The Guide #237: Fab 5 Freddy, the street artist at the heart of New York’s creative zenith

A new memoir by Fred Brathwaite offers an insight into the city’s emerging underground scene in the 70s and 80s – and shows us the power of subcultures in difficult times

Fainting in front of Michael Jackson and feuding with Monica: inside Brandy’s jaw-dropping memoir

The R&B singer’s must-read autobiography candidly describes a life of heady highs and horrific lows

‘African people are surreal’: songwriter and blues poet Aja Monet on Black resistance and love as spiritual warfare

Radicalised by the inventiveness of groups such as the Harlem Renaissance, the LA-based artist is determined to reclaim the radical possibilities of culture in an age of institutional and algorithmic exploitation

No New York by Adele Bertei review – a vivid, vibrant, musical coming of age

1970s and 80s New York are viscerally evoked in this potent memoir of the ‘no wave’ scene

Country star Ty Herndon: ‘The drugs could be forgiven. Being gay definitely could not’

In an honest new memoir, the musician opens up about being closeted in country, sexual assault and finding love in his 60s

Shoplifting, sex shows and sheepdog-breeding: great artists and the side-hustles they did to get by

John Cage appeared on an Italian quizshow. Jean Genet stole rare books. Emily Carr reared bobtails. And Kathy Acker did X-rated acts with her boyfriend … we explore the unlikely sidelines of struggling artists

Sex with Scorsese, beef with Sondheim … and inventing the moonwalk? The wildest moments in Liza Minnelli’s memoir

From Peter Sellers dressing like a Nazi, to having to manage her mother Judy Garland’s addiction, jaws will drop at Minnelli’s anecdotes

Kids, Wait Till You Hear This! by Liza Minnelli review – a heady brew of gossip, glamour and defiance

Lady Gaga and David Gest are among those who get ferocious dressings-down in this brutally candid memoir

Why Train Dreams should win the best picture Oscar

With its meditative pace and sincere interest in moral questions, Clint Bentley’s film of a rudderless man cutting down trees in Idaho’s verdant vistas has the air of a Hollywood classic from another era

Jack White: ‘I’m not going to put a painful thing out there for some idiot on the internet to stomp all over’

As a new book of his lyrics, poems and selected musings is published, the White Stripes’ singer, songwriter and general guitar hero reflects on poetry, politics and why writing a song is like reupholstering a chair

‘I owe Iron Maiden my English A-level!’ The great literature our writers discovered through pop music

Ahead of World Book Day on Thursday, Guardian music writers pick out the musicians whose literary references illuminated them – from Adam Ant on Joe Orton to the National on Grace Paley

Dirty Business to Gisèle Pelicot’s memoir: the week in rave reviews

A damning fact-based drama about a UK water pollution scandal, and the French survivor of rape tells her harrowing story. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

The Secret Agent to Mitski: the week in rave reviews

A brilliant mystery drama about politics and corruption in 70s Brazil, and a wonderful wallow in misery from the US musician. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

A Prayer for the Dying review – pestilent western feels like a short stretched too long

Johnny Flynn and John C Reilly offer casting heft, but this moody, technically sound tale of an unfolding epidemic in 1870s Wisconsin lacks emotional substance

From Brontë to Ballard, Orwell to Okri: the best songs inspired by literature – ranked!

As Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights gets a boost from a new film adaptation, we survey the surprising, seditious and sensual ways in which prose has influenced pop