Jenessa Williams
Jenessa is a freelance music journalist, fandom academic and the writer of Subtweets, our weekly column that dissects the trending topics setting Music Twitter alight. She likes millennial hip-hop, noughties emo and advocating for a new era of diversity and representation in both.
Behind the campaign to get Lady Gaga’s ‘Artpop’ the respect it deserves
Lady Gaga is climbing the charts, but it’s not because she has new music. Instead, seven years on from its release, fans have taken...
Has musical gatekeeping caused Cupcakke’s boredom with female rap?
Divisiveness over something that a celebrity said on Twitter? Surely not! Just like the rest of us, musicians are known for the odd foot-in-mouth...
Satanic Panic over Lil Nas X’s ‘Montero’ proves that Black queer sexuality is still...
All big new musical announcements these days start with the notes app, but for Lil Nas X, the message he typed last week was...
‘For Those I Love’ album review – a poignant and accomplished debut
Grief is a complex thing. To survive as sentient beings, we have to do what we can to suppress the knowledge that our loved...
One year of Verzuz – how musical competition brought the timeline together
If you’re a regular Twitter user, you might have noticed some seemingly-random artists appearing in your ‘trending topics’ over the past year. Gucci Mane,...
With the UK’s right to peaceful protest under threat, protest music is more important...
The news agenda has been a hard one to stomach these last few weeks (months, years…), and it’s difficult not to feel like each...
How many studies into music’s gender imbalance need to happen before things change?
We all know how it goes by now. A big report comes out, citing some damning evidence that reveals that there is still a...
Robots at rest: The orbit and influence of Daft Punk by those who were...
Right as we're all (tentatively) rejoicing over the news that we might actually be able to get to a gig this year, 2021 decided...
How Yungblud made podcasting a Gen Z hit
It’s difficult to put your finger on why, but there’s something about the boom of podcast-listening that has often felt like a very ‘older...
Why was 2006 such a good year for music?
If you’re old enough to have been a music fan in the early noughties, there was likely a record that you’ll remember feverishly refreshing...