Email AuthorPhillip Mlynar
Featured Entry
Hip-Hop's Top Ten Greatest Sneaker Songs
December 07, 2010 in Sound of the City
Kid Cudi, going all out for Converse.Sneakers have long been hip-hop's footwear of choice. The links between the artists making the music and the companies behind the kicks are now...
Featured Entry
Q&A: Soul Singer Syl Johnson Prefers Money To Women, Loves Being Sampled By The Wu-Tang Clan, And Is Sorry He Had To Sue Cypress Hill
December 01, 2010 in Sound of the City
"I've met RZA, Raekwon, and Ghostface. They were cool, man, but it was a lot of cursing!""I'm sitting in the house now that was built with the Wu-Tang money," says...
Featured Entry
Ten Reasons Why Dr. Dre's Detox Will Be Great
November 22, 2010 in Sound of the City
Does this man have another classic in him?Dr. Dre's long, long awaited Detox has received its latest release date, this time via a press release from Interscope's London office guaranteeing...
Q&A: DJ Premier on Where Rap Went Wrong and How to Fix It
November 11, 2010 in Sound of the City
Featured Entry
The Top Ten Best Worst Singing Rappers
November 09, 2010 in Sound of the City
These days, there's nothing attention grabbing about rappers who sing, whether it's Andre 3000's amped squawk, an Auto-Tune-enabled Kanye West, or Lil Wayne's upcoming Riker's Island shower room spirituals. This...
Featured Entry
Q&A: Tanya Morgan's Von Pea Shares His High School Memories of Fabolous, Biggie, and Jay-Z
October 19, 2010 in Sound of the City
Boys & Girls High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn--once home to both the Notorious B.I.G. and Fabolous--has long since become a legendary spot for New York hip-hop. Von Pea, one third...
Featured Entry
The 10 Greatest Rap Songs About Video Games
October 04, 2010 in Sound of the City
Def Jam Rapstar is the latest attempt to merge the worlds of hip-hop and video games. In the past, this has involved shoehorning playable rapper characters into cliched genres --...
Featured Entry
Q&A: Rapper 9th Prince On His Older Brother RZA And The Early Days Of The Wu-Tang Clan
October 04, 2010 in Sound of the City
The Wu-Tang Clan is hip-hop's most enduring family. Thanks to seemingly unbreakable bonds both artistic and familial, the now eight-strong crew of rappers is still together, despite frequent -- and...
Featured Entry
Glee's Ten Most Cringe-Worthy Rap Moments
September 23, 2010 in Sound of the City
The phenomenally successful Glee kicked off its second season earlier this week, with Jay-Z and Alicia Keys' home-town anthem "Empire State Of Mind" showcased in the opening song spot. But...
Detroit Producer Black Milk's Top Ten Albums of the Last Decade
September 14, 2010 in Sound of the City
Featured Entry
Q&A: Flying Lotus On His Awkward, Weed-Filled High School Years
September 03, 2010 in Sound of the City
"I got kicked out of high school for some weed-related shit," says Flying Lotus, the current king of progressive instrumental electronic music and head glitch-merchant of the Brainfeeder movement. He's...
Featured Entry
Remembering Fat Beats, The Best Record Store In Underground Hip-Hop History
September 03, 2010 in Sound of the City
Gang Starr flanking Fat Beats owner Joseph Abajian, who unfortunately saw this comingIn 1997, Paul Rosenberg, the attorney of an aspiring rapper from Detroit calling himself Eminem, was walking along...
Featured Entry
Ten Pioneering Pieces Of Hip-Hop Street Art
August 24, 2010 in Sound of the City
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Triple Self Portrait. All images courtesy the Eric Firestone Gallery.Street art has enjoyed a steady resurgence in rap over the last few years, with Kanye West and the...
Featured Entry
The Ten Most Exploitative Posthumous Rap Projects
August 18, 2010 in Sound of the City
Being a dead rap artist isn't much fun. Whether The Notorious B.I.G., Tupac, or J Dilla, death has never seemed to do much to alleviate the constant pressure on artists...
Featured Entry
New York Rappers Talk Their Worst Summer Jobs
August 04, 2010 in Sound of the City
Image via Darrell BellHip-hop is the world's most brazenly capitalist genre of music. If Jay-Z's not talking about playing Monopoly with real cash, then Kanye West's tweeting about the cherub-motifed...
Attention J-Dilla Heads: Slum Village's T3 on Finally Releasing the Album, Dilla's pre-Tribe Beginnings and that Whole "New Native Tongues" Reputation
July 29, 2010 in West Coast Sound
Featured Entry
The Top Ten Rap Supergroups That Never Happened
July 28, 2010 in Sound of the City
Over the weekend, the rapper Sean Price took to Twitter to propose a collaboration album between his own Brooklyn-based Boot Camp Clik hip-hop crew and Staten Island's mighty Wu-Tang Clan....
Featured Entry
Q&A: Rapper Theophilus London Gives Tips For Remaining Cool and Fashionable at HARD NYC This Weekend
July 22, 2010 in Sound of the City
Eddie Brannan"I was at M.I.A.'s secret birthday party two days ago when Drew Barrymore walked in," says a smitten-sounding Theophilus London, the much-championed young M.C. who, contrary to his rap...
Featured Entry
The Real Sugar Hill Records Story: In-House Drummer Keith Le Blanc on the Myths Surrounding Rap's First Label
July 06, 2010 in Sound of the City
"I don't think the true Sugar Hill Records story has ever been told because there's so much skull-duggery attached to it," says Keith Le Blanc, the one-time in-house drummer for...
The Choice Is His: Black Sheep's Dres Picks The Five Best Bar Mitzvah/Sweet 16-Rocking Hip-Hop Classics Of All Time
June 29, 2010 in Sound of the City
Featured Entry
Q&A: California Rapper Fashawn on Remaking Illmatic, Nas's 1994 East Coast Classic
June 14, 2010 in Sound of the City
"All the shit Nas was experiencing as a 21-year-old in 1994, I'm experiencing that shit now as a 21-year-old in 2010." In 1994, a 21-year-old Queensbridge resident calling himself Nas made...
Featured Entry
10 Nominations for 2010 World Cup Anthems Better Than Shakira's "Waka Waka (This Time For Africa)"
June 09, 2010 in Sound of the City
We defy you to unironically enjoy this song. The 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa kicks off on June 11th. Sports-wise, the tournament promises to be thrilling, with 32 teams...
What to Do? Wednesday's Pick: The Park at Mojito
June 09, 2010 in All Shook Down
Shock G 'Fesses Up About Humpty Hump
May 25, 2010 in All Shook Down
Featured Entry
Law & Order's Five Most Ridiculous Rapper Cameos
May 24, 2010 in Sound of the City
Law & Order ends its 20-year run tonight. Throughout the show's long reign, phalanxes of honorable detectives have cleaned the New York streets of crime and debris while throwing out...
