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.

The tragedy of C4 is Lil Wayne’s complete emotional absence. His delivery is flat and empty, and his words fly by like cheap gags in a bad stand-up routine. Beats and choruses provide tone where his lyricism consistently fails to do so, and we’re left to interpret what songs suggest instead of what they say. The plunging piano notes and solemn violins on “Nightmares Of The Bottom” prop up one of the album’s few mentions of his imprisonment altogether: “Only God can judge me, don’t need a jury… If I knew I was going to jail I would have fucked my attorney.” The track begs for some sort of honest reflection, but Wayne instead sidesteps its inquisition with flat puns and vapid banalities. On “How To Hate,” T-Pain lays his trademark foundation: genuine emotion funneled through a palatable silliness, and autotune. We wait for a fiery indictment of Wayne’s babymama(s), and instead get brainless chauvinism berating a faceless, one-dimensional devil in a purple dress: “I’m on my ‘fuck that bitch’ shit, you used to be the shit, but now you ain’t shit bitch.” And as the inaugural sample and choir chants of “President Carter” demand some sort of commentary on government corruption or record industry politics or best-rapper-alive boasts or something, we instead get “Yesterday just died, tomorrow never cried, the day of our lives.” A soap opera reference in a rap song has never sounded more appropriate.

Tha Carter IV finds Wayne portraying a caricature: an aimlessly violent, drug-addled nymphomaniac who may have been rapping for ten years and may have just debuted. He sounds more like the scores of rappers who have dedicated their careers to biting his flows and styles: an imitation of an imitation. And what’s most troubling about this strategy is that, in today’s rap landscape, it isn’t a bad one. Wayne has spent the past four years cultivating a distinct sound that has infatuated hip-hop’s purchasing demographic—one that sees him as a stark idea to be aspired to instead of a malleable individual to be understood. Wayne knows this, and has accepted wholeheartedly his duty to serve a public instead of an art. “6 Foot 7 Foot” answered the prayer of every 2008-Wayne stan who couldn’t wait for mixtape Weezy’s industrial approach to rap, dumping bars on any and every instrumental that arrived in his gmail. With C4 he’s applied this formula across an entire album—his verses are interchangeable, his team is barely present, and his real life struggles are nowhere to be found. Mostly because Wayne’s fans don’t look for real life, they look for an escape: a blunt blowin’, grown ass blood who will never give a fuck about ‘em, is single for the night, and got through that sentence like a subject and a predicate. As Lil Wayne the person continues to age, suffer, and change, Lil Wayne the rapper will shrink into a narrower parody. For every platinum plaque he’ll chase, his inability to articulate his feelings in his music, interviews, and daily life will become more paralyzing, until his life amounts to little more than a rap punchline.

This series’ artwork takes photos of Wayne throughout his life and imposes his current tattoos across his younger face. It implies a retroactive transformation—that young (Young?) Weezy, before rap, has ceased to exist, and the Wayne we hear on wax and see on TV is the Wayne that always was and always will be. Judging by Tha Carter IV, it will take quite some time before the face we see on Lil Wayne’s album cover looks anything like his own.

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.

The title “Section 80” combines two of the album’s key motifs: the decade in which Kendrick and his cohorts were born, and the Section 8 Program, a 1975 piece of legislation that provides housing for eligible low-income families and created many of the suburb-shaped ghettos of Los Angeles. Kendrick is preoccupied with the offspring of this environment: young adults born into the War on Drugs, school-lunch programs, and diagnosable personality disorders—altogether an apparent institutional acknowledgment of their burden on the world. He looks back to the Eighties not with the selective nostalgia of current trend (high tops, 808s), but the honesty of having been born in one of the most complex and troubling decades in African American history. The result is a child robbed of childhood: “I used to want to see the penitentiary way after elementary, thought it was cool to look the judge in the face when he sentenced me. Since my uncles was institutionalized, my intuition had said I was suited for family ties,” he confesses matter-of-factly on “Poe Man’s Dreams (His Vice).”

Even more chilling than his own recollections are Kendrick’s musings on the women in his life. Standouts “No Make-Up,” “Tammy’s Song,” and “Keisha’s Song” all take scathing looks at the insecurities and internal conflicts of young females raised on gangsta rap: Tammy channels vintage Cash Money to profess both her love and hatred for her boyfriend, while Keisha bumps “Brenda’s Got A Baby” as she sells herself on the Long Beach strip. The song choices aren’t random, as Kendrick has a keen ear for allusion: Kanye West, Aaliyah, and Pimp C all enjoy meta-interpolations in his verses, and producers Digi+Phonics liberally sample familiar drumbreaks and vocal snippets. The immediacy of the project is evident in this soundscape: these references will be familiar to all, but nostalgic only to those Kendrick’s age and younger—a sliding scale that’s getting steeper.

