Nas (Rapper)

Beats, Rhymes, Life

Nas sits down for a chat

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 >>

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 >>

The Top 3.5 Hip-Hop Songs Of The Week

The worst result of 21st-century technological advances, at least from a musical point of view, is the dual proliferation of DIY recording equipment and social media, allowing millions of—notice the quotation marks—"musicians" to flood inboxes, festival backpacks, Facebook timelines and ... More >>

Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap

Musical Line-Up Announced for the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party -- Free Concerts!

Today the musical line-up for this year's Big Apple Barbecue Block Party was announced. The event -- the 10th annual -- takes place this year on Saturday, June 9 and Sunday, June 10. Three bands will be playing each day, and the music, if not the barbecue, is free. The Block Party takes place in Ma ... 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 >>

Live: Jay-Z Takes Over Carnegie Hall

Jay-Z Carnegie Hall Monday, February 6 Better than: Slacking off. The age-old question about how one might get to Carnegie Hall rattled in my brain as I headed uptown last night, en route to Jay-Z's first of two performances at the hallowed Midtown space. "Practice" is the cheeky answer that peo ... More >>

Live: Common Serves Up Fresh Nostalgia On The Dreamer/The Believer

Common Catch, NYC Monday, December 12 Better than: Waiting until 12/20/2011. Common has always been a bit of a rap conundrum to me. There's no denying he's talented—"I Used to Love H.E.R." is arguably the greatest ode to/about/inspired by hip-hop of all time—but somewhere between the ... More >>

Live: Salaam Remi Immortalizes Amy Winehouse With Lioness: Hidden Treasures

by Kathy Iandoli ​Amy Winehouse (Lioness: Hidden Treasures listening session) Quad Recording Studios Wednesday, November 16 Better than: Thinking Back to Black was Amy's final opus. Amy Winehouse's career was punctuated with demons that detracted from her music, while simultaneously contri ... More >>

Mobb Deep

Sounds Go Through The Muscles: Bjork's Top Ten Hip-Hop Connections

As you may have heard, Björk's latest album, Biophilia, has been specially designed to work best on an Alphasmart 2000 word-processor. This pioneering piece of multimedia is likely huge fun for tech-heads, but for music fans it might also be the aural equivalent of playing with your food. And Björ ... More >>

DJ Premier & Kendra Morris

Prodigy Speaks Freely

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

Ten Reasons Why The Wu Tang Clan Are The Greatest Rap Group Of All Time

​Raekwon, the Wu-Tang Clan's resident slang scholar, released his new solo album, Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang, last week; it's the latest installment in a magnificent saga that's now nearly two decades strong and leaves Staten Island's finest rap representers firmly in the conversation for hip-hop's g ... More >>

Top Five Young, Hometown-Obsessed New York City Rappers

Roc Marciano, leading the charge​Last year a small, underground pocket of NYC-based hip-hop found its voice again. With Roc Marciano's unimpeachable Marcberg album as the catalyst, a crew of loosely associated artists shook off that tired cliché about our city's commercial-outsider status and ... More >>

Top Five Odd Future Songs They Couldn't Possibly Perform On Jimmy Fallon

Tame by comparison, believe it or not. Odd Future, a/k/a OFWGKTA, a/k/a Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, are a teenage L.A. rap collective who've been raising a ruckus for a few months now. Tonight they hit Santos Party House for their second-ever NYC performance, but tomorrow's the big one: Th ... More >>

Greg Dulli Finds Religion

The Twilight Singers' Dynamite Steps plumbs new depths of dark spirituality

Stretch and Bobbito, Back on the Air

A hugely influential hip-hop radio show reunites onstage

Live: Nas, Cee Lo, Pete Rock, And Diplo Command An Open Bar Beneath The Manhattan Bridge At Heineken's Behest

