Chuck D

'Robert Johnson at 100'

Bootsy Collins

Why Is Sarah Silverman Quoted On the Back of Gil Scott-Heron's Memoir?

We often receive advance copies of forthcoming books here at the office. Today we got The Last Holiday, memoir of recently deceased Gil Scott-Heron, which is coming out in January 2012. These are the people quoted on the back: Chuck D, Eminem, and...Sarah Silverman. Yes, Sarah Silverman. Nick Mu ... More >>

Wax Is For Anthrax: Drummer Charlie Benante On 8 Anthrax Rap Experiments

​The unstoppable, zombie-slaying Anthrax album Worship Music is their first in 21 years with classic vocalist Joey Belladonna, and naturally, it's full of thrash that hearkens back to the halcyon days of Jams shorts and up-flipped caps. However, if rap fans check out "Devil You Know," they mig ... More >>

The Top Ten "Otis" Freestyles

​ In the run-up to yesterday's release of Watch The Throne, the project's first official single, the Otis Redding-sampling "Otis," was re-done and freestyled over by many a rapper. So to tide you over until the physical version of Watch The Throne (packaged with a bonus CD-ROM containing a vec ... More >>

Live: Blitz The Ambassador Reps For His Homelands At Lincoln Center

Andree Lamoth​ Blitz the Ambassador and Spoek Mathambo w/Mshini Wam Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center Sunday, August 7 Better than: An evening spinning old soul records. "Don't forget that I'm from Ghana, yo. D'you know how far that is?" Samuel Bazawule, the Brooklyn-based MC better known as ... More >>

The Five Best Moments On Yo! MTV Raps

MTV turns 30 on Monday. To celebrate, we're running a bunch of pieces on the channel, its legacy, and its future. ​ Debuting during the golden year of '88, Yo! MTV Raps revolutionized TV coverage of hip-hop music. Of course, hip-hop videos existed long before Yo! launched—Grandmaster Fl ... More >>

Download: Blitz The Ambassador's Sun-Drenched "Best I Can"

​"It ain't where you from, it's where you at," intones Chuck D himself on the fourth album by rapper/producer Blitz The Ambassador. Blitz is originally from Ghana's capital city of Accra, and currently resides in Brooklyn, but the otherworldly rhythms and triple-speed rhymes of Native Sun (Emb ... More >>

Slick Rick

​"It ain't where you from, it's where you at," intones Chuck D himself on the fourth album by rapper/producer Blitz The Ambassador. Blitz is originally from Ghana's capital city of Accra, and currently resides in Brooklyn, but the otherworldly rhythms and triple-speed rhymes of Native Sun (Emb ... More >>

Son Of Bazerk And Leaders Of The New School Are Playing The Knitting Factory December 23

Son of Bazerk, back at it.​A certain breed of hip-hop obsessive, steeped in Long Island lore and old-school minutiae, was thrilled beyond measure at the news that Son of Bazerk -- the Public Enemy/Bomb Squad satellite group whose 1991 hip-hop soul excursion Bazerk, Bazerk, Bazerk remains a for ... More >>

Hip-Hop's Top Ten Greatest Sneaker Songs

Kid Cudi, going all out for Converse.​Sneakers have long been hip-hop's footwear of choice. The links between the artists making the music and the companies behind the kicks are now totally intermingled, from top-end exclusive lines like Jay-Z's limited-to-five-pairs all-black Air Force 1s (de ... More >>

Winter Guide: Holiday Gift Books for Any Kind of Troublesome Friend

Frenemies? Self-important hipsters? No literary problem.