Section.80 celebrates its own weightiness, and doesn’t allow much room to fray from its ideology. Moreover, the small production circle and dense lyricism puts musicality on the backburner. Besides his famous Wiz Khalifa impersonation extended in “Hol’ Up,” and the bouncy horns and hook on “Rigamortus,” little is intended to be catchy or melodic on this project. Choruses reveal themselves through repetition as opposed to commercial song format, and some questionable guest vocals bring well-written refrains down a peg. Of course, the J. Cole-served lead single “HiiiPower” hints most strongly at how a fully formed, professionally produced Kendrick will sound: an ambitious show-stealing conclusion that is quietly one of the best songs of the year.

“The first 2 projects was about me,” Kendrick Lamar tweeted shortly after Section.80’s release. “This one is about the people around me. YOU.” But this album is more accurately about “WE,” a morally aborted generation that learned about the world from a media who always told them they were wrong. Kendrick personifies the dawn of self-awareness a twenty-year-old Nas rapped about on “Life’s A Bitch”: that humbling moment of clarity that twenty-somethings wake up to every day.  It’s illustrated best on “Kush & Corinthians,” where Kendrick rhymes from the backseat of a friend’s car, on the way to a revenge drive-by. “Why must we retaliate, is it human nature?” he wonders, and then, as we tend to do, procrastinates: “I don’t know, I’ll look for the answers later—make a right, there they go!” Many of us, Kendrick included, are still looking.

Purchase “Section.80″ here.

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.

The pregame starts with “Dreams Money Can Buy.” Released to much fanfare in mid May, “Dreams” is Drake’s take on “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems,”—a brooding lament on being too busy to drive a new car, getting a girlfriend with priors through French customs, and above all else, wanting more money. But at its root are the difficulties that his wealth can’t fix: longing to be loved, ceaseless competition, and loss of faith in his heroes. The song is anchored by a looped sample of Jai Paul crooning “Don’t fuck with me” in falsetto, an ambiguous, unspecified statement that could be a confrontational demand, a fearful plea, or a self-loathing warning. It’s hard to know, particularly because Drake himself isn’t very sure. By the song’s end it’s hard to tell whether Drake was happy, sad, angry, or any mix of the three—he’s just on his way, and hopes there’s some good pussy waiting when he gets there.

Most striking of the Take Care leaks is “Trust Issues,” a slow-burning trance that reeks strongly of his good buddy (buddies?) The Weeknd. “Issues” finds Drake recontextualizing his hook on DJ Khaled’s “I’m On One”: instead of the triumphant declaration of youthful rebellion at the bottom of a shot glass that we meet on Khaled’s track, “Trust Issues” fills the quatrain with insecurity and a tangible sense of despair—it sounds like he’s trying to convince himself as much as he is the listener. During his rapped verse, he subtly bounces between proud braggadocio and emotional prodding, never seeming quite sure of which is right. The most jolting shift occurs between the half-whispered “if y’all what I created than I hate myself,” and the quick concession “but still, let them girls in”—one can almost feel him shake from his inner thoughts and return to the party he’s hosting. He doesn’t feel secure enough to commit to a girl that may be the one, and his only escape is to drink more and keep the party going: confiding in her and pushing her away all at once. As “Issues” slurs to a close, the ambiguity that hangs is whether the narrator in fact can’t trust others, or himself.

“Marvin’s Room” is the most conceptual of the leaks, with Drake recreating a desperate phone call to an ex after drinking too much Rosé at a party. Despite the droves of girls at his disposal (and having sex four times that week), he is fixated with the one he cannot have. Drake paints an all too common picture of many young people’s sexual frustrations—rampant promiscuity rests on the idea that the next girl (or guy) will always be better than the last, a cycle that leaves one unfulfilled and emotionally drained. His sadness, then, doesn’t necessarily come from missing his ex girl, but more the idea that she may actually be happy without him, and that tomorrow night’s romp will not fill the void that her moving on has created. He never expresses interest in continuing a relationship, he just needs “someone to put this weight on,” someone that wants to be there for him.

Through his three latest tracks, Drake creates a story ark that conveys a dark truth about the club: it isn’t a very happy place. It harbors insecurity, confrontation, and a constant dissatisfaction and assurance that someone, somewhere else is having a better time. In a recent interview with The Fader, Drake noted that his album is for the “kids driving around the city, reflecting on life.” Judging by the themes he’s been exploring, it isn’t hard to imagine what kind of lives those kids are living. These are the songs of sadness with a smile, colored with shades of purple and blue as dark as a V.I.P section, and with boundaries just as difficult to parse.

…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.

