ON ANY GIVEN night, the neon-lit streets of Akihabara, an entertainment district in central Tokyo, are packed with visitors. Inside windowless shopping malls, they flock to stalls selling used Hello Kitty or Astro Boy figurines, Pokémon trading cards and vintage video game consoles. At the idol bars and theaters — venues …
Last January, Todd Lansky was in the stands of Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., with his son Tyler before the Detroit Lions’ most momentous N.F.L. game in about a half-century. The Lions were about to face the San Francisco 49ers in the N.F.C. Championship Game when Mr. Lansky’s phone …
The megahits of 2024 were inseparable from their back stories. And that was exhausting. Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” which racked up hundreds of millions of streams and helped propel him to the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show, was the ferocious culmination of his battle, via quickly released singles, with …