Nas, imploring everyone to Tweet #heineken. Pics by Puja, more below.​Nas/Cee Lo/Pete Rock/Diplo/J Cole Some Random Warehouse Saturday, November 13 Better Than: The same show sponsored by almost anyone else. "How can you not have a good time when this is free?" shouted hip-hop artist Bua as ... More >>

Lupe Fiasco's Lasers Has A Release Date

​So Atlantic Records has been sitting on Lupe Fiasco's new record, Lasers, for a couple years now, an untenable state of affairs given that "he's really much more than just a rapper from Chicago -- he represents a generation, and a movement," as it was explained to us last week by the guy plan ... More >>

Detroit Producer Black Milk's Top Ten Albums Of the Last Decade

​"I don't hear anything else out there like my record." So says a confident Black Milk, the Detroit hip-hop producer who's struck 2010's boldest titular move to date by electing to call his fifth solo project Album Of The Year (out today). With his gritty-yet-soulful beats, Black Milk is often ... More >>

Five Nike Commercials That Emotionally Manipulate Even Non-Sports Fans

You might not know, because you are an American or otherwise uninterested, but the World Cup is coming up in a matter of weeks, in which the earth's best soccer playing nations will face off in South Africa. It only happens every four years. When it does, millions and millions tune in with all leve ... More >>

This Week's Voice: Sleigh Bells, LCD Soundsystem, Nas and Damian Marley, Obies, and More

Sleigh Bells' Alexis Krauss, meeting her public. Photo by Santiago Felipe​In this week's Village Voice, Rob Harvilla attempts to describe the planet-obliterating joys of Sleigh Bells, Zach Baron on LCD Soundsystem's sardonically devastating This Is Happening, and Sean Fennessey explains why th ... More >>

HARD-KNOCK LIFE

K’Naan teaches you the ABC’s

Madison Square Garden Says Hi to Jay-Z

​Say what you will about the way Blueprint 3 is shaping up (ahem)--Jay-Z still knows how to hold your attention. And the New York Police & Fire Widows' & Children's Benefit Fund is a far more admirable comeback vehicle than, say, a Budweiser Select campaign. From Sean Carter himself: "We are a ... More >>

The N-Word Is Flourishing Among Generation Hip-Hop Latinos

Why should we care now?

Formal Petition to Have Every Musical Performance on Television for the Next Six Months End with Lil Wayne Playing a Guitar Solo

THROWBACKS AND BACKPACKS

Rap gets its own Lollapalooza

'Uncle' Ralph McDaniels, A Hip-Hop Pioneer, Still Inside the Box

Celebrating 25 years of his trailblazing rap-video show

Status Ain't Hood's Greatest Hits

The Dirty Heartbeat of the Golden Age

Reminiscing on the SP-1200, the machine that defined New York hip-hop

Chrisette Michele's I Am

Classy, chaste belter only occasionally resembles your mom breakdancing

The NBA Fucking Sucks: A Playlist

Michael Jackson and Will.I.Am: WTF

Noise from the Front

For the week of December 20-26, 2006

Diddy's Little Helpers

Why hip-hop ghostwriting is an art now, and an actually respectable one

Status Ain't Hood Interviews Lupe Fiasco

Tical 2006: The Falling-Off

Wu royalty gets a bit too defensive with self-prophetic comeback/never-left campaign

The Quarterly Report: The Summer's Best Albums

Feeding the Root

Talking with Large Professor, premier hip-hop producer

Butch Femme

Million-dollar baby of hip-hop hits the Plexiglas ceiling

Pull Your Socks Up

Long Island's original native tongues serve the grown-ups

Thoughtful Florida Rapper Knows What the Alligators Know

Keepin' It Unreal

$elling the Myth of Bla¢k Male Violen¢e, Long Past Its Expiration Date

Murder, My Sweet

Thug Love Is All Around

Foucault's Turntable

Hip-Hop Scholars Bumrush the Academy

World War of Words

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

Still Rough Enuff to Break from NY To Long Island

Fade to Black

Bewitched, Beloved, and Bewildered