But Biggie was not a corporate rapper. He was simply incredible at making corporate rap. He bounced between strict artisan and shrewd miser, unable to adhere to the stigmas of either because he was such a balanced composition of both. In one of his last interviews with Jeff “Chairman” Mao, Biggie nags that he’s never been awarded “Dopest Rhyme of the Month” in The Source, and moments later scoffs at the notion that he loves the art of rhyming. In an earlier (and rarer) conversation with Peace Magazine, Big comments on Sir Mix-a-lot (of “Baby Got Back” fame): “I wanna be just as large as those fools, but get busy, cut the bullshit… I just wanna get busy on the mic more than anything.” In 1994, he tells The New York Times he’d never move to the suburbs for fear of losing artistic inspiration—“There won’t be nothin’ to rap about except the birds”—and three years later he sits poolside in Beverly Hills, puffing a blunt and backpedaling: “[My friends] will tell me an ill story and I can build that into something. I was never one to say that all my rhymes were my exact life experiences.” Of course, that’s all they’d ever been.

These contradictions paint a more composite image of Biggie than the monolithic “King of New York” that has persisted. He was a pioneer at odds with himself, too much of a craftsman to abandon his art but too much of a hustler to compromise his funds. He is the genius that wrote “Juicy” with a frown because he wanted his first single to be “Machine Gun Funk.” And this duality is what truly makes The Notorious B.I.G’s legacy so important today: he is the pivotal intersection at which the hip-hop artist meets the hip-hop businessman (or “business, man”). Kelefa reads Puffy as the “slick businessman mourning a slain thug,” but this dichotomy gives Puff too much credit and Biggie not enough. Puff’s power came from his uncanny ability to procure talent and create spectacle, to flash the neon lights above his own head and let the world know he’s present and accounted for, not because he was a gifted record executive or producer. And Big was no clunky gangster that lived and died by the gun. He was a restless mind with plans for his own record label, clothing line, and restaurant chain. His later music was more consciously aiming at national demographics and pop charts, yet his lyrical gifts were so second nature that downplaying his skill was never considered. If Puff “[didn’t] need the money but [couldn’t] help making it” as Touré describes in a 1997 Village Voice piece, then Big didn’t need to make the brilliant music he did, but couldn’t help making it. And before he could realize it all, before his long awaited sophomore album was even released, he was shot and killed. In death he became something he never was in life: simple.

The culmination of Biggie’s internal tensions arrived on March 25, 1997, across two CDs that XXL calls “one of hip-hop’s most enduring artistic achievements.” For all its critical merit, the tragedy of Life After Death is that audiences will never be able to listen to it impartially. Besides a handful of lucky journalists who were invited to an early listening party, no one in the public heard Life After Death before Biggie was murdered, and for the few who did, its context changed dramatically immediately after. Even today, the devastating ironies of the album’s themes, artwork, titles and lyrics make it difficult to listen to in its entirety. But a close, impartial reading of the project reveals a torn and frustrated artist, working to reconcile his past triumphs and failures with what he can see so clearly and closely in his future. Where Ready To Die is brim with a white-hot pain and constant anxiety that made his street tales that much more vivid, Life After Death has a more glassy-eyed sorrow, the torment of an artist trapped between two worlds and at home in neither.

The first words we hear Big speak on the album are from the most morbid cut on Ready to Die, “Suicidal Thoughts”: “I’m sick of niggas lyin’, I’m sick of niggas hawkin/Matta fact, fuck it, I’m sick of talkin’.” We then find Big “sittin’ in the crib dreamin’ about leer jets and coups/The way Salt shoops and how to sell records like Snoop.” His dreams are interrupted when he gets word from a visitor that somebody’s gotta die, and reassures his friend: “I’m a criminal way before the rap shit… Puff won’t even know what happened.” Within the first few minutes of the album, Big has gone from death to riches, back to death and back to riches again. The record follows this pattern nearly exactly, with “Die” followed by the radio behemoth “Hypnotize,” followed by murder fantasy/broad-stroke diss record “Kick in the Door,” followed by the R. Kelly-assisted “Fuck You Tonight,” followed by the Lox-assisted “Last Day,” followed by the R&B interpolating “I Love The Dough,” and so on. It’s as if at every turn, Big has to reaffirm himself on one side or the other: it’s gritty, but it’s radio friendly, but it’s lyrical, but it’s catchy, but it’s hip-hop, but it’s R&B. There’s regional pandering (“Notorious Thugs,” “Going Back To Cali”), pop samples (“Mo’ Money, Mo Problems”) and even a few female-aimed clunkers (“Another,” “Nasty Boy”). The only constant throughout the album, in fact, is Biggie’s ambidextrous flows and deft wordplay. No matter what the marketing angle, Big still does what he does best, rhymes. It’s what defined him as an artist—as a rapper—and it’s a steadfastness that has influenced how we’d perceive his successors for years to come.

