There’s a very particular life I was meant to have. I was meant to meet a nice Jewish boy, get engaged in a flurry, and move to a delicate home in the ‘burbs, not too far from my parents, and live a quiet existence with a child, a beautiful yard…

On the day Juice WRLD’s first posthumous album, Legends Never Die, released, it was pouring in Philadelphia. It’s hard not to imagine the sky weeping — tears of anguish or joy; I couldn’t tell you — in honor of the late Chicago rapper, hitmaker, and certified lifesaver. Juice WRLD’s music…

Have you ever heard of an album created on a limitless budget? Although uncommon, acclaimed manga artist, screenwriter, and film director Katsuhiro Otomo once approached composer and neuroscientist Tsutomu Ōhashi — also known under the pseudonym Shoji Yamashiro, who founded the immense Japanese music collective Geinoh Yamashirogumi — to compose…

Anglophones are notoriously insular when it comes to consuming foreign culture. We’re picky, limited, and disinterested in straying from our comfort zone. There are logistical reasons for this; we have a functionally infinite amount of English-language culture and an education system that has only started taking foreign language instruction seriously…

Go-go music’s definitive conga-infused rhythms, call-and-response tradition, and style of dance have primarily remained within the confinements of the D.C. Beltway. But in 2020, Chuck Brown’s inventive brand of funk has found its way to the popular video-sharing platform, TikTok. Over the past few weeks, the 2000s go-go song “Phatty”…

Tekashi 6ix9ine and Nicki Minaj’s “TROLLZ” went №1 on Billboard this week. …

From the moment JAY-Z’s much-hyped post-retirement album Kingdom Come dropped in 2006, its atmospheric closing song, “Beach Chair,” a duet with Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, proved divisive. Day-one fans who waited three years to hear their hero rap like a big emo about angels and having a midlife crisis over…

“Keep looking if you’re looking for average / I’m living proof, a human covered in magic” -6LACK,” Mourning Star “ 6LACK, real name Ricardo Valentine, was born on June 24, 1992, a Baltimore baby. A move to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1997 brought the future rap and R&B star down South…

The September 2, 2016 release of Isaiah Rashad’s The Sun’s Tirade never felt quite right. In terms of timing up the mood of the music with the spirit of the environment upon release, Zay’s viscous sophomore Top Dawg Entertainment release always felt like a height of summer listen, not meant…