KRS-One

The Five Best NYC Rap Albums That Never Happened

This week, while we've taken a loving look back at the finest album-length offerings that the home of hip-hop has contributed to the genre, we're also reminded of the empty spaces in our record collections where masterpieces should sit. It's heartbreaking enough that rap in an album form didn't catc ... More >>

Jay-Z Coldplay = Play-Z: A Rundown of Other Oddball Mashups

On New Year's Eve Brooklyn's Barclays Center will be alive with the monster double-bill of Coldplay and Jay-Z. Two titanic musical entities that have spent the past decade being the epicenter of their genres, their alignment for one night is sure to be a colossal way to bring in the new year. But de ... More >>

Rolling Stone's Top 50 Rap Songs of All Time: Six Alternative Number One Picks

Rolling Stone recently published a run-down of the top 50 hip-hop songs of all time. After consulting with a panel of 33 journalists, industry figures and artists (including professional rap encyclopedia ?uestlove and the remaining members of the Beastie Boys), the numbers were crunched and Grandmas ... More >>

Hidden Colors 2: The Triumph of Melanin

Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap

The Top 15 Hip-Hop Songs About Police Misconduct

Though artists like Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye and Baby Huey spoke on police corruption, it wasn't until the dawn of the rap era that the message in the music began to convey the anger and frustration of people who had been systematically disenfranchised and brutalized since the United States was ... More >>

Q&A: DJ Red Alert On Kiss-FM, The Bridge Wars, And Breaking "Rappin' Duke"

In October of 1983, Kool DJ Red Alert broadcast his first rap radio show on Kiss-FM. It would soon bloom into an essential listening session for hip-hop junkies, a jump-off point for upcoming artists, and a long-running part of New York City's musical soundtrack. So with Kiss closing its doors as we ... More >>

Hip-Hop's 25 Best Weed Songs

In honor of today being 4/20—every smoker's favorite day of the year—SOTC has compiled the 25 Best Rap Songs relating to weed. Though some may be more about bud than others, all are guaranteed to make your high all the more enjoyable. Be forewarned, though... this list doesn't have any h ... More >>

Q&A: Big Baby Gandhi On Rap Battling At Nine, Rebelling In The Facebook Era, And Getting Das Racist's Attention With Negative YouTube Comments

"Gandhi Mandhi was the name that they called him/ Now the honeys call me Young Kama Sutra/ Old white people real mad 'cause I'm the future." That cheeky rap is from "Boogie Nights," a jubilant track on Das Racist affiliate Big Baby Gandhi's recent mixtape No1 2 Look Up 2. The free tape is packed wit ... 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 >>

The Best Books of 2010

Vocoders, bohos, and a blast of vertigo—Village Voice writers pick their faves of the year

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 >>

Q&A: DJ Premier on Where Rap Went Wrong and How to Fix It

​If New York hip-hop has a spiritual gatekeeper, it's DJ Premier. Along with being part of definitive '90s rap duo Gang Starr, Premier has balanced crafting songs for certified rap royalty Jay-Z, Biggie, and Nas with supporting the city's more varied and underground scenes. His upcoming label ... More >>

This Week in the Voice: Dan Choi, Bad Lieutenant

​Lt. Daniel Choi resembles so many other American soldiers in many, many ways: as a late 20s West Point grad who loves his country, a born-again Christian, as a soldier who's served two tours in Iraq, and as a soldier who's been kicked out of the military. But even that isn't the distinguishment t ... More >>

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 >>

Q&A: Brother Ali on Rock the Bells and The Importance of Getting Touched By Ghostface

Cover of Ali's The Truth is Here EP Of the many details that differentiate Brother Ali from your average rapper, it is important to note that after delving deep into the painful dissolution of his emotionally abusive marriage on his 2007 album The Undisputed Truth, Ali wraps things up by telling h ... More >>

MS. HILL RETURNS

Or, at least, we hope so

Back to 'Africa' With Nas and Damian Marley

Why the blockbuster collusion of Distant Relatives feels so . . . distant

Week in Review: The F. Scott Fitzgerald of American Indie Rock

Photo of South Williamsburg's the Woods by Puja Patel​In the week in which everyone went to rock and roll fantasy camp--whether it be the one that takes place inside the Colbert Report studios with the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle or the one that takes place on the disco dance floor with Vin ... More >>

"Satan Is A Big Tall European": A Young David Paterson Shares the Stage with KRS-One and BDP

Wow. This stellar clip of BDP and KRS-One getting it in Harlem, circa 1990, contains both cameos from a not-yet-Governor David Paterson--that's him, circa 47 seconds in, right around when KRS gets his white devils dig in--and a pre-Bad Boy Puff Daddy, working a kind of proto-Diddy Bop in the backg ... More >>

Tonight They're Gonna Rock You Tonight: Zap Mama, Cake, and Some Golden-Age Hip-Hop

Starting today, intrepid Voice intern Michael Downes will offer a daily, highly biased digest of that evening's best NYC shows -- and the whole weekend's slate on Friday, which today is, mercifully, if you were not aware. Enjoy. FRIDAY Zaire-born Marie Daulne fronts Zap Mama at Joe's Pub. Foun ... More >>

KRS One+DJ Cool Herc

I Knew M.I.A. Was Pregnant Before You

KRS-One: These Kids Today!

East Village Radio Music Festival: It's Hard Out There for a Pirate

TUNE IN

EVR celebrates five years of eclectic listening

AND YOU DON’T STOP

Kick it old-school at the Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival

DEAR MR. BUSH

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

Noise from the Front

For the week of May 16–22, 2007

All in the Family

Confused teens, confused thirtysomethings, and old jazz guys enjoying their dotage

Christina Aguilera Saves Hip-Hop

KRS-One and Marley Marl Working Together: Who Cares?

Before MTV

Talking with Ralph McDaniels, New York VJ and hiphop's great uncle

The Cotton Club

Black-conscious hip-hop deals with an overwhelmingly white live audience

Beguilement and Rage

So many unpretentious young bands with a geniune knack, so many others without a clue

Listings

Home Improv-Ment

Freestyling About Freestyling, for a World That Couldn't Care Less

World War of Words

As Battles Turn Complicated, Murder Remains Bigger Than Hip-Hop

Busking for Bucks

Souled Out

God Must Have Spent a Little More Time on Today’s Pop Gospel

Beats and Keats

Universes’ ‘Slanguage’ at NYTW

Metaphysical Refinitions Overstood at Last!

Music

Live and Erect

Rock And Rap Shows Bed-Spring Into Action

Pazz & Jop Preview

The King of Coonology

Spike Lee Mounts His Revenge on Black Hollywood

Roots, Rhymes, and What?

Critics Say Brooklyn Museum Is Soft on Hip-Hop Politics

All Mixed Up

Clubs Go Off the Deep End

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