The CDs are pressed, the numbers are projected, and the verdicts are in: Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter IV has hit like a Funk Flex bomb and is slated to be one of the highest selling rap albums of the summer. It was a lay-up—Wayne was to return from Rikers to a rap game kept warm for him by protégés Nicki and Drake, snatch up some beats from eager producers, maybe pay them, and craft a classic the likes of which we hadn’t heard from him in years. Instead, surprisingly, Wayne has delivered an hour or so of one-liners and hashtag punchlines that aren’t really about anything. And after an astronomical rise to stardom, a year-long prison stint, a well-documented drug dependency, and even a few new babies, the goblin should have a lot more to talk about. Wayne’s either being tight-lipped or airheaded about the challenges of his past few years, and his failure to address them on this latest project is a sobering comment not only on his growth as an artist, but his ability to reconcile his real life against the one his fans demand of him.

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Kendrick Lamar boasts an element that most of his fellow freshmen ignore: urgency. He sounds like he’d be rhyming even if no one were listening—a commendable trait amidst the swarm of “I’m not a rapper, I just happen to rap” caricatures that currently dominate blogspots and Billboard. Kendrick’s urgency is the fuel behind Section.80, the latest release from the Dr. Dre-cosigned Compton native on his TDE imprint, and he produces an engaging, dense, and gloomy comment on a generation’s identity crisis and the complex social and historical factors that have contributed to it. With its lofty concepts, baroque production, and striking allusions, Section.80 quickly establishes itself as a transcription of an era, and a young man’s frantic race to get it all on paper.

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No one makes partying sound less fun than Drake. For the Young Money cash crop, hitting the club means fierce stares from competitors, vapid advances from gold-diggers, and woozy blackouts from getting too crossfaded. Since his major label debut, Drizzy has made art of the indefinable grey between the euphoric climax of a night on the town and the awkward pregames and hasty comedowns that surround it on either side. Even more subtly, Drake employs this bell curve as a metaphor for the broader highs and lows of fame, wealth, and love. A recent trio of leaks from his upcoming sophomore effort Take Care find Drake musing on the ironies of contemporary young adulthood: an insatiable materialism coupled with a dismal global economy, a nihilist rebellion against growing old while demanding respect from elders and peers, and a difficulty expressing love amid a romanticizing of casual sex. Drake is widely criticized by rap stalwarts for being too emotional, but the feelings he’s engaging with aren’t just his own—they’re the swirling conflicts that a generation of “emerging adults” are facing every day, and are trying to forget about every night.

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…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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A vulgar, offensive, nihilistic anarchist has exploded onto the rap scene, and he’s making some of the most interesting hip-hop heard in the past decade. Playing front man to a bizarre crew of his hometown friends, the young MC draws on his turbulent upbringing, lucid imagination, and slight penchant for murder and rape to deliver ornate narratives that equally disgust and delight. Despite bubbling under the radar for some time, his ascension to the head of conversation has been blindingly fast, catalyzed by some unforgettable media appearances and punctuated by an infectious first single and a video that’s just as awe-inspiring as he is. MTV thanks God every time he spouts another profanity-laden quotable, and parents and pundits are already sketching picket signs. Hip-hop has never seen anything like him, and fans across genres, generations, and demographics can’t get enough. He’s funny, lyrical, angry, endearing—and he even has an awesome name: Eminem.

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From The Source’s legendary “Unsigned Hype” column to the hundreds of rap blogs that litter the internets, hip-hop culture has always raced to declare who got next. It’s a fervent debate that permeates basketball courts, barbershops and record-filled basements–who’s nicer than who, who deserves what, who’s dropping when and what it’s going to mean for everyone else. Rap mag XXL has capitalized on this perpetual controversy with its “Freshman Class” series: an annual cover story that features ten or so MCs dubbed to be the most promising amongst the plethora of new acts vying for airtime and attention spans. This past Monday evening, leaked photos of the 2011 Freshman Class hit the ‘net, prompting XXL to officially release the upcoming cover and spark a firestorm of debate about their latest picks. Couple this with the brow-raising pick for Best New Artist at this year’s Grammy Awards, and contention seems higher than ever about who deserves to be called the next big thing. But for all the tweets, tallies and tantrums, it seems like the one thing the public can’t agree on isn’t who the best new artists are, but what exactly it means to be “new” in today’s music climate. And if that can even be defined, how then can we hope to define criteria for “best”? As patterns for music consumption and artists’ lifespans shift immensely, the concept of a “new artist” has taken on unprecedented fluidity, and it’s becoming apparent that discovering the next may not be as important as understanding the now.

