The Golden Age of Delicious Vinyl
June 15, 2018

The Golden Age of Delicious Vinyl

Delicious Vinyl put out legendary hip-hop titles between 1989 and 1995, and the Los Angeles-based classic label’s catalog of West Coast party rock and conscious rap still gets play, on radio and at functions worldwide.

Their iconic catalog includes smash hits “Wild Thing” (on Tone-Lōc’s Lōc-ed After Dark) and “Bust a Move” (on Young MC’s Stone Cold Rhymin’), as well as groundbreaking albums by Masta Ace Incorporated, which married West Coast and East Coast sensibilities, and the sensational second album from Pharcyde, Labcabincalifornia, which was responsible for launching the career of producer extraordinaire J Dilla, who contributed to six songs including the immortal “Runnin’.”All this music connects the dots between the early Def Jam sound, hip-hop’s migration to the west coast, and micro-eras of sample-based production. You’ll find sounds analogous to Rick Rubin’s booming, stark production for Run-DMC; the Beastie Boys’ record-store-in-a-blender album Paul’s Boutique; and a smoothed-out, funky angle similar to groups like Hieroglyphics.

With Craft Recordings re-releasing key Delicious Vinyl albums in summer 2018, a bunch of that music is now back in circulation, waiting for your trip down memory lane or maybe first-time listening experience.

