One night in March, an elevator opens onto the 23rd floor of a midtown Atlanta skyscraper, and Lil Wayne steps into the alcove of his luxury condominium. His place takes up the entire floor of the building. Still, to enter the apartment proper, Wayne must affix a digit to a biometric fingerprint scanner, which unlocks his door with a satisfying pop. Inside, massive windows offer breathtaking panoramic views of the city. Perhaps to avoid competing with such vistas, the decor in the apartment is...

On a bright sunday afternoon in Los Angeles, Taylor Swift is on good behavior, as usual. In high school, she had a 4.0 average; when she was home-schooled during her junior and senior years, she finished both years of course work in 12 months. She has never changed her hair color, won't engage in any remotely dangerous type of physical activity and bites her nails to the quick. At 19 years old, she says she has never had a cigarette. She says she has never had a drop of alcohol. "I have no...

The Band on Bruce: Their Springsteen A candid look at the legend from his "greatest friends" — the E Street Band

The sound is classic amateur 1966 — chaotic, jangling guitars, impatient drumming and crude raging-hormone vocal...

One afternoon in January, Sean Penn answers the door of his Bay Area home, shoeless, in jeans and a gray thermal undershirt, his hair sort of crazily mussed, looking as if he's just woken up. It's a couple of minutes past noon.

To say that Penn has "aged well" is to employ a nonstandard usage of the term. He does not look younger than his 48 years. His forehead is baroquely creased, his long face haggard, his hair soaring and gray-streaked and parted down the middle. Something Penn is...

Despite a financial crisis for the ages, the catastrophic collapse of a Republican Party crippled by his political legacy, and the highest presidential disapproval rating in the history of American polling, outgoing commander in chief George W. Bush has not completely lost his sense of fun. When Rolling Stone caught up with him at the White House shortly after the holidays for what would turn out to be his final extended sit-down interview as president, the graying but still quite fit Texan had...

Brad Pitt is having technical difficulties.

"I normally need my kids to do this," he mutters, as he attempts to connect my iPod into his stereo. "They're so beyond me in technology, it's hard to keep up. Our seven-year-old was searching the word 'weapons' on Google the other day and ended up on some white-supremacist site. I'm sure now we're on all kinds of watch lists."

Eventually, Pitt gives up and summons an assistant, and soon enough we're listening to Townes Van Zandt. Pitt has never...

Everything gleams like sin on the Dark Knight BD (that's what they call a Blu-ray disc, get used to it). From the man in the Bat suit (Christian Bale) to the Joker in cracked clown makeup (Heath Ledger), the movie is a potent provocation decked out as a comic book. And oh, boy, is it a looker. If BD is the future of home-theater viewing, then The Dark Knight shows you why. Images...

There's an understanding among those who know...

Illustration: Shepard Fairey

Yes we did. Barack Obama's on his way to Washington, Britney's got a new album, gossip girls are dying to kiss vampires, and Mickey Rourke — Mickey Rourke! — is an Oscar contender. The 2008 Hot List is full of hopeful surprises — just like the man headed to the White House.

• View List: The 2008 Hot List

There's something about a voice that's personal, not unlike the particular odor or shape of a given human body. Summoned through belly, hammered into form by the throat, given propulsion by bellows of lungs, teased into final form by tongue and lips, a vocal is a kind of audible kiss, a blurted confession, a soul-burp you really can't keep from issuing as you make your way through the material world. How helplessly candid! How appalling!

Contrary to anything you've heard, the ability to...