In its most popular usage among traditional rock fans, a “sell-out” is an artist that opts for major label deals, corporate endorsements and huge record sales instead of the romanticized vision of local club shows, indie distributors and general poverty. But as hip-hop has advanced and transformed, it has developed its own set of expectations for the integrity of its cultural flag bearers. Hip-hop’s purists have always measured subject and substance to parse the “real”: to this sect, those promoting positivity and consciousness in their lyrics are the genre’s true heroes, and the baseless sludge of gangsta rap and commercially-aimed dance music are everything wrong with the culture. “Out of hundreds of rap groups, the Fugees definitely represent the best,” wrote Bernard Taylor, a rap fan from New Orleans, to Vibe Magazine in 1996. “Alize and Versace references can get boring—that’s why I give the Fugees mad props. I thought I would never stop playing the Notorious B.I.G’s album Ready to Die, but after hearing The Score I pronounced Biggie Smalls dead.” Of course, within a few tragically short months, Biggie Smalls was dead, and Bernard probably wished he’d never sent that letter.

But to a larger portion of the hip-hop audience, “selling out” meant betraying the culture’s current aesthetics and energy—“watering it down” to appeal to a wider audience. A fat check from a label or a company has been seen as a victory for hip-hop ever since three kids from Hollis, Queens scored a million dollars from some Germans to wear kicks they’d have worn either way. That was the beauty of hip-hop: every shmuck with a pen and pad could reach his wildest dreams just by the veracity of his words. Biggie served to push hip-hop’s aspirations even higher: it was not only admirable to parlay a rap career into a broader corporate imprint, it was expected. In his wake, rappers saw what Big had hoped for himself, and made his dreams their reality. When he advised “stay far from timid/only make moves when your heart’s in it/and live the phrase ‘sky’s the limit’,” it was a pep talk and a plea, as much directed to his peers as it was to himself.

“I don’t want motherfuckers to just look at Big and be like, ‘Oh shit, there go Big the dope MC’,” B.I.G commented toward the end of his conversation with Chairman Mao. “I want people to look [at] Big like, ‘Look at Big. He grew. He’s a businessman now. He’s a father now. He’s taking control of his destiny. He’s movin’ up.’”  In this candid moment, the late rapper was describing his idea of success. But through Biggie’s legacy, his art, his being, we see more than just success. We see mink coats and expensive bottles, private jets and R&B bitches, caviar for breakfast and champagne bubble baths. We see the white picket fence surrounding the lawn that he dreamed of watching his daughter play on. We hear the birds he once mocked as suburban non-noise, now singing the satisfying song of stability, peace, and comfort. We see excess, and for better or worse, he made hip-hop believe that was all within its reach. That is the dream The Notorious B.I.G left us with, and because of all the greatness he gave hip-hop culture, we’ve had no choice but to try and live it all out for him.

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.

The paragraph above might be how a 1999 feature article in a music magazine would begin, covering the white rapper who was then the most interesting man in music. Today, the same descriptions may be invoked when speaking of rap’s latest bad boy, Tyler, the Creator. Numerous comparisons have been made around Tyler, with critics forcing their own footnotes onto his budding career. The young MC typically scoffs at these associations, rightfully dismissing the cries of horrorcore, Lil B and the Wu-Tang Clan. However, one call is undeniable: 9-year-old Tyler was watching very closely, as we all were, when Marshall Mathers took pop culture by storm a decade ago.

It seems appropriate that the successor to Em’s lovable chaos was still in grade school when The Slim Shady LP hit stores. Eminem was always for the kids. His persona was shamelessly aimed at the youth who Parental Advisory stickers were meant to repel, from the crayon scribbled logo on his debut album’s artwork to his cartoonish voice and zany videos that mesmerized those raised on “The Animaniacs” and “Pinky & The Brain.” When he arrived, Eminem was not only a whirlwind force in contemporary pop and hip-hop—he was a pillar in a generation’s youth, teaching pessimism and irony to tweens all over the country who were just peeking into adolescent angst.

Tyler, the Creator was evidently one of those tweens. Now all grown up, his music features the same brooding motifs and over-the-top imagery that made Slim Shady so inescapable. In fact, Tyler’s own first single “Yonkers” is in direct dialogue with “My Name Is,” the infamous debut that stamped Em onto the public consciousness. These two records overlap on several levels, and their intersections reveal much about Em’s legacy and Tyler’s potential.

Tyler and Em both channel fantastical imagery to establish setting and character–we find Tyler wearing synthetic wigs and wrestling with dinosaurs in his opening bars as Eminem murders aliens and mutilates himself before a classroom. Both records present a moral figure that the narrator is in conflict with: Eminem with a white-coated Dr. Dre, Tyler with his own voice, pitched down in allusion to the psychiatrist character on his “Bastard” mixtape. This device paints both MCs as beyond saving, and in perpetual conflict with an extended version of themselves. They reinforce this dichotomy by allowing their self-appointed alter-egos to “take over” their normal personas: during his last verse Tyler repeats “I’m Wolf” three times in reference to his Wolf Haley incarnate, while Eminem re-introduces himself ad nauseum, and by a completely different name (it wasn’t long ago that puzzled listeners asked whether the song was by “Eminem” or “Slim Shady” and were answered “both”).