The Agony and Ecstasy Of Loving Nas

The Agony and Ecstasy Of Loving Nas

Be sure to subscribe to our playlist, The 40 Best Nas Tracks Not on Illmatic, right here.Nas’ 1994 debut Illmatic is not only considered his best album, but is regarded as the best hip-hop album ever, full stop. And with good reason: that album revolutionized the genre. Nas captured the ruinous glory of post-crack N.Y.C.. By suggesting that drugs were both empowering and destructive, his lyrics alternately embraced and rejected the idea of ghetto glamour, etching out bits of hard-won wisdom amongst Nas’ piercing observational storytelling. His word-drunk, casual cadences redefined how emcees could rap. And this was all done over peak boom bap production from DJ Premier, Pete Rock, and Q-Tip, among others.But, at this point, it’s boring to talk about Illmatic, or to say that Nas lives it its shadow. It’s a boilerplate narrative, and a lazy, rote mythologization. To be honest, many of the ideas and even a few of the observations I made in the first paragraph were recycled from the various times in my career when I’ve been tasked with paying homage to that particular lodestar. But what happened after Illmatic, and the various ways that his fans and critics have reacted to that output, is a lot more interesting.In the ensuing years (and decades), Nas continued to evolve and experiment, cycling through different personas and tackling difficult concepts, both personal and political. He wasn’t always successful; there are peaks and valleys, and he failed as often as he succeeded. At times, his work has been baffling and self-annihilating, full of contradictions and strange discursions. For every blazingly brilliant observational detail, there’s a weird sex rap or a confounding historical inaccuracy. And Nas, himself, is frequently unlovable. He’s aloof and enigmatic. He’s flirted with messianic imagery and has been accused of abusing his ex-wife. Sometimes it seemed that his fans -- and I count myself among them -- spent as much time apologizing for him as listening to his music. But, the truth is, we’ve hung on. We’ve bought into the idea of his brilliance; we’ve subscribed to his narrative. Sure, it’s a messy and uneven journey, and it’s frequently hard to stomach him, much less listen to his music, but, in a way, that makes him feel more human. He’s not a face on Mt. Rushmore, and he doesn’t carry the extra-human weight of aDylan or B.I.G., but his flaws ground him, and bring his flashes of otherworldly brilliance into stark relief.There has effectively been five distinct Nas periods. The first is Illmatic, which is a deeply autobiographical work that captures key parts of Nas’ childhood. By the time that he re-entered the studio to record 1996’s It Was Written, he had largely abandoned this direct approach. Taking a cue from Raekwon and Ghostface -- who had, the year before, released Only Built for Cuban Linx -- Nas took on the persona of drug lord Nas Escobar. His cadences seem were more calculated and precise, alternately more accomplished and less poetic, and though some of the imagery from that album was still culled from Nas’ childhood in the Queensbridge projects, tracks such as “Live Nigga Rap” and “Street Dreams” were conscious fictions -- Miami-sized coke rap fantasies that were cinematic in scope. He would continue mining this persona over his next two albums, Nastradamus and I Am. The artistic failure of those two albums has been widely overstated -- it’s hard to entirely dismiss albums that produced tracks like “Project Windows,” “Nas is Like,” and “NY State of Mind, Pt. II” -- but by the turn of the millennium, there was little doubt that the Nas’ Escobar persona had run out of steam, so Nas switched it up, beginning with 2001’s comeback album Stillmatic and continuing with 2002’s mid-period high-water-mark God’s Son. His narrative strategy here was more straightforward and reflective, which many took to be a return to the autobiographical raps of Illmatic, but tracks like “Get Down” and “2nd Childhood” were older, wiser, and less nihilistic. They were the stories of a survivor, and not a soldier. And though the role of the “street prophet” was always part of Nas’ persona -- see “Black Girl Lost” from It Was Written -- this period also saw him increasingly turning to socio-political themes. It felt that Nas had reclaimed his glory, and, for at least a minute, his fans reemerged from their closets and re-appointed Nas as the GOAT.This particular stylistic era reached a climax on 2004’s Street’s Disciple. There were moments of greatness on that album, but it was a messy, sprawling double album, and was a relative commercial disappointment. When, in a 2011 interview between Nas and Tyler, The Creator for XXL magazine, the Odd Future frontman admitted that Street’s Disciple was his favorite album, Nas seemed shocked. But Tyler’s reaction is understandable. The album contains some genuinely brilliant material, and the fact that it’s been overlooked makes it seem more personal to his fans. It’s