hip hop
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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 Kanye Cancel-Proof? A Look Back at His Controversial Decade
Kanye West had himself a decade. While he started out on a musical tear that had car speakers and arenas rocking, he ended it as a Donald Trump, MAGA-hat wearing, gospel-ish artist. The one consistency is that when he started out 2010, he thought he was God’s gift to the planet—and he pretty much ended…
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Still Looking for the Path to World Peace? We Found It in DaBaby’s Energy and Smile
Iylana Vanzant once told Karreuche Tran to lie her “crying head” on her bosom. Vanzant then took the young ex-girlfriend of Chris Brown and comforted her with the softness of a maternal unit cooing at her baby. There is another “baby” I would like to highlight who I also believe must be protected at all…
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Because Dreams Really Do Come True, BET Announces Miniseries Based on Andre Harrell’s Legendary Uptown Records
On Jan. 24, 2017, our lives were forever changed with the auspicious debut of BET’s The New Edition Story. Looking to perhaps recapture that magic—or at least those ratings—BET announced that it will be blessing us all with Uptown, which will revisit the trials, triumphs, and tribulations of the early ’90s phenomenon known as Uptown…
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Report: Apple TV+ and Oprah Winfrey Announce #MeToo Documentary with Russell Simmons Accuser as Primary Subject
Trigger Warning: The following article contains details of an alleged sexual assault. The lineup for the 2020 Sundance Film Festival was announced on Wednesday and there is one particular mysterious project that stands out. According to an Apple TV+ press release, the untitled Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering documentary, executive produced by Oprah Winfrey and…
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Zero Problems: It's Jay-Z's 50th Birthday and His Entire Discography Is Now Available on Spotify
If you having streaming problems, I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems but listening to Jay-Z ain’t one! Today, December 4, marks Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter’s 50th birthday and it looks like his gift to us is access to his entire discography on Spotify! After all of this time without access to his…
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'There Was Silence. It Was Understood': Reflections About 'yasiin bey: Negus,' the Listening Installation at the Brooklyn Museum
A few weeks back, I wrote a piece that was critical of “yasiin bey: Negus,” the traveling art exhibit/listening installation curated by yasiin bey, the artist formerly known as Mos Def. My overarching point (perhaps fairly called “mean” in the comments on the actual piece, and disregarded as closed-minded on Facebook) was that the idea,…
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Hip-Hop Legend Eric B. Jailed in New Jersey for 17-Year-Old Warrant
On the CBS series Blue Bloods, hip-hop icon Eric B. conducts criminal investigations as Detective Mike Gee, but in real life, the DJ-turned-actor has found himself on the wrong side of the law. From NJ.com: Hip-hop musician Eric Barrier, currently an actor on the CBS series “Blue Bloods,” has been jailed in New Jersey since…
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'I Felt Pretty': For His 50th Birthday, Diddy Reflected on Life as Fashion's Bad Boy
As someone who’s spent her entire working life in the fashion and music industries (over two decades and ongoing), it remains challenging for me to think of Sean Combs as anything but “Puffy.” You see, as a Gen-Xer, I remember well his evolution from upstart promoter to music exec to entertainment juggernaut…while unfortunately, my mind…
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It Turns Out, Hip-Hop Will Probably Always Be the Love of My Life
A few weeks back, I attended an album talk for noted hip-hop lyricist and producer Pharoahe Monch’s 1999 album, Internal Affairs (released on seminal label, Rawkus Records), at The REACH, the new arts and culture center that’s part of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. The talk, part of…