GZA (Rapper)

The Graying of Hip-Hop

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

Let These Rappers Teach in Our Public Schools

Last month, came news that the Wu Tang Clan's resident Genius, the GZA, is going to soon begin working with Columbia teacher Dr. Christopher Emdin and the website RapGenius to bring a better, hip-hop-based chemistry class to New York public schools. As cool as it is that GZA's taking this seriously ... More >>

The Top 20 NYC Rap Albums of All Time: The Complete List

Any list of the Greatest New York Rap Albums of All Time is, essentially, a list of simply the Greatest Rap Albums of All Time. The genre was invented here, after all, and over the years -- from early days to Golden Age and onward-- the city's hip-hop history has been an embarrassment of riches. Fas ... More >>

Spring Arts Guide: The Once and Future Ratking

The trio have been hailed as the saviors of New York rap, but they've set their sights higher

The Top 20 NYC Rap Albums of All Time: 10 - 1

Any list of the Greatest New York Rap Albums of All Time is, essentially, a list of simply the Greatest Rap Albums of All Time. The genre was invented here, after all, and over the years -- from early days to Golden Age and onward-- the city's hip-hop history has been an embarrassment of riches. Fas ... More >>

Why Artists Should Stop Playing Their Seminal Albums Live

On a wispy evening last October, my housemate and I went to see GZA perform his magnum opus Liquid Swords in full at D.C.'s swanky Howard Theater. I wasn't the only one with high expectations. The crowd's hunger escalated with Killer Mike slaying his opening set, pulling out perfectly punctuated sho ... More >>

Make Time for These Hip-Hop Shows at CMJ 2012

By all means, enjoy the whispy waifs warbling their sensitive indie ballads up and down the city during CMJ. But make time for some hip-hop while you do. Here are a few acts worth your time. See Also: - Don't Miss These Bands At CMJ - Handy CMJ Flowchart Panel Selector

GRIND TIME

GZA and Killer Mike take on Irving Plaza

Colt Cabana: A Wrestler Grapples With His Entrance Music

The life of an independent professional wrestler is busy enough, but for Colt Cabana, squaring off in the ring is only the beginning. A wrestler, actor (you may have seen him with legendary Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka in a recent Old Navy commercial), stand-up comic, and popular podcaster, his ta ... More >>

Q&A: GZA On Wrestling, His Hip-Hop Beginnings, Chess Metaphors, And The Chances of a Wu-Tang Kung Fu Flick

Much has been afoot in Gary Grice's professional life lately. The Wu-Tang Clan colonel better known as GZA or Genius is working on a new astronomy/physics-inspired record called Dark Matter and a re-recording of Liquid Swords, his 1995 stone-cold classic, that will incorporate instrumentation by liv ... More >>

GZA

GZA, Screaming Females, And About 300 Other Artists Will Play Northside Festival This June

The music portion of the Northside Festival—the North Brooklyn celebration of music, art, film, and (in a nod to Brooklyn's many small businesses) entrepreneurship—will take place at various venues throughout Kings County from June 14 to 17. Participating venues include the usual Brookly ... More >>

Coming This Week: SXSW Coverage

by Chris Gray "What I want from each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in that area." —Tommy Lee Jones, The Fugitive You don't have to spend much time at South By Southwest to know that all of ... More >>

Jim Jones Masterminds the Vampire Life

Watch the Jones

A Dissenting Opinion: Let's Quit It With The Live Performances Of "Classic" Hip-Hop Albums

Back in 2007, All Tomorrow's Parties and the Pitchfork Music Festival decided that getting GZA, the Wu-Tang Clan's resident rhyme scholar, to reenact his crime rhyme masterpiece Liquid Swords in full was a good idea. And it probably was—once, maybe twice. But the third time removed the charm. ... More >>

'93 TIL INFINITY

Back to (old) school

Ms. Lauryn Hill And Nas To Headline Rock The Bells Festival, Which Hits NYC In September

​The Rock The Bells festival returns to the New York area with a Sept. 2 date at Governor's Island. This year's installment is headed up by a slew of full-album sets that includes run-throughs of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Illmatic (which Nas will perform with AZ, Pete Rock and DJ Premie ... 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 >>

Top Five Young, Hometown-Obsessed New York City Rappers

Roc Marciano, leading the charge​Last year a small, underground pocket of NYC-based hip-hop found its voice again. With Roc Marciano's unimpeachable Marcberg album as the catalyst, a crew of loosely associated artists shook off that tired cliché about our city's commercial-outsider status and ... More >>

Top Ten Greatest Rap-Acronym Anthems

​Kanye West and Jay-Z's Lex Luger-produced "H.A.M." is a creative union of the two biggest currently recording rap stars in the world -- as the lead single to the duo's upcoming Watch the Throne project, it's a feisty statement of intent. But more importantly, it's a fresh edition to the canon ... More >>

Can A Professional Music Critic Name All Nine Members of the Wu-Tang Clan?

