Black Thought

Rapt.fm: Like Chatroulette Fueled by Hip-Hop, With Significantly Fewer Dicks

RaptFM: Like Chatroulette, But Fueled by Hip-Hop and with Significantly Fewer Dicks

You enter the room and they're already there. Some of the names you recognize: Randa the Rhyma (45 wins), Gig@ntic (48 wins), and Novice Raps (53 wins). You've checked the boards obsessively, but you've only ever been here before anonymously, as a guest. This is your first appearance in competition. ... More >>

Feeling Nostalgic For Madden NFL's Delightfully Clunky Hip-Hop Moments

Madden 25 comes out today, and you'd think it would have everything a dork who likes playing pretend football could want. The game's received positive reviews. There are new bells and whistles to try out. (Okay, basically, it has updated rosters.) And there's the opportunity to play online and lose ... More >>

Mr. Len's Guide to Surviving a Catfish Situation and a Zombie Apocalypse

Editor's note: In Tweets is Watching, Phillip Mlynar asks local artists questions based solely on the contents of their Twitter timeline. Mr Len recently released The Marvels of Yestermorrow, a project that he guarantees is "the most comedy you'll get from an instrumental record ever." On the basis ... More >>

The Graying of Hip-Hop

What happens to the youth-obsessed genre when its greats reach retirement?

Questlove is the Hardest-Working Man in Showbiz, and He is Lonely Enough to Prove It

Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson is a man of many responsibilities. In the past six days, he's DJed five events, performed twice with his band, the Roots, taped four episodes of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, opened a restaurant that serves fried chicken he can't eat on his current diet, graded his studen ... More >>

Statik Selektah on the Troll Power of Putting Mac Miller and Sean Price on the Same Song

Editor's note: In "Tweets Is Watching," Phillip Mlynar asks local artists questions based solely on the contents of their Twitter timeline. Statik Selaktah promises his upcoming album, Extended Play, will "remind you of the hip-hop you grew up on, but it's like the new fresh version of that." To hi ... More >>

Homeboy Sandman's Road Stories and Homecoming

Homeboy Sandman is one of the most celebrated and respected artists to emerge from the New York underground in the last decade. While the Stones Throw-signed Queens-native has spent the past few weeks on the road with Rhymesayers' Brother Ali, he returns to NYC tonight for their tour's stop at the B ... More >>

Homeboy Sandman On His Black Thought Man-Crush

Five years ago, you could find an aspiring rapper named Homeboy Sandman bombarding the subway cars of the 7 train with promotional material claiming that rappers Mos Def, Big Pun, and The Roots' Black Thought considered him the next great rapper. It was a promotional ruse, but one that seems to have ... More >>

The Top 5.33 Hip-Hop Songs Of The Week

The "b word" has been a staple of hip-hop for decades, although there's some linguistic shading as far as its use: women that aren't particularly awesome are called "bitches"; really awesome women are "bad bitches"; respected dignitaries like moms are "ladies" and "females"—unless they're the ... More >>

Live: The Roots, Living Colour, And Others Pay Tribute To Jimi Hendrix At SummerStage

SummerStage Honors the Music of Jimi Hendrix Central Park SummerStage Tuesday, June 5 Better than: Exercising, which is apparently what you're supposed to be doing in Central Park. Hendrix was really into covers—his live sets were littered with songs by Cream ("Sunshine of Your Love"), Dyla ... More >>

12 Tracks, Two And A Half Hours: Sound Of The City's Mixtape Of Long Rap Songs

Last week, the new Gorillaz track "DoYaThing" dropped. It's long—a full 13-minutes and some seconds of music, a lot of which involves Andre 3000 getting frenzied and inspired with that rapping thing he does so well. With "DoYaThing" and persistent talk about Outkast reunion rumors bedazzling u ... More >>

Download: Homeboy Sandman's Interstellar Voyage "The Miracle"

Homeboy Sandman is a spiraling autumn of light from Queens, a rapper whose flow at once sounds like a metaphysical brain drain and a physically fit slice of verbal gymnastics. With a career built on battle competitions, hosting nights at the Nuyorican Poets Café and some guerilla F train flyering, ... More >>

