SPIN Rap Report: Young Thug Slimes Us, milo Takes Busdriver to School
From here in Los Angeles, it feels like summer won’t leave: The beach is packed, the Dodgers are braving 90-degree weather, and YG still doesn’t have a release date. But make no mistake, this is the...
View ArticleReview: Young Thug Continues to Turn Rap Into an Unsolvable Maze on ‘Slime...
Maybe Young Thug is a pragmatist after all. In the run up to the record's April release, some mistakenly billed Barter 6 as the Atlanta upstart’s debut album. With the benefit of hindsight, it seems...
View ArticleReview: Young Thug Is ‘Up’ for Whatever With New Mixtape
The video for "F Cancer (Boosie)," the first single from Young Thug’s latest mixtape offering, I’m Up, is the best kind of fever dream. The skeletal Atlanta rapper spills out of an ambulance in pink...
View ArticleSPIN Rap Report: Vic Spencer and Chris Crack Join Forces, Boosie Beats Cancer...
The first two months of 2016 have been dominated by something that in most years doesn’t show up until much later: star power. In January, Atlantic successfully parlayed Kevin Gates’ cultish, largely...
View ArticleIf You Don’t Know Me By Now: Remembering Phife Dawg
"Stop trying to front like I’m Tito or some shit. And no disrespect to Tito." — Phife Dawg When you woke up yesterday and saw that Malik "Phife Dawg" Taylor had passed away, which detail tripped you...
View ArticleI’m Afraid of the Future: Jay Z’s Second Act
In honor of the recent 20th anniversary of Jay Z’s debut album, Reasonable Doubt, we’re publishing a series of pieces looking at the rapper’s singular career and achievements. Welcome to Jay Z Week....
View ArticleReview: On His Major-Label Debut, Clams Casino Is ’32 Levels’ and Then Some
Clams Casino is not, in the strictest sense, a hip-hop artist. But his influence over and relationship with the sound of the genre’s past decade have largely come to define his work. Since the New...
View ArticleThinking ‘Bout Forever: Frank Ocean and Time Travel
On "We All Try," a carefully made declaration from Frank Ocean’s breakthrough mixtape, nostalgia, ULTRA., the enigmatic singer proclaims: "I don’t believe in time travel." He does believe in war,...
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