OutKast

The Mystery of Shuggie Otis

Where has the singer-songwriter been?

Those "Influential" Albums Being Discussed on Facebook? They're Garbage

Influentialalbums.com is a "quiz" one of your Facebook friends might've posted, boasting "Very few people own 70 or more. How many have you got?" and listing 100 albums ranging from the duh (Blonde on Blonde, Pet Sounds) to the hmmm (Gerry Rafferty? Felt??) to the genuinely bizarre (well, see below) ... More >>

Our 20 Most Popular Posts of 2012

We covered a lot of music ground in 2012. You loved all of it. But some stories were more read than others. Here now, our 20 most popular posts of the year. Thanks for reading. The Ten Best Reissues of 2012 The Ten Best Noise Tracks of 2012 The Ten Best Metal Albums of 2012 The Ten Best Country Alb ... More >>

Our 20 Most Popular Stories of 2012, 20 - 11

We've covered a lot of music ground in 2012. And you loved all of it. But you read some stories more than others. Here now, our 20 most popular posts of the year, from 20 - 11. The Ten Best Reissues of 2012 The Ten Best Noise Tracks of 2012 The Ten Best Metal Albums of 2012 The Ten Best Country Al ... More >>

Live: Juicy J Gets Caught Leading A Mosh At The Paper Box

Juicy J The Paper Box Thursday, August 16 Better than: Everything ever. Covered in sweat, sporting his trademark locs (or stunners), making a crowd mosh and surge at his beck and call, you'd never know Juicy J is in too cool for school New York City. Then again, this is Brooklyn—Bushwick, at ... More >>

Which Album Will Pitchfork's Readers Crown As The Best Since 1996?

In an effort to stanch the flow of stale complaining about its "elitism" invite its readership into the magical world of music-publication listmaking, the online-tastemaker behemoth Pitchfork is putting together The Pitchfork List, which purports to count down its readers' favorite albums released b ... More >>

R. Kelly's Write Me Back Rides The Retro Soulacoaster

Around this time last year, I saw R. Kelly at the Prudential Center, and it was one of the most impressive live spectacles I've been witness to in my two-plus decades of attending big arena shows; there was an onstage bar complete with cocktail-shaking mixologist, an acapella reworking of his 1994 s ... More >>

Children Of The Night Wave The New York Flag On Queens... Revisited

"I find myself walking to work and I can see the sun rise right over Queens Boulevard, and I say to myself, why hasn't Queens gotten a trophy in a very long time? I mean, I feel like we deserve to shine right now, don't we? We got a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful team and I can see us parading down ... More >>

12 Tracks, Two And A Half Hours: Sound Of The City's Mixtape Of Long Rap Songs

Last week, the new Gorillaz track "DoYaThing" dropped. It's long—a full 13-minutes and some seconds of music, a lot of which involves Andre 3000 getting frenzied and inspired with that rapping thing he does so well. With "DoYaThing" and persistent talk about Outkast reunion rumors bedazzling u ... More >>

Oddsmaking: Will Mumford & Sons Upset "Rolling In The Deep" In The Grammys' Record Of The Year Race?

Every year, when I get involved in Grammy debates with my cooler friends, I tell them the problem with the awards isn't that they reward mass-appeal schlock. If the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences is doing its job right, it should be rewarding popular, undeniable, and somewhat unhip ... More >>

Da Capo's Second-Best Music Writing 2011: 112 Of Last Year's Most Notable Music Stories

The 2011 edition of Da Capo's annual anthology Best Music Writing— which this year was guest edited by The New Yorker classical writer and The Rest Is Noise author Alex Ross; Daphne Carr has been the series editor since 2006—contains 32 essays and is augmented by a a jumbo-sized "Other N ... More >>

Mark Drake's Words

The artist steps up his lyrical game on his second album, Take Care

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 >>

Q&A: Big K.R.I.T. On Making People React To His Lyrics, Crate-Digging And Crafting Playstation Beats