​If there's one common complaint we hear as rock critics, it's "I could totally do your job." First off--shhh, don't tell anyone! Secondly, "jobs" traditionally pay better than this, so we'll gladly go Parent Trap with you in a heartbeat. Either way, we decided to get some measurable data o ... More >>

Q&A: Rapper 9th Prince On His Older Brother RZA And The Early Days Of The Wu-Tang Clan

​The Wu-Tang Clan is hip-hop's most enduring family. Thanks to seemingly unbreakable bonds both artistic and familial, the now eight-strong crew of rappers is still together, despite frequent -- and usually shoddily sourced -- media claims that they're about to implode due to rampant bickering ... More >>

CMJ 2010 Announces 700 More Artists: Phoenix, GZA, Francis and the Lights, Screaming Females, Franz Nicolay, and More

Our hero, Screaming Females frontlady Marissa Paternoster, at Siren. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne.​The second round of artists announcements is out, and it's the big one--count on newly installed acts Phoenix, GZA, Screaming Females, Extra Lens, Francis and the Lights, et al, to be your headliners, ... More >>

The Faces of All Tomorrow's Parties New York 2010

all photos by Per Billgren This past weekend in Monticello, New York the third annual All Tomorrow's Parties New York took place. Here are some snapshots of the people we met.

Live: Rating Rock the Bells Sets From Slick Rick, Wu-Tang Clan, Lauryn Hill, A Tribe Called Quest, Snoop Dogg, and More

Oh, hey Q-Tip. All photos by Rebecca Smeyne.​On a sweltering Saturday, the seventh annual hip-hop nerd convention Rock The Bells took over Governor's Island. It's a place where people know to "throw a one in the air" for Guru before DJ Premier even asked, a place where you can overhear a convo ... More >>

Jim Jarmusch's Showtunes

On ATP 2010, musicians as actors, Tom Waits's threats, and what planet ODB was on

The Black Lips

RZA's Official Statement on What It Was Like to Dress Up As George Washington for Victory or Death: "More baggy, more space for my nuts."

​Surely you recall Victory or Death, the massive RZA-helmed tribute to Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze's George Washington Crossing the Potomac painting, except with Wu-Tang members and hidden ninjas and a website that plays a remix of "O Fortuna" at swelling volume? Well our pals at the LA Weekly had ... More >>

GZA

Today Is the Day Fucked Up's "Do They Know It's Christmas" Cover Arrives

​The first and hopefully last time we'll spend a morning typing "Do They Know It's Christmas" into iTunes. Matador promises that the long awaited Band Aid cover, featuring what Fucked Up frontman Damian Abraham described to Pitchfork as "the best and the worst of the music industry," will hit ... More >>

The 50 Worst Songs of the '00s, F2K No. 20: Gym Class Heroes, "Taxi Driver"

F2K is a countdown of the 50 worst songs of the decade. Track our progress here. Since emo already ruined rock music for a generation, why not just take rap too?

Live: Theo Parrish, Soaking In It At Brooklyn Yard

Pics by Puja Patel, more below Theo Parrish apparently played Eddie Kendricks' "Date With the Rain" just about an hour before the first downpour washed over South Brooklyn last night; the Sunday Best dance party was the last of a Detroit-based trilogy that previously featured deep-house youngin Kyle ... More >>

SXSW: GZA Onstage with Black Lips at Emo's

Bill JensenSXSW: GZA with Black Lips at Emos, Friday, March 21 Black Lips walked on to "Liquid Swords" with GZA's voice booming from the back room. When he came out, the crowd went apeshit. The rest of my notes: "This is a trainwreck."

GZA Performs Liquid Swords, Possibly Other Songs

GZA's Got A New Record Out

Ten Favorite Moments From the Wu-Tang Clan's 8 Diagrams

Whose Nostalgia?

No R.I.P. for the rock album just yet—Sonic Youth's seminal Daydream Nation lives again at McCarren Pool.

Live: Status Ain't Hood at the Pitchfork Music Festival

Bring Da Ruckus

Still don't nothing move but the money in thrilling Wu-Tang reunion-show doc

Status Ain't Hood Interviews Prodigy and Alchemist

Country Music Needs a New Publicist

Post-Kanye Chicago Rap Saves Rap

Loving the Ironman

The last Clansman standing delivers working man's Wu

Radical Comfort

Hey Mr. Sax Man, you're the hidden king of rock and roll, or whatever it is

Live: GZA Keeps the Wu-Tang Reunion Rolling, Sort Of

Return of the Ruckus

Still unhinged after more than an ol' dirty dozen years, the Wu-Tang Clan stage a Shaolin family reunion

Status Ain't Hood's Top Five Live Shows of 2005

The Life Quixotic

Have son, will travel: Murray's sad-sack Don Juan stoically confronts the autumnal dead end

Wuclear Fission

A Nutcase and a Point Guard Rise Above Wu-Tang’s Solo Overkill

Scrambling On Eggshells