something that we, and we alone, own. Still, the lukewarm reception caused Nas to recalibrate. To put it bluntly, Nas was aging. He was a wealthy, veteran rapper who, at that point, was over 10 years removed from the street life and struggling to adopt a credible public persona. In lieu of this, he withdrew himself from his music, and released a string of high-concept albums that were oriented around a series of thematic conceits. Hip-Hop Is Dead, from 2006, looked at the supposed-demise of hip-hop. It was a moody album that mourned the genre’s childhood innocence and the inondation of commercialism. It was by no means brilliant, and I can’t imagine anyone putting it in their top 3 Nas albums, but its melancholy made it compelling. The follow-up, 2008’s Untitled, looked at race relations in America. The album was originally called Nigger, which, as you can imagine, garnered a sharply mixed response. Nas was still considered a commercial and cultural force, and the title drew criticism from camps as disparate as Al Sharpton and Bill O’Reilly. Eventually, Nas conceded to the pressure, and named it simply Untitled. Putting the controversy aside, it wasn’t a particularly great album, but there are some crucial tracks, including the spare lyrical workout “Queens Get the Money,” and the crunchy, aggressive “Money Over Bullshit.” But it’s legacy was tainted by allegations that Jay Electronica had ghostwritten some of the tracks. Though never proven, it put Nas fans in a familiar space, making excuses and equivocating.Regardless of the album’s authorship, at this point, in his career and in his life, it’s fair to say that Nas had lost his narrative. He was no longer at forefront of hip-hop, either culturally or commercially, and his marriage to R&B singer Kelis had produced a child but ended in a divorce (years later, Kelis would claim that Nas had abused her; and regardless of whether or not that is true, at the very least, it pointed towards a tumultuous relationship). He did what many of us would in his situation: he took some time off. 2012’s comeback album Life is Good was Nas’ most personal work to date, and one of his most compelling. It’s a deeply ambiguous work -- the cover finds him clutching Kelis’ wedding dress, and the entire album is coated in ennuie and disappointment. The opening track, “No Introduction,” is a biography-in-miniature and directly tackles the dissolution of his marriage. Over a lush production from Miami production unit (and frequent Rick Ross collaborators) J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, the song begins with Nas embarrassed, standing in line for a free lunch at elementary school, and ends with the admission that he’s aging and seeking an ever-elusive closure. This sense of melancholy is present throughout that album. The track “Bye Baby” tackles his divorce head-on, while “A Queens Story” traces the arcs of his friendships, and ends with the starkly ambivalent image of Nas the “only black in a club of rich yuppie kids,” getting hammered as he recalls the images of his dead friends.Life is Good would’ve made an appropriate swan song, and he could’ve rode out in the sunset at this point with his legacy intact, but, of course, this didn’t happen, and the follow up, 2018’s Nasir, felt like a retreat of sorts. It was billed as a collaborative album with Kanye West, which seems like every hip-hop fans wet dream (at least in 2005). And while there are certainly flashes of greatness (most notably on “Adam and Eve,” where Nas wrestles with his legacy, both to his public and his children), the emcee sounds strangely detached. He’s abandoned his narrative raps, and his ability to twist the details of his life into poetic imagery fail him. “Not for Radio” more-or-less recycles the vibe and themes of “N.I.*.*.E.R” from Untitled wholesale, except with much-diminished returns, while the seven-minute-long “everything” feels maudlin, and strangely anchors itself around an anti-vaccination rant. But most of all, it's what's missing that's important. Considering that Nas has always been such an honest and forthcoming emcee, it's odd that he didn’t address Kelis’ allegations of domestic abuse. Nas is far from the only pop culture figure to suffer from such allegations, and there has been no supporting evidence, but his silence reads as guilt. Nas fans have defended him many times over the years for a variety of transgressions, but this is probably the most troubling.But, like I said in the beginning, it’s not easy being a Nas fan. At times, he seems god-like and invisible, while at others, he's impossibly bitter and even loathsome. But you take the good with the bad, and hope the former outweighs the latter, as it frequently does. If he would’ve ended his career after It Was Written, he would’ve left the hip-hop with two concise, blazingly brilliant albums, and would’ve been talked about in the same breath as Biggie or Pac, but his subsequent material has revealed him as being merely human, but, in the end, we’re still here, for better and worse.

