MF Doom

Don't Compare 16-Year-Old Bishop Nehru To Joey Bada$$

Hailing from upstate New York, 16-year-old rap tyke Bishop Nehru released his impressive Nehruvia mixtape last week (which you can stream below). Over 12 tracks, the project features Bishop (who named himself after 'Pac's character in Juice) dropping his buttery flow over instrumentals by MF Doom, M ... More >>

My Inability To Schmooze Is Killing My Music Career!

Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist, and is the author of The Girls' Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to help you ... More >>

Five Rare Ghostface Killah Songs You've Never Heard

Tonight, lauded Wu-Tang MC Ghostface Killah takes the stage at Webster Hall. Ghost has spent almost two decades being one of the most prolific MCs in the game. Unfortunately, many legal restrictions have kept some incredible work of his from seeing an official retail release. So, for the Ghostface ... More >>

Make Time for These Hip-Hop Shows at CMJ 2012

By all means, enjoy the whispy waifs warbling their sensitive indie ballads up and down the city during CMJ. But make time for some hip-hop while you do. Here are a few acts worth your time. See Also: - Don't Miss These Bands At CMJ - Handy CMJ Flowchart Panel Selector

Seven Speaker-Shattering Busta Rhymes Guest Verses

Busta Rhymes will headline this year's 2012 Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival with a performance down under the borough's namesake bridge on Saturday. With a stash of rap anthems that includes "Pass The Courvoisier," "Woo-Ha!! (Got You All In Check)," and "Hands Where My Eyes Can See," the big man's set is ... More >>

Q&A: Joey Bada$$ On Singing Biggie At Two, Tumblr Stalkers, And Finishing High School

Joey Bada$$ is perched over a Pac-Man tabletop arcade machine at a neighborhood bar in Flatbush. With a glass of Sprite resting on the video game's screen, he confesses that he's never played Pac-Man before, gives a laugh, and says, "I probably suck at this." Bada$$'s lack of experience at early-'8 ... More >>

Hip-Hop's Top Ten Aretha Franklin Samples

​Rap royalty loves the Queen of Soul. Or, at least, some very prestigious hip-hop types have found the intimate grooves of Aretha Franklin's discography to be fine and fertile fodder for their sampling kicks. So with Franklin preparing to warble her way through a couple of back-to-back shows a ... More >>

Blue Note Records' Ten Best Sample Sources

Blue Note's cover art: Also an inspiration. (Original on the left, homage on the right.)​Hip-hop artists have never been shy about sampling songs from the vaults of the Blue Note jazz label, and few have pilfered with as much creativity and gusto as A Tribe Called Quest's one-time de facto lea ... More >>

Five Great Records On Fondle 'Em That Aren't By MF Doom

​This week, Metalface Records reissues MF Doom's Operation Doomsday (in a lunchbox, for some reason) and that seems like a good excuse to look back on the label that first released the project--Fondle 'Em. While Rawkus, through its feats of star-making and self-mythologizing, now stands as the ... More >>

Curren$y And The Alchemist Get Chilly On "Covert Coup"

​The New Orleans-based Curren$y is a weed rapper, which means his job is to make something usually associated with directionless demotivation seem badass. The art of weed rapping is the art of bragging about surpassing low expectations, and there are a couple ways to do this: the current big m ... More >>

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 >>

The 10 Greatest Rap Songs About Video Games

​Def Jam Rapstar is the latest attempt to merge the worlds of hip-hop and video games. In the past, this has involved shoehorning playable rapper characters into cliched genres -- a Wu-Tang Clan beat-'em-up! 50 Cent's first-person shooter! -- or rappers licensing a few throwaway songs to the l ... More >>

The Top Ten Rap Supergroups That Never Happened

Over the weekend, the rapper Sean Price took to Twitter to propose a collaboration album between his own Brooklyn-based Boot Camp Clik hip-hop crew and Staten Island's mighty Wu-Tang Clan. The idea has been received rapturously. But then again, theoretical hip-hop supergroups usually are. Rap's hi ... More >>

Michael Jackson and Hip-Hop

Guess which one of those things didn't die this year

MC Paul Barman Perseveres

Reintroducing the lewdest, brainiest, unlikeliest white rapper of them all

The New York City Record Store Year-End Roundup

​In 2009, we began the weekly Local Top 10, a series we hoped would prove that New Yorkers were far too stubborn to let the record store go. The series ran until last month, when we literally ran out of stores to cover--not the best sign for the future of music retailing in New York City. Befo ... More >>

Thanksgiving Playlist 2009: 100-Plus Songs Better Than Your Grandma's Lumpy Squash

Two years ago, William Bowers compiled this playlist. Any further additions? This holiday's abstract mandate can be sorta barren for us patriotically-challenged atheist vegetarians who maintain cosmic equidistance from our bloodkin. The term for it is even weird: "Thanksgiving" is a syntactical c ... More >>

This Week in the Voice

The American military presence in Afghanistan costs about $16 billion a month. What are we getting for the money? "Afghaniscrewed: How I Spent My Fall Vacation" by P.J. Tobia. When Alan Hevesi was the city's, then the state's comptroller, Jack Chartier and Hank Morris were his "two loyal gatekeepe ... More >>

DOOM Laughs Last

Rap's biggest enigma is back with more off-color jokes and apocalypse theories

A Thanksgiving Playlist

The Week of Obama Odes. Plus, Kool Keith, Still Batshit and Pervy

Murs Hits the Big Time, If 'the Big Time' Even Exists

Provincializm #16: Thank-Rock Playlist

From Madvillain to Milli Vanilli

Angry fans allege that mysterious rapper MF Doom won't even play his own shows anymore

Ghost's Second Kilo From 2006 Cut With Filler, But Pure Enough

Reader: Sex, Sure, But Where Is the Love?

Private Enemy

Two New York rappers dreamed of stardom. MF Doom got it. MF Grimm didn't.

A Conversation Between Just Blaze and Alchemist

Rakim Vs. Big Daddy Kane

MF Doom: Worst Rapper Ever?

Listening in Real Time

Eclectic neoclassicism versus childhood-oriented avant-primitivism as global warming swamps our history

Pitchfork's Year-End List Vs. Haters

Gypsy Part of Town

Come savor the beaty delights of European multiculturalism, Arabski kjuchek included

Harmonies and Abysses

Across the sky sheet the impossible birds in a steady illiterate movement homewards

Music

Diphthong Songs

Rap's James Thurber welcomes you to his world once more

Disguised Rappers Fight Crimes of Hip-Hop Normality

Listings

It Was Rewritten

Nas-postles Remix and Retool the Prodigal Son of Hip-Hop

CMJ Musicfest 2002

Tigers in a Spotlight

Sound Checks

Your Choices Guide to Four Nights of CMJ Music

The Nerd Behind the Mask

Rock 'n' Rai