It has been just six months since Snoop Dogg announced he acquired Death Row Records, and there has been newfound excitement around the record label originally founded by Dr. Dre and Suge Knight. Tha Dogg Pound announced that they have returned to Death Row after more than 20 years away and are working... Read more

After weeks of open voting, the 2020 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee class was revealed this Wednesday morning (January 15). With some notable musical acts up for consideration — Depeche Mode, The Doobie Brothers, Whitney Houston, Nine Inch Nails, and T-Rex — it is their sixth on the... Read more

One year ago today (March 12, 2018), the late-night news of Craig Mack's passing felt like an essential piece of 1990s Rap fabric was ostensibly gone forever. The 47-year-old Long Island, New York representative died from natural causes. His legacy was connected to the genre's elite from the genesis of... Read more

The 14th Annual A3C Festival has been taking place since Wednesday in Atlanta, Georgia. As usual, this premiere Hip-Hop gathering had an amazing line-up of the genre’s best and brightest performing. Names like Wu-Tang Clan, The Diplomats, Talib Kweli, Lil Wayne, Mannie Fresh, and PRhyme have been headlining the event... Read more

De La Soul has always stood for raising the musical bar. Celebrating its 22nd birthday this week (July 2), the trio's 1996 album Stakes Is High parlayed the group into its second era of prominence. Three years since their last LP, the work also proved that they were able to... Read more

Method Man has always appeared to be Wu-Tang Clan's most accessible group member to the mainstream public. Even his fellow Wu Gambino Raekwon admitted in a 2013 Vlad TV interview that Meth had the most passion in the group to be their breakout star. Chef noted that was also why... Read more

On March 25, 1997, The Notorious B.I.G.'s posthumous album, Life After Death, dropped. In one of the eeriest examples of art imitating life (or is it the other way around?), the album's title, artwork, and much of its track list dealt with foreshadowing mortality. On the LP cover, Biggie posed with... Read more

Fans of Hip-Hop photography have had a lot to celebrate of late. In addition to the advent of Instagram, where iconic photographers like Jamel Shabazz, Joe Conzo, Chi Modu, and others share the snapshots they've taken of the culture's earliest days, museums and similar institutions have begun the process of... Read more

With the shiny jackets, posse camera shots, and braggadocious lyrics, the Bad Boy family certainly left its imprint on the Rap video canon, and the Jiggy Era for many Heads will always symbolize a heyday of mainstream New York City Hip-Hop. A key player in that movement was, of course,... Read more

#3 Bad Boy Records While East Coast Rap music was never dead, there is no question that from mid-1992 to mid-1994 commercial hip-hop was dominated by the West Coast, primarily by Death Row Records. It was not until Sean "Diddy" Combs was fired from Uptown Records and decided to launch... Read more

#3 Bad Boy Records While East Coast Rap music was never quite completely dead, there is no question that from mid-1992 to mid-1994 commercial hip-hop was dominated by the West Coast, primarily by Death Row Records (more on that later...).  It was not until Sean "Diddy" Combs was fired from... Read more