Beyond the humor and schizophrenia, both “Yonkers” and “My Name Is” present strong ideology from each artist, taking form in candid emotional musings and emphatic pop-culture lashings. Parents are recurring themes in both records, with both Tyler and Em citing incompetent mothers and absent fathers as catalysts for their behavior. The maternal references are especially somber: Tyler concludes “that fucking broad” will never understand him, while Eminem confesses that “99% of my life I was lied to,” presumably by his only parent–a melancholy revelation sandwiched between his silly non-sequiters. And externally, the two claim fierce contrarian to the dregs of pop culture, as Eminem slices through late 90s staples Pamela Anderson and the Spice Girls, while Tyler asphyxiates Bruno Mars and crashes B.o.B’s airplane.

On their respective debuts, the MCs provide cohesive outlines of themselves, describing their fantasies, backgrounds, ideals and even drilling their names into our memories. They achieve what all set out to do with their inaugural piece of art: introduce themselves. However, if Eminem’s legacy teaches us anything, it is that these cordial introductions don’t last very long.

The struggle that Tyler will face is one his sensei could not overcome–maintaining the snapshot of one’s self that fans fell in love with, while addressing the overwhelming change brought by fame and notoriety. “My Name Is” is so accurately Eminem, so laser focused on every bullet-point of his pop appeal, that he was unable to ever match it (he’s vented about this dilemma in later works). But this is not to say that Tyler is doomed. Contexts have shifted greatly since 1999, and the excess and instance of the internet means that a rounder image of Tyler is just a few keystrokes away for those that care to look. In addition, the richest of dialectics between the two MCs is that Eminem was a white rapper from urban Detroit with a ceaser cut and baggy jeans, while Tyler is a skateboarding, Vice subscribing black kid from the L.A. suburbs. Like Eminem, many didn’t know that kids like Tyler existed in the world, but most expected it, and all now have demands. This role as a socio-demographic pioneer affords Tyler certain immunities (and boatloads of cool), but these privileges are limited. As hip-hop continues to demand originality from one turntable and despise change from the other, Tyler’s test will be his ability to crossfade: to retain the bullet-points he has drafted for himself while reconciling the image that will be imposed upon him and expected from him. To catch one record while the other still spins.

Luckily, Tyler has an example to work around: Em has missed the mark. His content is in top form, but his context has lost all spark: the rebel yell and flipped finger we came to love have been reduced to a limp cycle of self reference. Eminem now flies First Class with B.o.B. and Haley Williams, with Detox playing in flight. And even worse, he’s tragically unsuspecting of his young protege, all grown up, grinning in the cockpit.

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.

This year, XXL has chosen to bestow the Freshman title to a diverse class of characters. Some have record deals, some have Wikipedia pages, some have a lot of work to do. It’s difficult to identify any common thread amongst the MCs that grace the cover, particularly in their respective levels of success. Yelawolf, Lil Twist and Cyhi all enjoy comfortable record deals with rap’s strongest teams, but none have produced records that have had any major cultural or commercial impact. Lil B and Mac Miller boast dedicated internet fanbases, but have yet to jump off the web and translate cult followings to mass appeal. Acts like Kendrick Lamar and Big K.R.I.T have been celebrated for quality projects and industry cosigns, but lack the communicative stickiness that several of their peers enjoy. And many of the other artists are floating in lyricist limbo, acknowledged more for being on the court than being a viable player.

Most pressing, it seems, is that while most fans have one or two of their favorite up-and-comers on the XXL cover, few can claim to be fans of, or even familiar with, all eleven. In fact, even XXL editors themselves admit in their March 2011 issue that for all the feverish and passionate submissions they receive, “no one ever actually has a list of a full 10.” If XXL’s goal is to highlight new artists that readers should check out, then this makes sense. But XXL has been intentionally ambiguous about what exactly it means to be a Freshman. The title appears to jump between an acknowledgement of accession to rap’s forefront and a pegging of future promise. The series began in 2007 as a steadfast crowning of “Hip-Hop’s Next Superstars,” with a list that included Papoose, Gorilla Zoe, and Young Dro. As the series continued, the declarations lost hyperbole and the picks got more controversial and confusing, with the most prominent snafu in the cover’s history being the omission of rap wunderkind Drake from the 2009 list.  Because XXL’s science isn’t consistent and their record isn’t encouraging, it serves more to consider not how successful Freshman alumni went on to be, but how they were being considered at the time their covers ran, and what the progression of the series has implied about the nature of the new artist.

