Category: Slander

Comedy that doesn’t work as entertainment is a failure, right? The first and last defense of every boring poser in the Meme Rap game: “You just don’t get it.” They’re always right, too. The fact that every aspect of this is both terrible and terribly done is the whole & only point, a career-length shaggy…

In 1997, I would have checked this out just off the cover art alone. Back then, that meant buying CDs and tapes at stores full of them. I was always copping compilations and mixtapes because I wanted to be able to hear everybody. That was a daunting task in those days, but only a matter…

I had no idea who this cat was, and in most ways I still don’t. I assumed this was a producer’s V/A LP type deal, just farming features with a guest list that included Sadat X, Project Pat and Nature, which definitely caught my attention. Shane Dollar, clearly, is a discerning head, so this was…

Seeing a brand new music video from NYC crew Natural Elements in 2026 was some extremely unexpected shit. Far less surprising: they’re all still top tier spitters. “They’ve still got it!” is some damn faint praise, though, ain’t it? This is rap, after all. What makes this joint interesting for an old head like me…

Hip Hop’s Extremely Official 50th Anniversary was a crude, awkward scene, yet it also brought us a ton of welcome comebacks. There has been a whole wildfire worth of old school legends re-appearing with some serious heat, far hungrier than they have to be. For my crisply folded money, Redman’s 2024 joint Muddy Waters Too…

Homeboy Sandman is one of one. That’s hella redundant because he already knows this, and has referenced it many hundreds of times throughout his sprawling, breezy and often genius-grade catalog. Like too many basic bitch hip hop heads online, I had doubts about this cat at first, back where the Blog Era overlapped with the…

Real Yeti Rap seldom covers the same artist twice, but Rome Streetz is an exceptional human. There has been a lot of Discourse™ in the past year questioning whether he’s somehow fallen off, or at least hit that awkward plateu where he’s out of shit to say but still has to keep cutting new verses.…

A lot of rappers these days are keen to clarify they’re actually curators. Very few of them are. Sideshow has been walking that walk in Los Angeles for a minute or three, a man with a million projects, perpetually. So saying that “ALOVENARCOTIC” is an excellent video for a nothingburger song is missing the point:…

Checking out the annual harvest of “Album of the Year” lists is always a valuable reminder that music criticism is polluted with hipster weirdos. Their primary purpose is co-signing effusive poptimism handjobs for the major label flagship products & festival PR projects that pay the bills. In exchange for that service, they’re allowed the self-indulgence…

I had never heard of namesbliss before, but I was pretty much sold thirty seconds into this video. Unlike most of my few remaining peers here at the heights of music journalism, I am acutely allergic to rap with British accents. I do make exceptions for exceptional voices like D Double E or Roots Manuva…