Tyler the Creator

Billy Ray Cyrus & HomeTown Buffet: A Track-by-Track Menu

Shut up, everybody, because I have HUGE news: Billy Ray Cyrus is teaming up with HomeTown Buffet! Buffets, Inc.® is proud to announce its latest tie-in with country music, this time with the singer/songwriter/actor Billy Ray Cyrus and his 13th studio album, Change My Mind. Beginning April 11, gue ... More >>

An Intimate, Eye-Opening Night With Tyler, the Creator

Better Than: Oprah Tyler, the Creator lost his virginity at age 17 in his grandmother's bed. Yep. You know that now. But chances are, if you're like the type of Tyler obsessive that bought tickets to the Highline Ballroom's sold out interview between the controversial rapper/designer/video director ... More >>

QUIZ: Are These Tweets From Cher or Horse_ebooks?

RiFF RAFF may get all the the love as the King of Incomprehensible Tweets, but the title of Queen goes to Cher. While she may not have Harmony Korine ready to pen a book of tweet interpretations, the near-EGOTer has roughly 1.3 million followers who eagerly await her tweets, which, on any given day, ... More >>

Tyler, the Creator's WOLF, Reviewed By Tyler, the Creator

Tyler, the Creator's new album WOLF -- a 72-minute experiment to see how often the word "fag" can be rapped on a major label release -- is out today, and the reviews are steady rolling in. You don't need to read any of them. Because Tyler's already reviewed the album for you himself. For the past w ... More >>

How Jazz Trio BadBadNotGood and Odd Future Became Unlikely Pals

The hip-hop-inspired jazz trio BadBadNotGood are in a car driving to a show in Vermont while bumping the new My Bloody Valentine album. Comprised of keys player Matthew Tavares, bass man Chester Hansen and drummer Alexander Sowinski (who likes to sport a pig mask while playing out), the Toronto-base ... More >>

Om'Mas Keith, The Chosen One

The Queens-born hip-hop producer walks in to the Grammys a double-nominee

Sorry, Haters: Kitty Pryde Is Staying a While

"It's a huge accident." That's how Kitty Beckwith characterizes the fact we're even talking, over chocolate tea at Tarallucci E Vino, about her unlikely success as a rapper. The alleged teenager made waves last year as Kitty Pryde, a Claire's employee from Daytona Beach who appeared, like all viral ... More >>

Pazz & Jop: Frank Ocean's Sea Change

His musical and personal honesty made waves in 2012

12 (More) Big Deal Albums We're Hella Excited For

Hey: Albums! In case people still care about these things, here's a batch of potentially interesting releases arriving in the calendar year.

The Best Albums Pitchfork Hated This Year

Since Purity Ring, Death Grips and Tame Impala didn't exactly take off this year like Arcade Fire or Animal Collective, Pitchfork's cultural influence might be cooling off, which is bittersweet since their writer stable is probably better now than it ever was (some of us don't miss those novelty rev ... More >>

CLIQUE, CLIQUE, CLIQUE

Trash Talk and Mellowhype rep Odd Future

What Will the Miley Cyrus/Tyler, the Creator Collaboration Sound Like?

Why are Miley Cyrus and Tyler, the Creator collaborating? Probably because they know how awesome it will be. See Also: - On Odd Future, Rape and Murder, And Why We Sometimes Like the Things That Repel Us - Miley Cyrus Takes Her Party In The USA To Occupy Wall Street

Last Minute Music-Inspired Mashup Costumes For Your Already Busted Halloween

Halloween on a Wednesday. It was a massive bummer before Sandy came and took a shit all over it. It makes sense if you've not yet picked out a costume. We've got some last minute, music-inspired costume suggestions. All of them are awful, maybe. But after all that's gone down these last few days, ex ... More >>

The Top 3.66 Hip-Hop Songs Of The Week

Hip-hop is at its best when artists collaborate, challenging one another to create their best work, and this week's best hip-hop tracks are highlighted by a collection of odd couples. DJ Khaled, of incessant yelling and inexplicably giving Ace Hood work, managed to put Nas, Scarface and DJ Premier o ... More >>

Live: The Internet Shows Off Its "Weird-Ass Music" At Bowery Ballroom

The Interet w/Kilo Kish, Phony Ppl Bowery Ballroom Sunday, August 5 Better than: Staying home to wait for Drake's posthumous Aaliyah collaboration. The MTA and its agenda of mediocrity made me late for last night's Kilo Kish/The Internet show at Bowery Ballroom, but as I walked into the main space ... More >>

'Peter Rosenberg's Night of Real Hip-Hop' w/ Tyler, the Creator+Earl Sweatshirt+Raekwon+Asher Roth

Kitty Pryde: Hazy Beats, Crushed-Out Lyrics, And A Keen Eye For Detail

It would be easy to dismiss Kitty Pryde—scarlet-haired 19-year-old white women from Daytona Beach, Florida, would not fit anyone's profile of "the next to blow," and rap-singing songs about Justin Bieber ("Justin Bieber") and an object of her affection ("Okay Cupid") isn't the most direct path ... More >>