XXL’s “Leaders of the New School” cover, the predecessor of the Freshman series, ran in November 2007. The mixtape was just conceding to the blog as the dominant means of discovering new artists. Record sales were teetering, but were still existent. Every featured MC had consistent radio play, with either a big feature or a hit of their own. Almost all had deals on the table, and many had secured debut dates, which were listed in the story. By contrast, almost none of this year’s Freshman MC’s have any significant radio presence, and their careers seem much less solidified than the class four years their senior. Where the earliest Freshman covers seemed to be a celebration of those that had arrived, 2011′s appears to be more a suggestion of arrival. It comes as a slight nudge to a close friend, followed by a half-whispered “Hey, this kid over here might be on to something.” There’s no accolade for past achievement or implied certainty of future viability, but a very immediate, acute indication of the present, an observation that people are talking about these MCs right now, and so there must be some good reason why.

This near-abtruse distinction bears larger relevance to the shifting nature of “new” in today’s music industry. Instinctively, we understand “new” as a definite state, brought about by way of birth or creation. But today’s viral-based music exchange doesn’t lend itself to any static markers. Contemporary “new” rap artists are not contracted, developed, and presented as would be a new film or new book. Rather, they develop in the public eye, gaining followers one by one (figuratively and literally) and eventually hitting a plateau that warrants mass acknowledgement of relevance. This makes it much more difficult to define exactly when an artist is “new”– when they upload their first project to their immediate circle of friends, or when a major rap blog discovers that project a year later and dubs it Album of the Year? Examples of this fluidity are rampant throughout today’s industry: Saigon’s debut album The Greatest Story Never Told was released last week and soared to the top of the iTunes charts, but it’s a project that’s been in limbo since 2006 (ironically, Saigon is an alumnus of XXL’s very first Freshman Class of 2007). And even outside of the rap world, Esperanza Spalding was crowned “Best New Artist” at this year’s Grammy Awards, after having recorded three commercially viable albums since 2006. By all logic, the only criteria that suggested she was “new” was that few watching the Grammy’s had any idea who she was.

“New” has become a matter of perception, a window that is becoming narrower as the barriers to entry in the music industry become thinner. Our infatuation with the concept, then, must be reevaluated in order to remain pertinent to the cultural conversation. An annual list of ten Freshman MCs cannot be of true worth if the list only has a life span of a few months. A case in point: several of last years Freshman MCs–Wiz Khalifa, J.Cole, Donnis, Big Sean–are still generally considered new acts today, but by mid 2010 there were several different artists being pegged to take their place. By trying to understand the changing nature of the new artist within the contexts of old standards, we are essentially shrinking these artists’ entire freshman year into their first day of school. Then, by constantly racing to place this concrete state of “new” onto an ever-emerging pool of rising talent, we’re recreating that first day of school again and again. It’s no wonder, then, that so many selected artists have trouble emerging from the Freshman class–we all know how awkward that first day can be.

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.

LL Cool J’s “I Need Love” is widely credited as rap’s first love ballad. It’s a slow, sugary soliloquy in which LL bares his soul to a girl he hasn’t found yet, promising that he’s done playing games and is looking for someone special to give his heart (and body). The record is almost cartoonish by today’s standards–it seems like L is trying to catch hip-hop up to a century’s worth of romance cliches, with couplets like “You can scratch my back, we’ll get cozy and cuddle/I’ll lay down my jacket so you can walk over a puddle” grasping for heartstrings a little too eagerly. Hip-hop’s first interpretation of the love song played by the rules, delivering all the sentimental lovie-dovie lines that Hallmark could print. Things really got interesting two years later, when a stocky Queens native with a heavy tongue said things a bit more bluntly.

“Have you ever met a girl that you tried to date, but a year to make love she wanted you to wait?” Biz Markie asks at the opening of “Just A Friend.” The question is rhetorical: before we can answer, he launches into his narrative about “Blah Blah Blah,” an interest of his who has banished him to the friend-zone. The song’s hinge is the ambiguity of the term “friend”; throughout, Biz’s girl refers to another guy in her life as “just a friend,” and leaves Biz to either take the situation as is or move on. He begrudgingly presses on, never quite sure of his position, and ultimately suffers an epic loss after catching a fella tongue-kissing his girl in the mouth. Its pulse is its infamous hook, during which Biz Markie croaks out his plea to the lady of his dreams. Unfortunately, he never gets a response.

“Just A Friend” probably shares equal amounts of hip-hop lore with “I Need Love,” with both remembered as landmark records in the genre’s history  and nostalgia-inducing relics of past youths. But “Just A Friend” bears a certain cultural stickiness, a pop persistence that has remained to this day. It’s simply more human than its glitzy, perfume-scented sibling, depicting a real relationship for all its complexities, inconsistencies, heartache, and humor. LL Cool J is a shirtless, lip-licking, budding sex icon. His delivery is polished, his mix is flawless and his lyrics read like the world’s greatest personal ad. Biz Markie, however, produces something a little rougher. His words slur, his rhymes are uncertain, and his singing is God awful. “Just A Friend,” for all its unorthodox sounds and silly visuals, was much like an actual relationship. It was spontaneous, challenging, infectious, confusing, fun, and unforgettable.

