“Looking back on my life as a woman in the music industry, I’m unsettled by the inescapable sexism perpetrated by Sean Combs and others.”
hip-hop
Posted inEditor's Pick
André 3000 Is at Peace (For Now)
“One of the greatest rappers of our time in conversation with one of the most lauded culture writers alive on freedom, fame, flutes, and the burning question: ‘You gonna put some beats on that shit?’”
Posted inEditor's Pick
“In My Mind I Was Already Gone”: The Endless End of Outkast
“Twenty years after the release of ‘Speakerboxxx’/’The Love Below,’ we chart how the creation of André 3000 and Big Boi’s fifth studio album became the start of Outkast’s ending.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Evolution of the Hip-Hop Hunk
“One fan’s journey through rap’s pursuit of the female gaze, from LL Cool J to Tupac to Drake.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Too Short’s Long (and Very Raunchy) Life in Rap
“The West Coast rapper is an unsung pioneer of some of the genre’s most central elements.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Remembering the Rappers We Lost
“Biggie. Tupac. DMX. We pay tribute to 63 stars who died too young.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Lost Ones
“Sometimes you encounter a song that will not fade away, though you never hear it again.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The (Un)holy Gospel of Suga Free
“There’s a thin line between isolation and serenity, and Suga Free needs nobody but Suga Free.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
How Bay Area Hip-Hop Found Its Sound in the 1980s
“How is a discussion about street dancers connected to an exploration of the Bay Area hip-hop sound? It’s important to understand the conditions under which the genre emerged locally.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Hip-Hop at Fifty: An Elegy
“A generation is still dying younger than it should—this time, of ‘natural causes.'”