Tag: Rap
Vancouver, B.C., Canada’s greatest interviewer catches up with super-producer/TNGHT member/Kanye collaborator Hudson Mohawke for his latest piece. As always, Nardwuar has a bevy of relevant gifts for his subject, including, awesomely, a 45 of the “Stalag 17,” and the Paid in Full soundtrack LP. Plus, HudMo says “shit” a lot. […]
Last week, Chance the Rapper’s Acid Rap hit number 63 on Billboard’s Hip-Hop/R&B albums chart. Now, Acid Rap is very, very good, and Chance deserves every bit of the success and recognition he’s seen since its release. But something about this particular honor is fishy: Acid Rap is a free download; it shouldn’t be charting at all. Someone appears to be […]
You clicked the headline, so you already know what you’re in for. Here’s a beautifully produced video of a few very old white people reciting the lyrics to A$AP Rocky’s “Houston Old Head.” It is very funny, especially when you get to “pimpin’ bitches since lemon shrimp lo mein.” These people are actually very compelling […]
Rap mixtapes have roots in 1990s DJ mixes, but took shape in their modern form the early 2000s, with The Diplomats and G-Unit remixing popular songs of the day and putting out tapes for self-promotion. The increased popularity of the format through the decade raised the expectations of these free promotional projects, putting them in […]
Each week in Sample Wars, we’ll pit two songs which sample the same source material head-to-head against each other, to determine which one rocked the sample better. This week we’re looking at Yellowman’s “Zungguzungguguzungguzeng,” a stone-cold classic dancehall tune that spawned a thousand sing-songy hip hop hooks, as well as the beats for Black Star’s […]
Miley Cyrus’ “We Can’t Stop,” to many people’s chagrin, has become one of the biggest songs of the summer. The striking video, full of drug allusions, playful sexual images and questionable racial posing, immediately sparked controversy. It has over 90 million views on YouTube, and though there was strong backlash to the racial accessorizing of […]
Each week in Sample Wars, we’ll pit two songs which sample the same source material head-to-head against each other, to determine which one rocked the sample better. This week’s Sample Wars looks at two of our era’s most titanic musicians: J Dilla and Flying Lotus. “Pie Face,” from FlyLo’s 2010 Pattern + Grid World EP, and “What […]
Here’s the clip for “Everybody’s Something,” in my book the best cut from Chance the Rapper’s excellent Acid Rap mixtape (and the subject of a Sample Wars not long ago). The Austin Vesely-directed video buts Chance in some Carl Sagan-style cosmos, overlaid with some nice hi-fi lo-fi footage that impressionistically outlines the song’s lyrics about doubt, affirmation, […]
To mark the 30th anniversary of Graffiti Rock, a hip-hop variety show that aired one nationally syndicated episode from WPIX in 1984, Michael Holman, the show’s creator, is reissuing the show, along with a documentary that goes behind the scenes of how the show was made. As is de rigueur these days, he’s set up a Kickstarter to fund it […]
Remember when that unfinished Kanye video leaked and he got all “FUK U” about it? Well, the finished, Nick Knight-directed version is here, and it’s interactive! But it’s also, uh, pretty much exactly like the version that leaked. Interactivity is limited to slowing the song and video down–which is fine, because it sounds fucking awesome screwed […]
