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The 10 Best Hip-Hop Tracks of 2020
The need to stay the hell apart from humans this year resulted in a sweeping halt on the production of movies, television shows and the like. It also means no festivals, concerts or trips to the silver screen. Fortunately, making music doesn’t require a mess of people congregating—especially if you have skills with instruments and…
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Why These 10 Hip-Hop Tracks From 2019 Have Us Hype for 2020
There’s quite a bit of hip-hop cooking in the kitchen for 2020, in terms of scheduled and rumored releases. Full-length projects are expected from the holy trinity of contemporary rap greats—Drake, J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar—as well as albums that will excite the kids (Lil Uzi Vert, A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie) and us old…
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Is Ray J. the Most Significant Black Entertainer of a Generation? No. But There Is a Case to Be Made
A couple of weeks ago, Ray J. went viral when news broke that Suge Knight, the devil’s favorite Blood, ceded control of the rights to his life to Ray J. from the prison cell that Suge will likely die in. In fact, Ray is simply taking over Death Row Records, which I suppose means…
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The 15 Greatest Hip-Hop Songs of All Time
Hip-hop celebrated its 46th birthday on August 11. The anniversary of the genre’s unofficial yet widely accepted formation in the Bronx just happened to coincide with the tail end of a conversation regarding everyone’s top 50 rappers list. The thought of putting together my own top 50 list always put me off; once you get…
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'Exhibit C' Is Almost 10 Years Old. Jay Electronica Has Completely Squandered His Career
Illmatic, my all-time favorite debut album and one of my top-five favorite hip-hop albums of all time, celebrated its 25th anniversary April 19. Whether or not Nas ever released another classic album has been the subject of an interminable debate among hip-hop nerds; what isn’t up for debate is that Nas had a largely respectable…
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I Used to Reject Therapy. Now I Embrace It Wholeheartedly
My relationship with therapy is, to say the least, old and complicated. When I was a young child, my public-school teachers sent me to therapy. According to my mama, I was acting like a “damn fool” and they thought I was adversely impacted by my parents’ divorce. I don’t remember much about it except the…
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The Unbearable Blackness of Being
Shortly after I entered the world via Detroit’s now-shuttered Grace Hospital one summer day in 1981, I set upon what was an unmistakably black-ass upbringing in one of America’s chocolatiest cities. That which we refer to as “black people shit” as an adult was simply childhood by default: a quarter for a baggie of assorted…
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The 10 Best Hip-Hop Tracks of 2018
Just about every hip-hop critic and cognoscenti has had the same response about the amount of new music released in 2018: Too damn much. As the genre continues its dominance on streaming services, it seems like artists are in overdrive to capitalize on the moment. If you’ve been a rap fan at any point between…
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We Need a New Category for Today’s Rap Music Because This Shit Ain’t Hip-Hop
Eleven years ago this month, I made the decision to get my first tattoo below my elbow—a piece covering my entire forearm that could never be hidden without clothing. I wanted the tattoo to be meaningful, so it only made sense to dedicate it to one of my favorite things ever: hip-hop. The piece is…
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The Wire, the Best Show in History, Ended 10 Years Ago and Changed TV Forever
HBO’s The Wire signed off a decade ago this coming March. Eclipsed in popularity by mainstream shows Sex and the City and The Sopranos on the same network, the Baltimore-set crime drama never received any major television awards, and the showrunners struggled at times to actually complete its five seasons. (Note: if you haven’t yet…