Most significant about “Just A Friend,” particularly when held against “I Need Love,” is that Biz rewrote the love song formula that had previously dominated popular music. The song wasn’t idealistic, it was realistic, and set the precedent for hip-hop’s often left-of-center perspective on love. Its success as a crossover pop record evinced that there was a mass desire for a new voice singing the love song, one that would tackle it with genuine emotion and earthly prose, instead of the overworked cliches that LL had parroted in “Love.” Its emphatic energy, scathing bluntness and proud defiance of pop norms completely embodied hip-hop’s golden standards: originality and authenticity at all costs. “Friend” was a song that only hip-hop could get away with, and its blasts from speakers to this day because while we may not all find the love we need, we’ve all most certainly had a friend. Biz was just the first to admit it.

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.

What makes Lil B unique is not that he’s capitalizing on nostalgia- reunion shows and ‘best-of’ albums  do it all the time- it’s that the nostalgia he taps into is not based in actual events of the past, but rather emotions and experiences that have never happened to any of his fans. He is offering an experience that for his fans, growing up in this generation has prevented them from ever having. It’s genius.

Modern hip hop fans have not been deprived of talent or variety, but we been deprived of unity, which in turn has deprived us of wild fanaticism. Every corner of the industry seeks to separate us into increasingly narrow factions. Sean Price recently told all Kid Cudi fans to kill themselves; Wiz Khalifa  presents us with becoming a Taylor or dying as our only options, albeit more lightheartedly; seemingly every MC has joined some sort of collective with a with-us-or-against-us mentality that simplifies life for them, but makes it very hard for fans to like artists with conflicting ideologies without appearing uninformed. Additionally, the aforementioned folks at Apple have contributed to a shift in how we build our musical identities. We don’t all tune in to the same radio station; we plug ourselves in to our own private collection of music that is different from everyone else’s. We’ve become hip hop snowflakes.

These things are apparent to most everyone. We have all sacrificed commonality for a greater level of self-expression and access to information. What’s less apparent, though, is how the industry’s fragmentation has prevented us from ever being swept up in a movement so large that we stop becoming fans and morph into fanatics.

At first glance, Lil B seems like the artist least suited to capture us in this way, mostly because Lil B is an amalgamation of every bad hip hop cliché. His verses are the basest extreme (no pun intended) of hip hop’s dregs: atonal, comically scattered, and rife with detached misogyny. Everything about him is hilariously- but consciously- vague. His self-appointed status as the Based God seems to entitle him to whatever he wants to be entitled to at any given moment. He has passion, but no thesis; a deep “appreciation” for women, but no specific stories of either love or sexual conquest; his physical appearance is only distinct in that he apparently can shape shift: some days he looks like Ellen Degeneres, on others he looks like Jesus Christ (which sets him up nicely to be Bill O’Reily’s new least favorite rapper. You’re off the hook, Cam).

Just as important as the ambiguity of his identity, however, is the fact that his music is, in the traditional sense, not good at all. The music he currently makes is such an enormous downgrade in sophistication from his days with The Pack that he might be the only rapper to ever launch a comeback that yields exponetentially greater success with remarkably shittier music. But this, combined with his lack of a detailed identity, is the crux of his likeability. Show me a rapper with tons of talent and an interesting story, and I’ll show you tons of people who hate him. This is partly due simply to differences in taste, and partly due to the hyper-individuality that has become so pervasive among hip hop fans. Lil B does not have to navigate these obstacles, however, because there is little argument over the quality of his music, and even less about the merits of his personality. Without these two factors, fans are left with much less dividing them.

Simply the absence of specificity and lyrical prowess, though, is not enough to get you millions of adoring fans- it’s exhibiting these qualities despite the fact that your fans know you are capable of much more. From his stint as the unofficial spokesman for Vans, Lil B has proven that he can, in fact, rap much, much better than he currently does- and this is why everyone is so comfortable with liking him. Without his previous years, he would either be seen as a foolish flash-in-the-pan, or something much worse: a lifeless parody of everything people point to when they claim that hip hop is dead. The fact that he previously had success with a much higher level of hip hop, however, makes this entire phase of his career somewhat tongue-in-cheek.

That is the Beauty of Lil B. We don’t have to feel guilty about worshipping someone who raps poorly and acts bizarrely, because we know that that behavior is the product of a concerted effort to be that way. To facilitate this lack of inhibition, the Based God has structured his fan base the way a religious evangelist would. He accepts any and all fans (and more often than not, shows each of them some love on his dizzying number of social networking pages), and in return for his openness he merely asks that everyone call him God and blindly, passionately hang on every statement he makes without running it through the gauntlet of rational thought.

