Soulja Boy

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 >>

Pazz & Jop: Riff Raff Is Keeping It Surreal

He's believable as a hip-hop star because nothing he says is true

Pazz & Jop: The Confounding, Inexplicable Splendor of Rapper Future

Space is the place

"You Write From Your Soul and They Try and Make It Into A Minstrel Thing": Our Interview With Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire

Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire is Brooklyn's rap superstar-in-waiting. He released a new EP (Passion & Power) on Universal yesterday, and we interviewed the venerable eXquire for this week's print edition of The Voice. Here's the bonus beats of the chat, which includes eXquire revealing the song that snag ... More >>

Myspace Was Better Than Facebook (For Music)

With Facebook's stock and growth rates skydiving, it's time to say something that should have been said a long time ago: Myspace was better. Maybe not when it came to its coding or those garish "personalized" pages, but definitely when it came to music. Back in the day -- say, about 2004 or so -- ... More >>

A Brief Primer On Riff Raff, The (Really Good) Houston Rapper Who Will Be Portrayed On Screen By James Franco

If Noz and The Onion collaborated, they might come up with a scenario like this one: Gucci Mane and Selena Gomez star in a Harmony Korine-directed film alongside James Franco, whose character is loosely based on the little-known YouTube rapper Riff Raff. But, of course, this is the era of trollgaze, ... More >>

Radio Hits One: Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, And Other Urban Radio Staples Turn To Clappers

Lately, when I turn on a hip-hop station, I feel like I'm being applauded, and I don't always feel like returning the favor. I'm not referring just to the default use of handclaps (sampled or, more likely, emulated by drum machines) as snare drums in beats, which has been a common practice and has b ... More >>

Live: Gang Gang Dance And Lunice Work Up A Sweat At P.S. 1

​ Gang Gang Dance (DJ Set) w/ Lunice, Miracles Club, Laurel Halo P.S. 1 Saturday, July 23 Better than: Your average art-museum function. Most show reviews you've been reading over the last week have probably begun with, or at least nodded towards, the extreme heat we've been working through ... More >>

Five Questions To Ask At Ben Westhoff's Dirty South Reading

​Tonight, Voice contributor and hip-hop sommelier Ben Westhoff will read from Dirty South, his look at the populist rise of rap music from the southern states, at Williamsburg's Book Thug Nation. The book focuses on the bigger names to have emerged from the south, with chapters based around Bi ... More >>

MAKE IT RAIN

What has Southern rap done to hip-hop?

Q&A: "White People Rapping Poorly" Mastermind Connor Toole On What Makes Terrible White Rappers So Amusing

Asher Roth, one of the good guys​Today, the Internet is filled with more depravity and embarrassing footage than anyone could have ever thought possible. Fortunately for us, people like Connor Toole are seeking out the best of the best (or worst of the worst), and posting these .gifs or YouTub ... More >>

Top Five Train-Wreck Rappers

​The Berkley-based rapper Lil B plays the Highline Ballroom on Thursday; for curious New York gawkers, it's a chance to see the world's foremost proponent of a new movement you could kindly term train-wreck rappers -- those artists whose every youthful indiscretion, ill-advised comment, physic ... More >>

Was 2010 The Best Year For Music Ever? Throw Taylor Swift In A Well

Welcome to Sound of the City's year-in-review rock-critic roundtable, an amiable ongoing conversation between five prominent Voice critics: Rob Harvilla, Zach Baron, Sean Fennessey, Maura Johnston, and Rich Juzwiak. We'll be here all week! Pay Rich Juzwiak what you owe him, Jay Leno. Twitpic by Dav ... More >>

Was 2010 The Best Year For Music Ever? Five SOTC Critics Discuss.

