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29.08.2024 / 18:31

R.I.P. Beatking, Houston’s hometown hero

Before I ever heard a song by Beatking, his shirts announced the vibe, bearing 150-point Impact font slogans like “GUM IS NOT TOOTHPASTE,” “Squirting is cool but it stank,” and “STOP MOVING TO HOUSTON.” The tees were a product of necessity — the cheapest way for Beatking to show up at the club with a fresh fit every weekend — and, like the Houston rapper and DJ’s music, laser-focused on pinging the most carefree part of our brains. “I can rap my ass off, but I realize that bitches don’t want to learn trigonometry in the club,” he said back in 2014.

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Pretty V’s experimental rap universe in 7 songs

Some days, I wake up and check for fresh tunes from Pretty V the way you might consult the weather app or read the news. The British rapper/instrumentalist seems to record and release songs entirely on a whim, liable to drop a track or five any day of the week.

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We don’t need a tapped-in president

When Kanye West revealed his support for Trump back in 2016 it was a scandal; nowadays, a rapper backing the 2024 Republican presidential nominee is barely news. Trump received the endorsements of Lil Pump, Lil Wayne, and Kodak Black during the 2020 election cycle (and gave presidential pardons to the latter two after losing), and 2024 has only been more fruitful.

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Lana Del Rey and Quavo thread the needle on “Tough”

In 2021, Lana Del Rey said her dream collaboration would be Migos. “I think they kicked off a new super fun, super autobiographical, completely different style of rap,” she told Variety during a red carpet scrum.

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It’s feeling like a skaiwater summer

skaiwater is nonbinary and uses he, she, and they pronouns; this interview uses the singular they for consistency.

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Wolfacejoeyy has mastered the sexy drill singalong

Wolfacejoeyy has to hand it to his mother. “My mom always told me, ‘You know you can sing right?’” the Staten Island rapper says. “I'm like, ‘Why are you telling me this? If I could sing I would know.’ Then I started recording music and I was like, ‘Hold on.

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Anycia doesn’t believe in fear

It’s a Thursday in early April and Anycia is calling me in the middle of getting her nails done. The 26-year-old rapper is supposed to be relaxing: she’s back in her hometown of Atlanta on one of her precious days off. She’d just done a show in New York the previous weekend, with an impending show in Seattle and a press run in LA.

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tdf is making 808s big enough to blow your speakers up

tdf’s productions can bait a certain kind of rap fan, down to his drops. Littered across his projects RELIGION and BLUEPRINT are vicious insults sampled from Instagram Live: tdf is a dickrider, tdf fell off, tdf has the Cheese Touch; tdf wants to be Pi’erre Bourne so bad, tdf keeps putting “random ass n***as” on his beats, tdf is “the worst prod in history.” “I don’t really take that stuff seriously, so I just put it in there,” the 20-year-old tells me over the phone. Based in Minnesota, tdf (née Tyrese Jones) mostly collaborates over the Internet.

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Death and rebirth in Knoxville

“To those who in all times have sought truth and who have told it in their art or in their living, who died in honor …To those in all times who have sought truth and who failed to tell it in their art or in their lives, and who now are dead.” - James Agee, “Dedication”

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How Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball helped rap go Super Saiyan

Rap Column is a column about rap music by Vivian Medithi and Nadine Smith for The FADER.

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The heart and the tongue of Bear1Boss

When I hop on a Zoom call with Bear1Boss, he immediately notices the embarrassing amount of wrestling action figures displayed on the bedroom wall behind me. Like wrestling fans tend to do when they meet a fellow member of the tribe, we start debating our personal GOATs. Turns out we have the same favorite wrestler: CM Punk, the scrappy underdog from Chicago who swaggers to the ring to the massive riffs of Living Colour’s “Cult of Personality” and never backs down from a fight.

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Kevin Gates is one of our weirdest rappers

Rap Column is a column about rap music by Vivian Medithi and Nadine Smith for The FADER.

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How Pitchfork changed the rap industry by changing itself

Rap Column is a column about rap music by Vivian Medithi and Nadine Smith for The FADER.

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5 essential, unstreamable mixtapes you can hear on the Internet Archive

Online music is inherently precarious — if a physical recording of something is never made, it’s dangerously easy to erase any sign that it ever existed. With mass layoffs in the wake of Bandcamp’s sale from Epic Games to Songtradr, as well as the recent announcement that Soundcloud is seeking a buyer in a potentially billion-dollar deal, there are understandable concerns about the future of the music that’s been uploaded on those platforms.

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Breaking down Playboi Carti’s stream-subverting album rollout

A vicious debate rages across the internet this month, with manifestos etched into comment sections and forum threads. Picking the best Playboi Carti single out of the past four weeks is less an objective critical exercise than a musical Rorschach.

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6 artists who are keeping Milwaukee rap essential

So often, when regional rap scenes blow up nationally, they’re treated too much as a passing novelty: a city has its moment in the sun, and then it’s on to the next one. Just as frequently, the popularity of regionally-specific sounds doesn’t actually benefit artists from those areas very much.

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Hip-hop’s dangerous bet on the gambling industry

Earlier this month, Drake posted a black-and-white video to his Instagram Reels, set to the contemplative strains of Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again.” But instead of a heartfelt salute to Paul Walker, Drake repurposed the ballad to pay tribute to something else: gambling. As Charlie Puth croons and piano keys twinkle in memory of Vin Diesel’s fallen bestie, we see clips from the past year of Drake risking millions of dollars on virtual roulette, anxiously ripping a hookah at his kitchen counter as he stares intently at his computer screen and roleplays his own private Uncut Gems.

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The best guest verses of 2023

The art of the rap feature is competitive and collaborative in equal measure. A good guest verse isn’t just well-executed, but a way of opening up new facets of a song, whether it’s finding new pockets in the beat or complicating emotional motifs with shades of nuance.

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How vinyl editions of mixtapes reveal the conflict at the heart of hip-hop’s 50th anniversary

This year has been filled with countless tributes to rap history, from live concerts with legacy acts to block parties hosted by New York City cop-in-chief Eric Adams (complete with a drone light show). But more than a celebration of history, “HipHop50” is very much a marketing campaign.

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DJ Envy’s scandal shows the darker side of rap hustle

The rap game is built on hustle. Sometimes that hustle is just hard work and sweat equity, but the industry’s emphasis on making money at any cost can sometimes make it a target for shadier operators.

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Chow Lee wants to end the summer sexual style

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