV News and a founding staff writer for the teen publication Rookie magazine.
Her music journalism and criticism have appeared in outlets including The New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork and more. She graduated from New York University with a degree in art history and cultural criticism.
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The singer's 1968 hit "Different Strokes" became a popular hip-hop sample used by artists like Wu-Tang Clan, Public Enemy and Kanye West.
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The singer-songwriter is the first high-profile musician to join Young's protest against the streaming service over its hosting of Joe Rogan's podcast.
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Lang helped make Woodstock a defining moment of the 1960s. He once called it "a test of whether people of our generation really believed in one another and the world we were struggling to create."
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The rapper was hailed as "the most original West Coast stylist in decades." He was reportedly stabbed at the Once Upon a Time in LA music festival.
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As a member of the hip-hop group UTFO, he was part of a pioneering era of New York City rap in the early 1980s. The Brooklyn group was best known for their 1984 hit song "Roxanne, Roxanne."
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The NPR Music editor shares her favorite albums and songs of 2021.
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From Jersey club to the U.K. underground, 2021's best electronic music looks like a complex melting pot of genre and history.
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The singer believes "our stories should be listened to as we intended." She requested the change for the release of her new album, 30, and Spotify replied with a tweet reading, "Anything for you."
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The artist, born Terence Wilson, sang about issues of racism and poverty in the music of the pioneering reggae band.
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With his brothers Charlie and Robert, the multi-instrumentalist helped define R&B's sound in the 1970s and '80s, bringing a distinct flavor of synth-heavy electro-funk.