“The most amazing thing about the Shakira phenomenon is the craze that has gripped masses of children.” The late Gabriel García Márquez wrote that in his 2002 profile on Shakira for The Guardian. Even when covering one of the biggest pop stars in the world, the Nobel Prize winner’s music writing doesn’t rank anywhere near his classics like One Hundred Years of Solitude or Love in the Time of Cholera, but it does earn a spot alongside a few of our other favorite rock star/writer pairings.
Zadie Smith on Jay Z for New York Times Magazine
Smith starts things out by admitting, “It’s difficult to know what to ask a rapper,” but things get easier once the guy that shares a bed with Beyoncé decides the White Teeth and NW author is a fish sandwich person.
Elif Batuman on Vampire Weekend for The Guardian
The author of The Possessed originally shared some thoughts on Ezra Koenig’s writing right before the band blew up, writing that his fiction was actually pretty good. It later showed up at The Guardian.
Gary Shteyngart on M.I.A. for GQ
Two months after she ate truffle fries in front of Lynn Hirschberg, our favorite Russian took a shot at profiling M.I.A. for GQ.
Dennis Cooper on Courtney Love for Spin
“I’d been forewarned by Geffen’s publicist, by friends of hers, even by the rest of Hole, that Courtney Love doesn’t trust journalists,” Cooper writes in a profile published in the magazine’s May 1994 issue. As per usual with her interviews, Love talks about a host of things, including her failed attempt to start a riot grrrl chapter in LA.
Kathy Acker on the Spice Girls for Vogue
It’s strange to think that one of the last things Acker would publish during her lifetime was this Vogue cover story that Anna Wintour wasn’t all that jazzed on in the first place.