Here's something funny: Gucci Mane records a goofy-ass song called "Scarface," which is all about his stupid, ridiculous face-tattoo of an ice-cream cone with lightning bolts coming out of it, and…   Read Story »

When the Weeknd and Frank Ocean were getting famous and reaping tons of critical love last year, a small but vocal cabal of R&B-friendly critics carped that the indie rock writers of the world,…   Read Story »

Iron Chef came out a couple of weeks ago, and it hasn't appeared in this column yet because I was initially drawn to a couple of more immediate tapes: DJ Paul's bleary-eyed hardhead marathon For I…   Read Story »

For at least an hour after Meek Mill released his Dreamchasers 2 tape on Monday, the mixtape download site DatPiff was overloaded with traffic and basically couldn't function at all. In rap's current…   Read Story »

Rap music generally depends heavily on status and confidence: The best guys are the guys who mange to convince us of their complete dominance, and who assemble teams of like-minded guys behind them.…   Read Story »

Back in 2005, I went to a Jay-Z show in New Jersey, and one of my favorite music critics gave me a ride back to New York in his Mercedes, a car that would give me radically unrealistic ideas about…   Read Story »

In this little corner of the internet, things were slow this week. The week's big mixtape is French Montana's Coke Boys 3, the Bronx MC's first tape since his slow-burner "Shot Caller" went…   Read Story »

I've seen the massively bearded, dependably sincere Ohio rapper Stalley live twice. The first was about five months ago at the University of Virginia, where he opened for Kendrick Lamar. Booked…   Read Story »

I wasn't too fond of Relax, the 2011 Das Racist album that, I guess, was supposed to launch the group into a whole different realm, but they're quietly having a pretty great 2012. Kool A.D.'s The…   Read Story »

This past weekend, I jumped on a Bolt Bus up to New York to sit on a panel at the EMP Pop Conference with a bunch of my friends. The Pop Conference uses popular music as a jumping-off point to start…   Read Story »