Lil' Kim

The Ten Best Artists at Brooklyn Electronic Music Festival This Weekend

This weekend, the Brooklyn Electronic Music Festival will take over Williamsburg for the fifth year running. (So it's technically the Williamsburg Electronic Music Festival, but who's counting when you're drunk and dancing to Nick Catchdubs at 4 a.m.?) Last year's Festival brought Matthew Dear, Beat ... 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 >>

Live: Azealia Banks Enchants Under The Mermaid Ball's Sea Of Balloons And Tickertape

Azealia Banks's Mermaid Ball w/Maluca, Wckids, Tigga Calore, House of Ladosha & Jack Mizrahi Bowery Ballroom Sunday, June 3 Better than: Summer Jam. Azealia Banks has become one of many New York musicians flavoring their music with borrowed vogue culture—particularly from her birth year, 199 ... More >>

Hit Machines: The Ten Best Singles Runs From Post-Confessions R&B Albums

In his recent review of R&B singer Miguel's fantastic Art Dealer Chic series of EPs, The A.V. Club's Evan Rytlewski explained the singer's rise in popularity by floating the idea that his 2010 album All I Want Is You contained "arguably the most engaging singles run of any R&B album since Usher's Co ... More >>

Asshattery In 140 Characters Or Less: Which Musicians Are The Biggest Klouchebags?

If you're on the Internet you might have heard of Klout, a pseudo-scientific way for measuring the slippery ideal of "online influence." Taking into consideration a variety of factors, it has (despite its often being utterly gameable and as a result off the mark) turned into a way for people online ... More >>

Banned By BET? What The Alleged Censorship Of Nicki Minaj's "Stupid Hoe" Video Means

Cage not built by BET's Standards and Practices Department. ​This week the Internet lit up with the news that Nicki Minaj's eye-popping new video for her Lil Kim dis track "Stupid Hoe" had been "banned by BET," a logical follow-up to the "too hot for TV" narrative kicked off by her tweeting th ... More >>

Pazz & Jop Voter Comments: Singles Going Steady

Rolling down from "The Deep"

Radio Hits One: VH1 Takes On The '00s Pop Canon

VH1 spent last week counting down what the channel, and its panel of celebrities and "experts," consider The 100 Greatest Songs of The '00s. They certainly haven't been the first to assemble such a list—Rolling Stone and Pitchfork and every blog under the sun had their say about two years ago, ... More >>

Radio Hits One: The Elusive Superstar Duet (Or Three-Way)

​ In last week's breakdown of Lil Wayne's chart ubiquity, I noted that while Lady Gaga's Born This Way and its singles seemed to be everywhere, she hasn't staked out much additional Billboard territory with collaborations. Her only charting collab of late is "3-Way (The Golden Rule)," a little ... More >>

Beyond Kreayshawn: The Women In Hip-Hop Who The Internet Should Freak Out About Next

Last week, the birth of rap's newest star-to-be happened suddenly. Kreayshawn, a California rapper with Amy Winehouse's tattooes and piercings, Queen Latifah's earrings, and a modified version of Michelle Williams' pixie bob, dropped her video for "Gucci Gucci," and every person who was tweeting abo ... More >>

Prodigy Speaks Freely

The Mobb Deep MC is out of jail and ready to look back on his life

Top 10 Rap-Related Reality-TV Moments

​"Reality rap" was once a phrase invoked by gangsta rappers to defend their music against moral outcry from the mainstream media and pesky suburban dwellers. These days, the term largely refers to the slew of emcees lining up to star in their own TV shows. While Boogie Down Productions associa ... More >>

Top Five Train-Wreck Rappers

​The Berkley-based rapper Lil B plays the Highline Ballroom on Thursday; for curious New York gawkers, it's a chance to see the world's foremost proponent of a new movement you could kindly term train-wreck rappers -- those artists whose every youthful indiscretion, ill-advised comment, physic ... 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

Kanye West and Nicki Minaj Just Sold A Bunch Of Records

Last Tuesday night, Kanye West stood on a Bowery Ballroom stage and did the numbers: "To do an album right after the year that I had, and after all the 'Your career is over!' and 'Die, nigger, die!' and 'You'll never make music again!' And to come back and to do 100,000 the first day, digital alon ... More >>

Live: Kanye West At Bowery Ballroom, Ranting, Seething, And Enthralling

The Ten Most Exploitative Posthumous Rap Projects

​Being a dead rap artist isn't much fun. Whether The Notorious B.I.G., Tupac, or J Dilla, death has never seemed to do much to alleviate the constant pressure on artists to muster up new recordings to satisfy the bulging posthumous rap retail market. (In the hip-hop world, possessing a heart t ... More >>

Gucci Mane Is Eating Really Well In Prison, If The Cover Of His Upcoming Burrrprint 2 Mixtape Is Any Indication

​From Rap Radar comes news of the next Gucci missive, out April 13, which promises to be anot--man look at that spread! Three bottles! Such tastefully arranged carrots! And I hear Fulton County Jail's lobster is excellent! Tough TV-viewing angles though. Some PR info on this eagerly awaited se ... More >>

Summer Jam 2009: One Man's Twitter-Based Narrative

Yes, our fair blog's most avid Summer Jam enthusiast is long gone. But Hot 97's annual fete/debacle raged on last night at Giants Stadium, and friend of SOTC/Vibe guru Sean Fennessey was there to bemusedly take it all in, including yes, Jay-Z's live debut of his Auto-Tune riposte and thrilling com ... More >>

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

Young Jeezy Live at the Blender Theatre

The BET Awards: A Running Diary

Rick Ross Buries the All-Star Remix

Extensions of a Woman

Alicia Keys is still a few albums away from her masterpiece. She'll get there.

Timbaland, Reconsidered Again

Live: Hot 97's Summer Jam

The Re-Entroducer

Professor, blogger, DJ, curator, and music zealot Oliver Wang reveals even more Soul Sides

A Month on the Town

The man who's reviewed 12,000 records reviews 32 shows in 30 days

The Best Rap Videos Ever

Explorations in Mixtape Nation

Lil Wayne, Q-Tip, and Remy Ma feed into hip-hop's endless musical reserves.

School for Johns

Arrested for soliciting sex, men wind up in a Brooklyn classroom

Shell-Toed Superstar

Nas, Missy Elliot, and the Beasties celebrate the redesign of the Run D.M.C. Adidas

But It's Really Good Sex

Musical pornographer Janet Jackson shocks a stupefied America into outrage and erection

The Hiphop Cop

A Tale of NYPD's Rap Intelligence Unit

Gandalf Gets Swivey on the Wheels

Cool out, it's only Ringo and his three friends, doing the same stuff they've always done

In Da Fight Club

Letters

Power Nana Club

It's an Interracial Gang Bang Thang!

Close-Up On: Bedford-Stuyvesant

Parlor of Vices

Hip-Hop Under Heavy Manners

The Police’s Sunday-Night Tunnel Vision

NY Mirror

Skin Deep

Homeboys and Girls

Sex Crimes of the Hip Hop Generation

Jay-Z's Hard-Knock Week

Jay-Z’s Hard Knock Week

I Want My B-E-T

Let Us Now Praise Famous Gangstas (and Their Videos)

Gag Reflex, 35 Cents Off

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