The Best Hip-Hop Tracks of 2018 (So Far)
June 28, 2018

The Best Hip-Hop Tracks of 2018 (So Far)

Hip-hop in 2018 is in a weird place. There’s a million miles between the narcotized beats and nihilistic rhymes of the Soundcloud set and the more nuanced lyrics and big beats of a Kendrick Lamar or Pusha T. To paraphrase Yeats, the center is pretty jacked. Still, there are some central themes that run through many of the year’s best tracks: a desperation about where we are as a country and a culture, and a desire to change this. You can hear it in Childish Gambino’s “This is America” as well as Huncho Jack’s great “Modern Slavery.” The malaise underlines everything from JPEGMAFIA’s “Baby I’m Bleeding” to Kanye’s “Ghosttown.” We’ve still got a lot of time left in this year, but though there has not been an unqualified album-length masterpiece (maybe Pusha T came closest, but that’s hardly even an album), there are new amazing singles coming out nearly every week. We’ve collected our favorites here, and we’ll be updating this throughout the year.

The Top 50 Hip-Hop Tracks of 2018
January 5, 2019

The Top 50 Hip-Hop Tracks of 2018

It’s 2018, and the economy (for now) is booming. We live in an age in which we consume more pop culture and feel worse about it than ever before. We are more aware of the taboos and criminal acts that percolate beyond the stage lights, if not beyond the withering gaze of social media. We look for heroes, and everyone seems to be found wanting--too flawed, too corrupt.When you survive a chaotic, contentious year like this one--most fans will agree it wasn’t great, but will debate just how bad it was--you narrow your gaze from the forest and turn towards the trees. There is Pusha T’s Daytona, a marvel of economy and caustic wit. There were innovations that worked, such as Tierra Whack’s medley of minute-long pop R&B and rap suites, Whack World. There were innovations that didn’t work, like G.O.O.D. Music’s summer series of EP-length albums, all produced by Kanye West, which after a strong opening with Daytona went rapidly downhill from there. There was the surprisingly poignant return of Lil Wayne, the one-time child star who has grown into an elder statesman after a series of tragic, near-fatal setbacks. There was a boomlet of fast-talking, sexually-forthright women who dazzled rap aficionados, even as a true commercial breakthrough for them (save for City Girls’ appearance on Drake’s “In My Feelings”) remained just out of reach.Rap has atomized so much that it’s possible to ignore the headline-grabbing noise and simply find something you like. Fans of idiosyncratic street-rap flows glorified 03 Greedo, Key!, and Maxo Kream. Meat-and-potatoes backpackers contented themselves with PRhyme and Roc Marciano. Followers of the Chicago school of poetic, jazzy lyricism flocked to Noname and Saba’s new work. In the Bay Area, there was SOB x RBE, Mozzy and Nef the Pharaoh. In Los Angeles, there was Nipsey Hussle and Jay Rock. In New York, there was Sheck Wes and Flatbush Zombies.However, hip-hop culture remains a consensus culture. We exult in its nooks and crannies, its regional curiosities and local flavors, but we turn to the mainstream to make sense of it all. Cardi B, a woman whose big, boisterous personality and social media prowess outpaced her musical talent, proved an unusual choice for Most Valuable Player. Drake is Drake, and with nearly a decade of sad-boy vocals and tough-titty bars in his catalog, he seemingly has few surprises left to offer. Travis Scott is a blockbusting Michael Bay of rap, all maximalist noise that signifies nothing. The less said about Post Malone, the better. Future, J Cole, A$AP Rocky, YG, Nicki Minaj...they seemed to falter in 2018 with work that paled in comparison to past glories.In 2002, another semi-lousy year for hip-hop concluded with the promise of 50 Cent’s “Wanksta,” and the following twelve months brought Jay-Z’s triumphant “retirement,” OutKast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, T.I.’s Trap Muzik and the commercialization of crunk. Today, hope continues to animate a culture that’s poised to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” next year. Who will rehabilitate this aging genre and prevent its deterioration into bland rap singing and Spotifycore? Who’s going to take the weight?

Fond Farewells: 26 Posthumous Gems

Fond Farewells: 26 Posthumous Gems

There’s no pain exactly like losing a musician you love. Partaking in good art can’t help but feel like a communion between oneself and the work’s author, so even if we never get the chance to meet our favorite creators in real life, the loss of one feels deeply personal. Not to mention the collected weight of all those songs that will never be written, and concerts never performed. Add to this the complicated nature of mourning a public figure — whose private life and struggles are often known only to their family and friends — and, well, it’s just brutal.That’s why posthumous songs, while so often a source of strife between labels and artists’ estates, can be so soothing to us fans. They give us a chance to remember the musicians as they were (consider Sublime’s “What I Got”) or as they might be right now (Avicii’s “Heaven”). They let us feel grateful for what we had (Bob Marley’s “Give Thanks & Praises”) or pissed off over what we lost (Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”). Sometimes they play like a final missive from beyond (John Lennon’s “Woman”). Often they’re prophetic (Tupac’s “To Live and Die in L.A.”). And occasionally they’re just big, beatific shrugs (Mac Miller on “That’s Life”).Some of these songs were released within days of the artist’s passing, and most came within a year. But all of them feel imbued with some extra meaning, from the sad irony of the opener, Hank Williams’ “I Ain’t Got Nothin’ but Time,” to the hard-fought optimism of the closer, Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Music heals, so grab a tissue box and hit play.