Great song, at least​Welcome to Sound of the City's year-in-review rock-critic roundtable, an amiable ongoing conversation between five prominent Voice critics: myself, Zach Baron, Sean Fennessey, Maura Johnston, and Rich Juzwiak. Let us acknowledge at the onset that we are ripping this off fr ... More >>

Let Soulja Boy Be Great

A rap pariah seeks legitimacy on The DeAndre Way, and nearly gets it

This Week's Voice: Warpaint, Hall & Oates, Soulja Boy, Buke & Gass, and More

Warpaint, pulling you off the floor. Photo by Santiago Felipe​In this week's Village Voice, Rob Harvilla's Down in Front column makes its triumphant return, checking out shows from Warpaint and Hall & Oates, while Drew Hinshaw demands that you let Soulja Boy be great and Mike Ayers does arts a ... 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 >>

Live: Soulja Boy Tears Himself Away From Twitter For A Half Hour At Webster Hall

The hardest-working man in social media. Pics by Puja, more below.​Soulja Boy Webster Hall Thursday, December 2 Better Than: Every rap show I've covered this year. ('Sup, Drake.) There's a lot of nonsense associated with Soulja Boy. Excessive use of the word "swag" aside, the guy's most popu ... More >>

Week in Review: Who's Your Daddy?

​In the week we began our countdown of the 20 worst songs of 2010, we celebrated by mocking efforts from the Far East Movement, Ringo Starr, Godsmack, Trade Martin, and Lil Wayne. Where will Susan Boyle fall? Tune in next week and suffer more abuse until you find out.

Soulja Boy, Dimitri From Paris, And Mannie Fresh Headline Your Week In Nightlife

​A full range of emotions this week -- get emo tonight, go pantless on Saturday, giggle at the goofy songs of your youth on Tuesday. With Mannie Fresh, you might be able to do all three. In any event, here are your nightly nightlife picks for the next seven days:

Week in Review: Weezy Freed

Welcome to my life, Weezy.​So Lil Wayne is finally a free man. Perhaps a lonely free man, but a free man nonetheless. It's been a hell of a two weeks for the law around here, in all honesty. After last week's barrage of club closings, this week brought news of yet more: 171 Lombardy was raided ... More >>

Watch Soulja Boy's Delightfully Surreal Wall Street Journal Interview/Performance At Lincoln Center

​So as threatened, Soulja Boy was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal live onstage at Lincoln Center on Friday morning about his absolute mastery of social media, and while it didn't go down quite as we'd imagined it, the result was still wildly entertaining: He recounts his rise to fame (" ... More >>

Soulja Boy Will Be Interviewed By The Wall Street Journal Onstage At Lincoln Center Tomorrow Morning

​So the Wall Street Journal has this free interview/performance series at Lincoln Center Friday mornings, chatting with such cultural titans as Wyclef Jean, Stan Lee, Russell Simmons, and Jonathan Ames. (Note: If were putting those guys in order of who'd be most qualified to become president o ... More >>

No Age's Adrenaline Stage Continues

Everything in Between cements the L.A. semi-punks' graduation to Their Own Sound

Live: The Hood Internet Unleash A Torrent Of Guilty Pleasures At Bell House

Best Bar Mitzvah ever.​The Hood Internet Bell House Friday, July 2 The scene at the Bell House Friday night could've easily been mistaken for a totally rad Bar Mitzvah: A dance floor filled with boys and girls not touching, but rather dancing in circles around each other (some were even shoel ... More >>

Justin Bieber Played a Secret Show in Queens

​Seriously. While the softer section of the hipster demographic is waiting around for the Schumer-approved Williamsburg Pool Parties, Justin Bieber is holding it down all the way out in Queens. Like LCD Soundsystem before him, pocket-sized pop star Justin Bieber is doing it for the fans. So wh ... More >>

Justin Bieber and Soulja Boy's "Rich Girl" Has Nothing to Do With Hall & Oates, Unfortunately

Sometimes Soulja Boy does it for the streets, but most of the time he does it for the mall. This time it's explicit -- as in, explicitly for girls who can't drive yet -- as Mr. Tell 'Em calls on the new Prince of the Tweens for an assist. These hyper-relevant label pairings are supposed to bode wel ... More >>

