Kanye West dropped a (finished) new single – No More Parties in LA – featuring Kendrick Lamar, over Madlib/Kanye (but mostly, clearly Madlib) production. Hard to know if this makes SWISH, which is apparently coming sooner than later. If the track…

The New will feature hiphop from emerging artists, or artists/scenes bubbling just below the surface. This week features bluesy and soulful, uber-talented Oxnard, Cali native (and Dr. Dre co-signed) Anderson .Paak, with his excellent new album Malibu. (Don’t worry, The…

Welcome back to the The Catch Up, an mini-update/communique from America, on the latest happenings. This past week saw Kanye (somewhat) politely making a request ahead of SWISH, news on Heems’ new television deal, and a resurgent Charles Hamilton comes…

To understand where hip-hop is going, like everything else, we must review where it’s been – and where it hasn’t. The latter refers to the seismic shift in rap and hip-hop that stemmed from the Dec. 17, 1991, ruling on…

Welcome back to the The Catch Up, an mini-update/communique from America, on the latest happenings. This week saw the releases (at least the streams) of new material from notables MPC monster araabMUZIK, New Orleans spitter Curren$y, and the forever emo…

More so than any other genre except jazz, hip-hop’s merits have been built up, brought down, and deconstructed in ways innumerable. This was best verbalized in Mos Def’s “Fear Not of Man,” from his 1999 classic solo debut, Black on Both…

Welcome to the Catch-Up, a quick rundown of American hip-hop culture. In the last seven days, we saw Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole traded beats, Drake (sort of) responds to Adele‘s “Hotline Bling” request, KOOL A.D. dropped 100-track album (yes…

Understanding hip-hop just isn’t not possible with understanding its origins, to include the samples used from soul and funk, in order to understand its cadences and bounce. Arguably two of the most important and ubiquitous songs/samples in the history of music,…

Perhaps not an outright death of rap lyrics, but something has happened – and it started in the most unlikely of places.   “The game’s fucked up N****’s beats is bangin’, n**** your hooks did it Your lyrics didn’t, your…