Q&A: Joey Bada$$ On Singing Biggie At Two, Tumblr Stalkers, And Finishing High School

Joey Bada$$ is perched over a Pac-Man tabletop arcade machine at a neighborhood bar in Flatbush. With a glass of Sprite resting on the video game's screen, he confesses that he's never played Pac-Man before, gives a laugh, and says, "I probably suck at this." Bada$$'s lack of experience at early-'8 ... More >>

A Word From Your Humble Guest Editor

Your guest editor, about to be eaten by Pac Man​ Good morning. Your friend and mine Maura Johnston is currently overseas, enjoying grog and mead (I'm assuming) and generally being awesome. When you hear about the show she is seeing, in all probability you will die of jealousy. Expect a full r ... More >>

Radio Hits One: Beyoncé's Unlikely Pazz & Jop Coup

If the triumph of tUnE-yArDs in this year's Pazz & Jop albums poll was one of the biggest upsets in the poll's history, then the companion singles poll offered one of its most predictable winners to date: Adele's "Rolling In The Deep." Smart money had been on that song taking the prize since it bega ... More >>

Pazz & Jop 2011: Michael Tedder On Fucked Up's Majesty, Danny Brown's Cunning Skills, And The Joy Formidable's Outro Power

To supplement this year's Pazz & Jop launch, Sound of the City asked a few critics to expand on the reasonings behind their voting. Here, Michael Tedder breaks down his entire ballot, and along the way he talks about about the operatic heights of Fucked Up, the shredding ability of Annie Clark and R ... More >>

Pazz & Jop Comments 2011: The Personals

Feelings, whoa-whoa-whoa

California Demise: Tyler, the Creator and EMA Feel the Bad Vibes

tUnE-yArds, PJ Harvey, and St. Vincent Get Physical

The 39th Pazz And Jop Poll Is Live

Hooray and huzzah, the Pazz & Jop poll, calculated from the ballots of 700 critics around the globe, is up and running and ready for your perusal. Congratulations to Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs, whose w h o k i l l walked away with the albums poll; and Adele, whose inescapable yet compelling even o ... More >>

53 More Great Songs From 2011

Earlier today, Maura offered a list of the 47 songs on her "2011 Awesomeness" Spotify playlist; to complement that, here are the 53 songs from my less cleverly named playlist, "2011." As is the usually the case with these mega-lists, I compiled mine a bit haphazardly, throwing together a substantial ... More >>

The 11 Most Infuriating Songs Of 2011, No. 3: [White Person], [White Person Cutely/Seriously Performing Urban-Radio Hit]

The Songs: Karmin, "Super Bass" and "Look At Me Now" and way too many others; Mac Lethal, "Cook Wit Me Now"; Jackson Foote and friends, "Get Low"; Sophia Grace, "Super Bass"; probably more that are shooting up the Reddit charts right now. The Crimes: Anti-pop snobbery; humorlessness in the name of ... More >>

The 11 Most Infuriating Songs Of 2011, No. 2: Lana Del Rey, "Video Games"

The Song: Lana Del Rey, "Video Games." The Crimes: Irritated-alley-cat vocals; overwrought harps; fundamental misunderstanding of whether or not ironic critique of male-female mores can exist in the Hipster Runoff age; this poor girl's right thigh. In 2011 the phrase "Lana Del Rey" wasn't just the ... More >>

The 11 Most Infuriating Songs Of 2011, No. 1: Jessie J Featuring B.o.B, "Price Tag"

Ahhhh!! ​The Song: Jessie J, "Price Tag" The Crimes: Using what might be the entirety of her label's marketing budget to convince the world that she actually functions on a higher, post-capitalistic level; "video hos"; "ch-chang-cha-chang"; "bla-bling-bla-bling." The year's most grueling pop ... More >>

The 11 Most Infuriating Songs Of 2011, No. 5: Rihanna, "S&M"

The Song: Rihanna, "S&M" The Crimes: Dressing a bloodless ode to kink up by saying it's actually about the media? Na na na na na na, come on, girl. Pop stars need their personas as much as they need the songs that take them to the top of the charts—and lest you think that need exists in a va ... More >>

The 11 Most Infuriating Songs Of 2011, No. 4: Brian McFadden, "Just The Way You Are (Drunk At The Bar)"

The Song: Brian McFadden, "Just The Way You Are (Drunk At The Bar)" The Crimes: Setting sexual assault fantasies to the dulcet strains of "Cotton Eyed Joe," as remixed by a David Guetta clone. As has been the case for too many years now, 2011's year-end polls have ended in a wave of proclamations ... More >>

The 11 Most Infuriating Songs of 2011

More reasons to turn off the radio

The 11 Most Infuriating Songs Of 2011, No. 8: Tyler, The Creator, "Bitch Suck Dick"

The Song: Tyler, The Creator, "Bitch Suck Dick" The Crimes: Ugh. There really is no winning when one discusses the output of Tyler, The Creator, the leader of the West Coast hip-hop collective Odd Future, a skateboard-riding LA dude who this year showed the world that he loved the Neptunes and his ... More >>

