Kendrick Lamar

Talking Louis C.K., South Park and Popcorn With Talib Kweli

Editor's note: In Tweets is Watching, Phillip Mlynar asks local artists questions based solely on the contents of their Twitter timeline. Talib Kweli is gearing up to release his fifth solo album, Prisoner of Consciousness, on May 7th. The project features collaborations with Kendrick Lamar, Curren ... More >>

Five Other Failed Rap/Country Experiments

The hubbub this week regarding Brad Paisley and LL Cool J's controversial duet "Accidental Racist" has, among other things, given a sign that the world might still not be ready yet for a full blown country and hip-hop crossover. While rap has been above an attempted crossover, no matter how poorly c ... More >>

This Week in Pop Videos: Robin Thicke! 50 Cent! Lil Wayne! More!

A look at the week's hottest pop clips, including the frolicsome ribaldry of Robin Thicke, the mansion malaise of 50 Cent and the insufferable wackness of Somethingorother Yacht Idiots.

Nearly All the Big Acts Playing Lollapalooza 2013 Have Played Lollapalooza Before

Thanks to Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune, Lollapalooza's headliners have been revealed, and it appears that Perry Farrell & Co. are dipping into the past few years of the Chicago-based festival's lineup history for a little inspiration. Mumford & Sons, Vampire Weekend, Phoenix, and the Killers have ... More >>

Chvrches Are Getting the Hang of this "Blowing Up" Thing

With nothing more than an EP, a smattering of superlative endorsements from the international press and a forthcoming debut record they haven't even mixed yet, Chvrches are set to become your new favorite band--and this is a phenomenon the Scottish electropop trio is still adjusting to. "We're takin ... More >>

Shlohmo/Rustie - Output - 3/7/13

Better Than: Spending six hours in a live action arcade game. Last night, from 10 p.m. until 4 in the morning D33J, Jackmaster, Oneman, Rustie and Shlohmo played to a high-spirited Williamsburg crowd which braved terrible weather to support some of the most exciting rising stars in electronic music ... More >>

Jason Aldean Stops in NYC: One Hip-Hop Fan's Terrifying First Country Show

I had no idea who Jason Aldean was when I was asked to cover his sold-out Night Train tour. I'm a hip-hop head and aside from seeing Taylor Swift one time live -- she was awesome, by the way -- country is probably my least favorite genre right behind Gregorian chanting and Broadway show tunes. So of ... More >>

"We Won": Producers Daedelus and Salva on the Rise of Electronic Dance Music

As the boundaries that separate genres continue to dissolve, hip-hop and dance have formed an alliance that's bringing electronic producers to the forefront of popular music. For artists like Daedelus and Salva, who've been working with multiple genres for their entire careers, this evolution has be ... More >>

Kendrick Lamar - Roseland Ballroom - 2/26/13

Last night at about 5pm in a rainy Midtown, a line -- full of kids and adults alike in oversized hats, fur hoodies, ironic t-shirts, skinny jeans, and any other article of clothing Vice might consider a "do" --stretched down the block from the Roseland Ballroom. The mass amount of people continued, ... More >>

Nashville Songwriter Luke Laird Talks Kacey Musgraves, Eric Church, and Kendrick Lamar

Since contributing to Carrie Underwood's 2007 "Last Name," 2012 BMI Country Songwriter of the Year Luke Laird has netted almost a dozen chart-toppers, penning hits for everyone from Eric Church to Little Big Town and Miranda Lambert. This year, on top of work with Tim McGraw and Little Big Town, he' ... More >>

Will Long.Live.A$AP Be the Biggest Houston Rap Album of 2013?

[Ed. Note: The following post ran on the music blog of the Voice's sister publication Houston Press on Jan. 23. We rerun it here re: relevant to our interests.] By Nathan Smith There are a few things you should know about A$AP Rocky. He's a pretty motherfucker. His new album, Long.Live.A$AP, is a ... More >>

Defend Your Ballot: Caitlin White, Pazz and Jop 2012 Contributor

You can't really know where you're headed unless you know where you've been. For that reason, we're taking a look back at Pazz & Jop 2012 to drill down into the ballots of contributors and voters who participated. Maybe amongst the rubble we'll find clues about what lies ahead for music lovers in 20 ... More >>

SNL Sound-off: Kendrick Lamar's "Poetic Justice" and a Lonely Island Cameo

In the first two weeks of its new season, Saturday Night Live has given us a pair of polar opposites for musical guests: The Lumineers and Kendrick Lamar. The dichotomy goes beyond differences in genre and has more to do with the fact that one band showed up to work on a Saturday night and one didn' ... More >>

