When the mainstream popularity of rap music elevated in the late 1980s, it often did so with the help of inventive sampling. While many samples came from the R&B funk world, clever hip-hop artists and ...

“Arguing” is… arguably the sixth pillar of hip-hop. The game has changed, but our need to fight about it constantly remains intact. From “Who has the loudest soundsystem?” to “Who sounds the best over ...

At various points in my previous articles, I have at least pointed to the fact that I, having been born in the 2000s, had to learn about hip-hop out of order, at least compared to those who had been ...

I dedicate this article to Mark Fisher, whose writing on themes that run close to S.T.A.R.V.E.’s heart serves as another intertextual source of power for the LP. In 2014, Fisher wrote: "The pandemic ...

The removal of Kendrick Lamar and SZA‘s “luther” from the Billboard Hot 100 chart has reignited the heated debate of rap’s decline in 2025. The conversations are unsurprising when this is the first ...