Hip hop musician, songwriter, and composer Alicia Kristina Guastaferro, popularly known as Alicia G, is from Buffalo, New York. Alicia G is the epitome of the pop-culture world, with a refined sense of style honed over years of pageantry. https://open.spotify.com/artist/6B1EORFG9OJdxcjGL4ljxY In fact, by the time she was fifteen years old, Alicia had already been participating in beauty pageants around the country since she was eleven months old....

Before listening to a single note of Suris’ new album, “Pertinax”, I spent a few minutes just looking at the word. Pertinax. It has the distinct ring of a Stoic philosopher’s last defiant utterance or maybe a type of beetle known for its unusually stubborn shell. What a curious flag to fly for a collection of songs in an age of fleeting distraction. But...