Watch: New Yorker Poetry Editor Paul Muldoon Critiques Ke$ha's "Tik Tok"

Normally we have a zero tolerance for LOL-pop-music-type gags, in which someone old and stentorian soberly reads some silly Soulja Boy versa with a bunch of misplaced gravitas and strategic confusion, but let's make an exception here for the virtuoso poet and aging hipster Paul Muldoon, whom the P ... More >>

Freaks Of The Industry III: Thursday's CMJ Panels, Crassly Distilled

You haven't seen a CMJ panel yet? You missed a lot yesterday. And the day before. Here's today's lineup, with unrequested editorial comment.

On Charles Hamilton, Joe Budden, Asher Roth, and the Perils of Internet Oversharing

Welcome to rap's online overdose

Live Blogging the Michael Jackson Memorial

Live Video streaming by Ustream For all the lovely grace notes, homages, and eulogies that have flowed from any number of erudite and compassionate individuals in the wake of Michael Jackson's untimely death at the young age of 50, a celebrity's death is not over in American until the huge, gaudy, ... More >>

Soulja Boy Ruins Innocent English Family's Life

Rap's most awesome teenage millionaire, Soulja Boy, included an actual phone number on his last single, "Kiss Me Thru the Phone," which just came out last month in the UK, and now thousands of English people are calling it--to the hilarious dismay of a very kind seeming Oldham couple who own the n ... More >>

On Soulja Boy's "Gold Grill Shawty," Featuring OJ Da Juiceman

By the far the most hilarious teenage millionaire on planet Earth is the Atlanta-based, not-at-all-one-hit-wonder Soulja Boy Tell 'Em, whose particular variety of performative genius has inspired both EMP panels ("Soulja Boy is neither a cipher, like dance-rap wonders Tag Team or 69 Boyz before hi ... More >>

Week in Review: "Some Magazine, I Don't Know Where It Was."

Sahoko Yui In the week Rush Limbaugh called us "some magazine," we invited our friend Status Ain't Hood back for a day. Oh, and right: Congrats Tom! Interviews: Wavves' Nathan Williams on drugs and the beach, Albert Maysles on HBO's new Grey Gardens, Ian Svenonius on Kanye West and his new band, C ... More >>

Interview: Rapper Nipsey Hussle on West Coast Hip-Hop and Rolling Sixty Crips

"I mean Aspen, Portland: They're on the West Coast, but for an L.A. dude it's like the middle of nowhere. We got U.S. Marshals hopping on the bus in Salt Lake City." Not since the emergence of The Game on the national hip-hop scene has Los Angeles had such a promising new rapper as Nipsey Hussle. ... More >>

Thieving KiD CuDi Strikes Again, Steals Rich Boy's "Drop"

First, Kid CuDi rhymes over LCD Soundsystem's "Someone Great" (Murphy's bemused response here, although I don't vouch for the authenticity); now he's rhyming over Rich Boy's Polow Da Don-produced "Drop." With the caveat that rappers routinely rhyme over each other's beats, there's a reason that th ... More >>

Fringe Festival 2008 Reviews!

Missing Man, Ariel View, Keep Your Eyes Open, and more

Body Count

The BET Awards: A Running Diary

Country-Rap: A Secret History

Jay-Z Diss Track Enlivens Bullshit NBA Playoff Feud

Rick Ross Rolls

Continuing his pleasantly, audaciously inept hustle

Track 18 Wins Again

Major Hip-Hop Records in Burying-Best-Tracks Shocker!

Lightspeed Champion's Falling Off the Lavender Bridge

White Music for Wry People

The American Music Awards: A Running Diary

The Quarterly Report: Status Ain't Hood's Favorite New Singles

The Death of Rap City

50 Cent's Empire Crumbles

The VMAs: A Running Diary