Raekwon

The Top 20 NYC Rap Albums of All Time: The Complete List

Any list of the Greatest New York Rap Albums of All Time is, essentially, a list of simply the Greatest Rap Albums of All Time. The genre was invented here, after all, and over the years -- from early days to Golden Age and onward-- the city's hip-hop history has been an embarrassment of riches. Fas ... More >>

The Top 20 NYC Rap Albums of All Time: 10 - 1

Any list of the Greatest New York Rap Albums of All Time is, essentially, a list of simply the Greatest Rap Albums of All Time. The genre was invented here, after all, and over the years -- from early days to Golden Age and onward-- the city's hip-hop history has been an embarrassment of riches. Fas ... More >>

The Ten Best Concerts in New York This Weekend, 2/8/13

Here are the 10 best concerts around the city this weekend, in no particular order.

Curren$y Smokes Tons of Weed, and Still Works Much Harder Than You

Let that man multitask. In between bong snaps and awaiting a new episode of The Regular Show to come on New Orleans' rapper Currren$y is also having an extensive conversation with SOTC about the scattered array of topics potheads tend to have. Like about cartoons for instance. And snacks and shit. ... More >>

Rakim+Raekwoon

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 >>

Sound of the Sandy City

The day the music tried

The 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos Infomercial Is Here

Throw your dubs up, this year's Juggomercial has finally arrived. It's 23 minutes long, confirms most of the performers we mentioned on Friday, and casts the Gathering of the Juggalos as the one remaining safe haven from the "sell-out zombies" who dominate the mainstream. "Freedom still exists here ... More >>

The Top 13 Hip-Hop Songs For Summer

Free lunch, fire hydrants on full blast and beach chairs on the sidewalk—yep, the summer's here Need a hand composing a playlist to go along with a hot and lazy day's activities? Just in time for the official start of summer (and today's 90-plus temperatures), SOTC has put together a list of t ... More >>

Six Great '90s NYC Rap Demos

"Please listen to my demo!" That particular plea may no longer be heard coming from plucky upcoming rappers, what with the Internet age and all, but there's an undeniable pull about getting to hear the industry-ears-only dusty tapes that begat some of hip-hop's finest album moments. This week sees t ... More >>

Presented For Your Thanksgiving Enjoyment: A Cornucopia Of Songs With "Pie" In The Title

Today is Thanksgiving here in the States, and in addition to getting irritated by Nickelback's existence, lots of Americans will probably celebrate by eating pie. The word "pie" is a bit more prevalent in the lyrics of non-"Weird Al" Yankovic-crafted popular music than one might a dessert to be, but ... More >>

Mobb Deep

COUNTRY RAP

Yelawolf just wants to party at Irving Plaza

Peter Rosenberg's What's Poppin' Vol. 1 Takes The New York Hip-Hop Scene's Pulse

​New York City rappers have been cast as something of the rap world's whipping boys for more than a few years now. Not only is it fashionable to paint the city's scene as still stuck in the '90s—that's, er, despite the man who effectively runs rap, old man Jay-Z, being pretty proud to ha ... More >>

'93 TIL INFINITY

Back to (old) school

Live: Raekwon Turns Prospect Park Into Another Corner Of His World

Raekwon, Smif-N-Wessun, Joell Ortiz Celebrate Brooklyn! at Prospect Park Bandshell Saturday, July 9 Better than: "Salem (DJ set)" at Brooklyn Bowl The Prospect Park Bandshell is probably the best place to catch a hip-hop show in the New York City summer. Yes, you're going to have to stand in a li ... More >>

Four Great Contemporary Songs About Ice Cream

Sara McLachlan, Ice Cream Ice cream's great, not only to eat but to sing about, as well. As a metaphor for love, the frozen treat is unsurpassed -- it's cold, it warms up, it melts, and it's gone. Here are four of our favorite Love = Ice Cream songs.

Rock The Bells NYC Lineup Updated; Erykah Badu To Perform Baduizm

Tickets go on sale tomorrow at 10 a.m. for the New York City stop of the Rock The Bells Festival, which will take place on September 3 at Governors Island. The lineup for the all-star hip-hop concert, during which a slew of heavyweights (Nas, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Raekwon & Ghostface) will revisit album ... More >>

Week In Review: "In Reality, There Is No Greatest of All Time"

​"In reality, there is no greatest of all time," wrote Prodigy, wisely from prison. This sort of wisdom resonates in a week during which Phil Collins says "That's All" (sort of) to his epic career, and the Dropkick Murphys make a confusing Billboard Top Ten debut with an album called Going Out ... More >>

Q&A: Raekwon On Getting His Third Wind, Rapping About Crime In A Soft New York, And Giving RZA Tough Love

"Just growing up when we grew up and how we grew up and of course where we grew up . . . I seen enough to keep me inspired for decades, man." ​From the moment we all heard those kung fu effects on "Protect Ya Neck," the world was hooked. Smitten by the rugged wordplay and seemingly endless li ... More >>

Nicki Minaj, Louie Vega, Talib Kweli, And Bollywood Disco Headline Your (Christmas!) Week In Nightlife

​The holidays tend to bring a mass exodus from the city, but not everyone is leaving. In fact, some of our favorite DJs (and rappers) have chosen to come for a visit, giving us a full week of dance parties and awesome shows. We recommend that you take a night off from your holiday daze, grab a ... More >>

JAM WITH THE BISCUITS

Philly eccentrics crash at Terminal 5

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 Best Verses From Kanye West's Good Friday Project, So Far

​As sustained, goodwill-generating rap publicity stunts go, Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Fridays series is almost entirely without precedent. Other rappers, guys like Freeway and Crooked I, have given away free music in regular installments, but those guys are B-listers and supporting players, and th ... More >>

