…To OnlineClasses.net. The good folks at what appears to be a website for taking classes online think The Interludes is one of the Top 50 Hip-Hop Blogs on these interwebs. Our first press! It’s the little things guys. Here’s what they had to say:

Classy graphics accompany intelligently written pieces on cultural movements and trends in rap and hip hop. The bloggers of the Interludes consider their posts to be social documentation of the current music climate, and each post is accompanied by a downloadable mix.

I’m glad to see our devotion to black & white pictures isn’t going unnoticed. Thanks for reading, folks! Starting this blog has opened up so much opportunity for everyone involved, and it’s still amazing to me that people sit down and read (and enjoy) what we think about hip-hop. Glad we can contribute to discussion.

While I was sitting in the backseat of my family’s Camry trying to act out the masculine caricatures I’d already absorbed from “Video Music Box,” the hip-hop world was still reeling from the death of The Notorious B.I.G. “All About The Benjamins” was the second single from Puff Daddy’s No Way Out, a debut-turned-eulogy-turned-celebration as schizophrenic and tragic and beautiful as the hustler from Brooklyn who posthumously inspired it.  On its first single, “I’ll Be Missing You,” Puffy mourns his late protégé and best friend with a Sting sample and an old Negro spiritual. It’s a ballad that critic Kelefa Sanneh cites as the beginning of “corporate rap,” or rap music that prioritizes mass appeal and financial gains over artistic merit. But what better symbol is there for corporate rap’s big bang than its larger-than-life founder rising from the dead to squeeze in one more champagne drenched ode to hundred dollar bills? Clever, vain, intricate, glossy, humorous, infectious and just mesmerizing enough to hold the attention of a 6-year-old in the family sedan: “All About The Benjamins” was corporate rap’s blueprint, and Biggie’s verse was its legend.

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