During his 18 months in the national spotlight, Juice WRLD was consumed by the concept of death, which offered a neat, compact metaphor for his infinite emotional suffering. As he emerged in 2018 as one of pop’s most vital young voices, he described himself in his music as someone circling …
Read More »'Blue Story' Uses Hip-Hop Beats to Bring Mythic Weight to British Youth-Gang Drama
U.K. YouTube star Rapman, born Andrew Onwubolu in South-East London, makes a sensational feature debut as writer, director, and actor. His trilogy of short films dubbed Shiro’s Story went viral in 2018 and that energy continues to combust in Blue Story, his first cinema calling-card. On the surface, the plot …
Read More »DaBaby Plays the Blame Game on 'Blame It On Baby'
On April 23, 1985, a billion-dollar beverage company felt the heel of a boot descending on its windpipe. Coca-Cola’s rival, Pepsi, was everything the late 19th-century drink was not — smooth, new, and sweet enough to quench the carbonated corn syrup-addled taste buds of the Reagan era. Instead of riding …
Read More »Jay Electronica's Debut Album Is Real, and It's Finally Here
Until it arrived on Thursday night in the midst of a pandemic, almost no one could assert one way or another whether Jay Electronica‘s album was actually going to appear. He — and his label, Jay Z’s Roc Nation — had stoked the fires, and rumors abounded, including that this …
Read More »Lil Uzi Vert's 'Eternal Atake' Lived Up to the Hype. This Is How It Came Together
Like most hip-hop fans, the Philadelphia producer Ike Beatz went to sleep on Thursday night, doing his best to will a new Lil Uzi Vert album — the first since 2017 — into existence. Even though Ike claims he hasn’t seen the rapper in four years, the producer worked on …
Read More »Kanye West's 'Jesus Is King' Still Sounds Like a Work-in-Progress
On Sunday night, Kanye West brought Jesus Is King: A Kanye West Experience, his impromptu album-plus documentary premiere event, to New York. What he played — a working version of Jesus Is King — is incomplete. The event itself, announced with mere hours’ notice (though West’s fans didn’t seem to …
Read More »Rapper Tay-K Convicted of Murder and Aggravated Robbery
Tay-K, the rapper who went viral thanks to video for “The Race” in 2017, was found guilty of murder and three counts of aggravated robbery, according to Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Fox 4 News. The rapper, whose real name is Taymore McIntyre, is looking at five to 99 years in …
Read More »Future's Freewheeling EP 'Save Me'
Future‘s desolate sing-croon is partially responsible for swaths of chart-topping SoundCloud rap, a generation of hitmakers prioritizing depression over bluster, moods over bars and self-exploration over braggadocio. However, a whopping 19(!) Future releases since his 2012 breakthrough,Pluto, it’s not exactly certain how andifthe elder statesmen of contemporary Xanax blues fits …
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