GOOD Friday: Kanye West Comes Late With "Lord Lord Lord"

​Kanye West just keeps coming through, in a variety of styles and moods, on different days and with a wide range of friends. On this most recent GOOD Friday, West delivered the track somewhere close to 5 a.m. Blame it on Swizz Beatz, who is featured on "Lord Lord Lord," along with Mos Def, Rae ... More >>

Live: Rating Rock the Bells Sets From Slick Rick, Wu-Tang Clan, Lauryn Hill, A Tribe Called Quest, Snoop Dogg, and More

Oh, hey Q-Tip. All photos by Rebecca Smeyne.​On a sweltering Saturday, the seventh annual hip-hop nerd convention Rock The Bells took over Governor's Island. It's a place where people know to "throw a one in the air" for Guru before DJ Premier even asked, a place where you can overhear a convo ... More >>

Kanye West's "OFFICIAL POWER REMIX" Has Arrived

​It's here. Jay-Z's on it. But Swizz Beatz runs away with it. Believe it.

WAX, ECSTATIC

Don't blink, or you'll miss Mos Def

GZA

"Jimmy, What Up Baby?" Raekwon Performs on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon

"Good looking out man, word up"--always nice to thank your hosts. No surprise the Roots and Raekwon are a winning combination, especially on "Catalina," and even more especially with Black Thought guesting. I dunno, what's left to say? Best year for rap on television that's not BET or MTV ever? So ... More >>

Warren G

CMJ, Day Two: New York Says Hello--and Then Goodbye--to OJ da Juiceman

"This guy's on the internet," says DJ Green Lantern, by way of introducing Atlanta's Pill--a curious diminution for a rapper whose best songs ("Trap Goin' Ham," or you know, "We Outside") are very much about being nowhere near anything like a computer. Anyway, it's not like being on the internet ... More >>

Live From the Purple Carpet: Interviews and Photos from Last Night's Raekwon Record Release Party

The press mob. All photos by Eleni Rizakos.​Raekwon's long-anticipated Only Built for Cuban Linx, Part II dropped yesterday with a release party graced by Ghostface, Method Man, Diddy, DJ Premiere, Redman, Eric B, Ice-T, and Cappadonna, among many, many others. The red carpet was purple, of co ... More >>

News Roundup: Show No Mercy/GNAW, Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II, Thom Yorke

​--We'd be remiss to not mention friend of SOTC Brandon Stosuy's latest Show No Mercy, which features the debut of the Khanate project Gnaw (Shawn Bosler: "In that paranoid world where extreme metal intersects with extreme noise--a world where Merzbow sells brain implants in Neuromancer-like b ... More >>

On The Totally Adorable Video For Ghostface's "Baby"

It's gonna take me way longer than the Sept. 29 release date to get over the fact that Ghostface's new album is called The Wizard of Poetry. Here, in a slightly less juvenile clip than Raekwon's latest, he serenades a young lass in the first verse, discusses the side effects of her pregnancy in t ... More >>

Interview: Raekwon on Only Built for Cuban Linx II, Auto-Tune, J Dilla, and the Future of Rap

"You've got some fans that wanna stick up for me and say, 'Rae's still got it!' And you got some that say, 'Nah he'll never beat that album!'" ​ In the 5000 or so days since Raekwon released Only Built for Cuban Linx, long considered one of the greatest of all solo Wu-Tang albums, the Chef h ... More >>

Tonight! Regina Spektor, Loudon Wainwright III, Tinted Windows, and Raekwon

Next week, Regina Spektor will release her first new album in three years. What we've heard of Far is more cinematic than her often bare 2006 breakthrough, Begin to Hope, which may or may not be a good thing. Take a peek at the Beacon tonight. Loudon Wainwright III, patriarch of the venerated Wai ... More >>

Hey, It's Give Away Free Raekwon Music Day

Would you turn down an absolutely free and admirably weed-carrier-free mixtape from Raekwon, entitled Blood on the Chef's Apron, and including the awesomely I Love You Man-influenced Jadakiss/Rae collabo "Gutterman Music," which takes a well known Rush song to its gulliest possible conclusion? Yeah, ... More >>

On Raekwon's 92-Second "Gorilla Rap"

The 1:32 minutes worth of left-on-the-cutting-room floor, but-still-occasionally-extremely-fiery rapping is a tradition that dates back to mixtapes circa way before the internet was even really invented, but it fits in the climate now, too. From album (which, ask Jadakiss, isn't dead) to single to " ... More >>

New Raekwon: "Staten (Go Hard)"

Method Man yesterday, Raekwon today. Definitely the best "Brooklyn Go Hard" remix so far: "Sellin' nose candy, blackberry brandy, turtlenecks, 40 belows/Flow dandy," Raekwon doing his signature free associative thing alongside some credibly-fake Santogold imitator, and everybody's repping for Stat ... More >>

GZA Performs Liquid Swords, Possibly Other Songs

A Running Diary of Hip-Hop Superfest Rock the Bells

The exquisite joys of a sunny Sunday afternoon on the LIRR, Mos Def's basketball uniform, and De La Soul's late-'80s nostalgia

THROWBACKS AND BACKPACKS

Rap gets its own Lollapalooza

Status Ain't Hood Podcast 31

8 Diagrams: RZA's Drug-Rap Masterwork

Live: Cranky New York Rap Nostalgia Soldiers On

New York Rap is Regional Rap

Live: GZA Keeps the Wu-Tang Reunion Rolling, Sort Of

Return of the Ruckus

Still unhinged after more than an ol' dirty dozen years, the Wu-Tang Clan stage a Shaolin family reunion

Wuclear Fission

A Nutcase and a Point Guard Rise Above Wu-Tang’s Solo Overkill