There’s quite a bit of hip-hop cooking in the kitchen for 2020, in terms of scheduled and rumored releases.…

Hip-hop celebrated its 46th birthday on August 11. The anniversary of the genre’s unofficial yet widely accepted…

Illmatic, my all-time favorite debut album and one of my top-five favorite hip-hop albums of all time, celebrated…

My relationship with therapy is, to say the least, old and complicated.

Shortly after I entered the world via Detroit’s now-shuttered Grace Hospital one summer day in 1981, I set upon what…

Just about every hip-hop critic and cognoscenti has had the same response about the amount of new music released in…

Eleven years ago this month, I made the decision to get my first tattoo below my elbow—a piece covering my entire…

HBO’s The Wire signed off a decade ago this coming March. Eclipsed in popularity by mainstream shows Sex and the City…

Over the holiday break, I finally got around to watching Netflix’s Mudbound, last year’s period drama by director…

When Joe Budden didn’t report for his duties as co-host of Complex’s Everyday Struggle webcast this week, folks…

Seven years ago this month, we were all giddy with the hype and secrecy behind Kanye West’s upcoming fifth studio…

This week at VSB, we’re running a series called Albums That Changed My Life in which different writers let you in on…

Confession: I was absolutely thinking about pulling out of my first silent party an hour before I was to leave for…

When I was perusing the list of new-release albums from this past Oct. 13, it dawned on me after some time that…

In 2009 a family friend I hadn’t seen since I was a kid came into Chicago for a work conference and took me out for…

North Carolina rapper Rapsody dropped her second full-length album, Laila’s Wisdom, on Sept. 22. It’s her first…

When I broke up with my college sweetheart in 2005, I was living and working as a newspaper reporter in God’s…

I’m calling it right now: “Bodak Yellow” will make Cardi B a one-hit wonder (Editor’s Note: I disagree with this…

As a writer and English teacher, I’m forced to come to grips with the ever-(d)evolving way we approach our language.…