The critical and commercial success of Kendrick Lamar’s second album, 2012’s Good Kid, MAAD City, totally changed the Compton rapper’s life. He had gone from
Tag: Urban Legends
What constitutes a jazz record? It’s a question Robert Glasper doesn’t concern himself with too much. The classically trained jazz pianist has always straddled the
In 1987, writer Barry Michael Cooper went to Harlem’s legendary Apollo Theater to interview then-20 year old Teddy Riley about the new R&B sound the
While punk and New Wave grabbed the UK headlines during the late 70s, in the nightclubs of London and southeast Britain, American funk music was
Over the course of her decades-spanning discography, Mary J. Blige has been a conduit for communal pain and healing. She’s shared her world and given
All decades are a period of change, but some change more than others. Motown’s peak era came during the 60s, when even this record company,
One of the oft-told stories about the evolution of mid-20th-century American culture involves Bob Dylan bringing his electric Fender Stratocaster guitar on stage at the
Yasiin Bey never embraced the conscious rap label. But no one embodied it quite like him. He came on the scene with Talib Kweli as
Back in 2012, Rihanna‘s “Diamonds” soared to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the week ending on December 1. It became one of
As the Weeknd’s music steadily progressed from back bedrooms to arena stages over the course of a decade, its scope expanded even further thanks to