Album Review: Nicki Minaj's "Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded"

The best ten songs on Roman Reloaded run about as long as Illmatic, and they are as definitive a statement about music today as Nas’s was back in ’94. Minaj’s louche, hermaphroditic lyrics shit on dichotomous thinking about sex and gender with vigor unimaginable by the epicene girly-boys who’ve approached the issue from the other side since before David Bowie became Lady Stardust.

Click to read more ...

Poor White Blight: How Rapper Yelawolf (and Eminem Before Him) Turns Hip-Hop's Eye to the Trailer Park

A white rapper is an odd sort of creature. A brief survey of the media tells us that, culturally speaking, there’s no higher accomplishment in America than being a white entertainer. Unless, that is, you’re a rapper: there’s a line of embarrassment spanning generations from Marky Mark, Vanilla Ice and Snow to Tommy Hilfiger’s kid, Tom Hanks’ kid and Bob Dylan’s grandkid. Apparently, it’s still too soon for rap to have its "stealing from Robert Johnson" moment.

Click to read more ...

Unraveling The Drake Paradox

Throughout the admittedly hilarious review, Drake and his album get called "Renée Zellweger", "a crime against heterosexuality", "bitchmade", "false Beyoncé female empowerment", "audio vagina injections", and "gay ass music". And the nut is, believe it or not, I think this is a pretty positive review.

Click to read more ...

Give A$AP Rocky Another Chance

The point is, ASAP Rocky earned an enormous mindshare in the world of blogs without actually crossing over in any significant way. No "Forever". No "Wonton Soup". No "Yonkers". Not even a "Justin Bieber 'freestyle' over 'Otis' ". Therefore, that Rocky would hardly try to come up with a full set of new songs for his big break really irked me.

Click to read more ...

J. Cole's Got the #1, But Is He Still on the Sidelines?

It turns out, getting to the bottom of Cole’s paradoxically anonymous success uncovers a lot about the man himself, and the state of rap today, a world with a management structure only slightly less tangled up than the dynastic succession in England

Click to read more ...

Too Big To Fail

It’s clear to me, though, that Rick Ross’s world is, even as it’s still being realized, completely insane.

Click to read more ...

Is "Relax" The Album Of The Decade?

When Das Racist draw on their upper-tier liberal arts education, it seems like they’re writing for educated (read: “historically white”) people, letting in white people. They’re not. If they have a primarily white audience (an assumption I don’t necessarily buy), it’s because of latent racist assumptions that education and cultural literacy are an inherently white thing.

Click to read more ...

The Same Boys You've Always Known

It is tempting to simply write off this new song with ICP (billed as “featuring Mozart” in a parodic trumping of The Throne’s featuring Otis and Curtis) as a purposeful curveball; you could say it’s weirdness for its own sake, like White’s black, red, and white wardrobe. Doing so, though, would overlook the fact that White’s musical kingdom is built, essentially, upon the flotsam and detritus of musical history

Click to read more ...

In the Bedroom

Clams Casino will find freely available (in a non-legal sense) sounds and samples by searching for things like “blue” and “cold” on file sharing networks. That’s perhaps the best image for how Clams’ productions work: he makes songs that evoke common nouns, humble but ubiquitous. He makes you realize simple words can be translated into pure sound.

Click to read more ...

Words Will Never Hurt B

When B calls himself "based," he's connoting a few concrete concepts: positivity, personal expression, courage. But "based" also connotes some of the more ineluctable aspects of life. Like the word "cool." Or "god." Lil B's aimless, non-judgmental, anti-religion is also a sort-of religion.

Click to read more ...

Is Kreayshawn the Future of Hip-Hop

But the signing of Kreayshawn is actually a good thing for rap music, even if it would have been unimaginable 10 years ago. That's not to say that she (and her White Girl Mob) don't make a mess, but rap has never been a simple, unproblematic medium. 

Click to read more ...

Not Another Odd Future Think Piece: Rap, the Internet and Female Agency

There are ways to be provocative and socially conscious that don’t require a litany of mental gymnastics to justify. It may seem like I really despise OF. I don’t. If you were to google my name or check out my tumblr, you may find I’ve written a lot about them, a lot of it positive. I think OF is captivating as hell, and I’m constantly struggling with why that is. (Cf, this essay.)

Click to read more ...

Not Another Odd Future Piece

Everything you need to know about Odd Future is already there, in their name. “Odd.” “Future.” “Odd.” “Future.” Say it with me: “Odd Future.” So we’re done here, right? Eh…

Click to read more ...

Majors and Lasers

There are four versions of Lasers. There's the album Lupe Fiasco thought he made, the one his label thought he made; and there’s the album the critics heard, and the one fans heard. It turns out the record label and the fans have a better idea of Lupe Fiasco's Lasers than the artist and critics.

Click to read more ...

A Beauty And A Lyrical Beast

Minaj's album is not bad, and decidedly not boring, but it's a microcosm for Minaj's work as a whole. The first single, "Your Love," is a straight-ahead sweet love song. It samples Annie Lennox's "No More I Love You's" and doesn't get its hands any dirtier than name-checkingGhostface. The verses show her love for playing with sounds and voices, but wouldn't appeal to many who came looking for another "Monster" verse. 

Click to read more ...

Kanye West's Beautiful, Dark, Twisted Year

Kanye West’s on-again/off-again search for redemption found its most stable iteration in the record, especially the latter half’s self-aware dive into the depths of West’s psyche. And for the first time since the mid-'90s golden age or Eminem’s halcyon early oughts, one rapper was able to unify rap discourse and focus the nation’s attention on himself. That’s one hell of a life.

Click to read more ...

Drake & Kanye: The Dream Team?

Drake’s been good for Young Money, but it bears looking into: Is Young Money good for Drake?

Click to read more ...

Love the Music, Ignore the Message: How Critics Are Failing Odd Future

By the time they played their first New York show, the Odd Future story was at maximum volume, and had three notable features.

Click to read more ...

Is Justin Bieber The Future Of Hip-Hop

It looks like Justin Bieber's collaboration with Kanye West and Raekwon may have set the elfin singer on a new career course: rapping.

Click to read more ...

Playing the Race Card Again. And Again. And Again.

Das Racist (rhymes with "glass vases") takes rap literalism to its highest. That fake Jamaican accent? That's racist. Ignoring people of color? That's racist. Saying they look like Puerto Rican cousins? That's racist. Like Don Imus? That's racist. A line from "Nutmeg" sums up their somewhat quixotic project: "Play the race card again. And again. And again. Drinks at Bennigan's." 

Click to read more ...