NME in the context of Indie music

Richard Kylea Cowie Jr. (born 19 January 1979), better known by his stage name Wiley (formerly Wiley Kat), is a British grime MC and producer from Bow, London. Wiley is often labelled the "Godfather of Grime". In the early 2000s, he independently released a series of highly influential eskibeat instrumentals on white label vinyl, such as the first in the series "Eskimo" and is known as a grime MC both for his solo work and for material released with his crew Roll Deep.

Wiley first tasted success as a member of the UK garage crew Pay As U Go, with whom he had a Top 40 hit, "Champagne Dance" in 2001. Wiley has continued to make grime music while also releasing mainstream singles, such as the UK Singles Chart Top 10 hits "Wearing My Rolex", "Never Be Your Woman", and his UK number-one "Heatwave". Wiley's eleventh album, Godfather (2017), peaked at number nine on the UK Albums Chart, becoming his highest-charting album of his career, and also won an "Outstanding Contribution to Music" award by NME.

Independent music (also commonly known as indie music, or simply indie) is a broad style of music characterized by creative freedom, low budgets, and a do-it-yourself approach to music creation. It originated from the liberties afforded by independent record labels. Indie music describes a number of related styles, but generally refers to guitar-oriented music that deviates from mainstream conventions. There are a number of subgenres of independent music which combine its characteristics with other genres, such as indie pop, indie rock, indie folk, and indie electronic. Additionally, in certain circles, the term indie has taken on a definition entirely based on the typical sound of independent music in the 1980s, losing its connection to production style.

The origins of independent music lie in the early distribution of private press albums from the 1960s–1970s as well as late '70s British independent record labels, from the early alternative music scene such as Rough Trade, Factory, Industrial Records and Mute, which later contributed to the development of alternative rock music. NME released the influential compilation album C86 in 1986, which helped define indie rock. American independent music first emerged in the 1980s, and was spread via college radios, which led to the term college rock. Styles that evolved out of indie music and reached wide commercial success in the 1990s include grunge (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and the Smashing Pumpkins) and Britpop (Blur, Pulp, and Oasis). In the 21st century, due to the internet, indie music saw a global spread in popularity, as music fans were no longer dependent on physical publications to find new music.

Indie rock is a subgenre of rock music that originated in the United Kingdom, United States and New Zealand in the early to mid-1980s. Although the term was originally used to describe rock music released through independent record labels, by the 1990s it became more widely associated with the music such bands produced.

The sound of indie rock has its origins in the UK DIY music of the Buzzcocks, Desperate Bicycles and Television Personalities and the New Zealand Dunedin sound of the Chills, Tall Dwarfs, the Clean and the Verlaines, alongside Australia's the Go-Betweens and early 1980s college rock radio stations who would frequently play jangle pop bands like the Smiths and R.E.M. The genre solidified itself during the mid–1980s with NME's C86 cassette in the United Kingdom and the underground success of Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr. and Unrest in the United States. During the 1990s, indie rock bands like Sonic Youth, the Pixies and Radiohead all released albums on major labels and subgenres like slowcore, Midwest emo, slacker rock and space rock began. By this time, "indie" had evolved to refer to bands whose music was released on independent record labels, in addition to the record labels themselves. As the decade progressed many individual local scenes developed their own distinct takes on the genre: baggy in Manchester; grebo in Stourbridge and Leicester; and shoegaze in London and the Thames Valley.

Robert Fitzgerald Diggs (born July 5, 1969), better known by his stage name RZA (/ˈrɪzə/ RIZ-ə) or the RZA, is an American rapper, record producer, composer, actor, and filmmaker. He is the de facto leader of the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan, having produced most of the group's albums and those of its members. Known for his signature use of soul samples, sparse beats, and cinematic elements, his production style has been widely influential in hip-hop. The Source and Vibe both ranked him among the greatest hip-hop producers of all time, while NME included him on its list of the 50 Greatest Producers Ever, spanning all genres.

RZA has released solo albums under the alter-ego Bobby Digital; he was also a founding member of the horrorcore group Gravediggaz, performing as the RZArector. He has also worked extensively in film and television, composing scores for major films such as Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) and Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004). He made his directorial debut with The Man with the Iron Fists (2012) and later directed Love Beats Rhymes (2017). He served as an executive producer on Wu-Tang: An American Saga (2019–2023), for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music.

"Bonkers" is a song by English rapper Dizzee Rascal and American producer Armand van Helden. It is the first single released from Rascal's fourth studio album, Tongue n' Cheek. Rascal released the track under his own record label, Dirtee Stank Recordings on 17 May 2009 in the United Kingdom, entering at the top of the UK Singles Chart, marking Dizzee's second number-one single, third top-ten single and eleventh top-forty hit on the chart. This was also Van Helden's third number-one single, his first in ten years (with "You Don't Know Me" being his previous number-one single). In October 2011, NME placed it at number 59 on its list "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years".

Time Inc. (also referred to as Time & Life, Inc. after its two former flagship magazines) was an American worldwide mass media corporation founded on November 28, 1922, by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden. Based in New York City, the company owned and published over 100 magazine brands, including its namesake Time, Sports Illustrated, Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, Fortune, People, InStyle, Life, Golf Magazine, Southern Living, Essence, Real Simple, and Entertainment Weekly. It also operated subsidiaries alongside Time Inc. UK (later sold and rebranded as TI Media), whose major titles included What's on TV, NME, Country Life, and Wallpaper. Aditionally, Time Inc. managed over 60 websites and digital-only titles, such as MyRecipes, Extra Crispy, TheSnug, HelloGiggles, and MIMI.

In 1990, Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications to form the media conglomerate Time Warner (now Warner Bros. Discovery), with Time Inc. continuing as a subsidiary. In 2014, to focus on its three entertainment divisions, Warner Bros., Turner, and HBO, Time Warner spun off Time Inc. as a public company trading on the New York Stock Exchange. In 2018, the Meredith Corporation acquired Time Inc. for $2.8 billion. Three yars later, Meredith was acquired by IAC and merged with Dotdash to form Dotdash Meredith, resulting in IAC gaining most of the former Time Inc. assets.