Thirty years after the release of Ill Communication, we celebrate the New York trio’s gonzo blend of hip-hop, funk, punk and pop-cultural flotsamPasting prank calls and garbled Steve Martin routines on to a delicious ESG-esque garage-funk of their own making, the Beasties’ first swing at hip-hop improbably got these former punk-rockers played at New...

Sex workers, private investigators and women unlucky in love are some of the characters that drive these vivid urban portraitsLife in urban areas of west Africa, one of the most diverse regions on Earth, is often a daily roller-coaster ride spiced by abundant drama and an astonishing array of striking characters. Many writers have attempted to capture...

Battersea Arts Centre, London Netflix turned Kata Wéber and Kornél Mundruczó’s play into an Oscar-nominated film. Now a world-class ensemble from Poland’s TR Warszawa bring it out its nuanced brillianceThe 2020 Netflix film based on this Polish hit by Kata Wéber and directed – like the play – by her husband, Kornél Mundruczó, shockingly opened with...

I’ll Have What She’s Having, at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington DC, is a celebration the delicatessen and its place in US cultureCate Thurston remembers the moment her team settled on what to call an exhibition about Jewish delis in America. “We kind of just said it as a joke,” the co-curator says. “It was a former colleague who said, ‘You could...

A pulse-quickening novel about a tempestuous age-gap relationship at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall has won the top prize for translated fiction. The German author and her translator discuss how it entwines the personal and political• Kairos wins the International Booker – news • Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck – review‘What is a ‘no-brainer’?” the...

Bounce quartet Da Showstoppaz claim track sampled on US No 1 hit infringes on the title phrase from their track Release a WiggleBeyoncé has been accused of copyright infringement in a new lawsuit targeting her US No 1 hit song Break My Soul.The song samples Explode by Big Freedia, a New Orleans vocalist who performs bounce, a subgenre of insistent high-tempo...