It's a thrilling time for rap music as digital platforms have drastically changed how performers craft, circulate, and promote their art. No longer are rappers constrained by traditional gatekeepers like record labels or radio stations who would dictate what could be released based upon marketability...
album you can let rock from front to back, but Snoop’s star turn on “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang” and the Eazy-E and Luke diss track “F—k Wit Dre Day” were staples on the charts (and, with their unforgettable accompanying visuals, on music video stations like MTV and The ...
even as suburban mall rats and inner-city kids continue to snap up the album at a furious pace. He is the first white artist in the history of the music to be widely played on rap radio stations in black urban areas.
This turnaround is especially dramatic because rap was first dismissed by white rock fans as the enemy--some strange bastard offspring of disco. Rock radio stations resisted it. Even critics outside New York sidestepped it, except for an occasional socially conscious record such as Grandmaster Fl...
The radio freestyle is alive, it just looks a lot different than it used to. Funk Flex’s days of gatekeeping are long gone. Noteworthy freestyles happen less and less on nationally syndicated stations, as more regionally-targeted online platforms emerge. One is On the Radar Rad...
‘s Radio Songs and Pop Songs charts — a rarity in a time when hip-hop streaming smashes by the likes of Uzi, Lil Pump and Trippie Redd were barely even being touched by Top 40 stations. It all added up to Juice WRLD emerging as one of the biggest new rap or rock stars of the...
I wasn't allowed to play urban stations on my clock radio when I went to sleep as a kid, but that didn't stop me much. Between 1977 and 1980,Soul Traincame on at 1 a.m., right afterSaturday Night Livewent off. Why my parents were so strict with some things and lenient with ...
Find a high school or college party in Memphis that did not have wall-to-wall youth pumping their arms in bicep curl fashion while hopping back and forth on one leg. At the tender age of 17, Emanuel Patterson (now 27) shook dj’s and local radio stations with an unexpected release of...
and since there are so few people willing to be that ruggedly independent these days I’ll give him a pound (or dollar) and say “Thank you man.” I don’t need Klash to do a pop hit, I need him to tell pop music to smeg off and keep doing his t’ing the way only he can....
all you need is music that’s at your level. You could mistake the brash beats of “Say it to Me” for a “Fizzyology” song in the best way, which makes his humility lyrically all the more surprising when he says “It took near a decade to find my voice.” You wouldn’t think...