Best of SPIN

Nirvana's brief but brilliant body of work inspired fevered devotion not just in its fans, but in the band's peers. Here, in SPIN's 1995 article,…

(This piece was originally published in the June 1994 issue of SPIN.) In John Lydon's autobiography, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, he…

(This piece was originally published in the June 1994 issue of SPIN.) I still prefer to believe that Kurt Cobain's life was saved…

(This piece was originally published in the June 1994 issue of SPIN.) "'I don't have the passion anymore,'" sobbed the recorded voice of…

Athens, Georgia, 1985. The acid had lost its come-hither bouquet and the speed had snapped everyone's nerves like twigs. The run-down Victorians weren't such a steal…

San Bernardino National Forest, just like I pictured it — no skyscrapers, everything. But most of the 6,300 kids of all ages attending "Organic" June…

(This article originally appeared in the October 1993 issue of SPIN.)The recording of one of the most anticipated albums in hip-hop history was inching along…

In July of 1998, the future of youth culture was chillin' in the parking lot of a hip-hop concert in suburban New Jersey. Smokin' Grooves,…

Back in the 1970s, when Afrika Bambaataa dropped the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Women" into his DJ set at, say, the Bronx River Community Center,…

I've been working at SPIN since fax machines were indispensable and phone conversations were unavoidable; and my tangential relationship with the magazine goes back to…

Last week marked the first that SPIN has been without Charles Aaron editing and galvanizing its pages full-time since 1998 — it wouldn't be maudlin to say…

Sure, hip-hop is powerful stuff, capable of a mystical arm-twist or two, if the beats and rhymes and identities are properly aligned. But so is…

To celebrate SPIN's 28th birthday, we'll be looking back at all our covers, from the Herb Ritts-shot Madonna image that appeared on our very first…

To celebrate SPIN's 28th birthday, we'll be looking back at all our covers, from the Herb Ritts-shot Madonna image that appeared on our very first…

In 1985, the first issue of SPIN arrived with the following statement of purpose from founder Bob Guccione Jr.:…