Thursday, Aug. 8, marked nine years since the untimely passing of Sean Price, a one-of-one MC whose presence still looms large in the rap landscape. Few artists possessed his combo of technical precision, unbridled aggression, and side-splitting humor displayed on projects like his Heltah Skeltah work, alongside Rockness Monstah, and …
Read More »
Yung Miami has broken her silence on her relationship with Sean “Diddy” Combs, acknowledging that while several accusers have come forward to allege the Bad Boy mogul was physically violent and sexually abusive to them, that was not her experience. The City Girls rapper —real name Caresha Brownlee —sat down …
Read More »
On June 27, the legendary DJ Polo died at 63. The Queens DJ is remembered for the seminal work he did with the revered MC Kool G Rap starting in the mid-1980s. As Kool G Rap & DJ Polo, they released three studio albums, including 1989’s “Road to the Riches” …
Read More »
Thirty years ago, Common looked back ruefully at his favorite genre in “I Used to Love H.E.R.,” his classic riff on hip-hop as a wayward ex-girlfriend. “She was really the realest before she got into showbiz,” he lamented. The couple patched things up after that, and Common grew from a …
Read More »
On June 14, entrepreneur and infamous Fyre Fest organizer Billy McFarland uploaded a photo of himself alongside former president and presumptive 2024 Republican nominee Donald Trump to Instagram. His caption read, “Pres’ birthday featuring your new cabinet.” While that’s not likely to happen, McFarland has played a role in connecting …
Read More »
When dream hampton lived around the corner from the Notorious B.I.G in Brooklyn, when Gang Starr’s Guru would cut her hair, when she found herself in the epicenter of hip-hop’s modern genesis, she was a film student at New York University who just couldn’t afford to live in their Manhattan …
Read More »
dream hampton has been holding hip-hop to task for the misogyny it perpetuates since she was a college student writing for seminal rap magazine The Source in the early 1990s. She is perhaps most widely known as an executive producer of the 2019 documentary series Surviving R. Kelly, which chronicled …
Read More »
When a publisher suggested that Questlove write a book about the history of hip-hop, he was reticent at first. Not because of any fear of writing — the Roots drummer is an accomplished author, with a back catalog that includes an acclaimed 2013 memoir, along with volumes like 2021’s Music …
Read More »
The Roots Picnic, held yearly in Philadelphia since 2008, is a special kind of music festival. The lineup this year covered a wide spectrum of hip-hop and R&B, plus country, go-go, and more, with the Roots’ own omnivorous musicality as the guiding force. Daily crowds of 30,000 made the pilgrimage …
Read More »
This week, the Number One song in America is a diss track. Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” debuted at the top of the charts, to the surprise of no one who’s seen the track go viral since its release earlier this month. The song is buoyed by a catchyDJ Mustard …
Read More »