Common wrote One Day It’ll All Make Sense. Jay-Z wrote Decoded. Ice-T wrote Ice. Queen Latifah wrote Put on Your Crown. Styles P wrote Invincible. Mobb Deep’s Prodigy wrote My Infamous Life.  Surely hip-hop is enthralled with telling its story. No surprise there; the transition from writing lyrics to writing books was destined to happen…

(The Root) — I am not a feminist, nor do I allow others to identify me as one. (Whew! I finally got that out.) I am not a black feminist, hip-hop feminist or third-wave feminist, and I have chosen not to align my scholarship with the hybrid frameworks born out of the traditional feminisms of…

(The Root) — “Gimme dem beats fool/It’s a full-time jack move.” —Ice Cube, “Jackin’ for Beats” (Kill at Will) In their 40 years of creating classic beats and rhymes, rap- and hip-hop-influenced R&B producers have always found inspiration from soul, funk and rock-and-roll musicians. Whether it is Ice Cube’s sampling of James Brown’s “Funky Drummer”…

(The Root) — For as long as Africans in America have been producing music for the recording industry, there’s remained a tension between black performance styles and the mainstream society that benefits. This hasn’t always been a bad thing. There are times when the use of black style and form has moved pop culture to…

(The Root) — In hip-hop, the DJ has always been heralded as the most important member of a rap group. For years, artists have written odes to their mix masters, whether it was Run-DMC showering Jam Master Jay with praise or Rakim proclaiming that “Eric B Is President.” But recently a group of Atlanta-based DJs…

(The Root) — Drake’s new album, Nothing Was the Same, sold more than 658,000 units in its first week, with the single “Hold On, We’re Going Home” demoting Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” from the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. The Toronto-born-and-bred MC’s personal best week ever puts him in second place…

(The Root) — While the federal government hangs by the hair of its chinny chin chin, hip-hop MC Kendrick Lamar is playing the big, bad wolf, challenging rappers during Tuesday night’s broadcast of the 2013 BET Hip Hop Awards cypher to step up their art and performance in respect for the culture’s battle tradition. Surrounded…

Around the family dinner table over Christmas, the conversation turned to the recently announced Outkast performance at Coachella 2014—the event that pretty much all hip-hop heads are looking forward to—and the overall state of hip-hop going into 2014, which has decidedly more mixed reviews. Was 2013 a good year for the music we love, or…

Next week VH1 is set to air The Tanning of America: One Nation Under Hip Hop, a four-part documentary series based on Steve Stoute’s similarly titled book, The Tanning of America: How Hip-Hop Created a Culture That Rewrote the Rules of the New Economy. It was a fascinating read and remix of hip-hop’s history and…

Founded 16 years ago by Lawrence Krisna Parker, aka KRS-One, National Hip-Hop Appreciation Week (May 19-25) seeks to recognize the original elements of the culture—rapping, deejaying, break dancing and graffiti—and to renew the consciousness of the art form. This year’s theme is heritage. Artists, activists, entertainers and scholars around the world participated in a variety…