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Bye Bye Blumberg
The first time I saw the band Yuck perform live, I had never heard of them. They were simply the group warming up for Smith Westerns on a Friday night at a hole in the wall in downtown Nashville. I saw their name on the marquee above the venue and thought “Yuck” sounded weird and…
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Mykki Blanco
The black and white flyers advertising Mykki Blanco’s performance are simple. “MYKKI BLANCO,” they announce in bold capitals, along with the time and location: April 4, 2013 / Terrace Club.
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Poetry As Rap
The world of contemporary poetry has a startling new voice—and it is one that sounds a lot like an MC. This voice is that of Michael Robbins, who had his first poem chosen by Paul Muldoon to be published in the New Yorker just last year, and who this past year published his first collection…
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The G.O.O.D KIDD
Lord forgive me things I don’t understand. I don’t get Kendrick Lamar. I like to pretend I do. I guess what I don’t understand is my relationship with his music, and what I imagine is his relationship with me as his listener, and, most importantly, his relationship with himself.
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What Yeezy Taught Me
I was wearing fresh white high-top Converse sneakers, untouched by the inevitability of unclean, unsacred journeys to come. A slight gap between the crisp canvas shoe and the hem of my tight, black, and somewhat shiny floral trousers exposed a thin dimension of my pasty leg. Tucked in to my pants, which I’d purchased in…
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Mischief Keef
Chief Keef is an 18 year old (though his age often contested) rapper from Chicago. He is best known for his songs “I Don’t Like”—with the notorious refrain “that’s that shit I don’t like”—and “Love Sosa”; these two songs respectively have 25 and 30 million views on YouTube; many of his other songs, like “3Hunna”…
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Fuckin’ Problems
In the middle of the night, Drake released a yearning slow-jam called “Girls Love Beyoncé.” It plods forward, and Drake sings unsteadily over a codeine-soaked sample of the Destiny’s Child classic “Say My Name.” He laments what fame has done to his love life and ability to connect with women, so the subject matter doesn’t…
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Tyler, the Creator
I got 99 problems, and all of ’em’s being happy,” bursts out Tyler Okonma—better known by his stage name Tyler, the Creator—on “Pigs,” one of the many disturbing looks inside the mind of this 22 year-old rapper on his new album Wolf. The pop-culture riff with a demented personal twist is Tyler’s signature move, and…
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Azealia Banks
Azealia Banks might just be the long awaited solution, or revolution, concerning misogyny in rap. The opening line of her hit, “212,” “Hey, I can be the answer,” is perhaps her subtle recognition of her position at the helm of constructive feminism in hip-hop. For years women have been voicing their frustration with the portrayal…
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Bubble Rap
As I walked back from precept on Wednesday something about the sickening humidity reminded me of a song my sister and I shared last July. And though I knew the two-day heat-wave to be cruel and short-lived, still I was lulled into summertime nostalgia by the eighty-degree April breeze.
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127 Unclaimed Rap Names
The Crying Game DJ Yung Educated But Unemployed Lil Drummer Boy Sofresh n’ Soclean Dion Adonis Morissette D(ean)J Rapelye Rudeboy Giuliani Duncan Hoy-Z Lil Peni$ Lil Italy Lil Lion Man Lil Caesars Pizza Kings ?uest Missy Eliot Linton Missy Michelle Obama Lisa “Left Eye” Kudrow Kim Jong (F)un(k) Emilio Pucci Mane MatisYahoo! King Latifah Lil…
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Fuck Tha Police
The next song is very, very deep, but if I want to translate it, it’s fuck the police.” So Da Arabian Mc’s (DAM) introduced one of their final songs on Thursday.