This year marks four decades of avant magazine the Wire. Throughout, the British publication has frequently if fitfully championed interesting rap artists.
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Category: Spotlight
Opening Acts: When the Tide Is High
Wu-Tang Clan’s second album, Wu-Tang Forever, elicits a discussion on the end of imperial eras. Plus, thoughts on Kendrick Lamar’s new album and a Fat Joe TV doc on A&E.
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Opening Acts: Rock & Rap’s Imperfect Hall
This week’s entry discusses the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which inducted Eminem on May 4; and picks a few nuggets from Ben Merlis’ oral history of the Juice Crew and Cold Chillin’ Records.
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Opening Acts: The Best Rapper Alive Since…
This week brings a new column of hip-hop happenings past and present: Opening Acts. The inaugural edition mulls over a GQ cover story on Future, Alchemist vs. Get on Down, a reissue of Godfather Don’s Hazardous, and the UK group Caveman.
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Curren$y & The Alchemist, Continuance
Continuance is the latest in a series of well-received collaborations between Curren$y and the Alchemist, engaging an audience in thrall with classicist tropes.
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Sole & DJ Pain 1, Post American Studies
On his latest collaboration with DJ Pain 1, Sole delivers an anarchist broadside against global inequity and US hegemony.
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A Company Flow Fan’s DJ Bag in 1997
As I spent the weekend revisiting Company Flow’s Funcrusher Plus — an album I once had on constant rotation — I began to wonder…what other records did I spin as an amateur DJ in 1997?
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Count Bass D: Acting Out
In a 2007 interview for Creative Loafing Atlanta, Count Bass D discussed his career and his album, Act Your Waist Size.
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Notable Hip-Hop Albums of 2021
Hip-hop in year two of the pandemic felt deeply unsettled and chaotic, with a dearth of aesthetically vital artists who dictated the culture and served as targets to rebel against. Despite it all, good rap music still exists.
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Inspired by Shel Silverstein: MidaZ the Beast, Mavi
In the past two years, album covers for MidaZ the Beast and Mavi have drawn inspiration from Shel Silverstein’s 1974 children’s collection, Where the Sidewalk Ends.
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