The Latest in Hip-Hop News, Culture, and Lifestyle

Memphis newcomer GloRilla dropping one of the biggest hits of the year was probably not on most music fans’ bingo cards. But it’s GloRilla’s husky, snarling delivery that makes “FNF” best-of-year material. It’s clear that the 23-year-old rapper is just being herself, flapping her arms around a vast parking lot with a squad of girlfriends, one of which flashes a 42-ounce bottle of malt liquor, all of which shout the infectious chorus at the top of their lungs. Today, hip-hop's position as the dominant form in contemporary music is more or less unchallengeable. It's not simply that rap dominates the charts – hip-hop's tenets have now been comprehensively absorbed into virtually every other genre. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that hip-hop now is popular music.
California Love was top on the Billboards Top 100 for two weeks. The hip hop song topped the Billboards as a Top Hot Rap Single. The message detailed in this song is about a struggling single mother.

Beginning with some tension-building strings, the “dramatic” in this one’s name rings true. Joined by an echoey solo piano, and later by an unusual bassline and a prominent drumline, this tune is a little eerie and even futuristic. A short sax riff joined by some guitar picking makes this one pretty stylish. It’s all about being cheerful, and the bassy drumbeat adds a sense of deep satisfaction. Hayley Milliman is a former teacher turned writer who blogs about education, history, and technology. When she was a teacher, Hayley's students regularly scored in the 99th percentile thanks to her passion for making topics digestible and accessible.
Run the Trap explores a variety of genres, mainly related to the underground bass music genres. I imagine this would be the perfect website for those who are not fixated on hip hop but want to explore different music genres too. Established in 2007, 2DOPEBOYZ is a fantastic blog if you’re interested in keeping up with everything that’s going on in the hip hop industry, but also if you’re interested in discovering music by new and unsigned artists. Just like with any other genre-specific music blogs, many hip hop blogs tend to discuss other related music genres too. Below you’ll find a few online publications that also deal with electronic and indie music. However, most of the blogs included in the list deal mostly, if not exclusively, with hip hop and its subgenres.

Hip-hop, as an art form and as a culture, may not have set out to glamorize violence but the elements of industry surrounding hip-hop, the ones who exploit the culture and the art-form, continue to do so. The culture itself can benefit from a critical reexamination of violent authenticity, in both how it fits into and affects the culture as well as the mainstream at large. Hip-hop as an art-form and a culture ascended from the downtrodden urban neighborhoods of New York City.
Solid Gold employed a permanent dance troupe called the Solid Gold Dancers who performed choreographed routines to musical performances. Lucinda Dickey, an actress and dancer who played the lead role in the Breakin' films, appeared on the show during the 1982–1983 season as a Solid Gold dancer. In 1982 during a performance in London on Top of the Pops, street dancer Jeffrey Daniel performed popping and the backslide during the song "A Night to Remember". This was the first time popping was shown on British television, thus spreading its popularity in the United Kingdom. A year later, Michael Jackson also performed the backslide during a performance of "Billie Jean" on the Motown 25 TV special.

During the early 1980s as newly formed WRKS-FM (98.7 Kiss FM) became the first rap station in the United States, WBLS quickly began adding more rap songs to its playlists. The urban format by this time was redefined by an eclectic mix of R&B, rap, reggae, dance, house, and freestyle. WBLS continued as the flagship station of the urban format; however, Kiss FM surpassed them in the ratings. Urban contemporary playlists are dominated by singles by top-selling hip hop and R&B performers.
's Straight Outta Compton, an album that is now a byword for political militancy in popular music. As well as fanning the flames of anger amongst American law enforcement, tracks like Fuck Tha Police helped to position Los Angeles as a new centre of gravity for hip-hop, rivalling the historically dominant New York. Born out of the New York street culture of the 1970s, hip-hop is now the world's biggest music genre. Explore its history through Red Bull's unparalleled lecture archive. Despite her success, legal issues in combination with her responsibilities as a mother and wife have only added to the pressure and have led to delays on a follow-up.

Tells the story of his romantic pursuit of a woman whose backside he can see from the front. More horns — Rich Harrison turned roughly five seconds of a Chi-Lites fanfare into a smash for Beyoncé and set off on a run of red-hot R&B productions, including the should-have-been-bigger “1 Thing” by Amerie. The original is a driving, up-tempo boogie by a group that had its biggest hits with slow-burning ballads (“Oh Girl,” “Have You Seen Her”). “Sampling Is Creative or Theft,” read a New York Times headline in 1997, summarizing a debate that has raged ever since songs started incorporating parts of other songs.
There are different phases when I would go through records just trying to find good drum loops, especially from the ’80s, any track that would have an open break with an Oberheim DX or a LinnDrum. So many songs started out that way, and I felt like that was such a good foundation for creating something completely different, so I had a lot of fun with that, layering my own sounds on top of it to punctuate the groove. I definitely lean on sampled drums that I tweak out a certain way or a chopped drum break. I’ll listen to something, hear a break or a snare hit or kick hit, I’ll sample that using my SP-404 or my SP-555. Kits are also very helpful, but that’s pretty much just sampled drums from other tracks.

He's the first emcee to explode in a new rhyme cadence, and change the way every emcee rhymed forever. Rakim, The Notorious B.I.G., and Eminem have flipped the flow, but Melle Mel's downbeat on the two, four, kick to snare cadence is still the rhyme foundation all emcees are building on". Sometimes said to be an acronym for 'rhythm and poetry', this is not the origin of the word.
Active since 2010, TSIS is now one of the most respected voices in the industry, thanks to exclusive premieres, genuine reviews and an engaged audience. The live sessions and  the beat sessions are what really make Underground Hip Hop Blog stand out. Go and check out these performances to see the best producers at work. On Run the PuppetMaster 2 Trap, you’ll find plenty of reviews of new music, making it a crucial source of information if you want to know where the industry is going. Here’s another unmissable online magazine for those interested in hip hop and indie music culture. Starting in 1999, Fader was the first-ever music magazine to become available on iTunes.

Hip hop continues and will continue to evolve and thrive with today’s young musicians and shows no signs of slowing down. Inspired by a trip to South Africa, “Alright” is a story about hardship. After seeing how hard the struggle is there, it inspired him to write this record. Lamar’s line “everything will be alright” is a proclamation to anyone who’s working through a tough moment in their life. West used the lyrics of “Stronger” to vent out his frustrations and to show that you need to stay strong to survive adversity. This is best displayed in the refrain as West paraphrases Friedrich Nietzche.