The Food Lineup at Governors Ball 2013

One of the best things about summer is music festivals. One of the best things about music festivals is the massive pit dedicated to food, usually of the artisinal kind. Governors Ball, a three-year-old music festival not to be confused with Wolfgang Puck's menu for the party of the same name, will ... More >>

Pazz & Jop: Top 42 Singles

Pazz & Jop: Top 40 Albums

Pazz & Jop: Kendrick Lamar, Finally Compton's Most Wanted

It took quite some time for the rapper to become an overnight success

Pazz & Jop: The Confounding, Inexplicable Splendor of Rapper Future

Space is the place

Pazz & Jop: The Comments

Ten Big Deal Albums We're Hella Excited For

Hey: Albums! In case people still care about these things, here's a batch of potentially interesting releases arriving in the coming weeks and months:

12 (More) Big Deal Albums We're Hella Excited For

Hey: Albums! In case people still care about these things, here's a batch of potentially interesting releases arriving in the calendar year.

How Do We Remember Things That Happen In The Past Without 'Best Of...' Lists?

The minute December 1st was upon us, the Internet and print media alike began to fill its shelves and papers with content-heavy, link-heavy and rank-heavy lists, all of which give the reader some sort of guidance as to what actually happened over the past 365 days. Of course, we here at the Voice we ... More >>

The Ten Best New York City Rap Albums of 2012

There's been a repetition about year-end New York rap round-ups for a while now. They usually involve noting how the city isn't the commercial powerhouse of hip-hop it once was (shocker!), and then speculating on whether a few artists might be somehow bringing it back (from precisely which era is ne ... More >>

The Best Albums Pitchfork Hated This Year

Since Purity Ring, Death Grips and Tame Impala didn't exactly take off this year like Arcade Fire or Animal Collective, Pitchfork's cultural influence might be cooling off, which is bittersweet since their writer stable is probably better now than it ever was (some of us don't miss those novelty rev ... More >>

The Antlers, Grizzly Bear, and Sleigh Bells - Terminal 5 - 12/14/12

Better than:Cinderella "It feels amazing to be here tonight," the Antlers' Peter Silberman announced to a packed Terminal 5 on Friday night. "This is such a well-put-together event." It felt pretty amazing for me, too, since up until an hour previously I didn't think I was going to get on the press ... More >>

11 "Minor League Rappers" We Want To Hear on Hot 97

Last week Hot 97 Program Director Ebro Darden offered a weak explanation about his stations narrow playlist and why they don't play up-and-coming locals, saying--in so many words--that artists not getting spins on the station simply aren't ready for them. They're too underground. They haven't worked ... 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 >>

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 >>

The Top 5.33 Hip-Hop Songs Of The Week

The "b word" has been a staple of hip-hop for decades, although there's some linguistic shading as far as its use: women that aren't particularly awesome are called "bitches"; really awesome women are "bad bitches"; respected dignitaries like moms are "ladies" and "females"—unless they're the ... More >>

Kendrick Lamar+Ab-Soul+Jay Rock

Hot 100 Roundup: Taylor Swift's Kiss-Off To Country, Mumford & Sons' Folkie Rave, And More

Editors' note: Each week in this space, chart-watcher Robert Myers will offer his reactions to all the new entries on the Hot 100, Billboard's big board for popular songs. Late August on the pop charts used to be what I called the summer doldrums—almost the entire music industry went on vacat ... More >>

Let's Imagine What DJ Khaled's Kiss The Ring Will Sound Like

Despite every living rapper seemingly being just a phone call away, Miami radio personality/record executive/professional shouter DJ Khaled has never once put out a good album. He's been 0-for-5 (yes, DJ Khaled has released five albums), and Kiss the Ring, his sixth record, is on the horizon. Khal ... More >>

Seven Must-Dos For The Modern Young Weed Rapper

Wiz Khalifa is in love with weed. The Pittsburgh-raised rapper has established himself as a hip-hop superstar by making songs that are largely hooked around getting high. While it's not all that a unique pastime—the likes of Snoop Dogg and Cypress Hill ushered in the first great rush of weed r ... More >>

FLIGHT SCHOOL

Wiz Khalifa helps Jones Beach get young, wild, and free

Q&A: Dom Kennedy On The Yellow Album, Maybach Music Group Rumors, And Funkmaster Flex's Tupac Comments