Your Music Horoscope: Cancer Season
July 9, 2019

Your Music Horoscope: Cancer Season

Astrology has become a cultural phenomenon—horoscopes and astrology memes are prevalent on social media, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a millennial who doesn’t know their astrological sign. Apps like Co-Star and The Pattern are thriving on the promise of A.I.-gathered birth-chart insights, and astrology columns are published in almost every major online brand targeting young people. Whether or not our zodiac signs have any actual impact on our day-to-day lives, the study of the movements of the planets and their pseudo scientific meanings brings people together on a mass scale.From June 21 to July 22, the world is in the season of Cancer, symbolically depicted as a crab. Cancers are generally understood to be sensitive, nurturing, and a little bit mysterious. In celebration of the cardinal water sign, this playlist is a collection of some of the most iconic pop, hip-hop, and R&B songs made by Cancer musicians.From Vince Staples to Ariana Grande, Solange, Lana Del Rey, and Post Malone, some of the 2010s’ most beloved artists were born under the Cancer sun. While we lean contemporary here (after all, astrology is ultra-trendy), the playlist wouldn’t be a proper dedication to the zodiac sign without including quintessential tracks from older-school Cancers Missy Elliott, M.I.A., and 50 Cent. These Cancer classics are a fun, mystical way to get into the season.Photo by Max Hirschberger

Your Music Horoscope: Leo Season
August 2, 2019

Your Music Horoscope: Leo Season

Astrology’s pretty ancient, but we’re here for it as a modern-day cultural phenomenon—horoscopes and astrology memes are delightfully prevalent on social media, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a millennial who doesn’t know the ins and outs of their sign. Whether or not the zodiac has any actual impact on our day-to-day lives, it’s definitely affecting our listening habits every month with this ongoing playlist series in which we corral our favorite hit makers born under the current sign.That’s it, Cancers; Leo season has arrived. As of July 23, the astrological sign said to be ruled by the energy of the sun casts a bright, vivacious, peak-summer spell over the earth for a month. A fire sign, Leo is symbolized by the lion and is a playful, daring, and commanding sign. According to astrological wisdom, people with this zodiac sign have no shortage of confidence, are beloved for their loyalty and reliability, and are brave beyond comparison.For the latest installment in our series of music horoscopes, we’re celebrating some of our favorite hits made by Leo artists in recent years. Whether it’s country queen Kacey Musgraves cleverly calling out bullies on “High Horse,” bubblegum rapper DRAM flexing with stacks of money on “Cash Machine,” or pop chanteuse Dua Lipa nonchalantly cutting off an ex-lover on “IDGAF,” this playlist is full of fun, bold Leo energy. Some classics like Jennifer Lopez’s “Jenny from the Block—Track Masters Remix,” Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me),” and Kelis’ “Bossy” also make appearances, for it wouldn’t be a Leo season playlist without honoring the original divas. This radiant, spirited playlist is the perfect complement to sunny days.

The OGs of Emo-Rap
August 22, 2019

The OGs of Emo-Rap

In the dawning weeks of 2019, Spotify declared that “emo-rap” was the previous year’s fastest-rising genre. While the term had, by then, come to be associated with a fresh crop of post-genre, pro-feelings artists like XXXtentacion, Lil Peep, Lil Uzi Vert, and Juice WRLD, back in the early ’00s it had a different association. Inspired by the artsy, socially conscious likes of Project Blowed out west and Native Tongues back east, a small but creatively mighty wave of experimentally minded MCs and beatmakers had emerged in the ’90s from the underground tape-trading scene. By the decade’s end, they had congealed into a handful of seminal record label/collectives, each with its own regional flavor but all often derisively referred to by hip-hop purists as “emo-rap.”

The brashest camp was anticon., whose members had relocated from various points across the U.S. to Oakland, where wordsmiths like Sole, Doseone, and WHY? basked in the Bay Area’s scrappy boho-hippie vibe and kitchen-sink approach to art. The coolest by far was New York’s Definitive Jux, headed by El-P (who’d later become half of Run the Jewels) and heralded by Cannibal Ox, a duo so captivatingly cutting-edge that Elvis Costello was known to name-drop them in interviews. Meanwhile, Minnesota’s Rhymesayers Entertainment held it down for the blue-collar, lovelorn, bad-childhood types—a lane that Atmosphere carved out brilliantly before finding broader success on (in hindsight rather fittingly) the Warped Tour circuit.

