Will Hagle goes in on the newest album from the New York spitter.

Steven Louis waxes poetic on the rap legend's excellent new album.

Max Bell is not against rap or those thugs. Freddie Gibbs rose from scary Gary to Interscope refugee to widespread critical adoration. Some argue that the dexterous Gibbs can rap well over anything. Yet his last album, E.S.G.N. received mixed reviews.  The album was solid, but it was also what you’d expect too. It didn’t help […]

“Forever and Always” is the anchor bolt embedded in Foundation.  Were you unfamiliar with Warriorz, Firing Squad, First Family 4 Life, you’d understand MOP’s entire aesthetic in four minutes flat. Sure, there’s something trite about a “we still ain’t changed” track from a pair of New York 90s stalwarts who rap like Brownsville was a […]

Originally Published at the LA Times 3.5 stars out of 4 Woody Allen once opined that 80 percent of success is showing up, an adage that proves especially accurate when applied to the music of Al Green. Since the 62-year-old son of a sharecropper paired with Willie Mitchell for 1969’s “Green Is Blues,” every time […]

Last November, Zeus wrote a post dissecting the differences between albums and mixtapes for the benefit of crits and fans who had been mistakenly conflating Pusha-T rhyming over old G-Unit beats for high art. It happens. The post may have been a tad heavy-handed, but its point was salient. More often than not, mixtapes lack […]

One of the more frustrating things about hip-hop heads*, specifically those old enough to remember the first two Golden Ages, is the general groupthink that no hip-hop album made today can possibly be as great as anything made during 88-96. This is just how it goes. Nostalgia is a motherfucker and no matter how dope […]

Indeed. As is any compilation that features the song from the clip above, which you may remember from the opening credits of the very excellent Ghost World. Thanks to crate-digger and ex-Stylus alum Todd Hutlock, I’ve been listening non-stop to  Doob Doob O’ Rama Filmsongs of Bollywood for the past 24 hours. Recorded in the […]

No, the three and a half (out of four) stars that I tossed to II Trill does not mean that I have resolved to only rock 22 inch rims and sip syrup in my candy-colored Caddy. Nor does it mean this blog is about to turn into a Paul Wall, Lil Flip or Mike Jones […]

Regardless of what you think of their music, you’ve got to respect Wolf Parade. When Apologies to the Queen Mary dropped in late 2005 and every music journo prematurely slapped “next Arcade Fire” tags on them, they could’ve easily played the comparison to the hilt by touring relentlessly, making themselves available to everyone with a […]