Over the last few years, hip-hop artists who grew up in the hood but wanted to go beyond clichéd gangsterisms have been on the rise—Kendrick Lamar, Curren$y, A$AP Rocky, Big K.R.I.T. Hailing from Los Angeles's Leimert Park neighborhood is Dom Kennedy, another subscriber to the school of thoug ... More >>

Live: Ab-Soul Turns In A Gutsy Solo Performance At S.O.B.'s

Ab-Soul S.O.B.'s Thursday, June 21 Better than: Watching the final fourth quarter of the 2011-2012 NBA season. For a crowd full of Thunder fans, Ab-Soul provided a much-needed distraction last night during his first New York headlining gig. In subtle contrast to the mighty LeBron James, Ab debut ... More >>

Jones Beach Theater And PNC Bank Arts Center Schedules Announced: Drake, Wiz Khalifa, Kelly Clarkson, And More

Ah, the summer, the time of year when one can enjoy a concert in the glorious out of doors. This morning Live Nation announced the full lineups for its two local amphitheaters—the PNC Bank Arts Center in bucolic Holmdel, N.J. and the Jones Beach Theater, out on the South Shore of Nassau County ... More >>

Schoolboy Q

Five Reasons Why XXL's Freshman Class Issue Is Going To Be A Yearly Ritual For A While

As traditions go, XXL's annual "Freshman Class" issue is neither all that time-honored or worthwhile. The magazine's been putting rappers it calls freshmen on its cover since 2008, but hasn't exactly been kingmaking or future forecasting in doing so: 2008's list featured Crooked I and Joell Ortiz, h ... More >>

Q&A: Flatbush Zombies On Thug Waffles, Longtime Friendships, And The Meaning Of The Zombie Lifestyle

The word "Brooklyn" conjures up images of all types of illy shit—gold fronts (not grills), bubble coats, designer "wears," dreads smoking bud like it was legal. Newcomers Flatbush Zombies managed to incorporate all of the aforementioned BK traits into their music and its accompanying visuals w ... More >>

Bone Thugs-N-Harmony

Drake and The Weeknd Wallow in their Misery

Riding the Bummer

53 More Great Songs From 2011

Earlier today, Maura offered a list of the 47 songs on her "2011 Awesomeness" Spotify playlist; to complement that, here are the 53 songs from my less cleverly named playlist, "2011." As is the usually the case with these mega-lists, I compiled mine a bit haphazardly, throwing together a substantial ... More >>

HOMETOWN HERO

Class is in session 
at Brooklyn’s Southpaw

Underwhelmed And Overstimulated, The Finale: Jay-Z And Kanye West Fiddle While The Underground Gets Wasted

Smell that money burning. ​This concludes Sound of the City's year-end roundtable, a conversation about pop music in 2011 between Tom Ewing, Eric Harvey, Maura Johnston, Nick Murray, and Katherine St. Asaph. Read it all again. Thanks for the handoff, Nick, and thanks to Katherine, Tom and esp ... More >>

CMJ Announces Second Round Of Performers: J Mascis, Zomby, Kendrick Lamar, And More

Surfer Blood, who once upon a time was "just some band." ​ Last month the CMJ Music Marathon—coming to the city's music venues from October 18 through 22—announced the first batch of artists that would be playing next month's industry confab; that list included (among others) Neon ... More >>

Peter Rosenberg's What's Poppin' Vol. 1 Takes The New York Hip-Hop Scene's Pulse

​New York City rappers have been cast as something of the rap world's whipping boys for more than a few years now. Not only is it fashionable to paint the city's scene as still stuck in the '90s—that's, er, despite the man who effectively runs rap, old man Jay-Z, being pretty proud to ha ... More >>

Live: Kendrick Lamar Arrives In New York, Takes Over S.O.B.'s

Kendrick Lamar S.O.B.'s Wednesday, August 31 Better than: bringing back that old New York rap. "There are two rules for a Kendrick Lamar show. First rule: everybody put one hand up. Now everybody put two hands up." Those were Kendrick Lamar's instructions as he led us into his third song of the ... More >>

Ranking XXL's Freshman Class at the Highline Ballroom Last Night

​In what has become an annual tradition, the minds over at XXL magazine recently unveiled the elite class of fresh-faced rappers they dub the Freshman 10. Mostly products of Internet buzz and/or critically acclaimed mixtapes, the Freshman class issue has risen from a gimmicky excuse to put non ... More >>