Who

Frere-Jones is the pop music critic for The New Yorker, where he brings mass culture to the elite and explains the relevance of Jay-Z to septuagenarian Jews on the Upper West Side.

Backstory

Raised in Fort Greene and Brooklyn Heights, Frere-Jones attended Columbia and worked at a non-profit called the Families and Work Institute while playing with the rock band Ui in the early 1990s. After making a name for himself writing about music for the Village Voice and Slate, in 2004 he became The New Yorker's first regular pop critic since Nick Hornby.

Of note

His musical taste has proven to be pretty omnivorous—he's championed mainstream hip-hop and given raves to pop artists like Justin Timberlake and Kelly Clarkson as well as to typical critical darlings like Joanna Newsom and Arcade Fire. There are a number of musicians who have tasted Frere-Jones's wrath, though. In 2004, he was involved in a spat with Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt: Responding to Merritt's avowed dislike of hip-hop and the lack of black artists in his musical recommendations, Frere-Jones incited a minor firestorm on the web by calling the musician a "rockist cracker." He'll be schooling all the other crackers out there with his upcoming book, about record production in hip-hop.

On the side

Frere-Jones continues to moonlight as a musician. Although he's best known for Uii, which disbanded in 2003, his other projects include post-punk band The Sands and the electronic group Canal.

Family ties

Frere-Jones's brother is noted typeface designer Tobias-Frere Jones, who has designed fonts for the New York Times among other publications. His grandfather was the chairman of London publisher William Heinemann Ltd., and his great-grandfather was Edgar Wallace, the famous British crime writer and King Kong screenwriter.

Personal

Brooklyn dweller Frere-Jones was married to lawyer Deborah Holmes, but the couple split in 2006. They have two young sons, Jonah and Sam.