Jen Diaz/Hot 97

Lauryn Hill.

Hot 97 Summer Jam: Nicki Minaj, Young Jeezy, Rick Ross, J. Cole, Wale, Meek Mill, DJ Khaled, Waka Flocka, Trey Songz, Maino, Big Sean, 2 Chainz, French Montana, Mavado, Tyga, Slaughterhouse (and Nas and Lauryn Hill)
MetLife Stadium
Sunday, June 3

Better than: Seeing a Nicki Minaj concert.

In an era of increasing separation and ever-tinier attention spans, it's almost quaint to celebrate a tradition like Hot 97's Summer Jam with 60,000 of your closest friends.

Each year, Summer Jam means a sunny early afternoon heading over to the Meadowlands, the constant threat of rain during the afternoon hours, a few rap songs here and there with rappers featuring other rappers, walking into a chilly night leaving the show, and general ratchetness in the parking lot before, during, and after the concert.

Oh, and drama! Plenty of drama—which, in the years since Jay-Z vs. Nas evaporated, has turned into yawn vs. shrug.

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"Getting ready to tear this bitch down!!! Funk Flex!!! Mean!!! Webster hall!!!"

Those familiar with Funkmaster Flex, Hot 97's nighttime DJ and the one man Jay-Z and Kanye West trusted to break Watch the Throne lead single "Otis," know that on top his love for boom bap and muscle cars, Flex is something of a tech dork, fiending for the newest tablets and phones, blogging at inflexwetrust.com, and bragging on air about his Twitter followers and Facebook friends. Two months ago, however, he added another social network, joining Instagram (the self-described "fun & quirky way to share your life with friends through a series of pictures") and amassing nearly 20,000 followers who are greeted throughout the day with photos of everything from Flex's kids to his computer screen.

To outsiders, this mass of images might seem daunting, but upon closer inspection, it turns out to be as good an introduction to the life of our Best Radio DJ in New York as his 60 Minutes of Funk mixtape series was to Tunnel-era rap. For this reason, we're jumping off Flex's most recent post, a low angle shot of his dentist preparing to clean his teeth, with the caption "Dr. Feldman getting in crazy!!! Dentist time !!!!!," and bringing you this brief beginner's guide to an Instagram account that's as singular as its owner.

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To supplement this year's Pazz & Jop launch, Sound of the City asked a few critics to expand on the reasonings behind their voting. This is from Nick Minichino, who voted specifically for Funkmaster Flex's premiere of Jay-Z and Kanye West's "Otis" this summer.

That was the driving force of it—to create that moment of unwrapping the CD and listening to it for the first time. It was a very old-school way for things to happen. People really were anticipating an album on a certain day and everyone got to experience it simultaneously.

—anonymous Roc Nation executive about Watch The Throne's tight leak policy

Before Watch the Throne, music-industry talk about the "album experience" always felt like code for BUY THE ALBUM and especially DON'T STEAL THE ALBUM, especially since, in practice, no one really seemed all that interested in preventing leaks. The external-hard-drives-in-locked-briefcases mystique of Steven J. Horowitz's Billboard story (from which the above quote is sourced) merely revealed that, prior to this album, basic data protection was a skill music-biz folks had yet to learn.

And yet. Despite disheartening leaks Jay-Z and Kanye West had experienced in the past (the article cites My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy tracks, but there are plenty of other examples at least as far back as The Black Album in 2003) the "old-school" motivation rings true, thanks to plenty of other elements of the album's release. Of course, having actually exerted control over who will hear one's album before its release enabled quite a bit of the hoopla, and allowed the artists to make an event—complete with pop-up shop—out of the release. Having the money and power to ensure a release date before the release of a single allowed them to use the single's hype to goose album excitement (and vice versa)—a ploy only a handful of other rappers would be able to replicate. And the "listening party" allowed them, however briefly, to re-inscribe critics as gatekeepers.

That said, the crucial element of the old-school presentation was the premiere of "Otis." There was enormous incentive to determine the best possible venue and timing to release the first "real" single, especially after "H.A.M." debuted and sank. Jay-Z and Kanye West could have put the song anywhere online at any time, held it for the video and had an MTV premiere (which they got anyway), or made it an event in any number of other ways. Instead they premiered the song, relatively unannounced, on a Wednesday evening over terrestrial radio in New York City.

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Left to right: Pusha T, Funkmaster Flex, Kanye West. Photo via In Flex We Trust

It is a measure of Kanye West's proximity to the heart of the zeitgeist that even on the day after a disastrous midterm election, his name is front and center in the news cycle. The Internet is aflame today with the improbably news that George W. Bush apparently considers Kanye's "George Bush doesn't care about black people" telethon moment to be "an all-time low" in his presidency. Meanwhile, West, unbowed as ever, went on Funkmaster Flex's Hot 97 radio show last night for a marathon interview that touched on his nude photos, Jeff Koons, aliens, chardonnay, "hashtag rap," how it took him five thousand hours to write his "Power" verses, and whether Swiftgate or the aforementioned Bush moment was more traumatic for the pop star. (One guess as to his answer.) Love West or hate him, he is one of our moment's great communicators, and this interview was one for the ages. Below, a painstakingly narrowed down list of ten awesome, ridiculous things Kanye dared to utter on the radio last night:

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"I call Drake at least once a week," Lil Wayne told Hot 97's Funkmaster Flex last night, phoning in from Rikers. "I actually call three or four times a week, but he only picks up for me once a week." He was laughing when he said it: Wayne, of all people, knows what it is to be one of the most famous rappers on earth in the month after your record comes out. You tend to be a little busy. "I just feel like every time I pick up the phone to dial a number, I feel like I'm a bother, because I'm in jail. I don't have nothing else to do but talk to you, and that might not be what you want to do at the time," he explained. Which is probably true, though Wayne did note that Young Money henchman Mack Maine answers "every single time." Then the jail phone started beeping, signaling the interview was at a close. Read the whole semi-depressing, but basically honest and sincere transcript at MTV, or listen to "Right Above It," the pretty great single from Wayne's forthcoming I'm Not a Human Being, below. Drake, you'll be happy to learn, found time to rap on it:

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That right there is radio titan Funk Flex paying homage to the man who made his entire career possible, Mr. Magic. Photo by Elliott Wilson, who swung through the fallen DJ's wake out in Bushwick on Wednesday night. [Rap Radar]

True story. Apparently our state's governor was spotted out at 1am last night at Chelsea's the Taj, where in addition to Deejay Logic and some other dudes, Funkmaster Flex himself was on the turntables. How many Flex bombs did this coming together warrant, we wonder. One hundred? Five thousand? Did Flex play strictly radio edits? The mind boggles. We eagerly await Flex's regularly-scheduled rant tonight on HOT97, on which he once again tells every other DJ in the city to kill him/herself. Now with added political power! [Gawker]