The 11 Most Infuriating Songs Of 2011, No. 7: Maroon 5 Featuring Christina Aguilera, "Moves Like Jagger"

​The Song: Maroon 5 feat. Christina Aguilera, "Moves Like Jagger" The Crimes: Profligate whistling, misplaced sass, wholly unsexy instruction to "take [Levine] by the tongue." Earlier this year, both Maroon 5 and Christina Aguilera were coming off what might be called "soft landings"—th ... More >>

The 11 Most Infuriating Songs Of 2011, No. 6: Bon Iver, "Holocene"

The Song: Bon Iver, "Holocene" The Crimes: Shapelessness, "atmosphere," wondering if we're all just particles, man, invoking existential music-listening crises. Many of this year's most risible songs had clear reasons for being as irritating as they were—self-impressed "punk"dom, grating whi ... More >>

Underwhelmed And Overstimulated, The Finale: Jay-Z And Kanye West Fiddle While The Underground Gets Wasted

Smell that money burning. ​This concludes Sound of the City's year-end roundtable, a conversation about pop music in 2011 between Tom Ewing, Eric Harvey, Maura Johnston, Nick Murray, and Katherine St. Asaph. Read it all again. Thanks for the handoff, Nick, and thanks to Katherine, Tom and esp ... More >>

Sound Of The City's 2011 NBA Preview: Each Team, Paired With An Album From The Past Year

Think of the orange car as a clue. ​The resurrected NBA season kicks off (thankfully, finally) on Sunday. To celebrate, we've paired each team with a notable album from the past year; the list, with tweet-sized justifications, is below. (NB, although the NBA-savvy of you might have already fig ... More >>

People Who Died 2011: The Year In Obituaries

Amy Winehouse passed away on July 23. ​In memory of the people, places, and things that passed away in 2011, here's a collection of links and streaming-video artifacts.

HEART2HEART's "Facebook Official": In Which Lance Bass Proves He's Got The Internet-Attention Calculus Down Pat

​Last night, Lance Bass—former 'N Sync member, aspiring astronaut, and now apparently boy-band guru—offered a tutorial on how to get your probably-jokey, possibly-somewhat-serious musical project noticed by those folks on the Internet who are looking for things to giggle at as they ... More >>

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 >>

Radio Hits One: Raising The Bar For "YouTube Platinum"

Justin Bieber and Ludacris: Congratulations. A lot of people watched your video.​On August 28, MTV will throw the 2011 installment of its Video Music Awards, honoring achievements in the art form that used to make up the majority of its programming. While it's all too tempting to note the iron ... More >>

Live: Kreayshawn Lets V-Nasty Steal Her Show At The Highline Ballroom

Kreayshawn Highline Ballroom Thursday, August 18 Better than: no other concert I've ever been to, and I've been to a lot. Maybe Kreayshawn is hip-hop's Andy Kaufman, a high-concept satirist pulling an elaborate cultural prank with her sister V-Nasty acting as the crowd-baiting Tony Clifton. Maybe ... More >>

The Game Crams An Entire Mixtape's Worth Of Disses And References Into Four Minutes

​It doesn't twist the "Try A Little Tenderness" sample used by the song its title's piggybacking off, but the Game's "Uncle Otis" is full of peevish references to recent happenings in hip-hop and pop—Tyler, The Creator (who he claims to have "created," because he's clearly looking for a ... More >>

The Video Music Awards' Nominations Play To The Internet (Again)

​Last night MTV announced the nominees for this year's installment of their annual pseudo-event extravaganza, the 2011 Video Music Awards, and once again, the nominees for Video Of The Year have three pop picks ("Rolling In The Deep," "Firework," "Grenade"), one sop to the olds in the crowd wh ... More >>

Sorry For The Weight: Lil Wayne's New Mixtape Full Of Empty Posturing

​Lil Wayne's mixtapes used to be events in rap. His incredible work on the Dedication and Drought series gave birth to the Mixtape Weezy that could credibly claim to be the best rapper alive in 2006-07, a rapper so good that Jay-Z admitted on his otherwise rapper-loathing "D.O.A." that he "mig ... More >>

'Summerstage Festival: Slick Rick'

Seth Putnam, R.I.P.

A heart attack felled Seth Putnam on Saturday at the age of 43. If the man's name is not familiar to you then chances are, especially if you had even the vaguest connection with metal, you know his band's name all too well: Anal Cunt. And if you know A.C., chances are you know their song titles (sa ... More >>

Beyond Kreayshawn: The Women In Hip-Hop Who The Internet Should Freak Out About Next

Last week, the birth of rap's newest star-to-be happened suddenly. Kreayshawn, a California rapper with Amy Winehouse's tattooes and piercings, Queen Latifah's earrings, and a modified version of Michelle Williams' pixie bob, dropped her video for "Gucci Gucci," and every person who was tweeting abo ... More >>