Melle Mel

Rapt.fm: Like Chatroulette Fueled by Hip-Hop, With Significantly Fewer Dicks

RaptFM: Like Chatroulette, But Fueled by Hip-Hop and with Significantly Fewer Dicks

You enter the room and they're already there. Some of the names you recognize: Randa the Rhyma (45 wins), Gig@ntic (48 wins), and Novice Raps (53 wins). You've checked the boards obsessively, but you've only ever been here before anonymously, as a guest. This is your first appearance in competition. ... More >>

Revisiting the Furious Five's Unsung Classics With Rahiem & Kidd Creole

Saturday night, B.B. Kings will be rocked by one of the most important hip-hop groups ever when the Furious Five take the stage to perform their iconic and infinitely important hits and classic routines. While plenty of hip-hop retrospectives in the past year have revisited and celebrated "The Messa ... More >>

"Old-School Three Times Over": Meet Afrika Bambaataa, Cornell Professor

Afrika Bambaataa has been an unofficial professor of hip-hop for so long, it makes perfect sense that Cornell University would appoint the pioneering Bronx-born DJ and founder of the Universal Zulu Nation to a three-year term as a visiting scholar. "Wherever I go on the planet, I'm always teachin' ... More >>

Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap

PLANET ROCK

The Zulu Nation celebrates its 38th anniversary

Dig If You Will These Pictures: '80s Musicals, from Dolly Parton to Prince

Kool Herc's Top Three Old-School New York Hip-Hop Venues

​Kool Herc plays the genesis figure in hip-hop's fable; the first party the Jamaican-born, Bronx-raised DJ threw in the recreation room of his building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in 1973 is credited with formalizing the genre. From behind two turntables Herc spun the short, percussive sections of ... More >>

The Ten Best Hometown Productions By Large Professor

​Large Professor cuts an outside figure in the New York hip-hop scene these days. As a producer who also happens to rap in an endearingly economical manner, he's integral to any overview of hip-hop's storied golden era--he tutored under Paul C, contributed production input to Eric B & Rakim so ... More >>

Liquid Liquid Haven't Lost Their Edge

New  York City's punk-funk godfathers still make music to move you by

Excerpt: Dirty South: OutKast, Lil Wayne, Soulja Boy, And The Southern Rappers Who Reinvented Hip-Hop, Wherein Scarface Recalls His Mental-Health-Ward Days

​Also-beloved friend-of-SOTC Ben Westhoff's new book, Dirty South: OutKast, Lil Wayne, Soulja Boy, and the Southern Rappers Who Reinvented Hip-Hop, will be available on May 1st from Chicago Review Press. This excerpt focuses on Southern pioneers Geto Boys and particularly beloved rapper Scarfa ... More >>

Q&A: Rapper 9th Prince On His Older Brother RZA And The Early Days Of The Wu-Tang Clan

​The Wu-Tang Clan is hip-hop's most enduring family. Thanks to seemingly unbreakable bonds both artistic and familial, the now eight-strong crew of rappers is still together, despite frequent -- and usually shoddily sourced -- media claims that they're about to implode due to rampant bickering ... More >>

The Real Sugar Hill Records Story: In-House Drummer Keith Le Blanc on the Myths Surrounding Rap's First Label

​"I don't think the true Sugar Hill Records story has ever been told because there's so much skull-duggery attached to it," says Keith Le Blanc, the one-time in-house drummer for Sugar Hill Records. The pioneering New York label, which brought hip-hop to the world's ears in 1979 with the Sugar ... More >>

Lady Gaga Did a Children's Book In 2007!

​Well, a children's audio book. Well, she was featured on a couple of songs in a two-CD audio book that was done to go along with The Portal in the Park by Cricket Casey.

Bernard Fowler+Tackhead

Breaking Bread With Kurtis Blow

An old-school hip-hop legend gets right with God

Live: Liquid Liquid at Santos Party House

Live: Liquid Liquid at Santos Party House

Track 18 Wins Again

Major-label hip-hop records in burying-best-tracks shocker!

Gold's Downtown 81

Classic New York noise comp has a powerful effect without affectation

Bee Kind, Rewind

The exuberant wild style of Busy Bee still resonates three decades later

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony: Chaos Reigns

Rakim Vs. Big Daddy Kane

MF Doom: Worst Rapper Ever?

A Running Diary of VH-1's Hip-Hop Honors

Join the Party: A Politically Charged Bash Ignites the Movement

Haikus and Atmospheres

Consumer Guide