The Roots Save Their Sour Notes for the Quizzically Bleak ‘…And Then You...
In this post-Internet age of cross-platform synergy as condo down-payment survival, the Roots have flourished. There is the band on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, an incredible sight for...
View ArticleKendrick Lamar Has Already Won in Every Way, But Sure, He’ll Take a Grammy Too
Back in 2009, just as Kendrick Lamar began to gain notice on blogs such as 2dopeboyz.com, he offered this lyric on "I Am (Interlude)," from his self-titled EP: "See, y’all don’t understand me / My plan...
View ArticleReview: Open Mike Eagle and Paul White Get Up Close and Well, You Know, on...
If the late, lamented revolutionary poet Gil Scott-Heron was a college-bound poet today, he might be writing raps in the vein of Open Mike Eagle. The comparison isn’t so far-fetched; Eagle cuts through...
View ArticleSPIN R&B Report: Tweet Flutters Back Into View, K. Michelle Puts the Real in...
Yes, there’s more to R&B in early 2016 than Anderson .Paak. The Los Angeles dynamo has been rightly lionized for blending hip-hop, pimpish soul, and skate-park pop on his second album Malibu,...
View ArticleReview: Come Test Death Grips and Get Sliced on ‘Bottomless Pit’
Four years ago, Death Grips exemplified the anti-corporate violence and rugged individualism of black-bloc anarchism. The tattooed and bearded Stefan Burnett boomed and growled like a punk incarnation...
View ArticleLife After Death Row: A Guide to Snoop Dogg’s Post-‘Doggystyle’ Career
The quarter-century-long career of Calvin Broadus — a.k.a. Snoop Doggy Dogg — is full of contradictions. He’s a husband and father whose devotion to his family is evident in such heartwarming reality...
View ArticleReview: NAO Fumbles Toward Ecstasy on ‘For All We Know’
British R&B singer Neo Joshua has charted a slow — yet inexorable — path to her own startling breakout moment. She entered as one-fifth of the Boxettes, a quintet that earned some notice in 2011...
View ArticleReview: Rae Sremmurd Dim the Fun, Along With the Lights, on ‘SremmLife 2′
Last year, it was impossible to go anywhere — a nightclub, a rooftop barbecue, even the supermarket — without hearing the manically gleeful chants of Rae Sremmurd. The brothers Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi...
View ArticleSPIN R&B Report: Yuna Props Up Woozy Soul With Smelling Salts, Laura Mvula...
While the world spent much of this year waiting for Frank Ocean, R&B continued to evolve. This season’s picks illustrate that there’s a thriving crop of sounds beyond the pop and social-media...
View ArticleFreddie Gibbs and Madlib Craft a Deft, Eccentric Street-Rap Epic on ‘Pinata’
7 SPIN Rating: 7 of 10Release Date: March 18, 2014Label: Madlib Invazion Piñata, the full-length collaboration between 21st-century gangster rapper Freddie Gibbs and 31st-century producer Madlib,...
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