FIGHT THE POWER

Public Enemy take over Central Park

The Animated, Rapping Elevator Safety Campaign That Never Should Have Been

​The wretched irony of it being Elevator Safety Week in New York right now--a fact nobody bothered to tell the city's own building inspectors, apparently--gets just a little bit worse today with the introduction of Safe-T Rider, a bewhiskered fox who raps like a self-loathing and subtitled Chu ... More >>

News Roundup: Vampire Weekend Comment Bombs, Sonic Youth, Public Enemy, LCD Soundsystem

​--The free download of Vampire Weekend's new track "Horchata" has shaken the dust off the intractable divides between the army of anons. Over at Brooklyn Vegan, we see college students ("The F. Scott Fitzgerald of American Indie Rock") pitted against college students ("...it's like the whiffe ... More >>

LONG LIVE THE KANE

Brooklyn celebrates a homegrown hip-hop icon

Interview: Found Magazine's Davy Rothbart

"Jim Carroll goes to a colonic spa in San Francisco with a friend of his, and his friend shits out this plastic green army soldier... his friend, after the soldier was out of his system, he got a lot mellower." Davy's Sears-style portrait Eight years into a project that began when he discovered a ... More >>

M.I.A. Officially More Influential Than Prince, Lil Wayne, or Kanye West

Congratulations to M.I.A. for making Time's list of the 100 most influential people in 2009, two years after her last record, and three months after being nominated for her first Grammy. Spike Jonze, in his adulatory but perceptive ("She reacts to whatever's in front of her: 'Those are booming India ... More >>

VHI and Slick Rick, Together at Last at Hip-Hop Honors

The channel's cheerfully confounding tribute to rap's golden oldies

Quilombo Country

The channel's cheerfully confounding tribute to rap's golden oldies

Tonight: Atmosphere at Webster Hall

The channel's cheerfully confounding tribute to rap's golden oldies

DEAR MR. BUSH

Fitty, Biggie, and others tee off in a political doc

Weekend Bender: Optimo, Trans Am, Oneida, DJ Rob Sheffield and more

Fitty, Biggie, and others tee off in a political doc

Out of Step, Out of Time

Black Flag, white guilt, blood-red noses collide in self-congratulatory American Hardcore

Let the Eggplants Fly

In which the new music editor emerges from hiding to get clocked in the head

Goat's Head Soup

Nashville genre-hoppers play fiendishly referential rock

Get Your War Off

Susan Sarandon, Cindy Sheehan, and Peaches bring it home

Not His Forte

Linkin Park emcee goes solo, not much else

'Spin' Sugar

Public Enemy, D.M.C., Lady Sovereign rock Spin magazine's 20th Anniversary party

Remote Patrol

Public Enemy, D.M.C., Lady Sovereign rock Spin magazine's 20th Anniversary party

Web Radio Picks to Click

Public Enemy, D.M.C., Lady Sovereign rock Spin magazine's 20th Anniversary party

Married to the Hook

The corporations murdered hiphop and all I got was this lousy G-Unit throwback jersey

No Sense, Just Dollars

Rap statement infatuated with a hatred of love for the pain

Stupid White Men

Get ready 'cause this ain't funny: Ad-Rock, Mike D, and MCA pay for their non-mistakes

Go 'Head, Fred!

Boondocks and motherland sing that song to da rhythm of da boogie da bang bang da bong

Horoscope

Boondocks and motherland sing that song to da rhythm of da boogie da bang bang da bong

Pro-Life Hip-Hop

Western positivists bring tablets down from the mountain

Hail Fellow Well Set

Western positivists bring tablets down from the mountain

Beating the Brokers

Finding the Real Deals in the Best Neighborhoods

Blacked Out

Hip-Hop and R&B Artists MIA in Music Industry Struggle

Planet Rock

The World's Most Local Pop Music Goes International

God Bless the Infesticons

The World's Most Local Pop Music Goes International

The Artists Formerly Known as Each Other (Almost)

The World's Most Local Pop Music Goes International

Grave condition

The World's Most Local Pop Music Goes International

Bunk

The World's Most Local Pop Music Goes International

Naked, Famous, Increasingly Fond of Murder Songs

The World's Most Local Pop Music Goes International

It's Nation Time. Again.

A new vanguard of rap activists takes to the streets

Profits of Rage

Chuck D's Same Old Song?

Signal & Noise

Chuck D's Same Old Song?

Consumer Guide

Chuck D's Same Old Song?