Jay-Z

Go Listen to This Coney Island-Themed Playlist Marty Markowitz Made on Spotify

Thank god for Marty Markowitz, possibly the only lovable politician left in New York. Today, the Brooklyn borough president released a soundtrack to rebuilding a Sandy-shattered Coney Island on Spotify. It's got Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive," Brooklynite synth-addicts Matt and Kim, and the Beasti ... More >>

Young Guru Ushers in the Era of the Engineer, Prefers De La to Tribe

You know Young Guru as the super-engineer knob-twiddler behind hits from Jay-Z, Rick Ross and Drake, but last week he steeped out from behind the boards to deliver a lecture at N.Y.U.'s Clive Davis School of Recorded Music as part of his Era of the Engineer tour. In tandem with Grammy U, the session ... More >>

Justin Timberlake Watch 2k13: "Suit & Tie" Music Video Edition

Justin Timberlake's comeback is exhausting. After a musical drought, it feels like we've suddenly been welcomed with a constant stream of JT news, appearances, performances, videos and Target commercials. From the initial release of his "prepare ye the way of the Justin" warning video on, he's been ... More >>

Barclays Center's Security Put Jay-Z Fans Through The Wringer. Streisand Fans, Not So Much. Was It Racist?

If you went to the Jay-Z concert at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn last month, getting into the arena probably felt like you were getting on an airplane -- concertgoers were put through airport-style metal detectors.However, if you caught Barbara Streisand at the same venue last week, the same secu ... More >>

The Top 3.9 Hip-Hop Songs Of The Week

The philosopher Jiminy Cricket once famously said, "Just look at the morning paper. Turn to any page. You'll find the whole world worryin' about some future age. But why get so excited? What's gonna be is gonna be. The end of the world's been comin' since 1903. That's, uh, B.C., of course." Dr. Cric ... More >>

El-P And Killer Mike Talk Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Anger As A Positive Force, And The Unlucky Fate Of Their Favorite HBO Shows

A few drinks into my conversation with Mike and El-P about their new collaboration R.A.P. Music (Williams Street), the tone shifted, as it tends to under the influence of multiple makeshift White Russians. EL-P's drink-ordering became relentlessly efficient. Things became a little more candid. The c ... More >>

Phil Mushnick, Of "New York N-----s" Shame: I'm Not A Racist -- I Outed Marge Schott!

New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick wrote a pretty idiotic column last week (part of which you can read below), in which he suggested Jay-Z should rename the Brooklyn Nets the "New York N-----s." Mushnick remains unapologetic -- since we reported on Mushnick's stupidity last week, he's hit us with ... More >>

Help Me, Drs. Jay And Ye: Six Images I Saw In The Rorschach Test That Is The "Paris" Video

The video for Jay-Z and Kanye West's "Paris" has finally come out, and it's probably not surprising that the setting is one of the giddy live performances of the track that closed the Watch The Throne Tour last year. This is no straight-up "check us out live" video interspersed with shots of the two ... More >>

Four Potential Special Guests For Taylor Swift's Two New York Shows

As you might have heard, Taylor Swift has been crossing the country touring behind 2010's Speak Now and performing a new cover song, often with a surprise guest, at each city along the way, leaving in a trail of camera phone YouTube videos and exclamation point-filled tweets in her wake. In Atlanta ... 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 >>

Today Through Sunday, You Can Buy Watch The Throne At Something Resembling A Record Store

​To celebrate Watch The Throne being available in physical form today, Jay-Z and Kanye West have transformed the space at 201 Mulberry Street into a record store that, naturally, is selling that album and that album only. The windows are outfitted in the gilded, Riccardo Tisci-designed pattern ... More >>

Jay-Z And Kanye West's Watch The Throne Inches Ever Closer To Existing

​Before the three-day weekend, quite a few people hinted that the Internet should maybe expect a surprise July 4 release of Watch The Throne, the Jay-Z/Kanye West collaborative album that's been the subject of much chatter for months now. That didn't exactly pan out, but the dawn of America's ... More >>

Gwyneth Paltrow Teaches Jay-Z About Spence Girls' Love Of Rap

The whitest girl you know? Not so much.​ In a bit of synergistic ego-stroking, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jay-Z decided that the best way to show off their friendship to the rest of the Internet was to open up their chat logs to the world, with Gwynnie quizzing Jay for her rich-people-things site Go ... More >>

Ice Cube

Listen: Kanye West And Jay-Z, "H.A.M."

​And thus, as threatened, did Kanye West and Jay-Z debut the first track off their upcoming Watch the Throne just past the witching hour on 1-11-11. "H.A.M." is gleefully insane: Kanye chatters about white girls, Jay plays chicken with a Mack truck, and producer Lex Luger devises a hilariously ... More >>

Jay-Z & Eminem

Cut Copy Is Headlining A Jelly Pool Party (UPDATE: Here's Another Possible Full Schedule Floating Around)

​Just as the sports world has spent today obsessively tracking Lebron James' every move, the Brooklyn rock contingent is anticipating the imminent arrival of the Jelly Pool Parties lineup for 2010, so much so that there's already been one convincing (but not very amusing) fake. Well, per the b ... More >>

Lady Sovereign Is Gay

And has been, for some time, apparently! Above, for instance, is a video of her talking about dating girls on Celebrity Big Brother UK, a series that averaged 3.7 million viewers per night during its January 2010 run. But it takes classier outlets--The Guardian, in this case--to bring news like th ... More >>

Cornel West Disses Jay-Z!