There were posse projects and crossovers (cLOUDDEAD, Deep Puddle Dynamics), rivalries and outliers (Nova Scotia’s Buck 65, Los Angeles’ Busdriver). But whether it’s Sage Francis tracing his sister’s self-inflicted wounds on “Inherited Scars,” Alias converting depression into revelation on “Watching Water,” or Aesop Rock bundling a life’s worth of observation into one glorious tumble of words, this is, was, and forever will be the original emo-rap.

Your Music Horoscope: Virgo Season
September 6, 2019

Your Music Horoscope: Virgo Season

Astrology’s pretty ancient, but we’re here for it as a modern-day cultural phenomenon—horoscopes and astrology memes are delightfully prevalent on social media, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a millennial who doesn’t know the ins and outs of their sign. Whether or not the zodiac has any actual impact on our day-to-day lives, it’s definitely affecting our listening habits every month with this ongoing playlist series in which we corral our favorite hit makers born under the current sign.With the end of summer comes the start of Virgo season on August 23. Symbolized by the modest maiden, the earth sign is ruled by Mercury, the Roman god of communication, eloquence, and boundaries. Virgos are the idealists of the zodiac, always well-organized and practical as they delve into the finer details of life.In the selection of tracks for our music horoscope playlist, you’ll find “Clarity” by Kim Petras, “Drive Safe” by Rich Brian, and “Overdue” by Metro Boomin, on which some of our favorite newer artists embrace their tender hearts in true Virgo spirit. We also mix in some classics––Cassie fantasizes about the most efficient way to approach her crush on “Me & U,” Nas paints a world free of injustice, racism, and destruction on “If I Ruled the World,” and Amy Winehouse takes a methodical approach to keeping a relationship in the friend zone on “Just Friends.” Beyoncé, Jay Electronica, and Tayla Parx are also featured. Use this playlist as a soundtrack for the last days of summer as you channel Virgo energy and get back into a routine.Photo courtesy of Parkwood Entertainment

Isaac Hayes Sampled: 50 Years of ‘Hot Buttered Soul’
September 30, 2019

Isaac Hayes Sampled: 50 Years of ‘Hot Buttered Soul’

There was nothing like Hot Buttered Soul, the luxuriant, expansive, exploratory soul album by Isaac Hayes, when it was released in 1969. Given complete creative control, the Stax producer and songwriter stretched out figuratively and literally, two of its four tracks stretching past the 10-minute mark, exploding with strings and horns. It turned Hayes from songwriter to sensation to icon. His style—soulful, cinematic, assured, lush, deeply arranged—would win him an Academy Award for his theme song to 1971’s Shaft and earn him a headlining spot soon after at the historic Wattstax concert.In the ’80s and ’90s, Hayes found most of his success as a film and TV star, but hip-hop musicians were keeping his music alive. Some of rap’s most defining songs between 1988 and 1992—Public Enemy’s “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos,” The Geto Boys’ “Mind Playing Tricks on Me,” DJ Quik’s “Born and Raised in Compton”—were built off the baroque samples of Hayes tunes. New York producers like RZA, Pete Rock, MF Doom, and Evil Dee used his palettes to make boom bap. And drawn to the cinematic, ’90s British trip-hop artists like Portishead and Massive Attack used Hayes to cull their nocturnal moods. To celebrate 50 years of Hot Buttered Soul, here’s Hayes refracted through hip-hop’s prism.

'90S THROWBACKS
Indie Rock Face-Off: Neo vs. ’90s

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Indie Rock Face-Off: Neo vs. ’90s

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.

Indie Rock Face-Off: Neo vs. ’90s

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.