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There are few topics more consistently represented in popular music than love. We ache for a good love song–they narrate our relationships, articulate the feelings we cannot, and crystalize memories we never want to forget. Historically, the love song has been simple, almost formulaic, either celebrating a love just found or grieving over a love long lost. Songwriters made millions by constantly finding new ways to say “I love you” or “I miss you.” After a few smash hits, however, hip-hop turned the love song formula on its head, introducing new ideas about what was fair in love and rap. Comparing two of hip-hop’s definitive love songs, LL Cool J’s “I Need Love” and Biz Markie’s “Just A Friend,” highlights why the genre’s takes on matters of the heart have been so distinct, popular, and memorable.

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It was a little weird when Apple released their onslaught of cryptic press over finally landing the rights to all of the Beatles’ music. They may have, in fact, created too much hype, as the advertisements suggested that Steve Jobs was set to announce that he had signed Lebron James, legalized marijuana, or done both. Many fans had the same reaction once the news was revealed: Doesn’t Best Buy have the White Album already? Don’t I have the White Album already?

What Apple was trying to access, however, were the deep nostalgic recesses of their older customer’s minds. They didn’t care about the seventeen year old who hasn’t paid for a song since 2002- they were reaching out to his parents, specifically the ones who screamed and cried and dated Japanese girls and altered their entire outlook on life because of four lads from Liverpool.  Beatlemania seems to be something so unique and powerful that no one in his twenties or thirties should really try to describe it. It seems, though, like the closest thing our culture has to the orgasm-aneurism hybrid that the band consistently produced is the way someone reacts today when their soul has been saved in front of a congregation of hundreds.

To Jobs and company, tapping into that religious devotion meant huge numbers on iTunes. In the opening week, they sold almost half a million albums and over two million individual tracks.  Some customers were undoubtedly first-timers, but it’s likely that the strength of those huge figures came largely from die-hard fans that ached to have a new experience with their old idols, even if it meant buying additional copies of music they’d already memorized the words to.

It was another brilliant move by the company that stays winning, but one person has actually harnessed collective nostalgia on an even larger scale. Ironically, his name is Brandon McCartney. Most of us know him as Lil B. Read the rest of this entry →

2010 was a year of immense change for hip-hop. Innovative producers and MCs pushed rap to new margins, kick-started by Wayne’s rap/rock hybrid Rebirth and punctuated by Kanye’s genre-trumping behemoth My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. But for all the creative sampling, surprising collaborations and overall broadening of the rap world’s horizons, a grittier, more visceral sound dominated the cars, clubs and street corners throughout the year. It danced on the line between self parody and self reverence, and as Complex’s Ernest Baker sharply noted, it felt like “an invitation to a party celebrating the fact that music like this [was] even being made.” It was the dense, noisy, controlled chaos perfected by young producers Lex Luger and Young L and galvanized by street anthems like Waka Flocka’s “Hard In Da Paint” and Rick Ross’s “BMF (Blowin’ Money Fast)” that captured our spirits in 2010, prompting hipster mosh-pits and trapster brick sales all at once. These huge, messy, and deceptively complex records employ a pop tactic known as the “Wall of Sound,” a production technique that’s been igniting dance floors for decades. Created in the 60s, introduced to hip-hop in the 80s, and still towering today, the Wall of Sound represents a prevalent dialogue surrounding the politics of sound, and is particularly significant within the context of the hip-hop soundscape.

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