If you don’t know the Ukrainian pop star Ruslana Lyzhychko, you should. She’s known as the Britney Spears of Eastern Europe, except she doesn’t shave her head for attention, she leads political rallies, and she was recently a key figure in the Euromaidanprotests in Kiev. 

Screams rang out Saturday night across the Los Angeles Sports Arena as Taiwanese band Mayday brought its brand of Asian stadium rock to an all-Chinese audience for a show celebrating its 15th anniversary.

For several years now, American and German officials have struggled with how best to respond to Deso Dogg. The Ghanaian-German artist, whose legal name is Denis Cuspert, gained popularity during the mid-2000s as a pioneer in Germany’s gangsta-rap scene, performing with DMX and recording tracks like “Gangxtaboggy,” “Daz Iz Ein Drive By,” and “Meine Ambition Als Ridah.”

Monzer Darwish is a 23-year-old graphic designer and metal fan from Al Salamiyah, Syria, a district near Homs. For the last five months he’s been travelling around the country and visiting refugees in Lebanon for a documentary he’s making about underground metal bands in war-torn Syria. Needless to say, it's a tough gig.

One of the odder phenomena of the last decade is hearing national security elites, terrorism experts, and career diplomats discuss the finer points of “flow,” “bling,” and the “politics of cool.” American and European terrorism experts have increasingly expressed concerns over “anti-American hip-hop,” accenting the radicalizing influence of the genre.

Imagine if you’d heard all your life that your relatives were musicians, then one day you find out your grandfather and his brother were, say, Simon and Garfunkel.