​"Guys like Talib Kweli and Lupe Fiasco rap messages and have something to say," America's second most famous living public intellectual told the University of Buffalo's Spectrum. "Now Jay-Z is on the radio and he's talented, but he's just not at the level he use to be at on Reasonable Doubt a ... More >>

The Decade In Music According to Kanye West

​Well, not really, but the above is a surprisingly touching and randomly detailed picture of a specific moment in time for Kanye West. That moment? The making of The College Dropout, his 2004 debut and Entertainment Weekly's pick for best album of the decade--that's the honor he's responding t ... More >>

Download Lil Wayne's No Ceilings Mixtape

​Here is the free, full, sanctioned version of Lil Wayne's leftfield tour de force mixtape, No Ceilings. All sorts of bonkers gems on this one--typically wild similes ("I smoke mad weed/I'm on my high horse," ha), a lot of plain old joy and exultation, an "I Gotta Feeling" (!) cover, and some ... More >>

Week in Review: Those Guys Could Bring the Funk

Alison, one of many CMJ street fashion stars shot by Sam Horine. Find the rest here.​In the week Jay-Z made it all about him, we made it all about Jay-Z, from the first deplorable word that he'd be attempting to demoralize the Phillies at Yankee Stadium all the way though his overshare-y and u ... More >>

Not So Fast, Shawn: Rain Bumps Jay-Z World Series Interference Into Tomorrow

​On account of the huge dent an enormous stage might leave on the spongy Yankee Stadium field tonight, and also because Jay-Z definitely doesn't go outside unless his kicks are guaranteed to remain spotless, the dreaded Keys-Carter "Empire State of Mind" performance has been moved from Game 1 ... More >>

Ghostface Killah Is Checking For the New Vampire Weekend

​There must be a lot of celebrating going down in the old VW compound right about now. From yesterday's Q A in the Times, with Ghost and his manager Mike Caruso, an interview which took place inside a "parked S.U.V. around midnight recently": Q: Vampire Weekend is a group you said you liked. ... More >>

Timbaland Will Leak Your Songs, Rappers: Jay-Z's "Venus vs. Mars"

​The mind boggles at the torture and ritualistic maiming that must be underway inside Timbaland's lab, as the producer managed to leak all three of the tracks he produced for Jay-Z's Blueprint 3 within about 48 hours of one another. Jay: you might think about retaliating, and just pull all of ... More >>

The Next Contestant on That Blueprint 3 Screen: Jay-Z and Drake's "Off That"

​ At the fancy liberal arts college where I went to college, there were two major social groups: the impossibly wonky kids for whom learning things and being able to function as human beings were mutually exclusive possibilities, and the impossibly wealthy and dynastic kids whose reality was s ... More >>

Jay-Z, Rihanna, and Kanye Will Be Here Long After the World's RAV4 Dealerships Have Gone Extinct

You gotta give it to Jay-Z, Kanye, and Rihanna--they are absolutely not afraid to suggest that when the world has ended and all the BMWs are just burned out husks and humans have to wear masks and bandanas to survive, they will still rule all of us. Video: Jay-Z feat. Rihanna & Kanye West - Run ... More >>

Blatant Chris Brown/Rihanna Rumor-Mongering Update: Jay-Z Is Fixin' to Kick Some Ass

You wouldn't like him when he's angry, or maybe you would actually. My goodness, Bossip is all over this -- 8 posts already today about the increasingly lurid and awful Chris Brown/Rihanna affair, the best/worst of which quotes an unidentified Us Weekly source in the Jay-Z camp that describes Mr. ... More >>

Phelps Bong Pix a Matter of Widespread, Fake Concern

Michael Phelps was pictured in the News of the World using a bong, and gave a standard-issue apology for "behavior which was regrettable." The IOC

Home Team Round-Up: These Are Powers, 50 Cent, Animal Collective (Of Course)

Sound of the City roots for the home team and so does Impose Magazine's Jeremy Krinsley. Alia Raza did the above video for Violens, a band that plays soft-heeled indie pop that is not in any way Lansing-Dreiden light, despite the band's frontman being first and foremost a member of that collecti ... More >>

"Swagger Like Us" vs. M.I.A.

Live: Jay-Z and Mary J. Blige Come Home

BACK IN BUSINESS

EPMD bring New York back

How to Rob, by M.I.A.

M.I.A. triumphantly knocks the hustle that's driving hip-hop's materialist malaise

Jay-Z's "Blue Magic": Pretty Great

Jay-Z, Returning Yet Again

Chrisette Michele's I Am

Classy, chaste belter only occasionally resembles your mom breakdancing

Noise From the Front

For the week of November 29–December 5

The MTV Video Music Awards: A Running Diary

Leave Him Alone, He's a Family Man, and His Bark Is Much Worse Than His Bite

'Spin' Sugar

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

Dirty-Dirty Deeds

As O'Reilly's nemesis lip-smacks toward financial future, Rubber Band Man one-ups him

Pull Your Socks Up

Long Island's original native tongues serve the grown-ups

Rapper-Mogul Fulfills Prophecies, Enjoys Early Retirement

VMT&A's

Who and what went down at the MTV Video Awards

Mix This

Young South Asians' Love-Hate Relationship with Hip-Hop's New Indian Beats

New Thugs on the Block

Next-Big-Thing Rappers Arrive With Wheeze, Breeze, and Cheese

Sobs, Static, and Sweat

Call and Response

Targeting Silent Rappers: A Street Fight for Justice or Hip Hop McCarthyism?

The New Bootleggers