We pride ourselves at The FADER on scouring the globe to introduce you to some of the most left-field music around. But in our monthly column Popping Off, Aimee Cliff takes the temperature of mainstream pop music.

Vaginas: in a world where porn is mainstream, they’re not as shocking as they used to be — as long as you’re just alluding to them in a sexual context. On the London leg of Miley Cyrus’s Bangerz tour last year, I watched as she thrust hers forwards on the hood of a car. On “Work,” Kelly Rowland sings you gotta put it in when we get it on, while Beyoncé says hers is sweetest in the middle on “Blow,” and Lana Del Rey wants you to know hers tastes like Pepsi Cola. But vaginas, we all know, can have many other functions; and recently, two prominent popstars are proving just how shocking they still are by drawing on that fact.

Read the full feature, where Aimee explores how FKA Twigs and Björk are breaking down taboos with their reproductive representations of the female body.

Investigating the state of bass in 2014.

Our 94th print issue, The Producers Issue, is on newsstands now, and it’s one of our favorite things we’ve dropped this year: a token of appreciation to all the people toiling away behind laptops and stacks of gear to hunt down the sounds that take over our lives. To keep that spirit going, we’re spending a week digging into beat culture with the folks that live it. We’ve got a roundtable of women producers, an investigation into how EDM promoters are trying to keep people safe while keeping drugs around, Fruity Loops tricks, exclusive interviews, and much more. Rappers rap, singers sing, dancers dance, but none of it really happens without the beat. Browse the best of our #BeatWeek features below.

13 Women On How To Change Male-Dominated Studio Culture

The 5 Best Record Shops In North America, According To Jamie xx

What EDM Promoters Are Doing To Stop Drug-Related Deaths At Their Shows

A Definitive History Of Chief Keef As A Producer

13 Things All Fruity Loops Producers Know To Be True

How Timbaland And Jimmy Douglass Changed Pop Music By Ignoring The Tape Machine

Life Lessons From J Dilla’s Mom, Hip-Hop’s “Ma Dukes”

Around The World With Ryan Hemsworth: Japan

Meet The Singer Who’s Secretly Behind The UK’s American Pop Takeover

Toro Y Moi’s Chaz Bundick Goes Full-On Dance With Les Sins

Beat Construction: The Real Life Shit Behind Cooly G’s R&B Bangers

The Double Life Of Tunji Ige

Hit the streets of Brooklyn as Geordie Wood photographs Lana Del Rey for the cover of our brand new June/July Summer Music issue.

Read our full cover story on Lana, where she talks fame, feminism and her new album, Ultraviolence.

In the opening of Earl Sweatshirt’s The FADER cover story, writer Mary H.K. Choi noted that his Hollywood apartment was a “nightmare,” littered with beer cans, video game paraphernalia and potato chip remains. Almost exactly one year later, the 20-year-old rapper let us into his home again, this time for the latest installment of At Home With, a series presented by Sonos and The FADER where we peek into artists’ homes to see where they live, listen and make music. Perpetually shirtless with a lav mic taped to his chest, Earl gives us the grand tour of his digs—from the walk-in closet that he installed to house his skate shoes and party shirts, to the framed photo of him and his father, to the scattered assortment of CDs and books (including Paddle Your Own Canoe by Parks & Rec star Nick Offerman). Although he regrets hastily choosing an apartment in “nasty” downtown Hollywood, it seems like a pretty comfortable spot for hyper-creative goofballs to work and play. Read Earl’s cover story from The FADER’s 85th issue and check back this week to download an unreleased Earl Sweatshirt remix.

Watch more videos from our At Home With series.

There was a big delicious-looking cake shaped like headphones at the grand opening of the first ever Beats by Dre store in SoHo. FADER style guru Mobolaji Dawodu spoke with Dr. Dre about the company’s new products and Dre’s work with Kendrick Lamar.

More: Dr. Dre Confirms Apple / Beats Deal: “The First Billionaire in Hip-Hop Right Here”

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