Interscope Records Inc.

Pazz & Jop: Top 40 Albums

Angel Haze Vs. Azealia Banks: Who Won?

It's no surprise that Azealia Banks got into a twitter fight with fellow New Yorker Angel Haze at the end of last week, Haze getting cagey when Banks ripped on poseurs who weren't from New York and things pretty much erupting from there. (Haze has since deleted her tweets but MissInfo put together ... More >>

The Maybach Difference: How Wale, Meek Mill, and Rick Ross Overcame Early Failure To Find Success

With all the limitations facing today's music industry, it's rare that any artist gets a second chance. This is especially true in the ever-changing world of hip-hop where if an artist, especially on a major label, doesn't immediately finding an audience, they're soon shuffled back into the over-sat ... More >>

Kendrick Lamar Wants Us All To Say "Bitch"

Last week, Kendrick Lamar had the whole world calling each other a bitch. You may know young Kendrick from his good kid m.A.A.d. city album, which was executive produced by Dr. Dre and is apparently so wondrous a body of work that it was magically certified as a classic even before it was released. ... More >>

Radio Hits One: Nine Songs From 2012 That Should Have Been Huge

The term "flop," in a musical context, usually refers to an unsuccessful album. Though singles constantly perform above or below expectations, a song will rarely get a reputation as a flop unless there's a lot riding on it, such as a pre-release single from a big-name album. In 2011, Beyonce's "Run ... More >>

How Not To Write About Female Musicians: A Handy Guide

​Maybe it's all that misguided Year of the Woman chatter that dominated year-end roundups, or the slow, agonizing creep of Fashion Week, or the coming apocalypse, but hoo boy has there been a lot of terrible writing about female musicians in the past few weeks. The latest offender is the New Y ... More >>

The 11 Most Infuriating Songs Of 2011, No. 2: Lana Del Rey, "Video Games"

The Song: Lana Del Rey, "Video Games." The Crimes: Irritated-alley-cat vocals; overwrought harps; fundamental misunderstanding of whether or not ironic critique of male-female mores can exist in the Hipster Runoff age; this poor girl's right thigh. In 2011 the phrase "Lana Del Rey" wasn't just the ... More >>

Live: Lana Del Rey Goes Offline, Plays Bowery Ballroom

by Kathy Iandoli Kathy Iandoli​Lana Del Rey Bowery Ballroom Monday, December 5 Better than: Rewinding the DVR over and over again to hear "Video Games" on Gossip Girl. Two years ago, Lizzy Grant's song "Kill Kill," which inhaled Nancy Sinatra's "Bang Bang" and exhaled a more listener-frien ... More >>

Live: Wale Brings Lots And Lots Of Friends To The Highline Ballroom

Wale Highline Ballroom Wednesday, November 2 Better than: watching next week, when the show will air on MySpace. The line had packed itself six-deep, turning the long sidewalk from the Highline Ballroom to Ninth Avenue into a traffic jam of Wale fans. Or maybe just fans of events. Or maybe sheep. ... More >>

Radio Hits One: T-Pain Escapes Lead Single Purgatory

The Revolver cover.​On Thursday Jive Records announced that T-Pain's fourth album rEVOLVEr would be out on December 6. That same day, the rappa ternt sanga's single "5 O'Clock" reached a new Hot 100 peak of No. 25 . The timing wasn't exactly coincidental. The track, on which T-Pain is supporte ... More >>

100 & Single: How Digital Changed The Charts, From Gwen To GoonRock

Spotify's top tracks (left) and albums on Friday, July 15.​The headline-grabbing music story of the week isn't on the Billboard charts—it's the U.S. debut of Spotify. With the streaming-music service less than 48 hours old here, it's a bit too soon to analyze what songs are getting the m ... More >>

Pia Toscano Would Like To Remind You That (Her) Life Is Unfair

Michael Becker/FOX​ Few low-level American Idol eliminations have been met with the hue and cry that accompanied the April booting of Pia Toscano, a comely, big-voiced belter who hails from Howard Beach and who was given this year's ninth-place trophy. The notion that Idol is a "singing compet ... More >>

Kelefa Sanneh Has Found Earl Sweatshirt, Who Would Like You To Lay Off His Mom

​The new New Yorker contains Yet Another Story On Odd Future, although Kelefa Sanneh's piece outstrips its many bibliographic counterparts thanks to its particular focus on the LA hip-hop collective's most sloganeered member, Earl Sweatshirt. The 8,000-word piece, which took nine months of ges ... More >>

