rap music
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Is Today’s Hip-Hop Trash or Are We Just Getting Old? Spoiler Alert: The Answer Is ‘Yes’
I’ll start with a disclaimer: I’m an old hip-hop head. I am 30-*coughs and crumples paper while driving under a bridge* years old and I am set in my taste, similar to how white people describe their racist parents as being “set in their ways.” I know what I fuck wit. If you know me,…
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‘Bodak Yellow’ Is Trash, and if You Like It, Your Taste in Music Is Trash
I love Cardi B. I love everything about her. I love that she is aggressively real. I love that she is aggressively beautiful. I love that she is aggressively Cardi. I had a sister who was killed a few years ago. She was Cardi B before Cardi B was Cardi B. Her name was Robin,…
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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…
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8 Hip-Hop 1-Hit Wonders You Flat-Out Forgot About
I’m calling it right now: “Bodak Yellow” will make Cardi B a one-hit wonder (Editor’s Note: I disagree with this wholeheartedly—P.J.). I’ve tried to bump “Bodak Yellow” more than once, and I’ve determined that dragging a metal rake across a chalkboard in a classroom full of preschoolers who are all simultaneously screaming about a “boo-boo”…
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All Eyez on Me Star Demetrius Shipp Jr. on Being Tupac, a Role He Seemed Destined to Play
To say that a Tupac biopic has been a long time coming is an understatement. Perhaps few know that as well as Demetrius Shipp Jr., the icon’s “blink twice” doppelgänger who was originally cast in the role in 2011 and waited through a handful of directors, including John Singleton and Carl Franklin, before Benny Boom,…
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Watch: ‘Name That Trap Song’ With Atlanta's Brian Tyree Henry
Just because Brian Tyree Henry plays Paper Boi, a budding rapper in the FX series Atlanta, doesn’t mean that he actually knows trap music IRL. Atlanta, whose 10-episode season ends Tuesday (and which has been renewed for a second season), has done a phenomenal job depicting the vastness of the black experience, including the role of rap…
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What Conservatives Really Mean When They Talk About Rap
What you say about somebody else reveals you. What I think of you as being is dictated by my own necessities, my own psychology, my own fears and desires. I’m not describing you when I talk about you; I’m describing me. —James Baldwin Donald Trump supporters have continually found new, improbable ways to rationalize the…
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Hip-Hop’s Best Year Ever Can Almost Buy You A Drink
It should come as no surprise to most of you that I wasn’t the most popular kid in high school. During my 1995 – 1996 freshman year, I endured an awkward post-pubescent, pre-growth-spurt phase that had me looking like the love child of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man and Associate Bob from Demolition Man. Making matters…
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I'm 29, And I'm An Aspiring Rapper (I'm Also A Lawyer, But Don't Let That Stop You From Judging)
There’s a duality in a lot of the shit that we millenials are. I say “that” rather than “who” because, in the circles we run in, so much focus is on the action rather than the person. Five minutes into a conversation with my fellow urban professionals — you know, my brunch party goin’, #travelnoire…
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I'm Going To Have A Daughter. I Love Rap Music. These Two Things Do Not Match
They said I can’t rap about being broke no moreThey ain’t say I can’t rap about coke no more The Wife Person and I have driven to the D.C. area four times this summer. And, with each drive comes a couple dozen or so new additions to my Spotify playlist; a trip soundtrack occasionally interrupted by Google…