hip-hop
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10 Reasons Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Buying the Carolina Panthers Needs to Be a Thing
So it turns out that the NFL’s Carolina Panthers franchise is about to be up for sale. The current owner, Jerry Richardson, is going to put the club up for sale after reports of several payouts being made to victims of sexual misconduct came out via Sports Illustrated. 2017 is definitely the year of getting…
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10 Best Christmas Hip-Hop Songs, Ranked
From the Temptations’ “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas” to John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things” to Oscar Peterson’s “White Christmas,” black folks have contributed to the sonic landscape of the Christmas holiday in unforgettable fashion. Since Christmas parties are a universal part of the season and because hip-hop is the music of…
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Rapsody on Her Grammy Nominations Being ‘Good for the Culture,’ Her Unconventional Journey and Thoughts on Cardi B
When Marlanna “Rapsody” Evans stepped onstage in Oakland, Calif., for her Wisdom Is Power Tour, the tiny emcee with the commanding voice behind her lyrical wizardry was met with an ovation unlike any other she had ever experienced. “I tried to address the crowd before I started, and I couldn’t even talk because they were…
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An Open Letter to Post Malone
Dear Mr. Malone: First let me say that, as an old-school hip-hop head, I will refrain from criticizing your music. I will not comment on your lyrical genius of rhyming “shottas” with “grrra-ta-ta-ta.” I won’t even mention how your synthesized, Auto-Tuned, Caucasian half-singing on “Rockstar” sounds as if T-Pain fucked a Pinterest page. I am…
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B.o.B.’s Apparent Belief That Slave Ships Never Existed May Be the Most Hotep Conspiracy Theory of All Time
Flat-earther B.o.B constantly proves my belief that a person can be a genius in one field and totally clueless in another. We previously reported that the talented rapper and singer was raising funds to build a satellite that will once and for all settle the debate about whether or not the planet is dinner-plate shaped.…
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When Should Rappers Hang Up the Microphone?
When I was perusing the list of new-release albums from this past Oct. 13, it dawned on me after some time that three of the artists—Wu-Tang, Camp Lo and Krayzie Bone (with his group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony)—all released albums that I absolutely loved exactly 20 years ago. In 1997 I turned 16, obtained my driver’s license…
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The Smithsonian Is Creating a Dope Hip-Hop Anthology
When MC Lyte broke into the hip-hop world as a pioneering solo female rapper, she wasn’t thinking about making history. Like most aspiring artists, she wanted to be on the radio. “I was a lover of hip-hop. I went to the hip-hop clubs. I started rapping in elementary school … at 12, I started keeping…
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This Cipher With Method Man and Black Thought Proves That Real Hip-Hop Is Alive and Spittin’
Yes, contemporary hip-hop has been slaughtered by mumble rap, screaming and dumb-ass rap lyrics (see “Bad and Boujee,” “Panda” and “Bodak Yellow”—coincidentally, songs that I love, but SHE used to have both banging beats and a hot lyrical game). Yet, all is not lost. On Thursday, two of rap’s pioneers—Black Thought of the legendary Roots…
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10 Signs You’re One of Those Wack-Ass People Who Don’t Like ‘Bodak Yellow’
Because I’m a weird and curmudgeonly fuck who doesn’t go to clubs and while driving listens only to Waze and Spotify playlists mostly consisting of Kanye and the Inception soundtrack, before last weekend, I’d heard about Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow” more times than I had actually heard it. By a pretty significant margin, too. While…