​ It's been a big year or so for Big K.R.I.T. Shortly after signing with Def Jam last June, he was booed off the stage at the Highline Ballroom; later in 2010 the Mississipi-bred MC hit the road on the Smoker's Club Tour (with Curren$y and Mac Miller) and the Wake And Bake Tour (with Wiz Khali ... More >>

Mike Bigga Lets Loose

The Atlanta MC's Pl3dge is an exhilarating, politically charged ride

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 >>

Top Ten Greatest Rap-Acronym Anthems

​Kanye West and Jay-Z's Lex Luger-produced "H.A.M." is a creative union of the two biggest currently recording rap stars in the world -- as the lead single to the duo's upcoming Watch the Throne project, it's a feisty statement of intent. But more importantly, it's a fresh edition to the canon ... More >>

The Six Most Decisive Wins In Pazz and Jop History

Not quite​Having spent the last two weeks poring through Pazz & Jop 2010, I've learned everything from the two albums most statistically similar to a bootleg compilation of early Bob Seger (those would be Flockaveli and Ke$ha's Animal/Cannibal combo) to the number of writers who ended their co ... More >>

The Top Ten Best Worst Singing Rappers

​These days, there's nothing attention grabbing about rappers who sing, whether it's Andre 3000's amped squawk, an Auto-Tune-enabled Kanye West, or Lil Wayne's upcoming Riker's Island shower room spirituals. This week the canon sees new album additions from one-time Goodie Mob member Cee-Lo Gr ... More >>

Live: Curren$y, Big K.R.I.T., And More Light Up Santos Party House

Curren$y (left) and K.R.I.T., models of menace and/or nonchalance. Photos by Nick, more below.​Curren$y/Big K.R.I.T./Smoke DZA/Mac Miller/Boaz/Etc. Santos Party House Tuesday, October 5 Better Than: Stealing your roommate's weed and watching Stella on DVD all night. Again. The weather in New ... More >>

Go See Phish At Least Once

Hello from Madison Square Garden, where once may be enough

Another Free iTunes Single of the Week: Slim's "Good Lovin' (feat. Fabolous & Ryan Leslie)"

Last week's prediction: "Auld Lang Syne" Anyone eagerly awaiting Fabolous's Loso's Way (guilty) should probably listen to "Good Lovin'," the second single off former Puff Daddy apprentice/112 vet Slim's Love's Crazy. The first, "So Fly," had Jadakiss in the Fabolous role, and Kiss, who's had some ... More >>

Interview: Girl Talk a/k/a Gregg Gillis

Letters 11.05.08

The Quarterly Report: Best Singles of 2008 Thus Far

Preview: Bun B's New Album II Trill

The Year's Best Music Videos

Jesus Is My Hype Man

The South Bronx's premiere hip-hop pastor expertly mingles the dope with the dopey

The Best Rap Videos Ever

Things I Learned Watching ATL

Scarface Stubbornly Refuses to Make an Actual Album

Cool Enough for James Frey and Nan Talese

2000

Collisions Of Grandeur

Hip-Hop Doppelgängers

Iced-out thug and boho griot keep it surreal on complementary CDs ready for iTunes

For Your Amusement

A roll call of this year's bands at Coney Island's favorite freak show

Eat This

Hungry art-rapper from England serves himself up like the totally different animal he is

Undermine Your Own Business

EMI cleans house, Elektra merges, Arista folds, what's left?

Her Cheesecake Is Punker Than Yours, Whatever It Means

Hell Hath No Grits

Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death

Dinky's I.N.S. Techno-cality

Foyer Mansion

Self-Hating Hicks

A South Fulla Pig-Chasing Whiteboy Rappers Fail to Elevate Their Race

Ghost Dance

It’s a Bomber, It’s a Bomber, It’s a Bomber

Mash Culture

Live and Erect

Rock And Rap Shows Bed-Spring Into Action

Erykah in Stanklove

Hip-Hoperation: Mindcrime

New Wave Dogs Movin' In

All My Ex's Don't Live in Paris, Texas

Love Jones