American Idol Breaks Out Its Copy Of Carole King: Her Greatest Hits

Michael Becker/FOX​ The same week NBC attempts to take on American Idol by launching the loud, flashy The Voice, Idol makes one of those baffling decisions that only Idol can make: Devoting an entire 90 minutes to saluting the deeply, overwhelmingly annoying singer-songwriter Carole King. I h ... More >>

Spring Arts Guide: The Feelies Get Perpetually Nervous All Over Again

Plus CSS, Adele, and other spring music picks

American Idol, Season 10, "Idols" Week: Ryan Adams Shout-Outs And Soaring Volcanoes

Please, Jacob Lusk, stick around as long as possible. CREDIT: Ray Mickshaw/FOX.​This was the first week we really got to see a lot of Interscope honcho Jimmy Iovine, whose role on American Idol is supposedly to mentor all the kids, but it's already clear he's only going to show up for five-min ... 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 >>

It's the Real and the Rise of the Rap Nerd

Why this duo's white, Jewish comedy-rap is funnier than you think

Live: Odd Future Make Their Absurd New York Debut at the Studio at Webster Hall

Odd Future The Studio at Webster Hall Monday, November 8 Better Than: Steve Harvey. Since everybody wants a piece of Los Angeles rap collective Odd Future, let's go ahead and carve off ours. Not the moment, about halfway through the show, when pack leader Tyler the Creator took a break from stag ... More >>

Remembering Fat Beats, The Best Record Store In Underground Hip-Hop History

Gang Starr flanking Fat Beats owner Joseph Abajian, who unfortunately saw this coming​In 1997, Paul Rosenberg, the attorney of an aspiring rapper from Detroit calling himself Eminem, was walking along 6th Avenue in the West Village with ten copies of an independent 12-inch vinyl single titled ... More >>

Styles P Wrote a Novel

The hard-boiled NYC rapper has found a new artistic medium for his badassness

Q&A: California Rapper Fashawn on Remaking Illmatic, Nas's 1994 East Coast Classic

"All the shit Nas was experiencing as a 21-year-old in 1994, I'm experiencing that shit now as a 21-year-old in 2010." ​In 1994, a 21-year-old Queensbridge resident calling himself Nas made a svelte, ten-track album that he titled Illmatic. Over beats concocted by a dream team of New York pro ... More >>

Q&A: Solange Knowles On Why Working With Kevin Barnes "Makes All the Fucking Sense in The World"

"I don't want this façade of me diving into the indie scene - there's not a conscious effort to that at all." ​Back in '08, when Solange Knowles released her sophomore album, the daffy, Motown-checking Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams, she sang "I'm no soul girl equipped with no afro." No ... More >>

The Mixtape Will Save Us All

If you want them to buy it, make it free

Status Ain't Hood Interviews Lloyd Banks and Tony Yayo

The Top 10

Odes to fame, guns, and what we should've seen coming

Immigrant Songs

How Rihanna and M.I.A. delivered the most profound political statements of 2007

Cookie Monsters of 'Rock'

TV on the Radio turn their frustrations into defiantly fascinating art

The Source Under Fire

Here's Your Guide to the Lawsuits, Criminal Charges, and Beefs

People Are Strange

Irwin Chusid presents a film fest of the musically bizarre

We Got A Lot

Kvelling over damn near a dozen meanings of life, their average length close to an hour

Edges of the Groove

Arguments against education, reclaimed punk rants, electropop with staying power

100 Hottest Hotties

Sex Drive Outpaces Death Drive as the Biz Goes Down the Toilet

Don't Call It a Comeback

Crossover Dream

Class Trumps Race in Eminem's '8 Mile'

Music

Popstakes

Haikus and Atmospheres

2Bad for 2Pac

The 'Bad Boy Curse'

The Perils of Hanging With Puffy

Where the Action Isn’t

New Wave Dogs Movin' In

All My Ex's Don't Live in Paris, Texas

Stinkonia

Homeboys and Girls

Sex Crimes of the Hip Hop Generation

Music

Music

Of Mics and Men in Harlem

The Tragedy and Legacy of Big L

Baby's On Fire

Swing, Kids!

A Revival Tries To Make History of Its Own

Consumer Guide