The-Dream has a knack for pulling out a variety of things from the artists he works with. Just today, Destiny's Child member Kelly Rowland released a Dream-produced track, "Dirty Laundry," recounting…   Read Story »

In the mid-'90s, when I was in high school, the German label Crypt Records had cornered the market on the sleazy, knuckedragging, oilstained-bowling-shirt garage rock that was all over the American…   Read Story »

Chance The Rapper is going to irritate the shit out of a lot of people. This is unavoidable. His voice is a pitched-up puberty-squeak, cracking and cackling and warbling all over tracks, never quite…   Read Story »

A$AP Rocky's "1 Train" is probably the year's most self-consciously cool rap song -- seven boldfaced blog-rap names, painstakingly assembled and sequenced, all attempting to outdo each other with…   Read Story »

Once upon a time, people hated Cassie. In 2006, she was a 19-year-old model-turned-singer whose big single, "Me & U," may or may not have been about blowjobs. After a couple of notoriously bad TV…   Read Story »

I had a strange realization the other day: I was getting ready to write a Mixtape Of The Week piece about Casino, Future's brother, and his Ex Drug Dealer tape, which I like OK but which I was just…   Read Story »

Sometime last year, around the same time I first heard his stuttering foghorn bass-tones on Kitty Pryde and Riff Raff's "Orion's Belt," I jumped on Twitter to say that Beautiful Lou was better than…   Read Story »

As far as I can tell, the three most interesting things about the Spanish Harlem rapper Bodega Bamz are as follows: His nicely sculpted beard, his vague A$AP Mob affiliation, and his name, the last…   Read Story »

The ancestral Oakland pimp-rapper Too Short is arguably one of the, let's say, 10 people in history who have had the most impact on rap music. His trajectory -- hand-to-hand cassette sales to…   Read Story »

Earlier this week, for about half an hour, Gucci Mane officially changed his name to Guwop, announcing the change on his Twitter: "Thanks Fans, for 8 years as Gucci now it's Wop turn." It didn't last…   Read Story »