Live: VH1 Brings Out The Divas At The Hammerstein Ballroom

via VH1​VH1 Divas Celebrates Soul Hammerstein Ballroom Sunday, December 18 Better than: Whatever Ryan Seacrest is going to cook up for VH1 Soul. Last night's VH1 Divas taping existed both as a performance and self-contained, 24-hours-out advertising opportunity for its broadcast. (Tonight at ... More >>

The Roots

Kanye West Showed Up At The Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival

At this weekend's Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival, Q-Tip brought out a few guests (Black Thought, Busta Rhymes), and among them was Kanye West, who performed a couple of his own tracks, assisted Q-Tip on "Award Tour," and took a flying leap into the crowd. The camera weaving in and out of the lower-right ... More >>

Strained Vibes, Excellent Scenario in Beats, Rhymes & Life

Michael Rapaport’s A Tribe Called Quest documentary eclipses the surrounding drama

Kool Herc's Top Three Old-School New York Hip-Hop Venues

​Kool Herc plays the genesis figure in hip-hop's fable; the first party the Jamaican-born, Bronx-raised DJ threw in the recreation room of his building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in 1973 is credited with formalizing the genre. From behind two turntables Herc spun the short, percussive sections of ... More >>

Live: The Roots Play To The Crowd At Astoria's New Outdoor Venue

​The Roots Studio Square Wednesday, May 4 Better Than: Whatever '90s cover band was playing elsewhere in Astoria. An hour into the Roots' Wednesday night show, located at the Astoria beer garden Studio Square, Black Thought finally got the crowd to sing along. The trouble was, the song the a ... More >>

Q&A: Neko Case On The Charity Drawing For Her 1967 Mercury Cougar, Her Poor Twitter Etiquette, And The Beastmaster

"My hugest goal was to get a Retweet from Questlove, because he has all these followers and he's so great. And he totally gave me one! I was like, 'This is a Twitter victory!'" Act now and all this (well, the car at least) could be yours​The cover of Neko Case's 2009 album, Middle Cyclone, fe ... More >>

Ten Reasons Why The Wu Tang Clan Are The Greatest Rap Group Of All Time

​Raekwon, the Wu-Tang Clan's resident slang scholar, released his new solo album, Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang, last week; it's the latest installment in a magnificent saga that's now nearly two decades strong and leaves Staten Island's finest rap representers firmly in the conversation for hip-hop's g ... More >>

R&B Serenity Now: R. Kelly, Ne-Yo, and Others Keep the Quiet-Storm Flame Alive

AND STILL THEY RISE

The Roots’ next regeneration awaits

PUT MY ROOTS DOWN

Philly’s finest get the spotlight at the Apollo

Ebony and Imus

Cornel West hangs with Prince and challenges—not denounces—hip-hop

Evil Empire Strikes Back

A rap-nostalgia bonanza feels like a rock show and sounds like a resurrection

Diddy's Little Helpers

Why hip-hop ghostwriting is an art now, and an actually respectable one

Pulling Dylan Out by the Roots

An otherwise sleepy tribute gets ambushed by "Machine Gun"

Blood at the Roots

A new label and newfound rage bear strange fruit for hip-hop's everymen

The Soul of Detroit Hip-Hop Bows Out Soulfully

Shooting His Mouth Off

Comic Communist spins Saddam theories and tells us where he got his shoes

I'm My Favorite Game

Proof that no matter how hard we pretend to be, we're all fragile

Looking Past Differences

Don't let the young Republicans put you in jail or the restless hipsters scare you away

Off Balance

Illadelphians lose their cultural momentum, maybe even tipping in the wrong direction

All The World

Not Spyro Gyra, just a hip-hop band throwing a world party

The Permanent Record

Three DJs Give You Something You Can Really Pop Your Collar To

Nicebreaker

Time Will Reveal

Love and Other Catastrophes

Eraserheads

Booger High

Five Hit Singles Linked by No Concept Whatsoever!

Love Jones

A Bulgar Display

Do for Self