And we love it, because, deep in every hip hop fan rests a desire to access the inner Beatlemania that has been oppressed for so many years. Mired in a culture that rewards us less for loving something than for not really liking anything at all, we are all dying to feel the religion and the mysticism that was so central to older generations of fans, to go to a concert dressed in a chef’s outfit and bawl our eyes out and throw our girlfriends on stage as a barbaric sexual offering to our musical idol. And ideally, he would be genuinely humble despite his façade of immortality, thanking us for our presence as much as we thank him for his. And, if possible, we’d like to go back to our discerning, rational, blogging selves in the morning.

And the Based God knows our desires, so that is exactly what he grants us.

In the Church of the Based God, this mystical world of ambient noise and non-sequiturs, nothing is at steak. For once, all we are required to do is show up with love in our hearts and swag in our souls. To older generations it may seem like buffoonery, a pathetic facsimile of what it truly meant to obsess. But those people worshipped men; fans of Lil B are worshiping the act of worship itself. Fortunately, his disciples could care less about how they’re perceived. If there’s one common thread throughout the history of fandom, it’s that the grown ups just never understand.

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.

The Wall of Sound was first developed (and named) by influential record producer/songwriter Phil Spector, who produced over 25 Top 40 singles in the early 1960s. His girl-group pop ballads were smash hits, and all featured his trademark style of dense, layered, and heavily reverberated instrumentation. On songs like “Da Doo Ron Ron” by The Crystals and “Be My Baby” by The Ronettes, Spector had several guitar players, horn players, pianists, and bassists playing in unison, to create the sensation of an impenetrable wall of melody, greater than any of the individual instruments that contributed to it. This distinction was the crux of Spector’s revolutionary philosophy: it was not the individual pieces of a composition that mattered, but the mélange, the feel of the sound that affected listeners (he felt so passionately about this that persons in the studio who weren’t even being recorded could not leave in between takes—he feared the sound would change if the amount of people in the room did). Spector, having no formal music training himself, understood that listeners weren’t looking for certain chords or solos, but for a sonic emotion, something that represented much more than it was comprised of. Two decades later, a producer from Long Island and his loud-mouthed MC friends would take this philosophy and politicize it, morphing it from a comment on music composition to a criticism of the concept of “music” altogether.

When Hank Shocklee and The Bomb Squad began producing the tracks that would become Public Enemy’s It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, their self-proclaimed goal was to “destroy music.” The group’s ground-breaking sampling techniques blended countless sounds together from various records to create their own version of Spector’s Wall of Sound, one that was even less melodic and even more chaotic. Tracks like “Fight the Power” and “Welcome to the Terrordome” were structured around the natures of individual sounds instead of their positions in a sequence or harmony, and became both protest and party anthems because their emotion was not only palpable, it was inescapable. Public Enemy’s ideology—a lambasting of cultural hegemony, social and political inequalities, and the rewriting of history by the dominant class—was in essence a protest against structure, and in particular, the structure that imposed standards on who they were and what they could be. Their music was another bullet-point in their argument: why should music be structured around the systems of melody and harmony that had previously defined it? Shocklee and his team felt not only that it shouldn’t be, but that to deliver the message their group needed to deliver, it simply couldn’t be. And audiences enthusiastically agreed, flocking to record stores and concert arenas to be blasted again and again by the impossible noise of the Bomb Squad and the urgent ideals of Chuck and Flav.

It is here that the innovation of Phil Spector and the politics of Public Enemy intersect with the sweeping phenomena of trunk rattling trap music that reigned in 2010. The champion architect for today’s Wall of Sound is Lex Luger, the Virginia-born producer who at a mere 19 years of age quickly became one of hip-hop’s most sought beatsmiths. Inspired by the archetypal booms and claps of Cash Money’s mid-90s reign, Lex’s style calls forth the sights, sounds, and smells of the traphouse: dense, hot, sticky, and filled with the smoke of various illegal substances. His beats boast heavily stacked and reverberated synths, hot, sharp, rapid percussion, and impossibly thick bass, completely ignoring any semblance of melody. It’s nearly impossible to isolate and identify any one chord or melodic riff, let alone write out or recreate his beats with traditional music training. Lex beats thrive solely on energy and imagery; rhythmic tensions and melodic flare take a back seat to purely emotional sound, meant to provoke more than invoke. Each of the many times “BMF” and “Hard In Da Paint” blared across airwaves and from iPod docks this past year, it was in sonic protest of the tidal wave of over-produced, flowery pop production that neighbored it on either side. This music wasn’t catchy, it was gropey. And we loved it not for how good it was, but how insistent it was.

Few would liken Rick Ross and Waka Flocka to Chuck D and Hank Shocklee, and even fewer would connect either pair to the jukebox girl groups of the 60s. But all three categories of artist—the crude, the controversial, and the candy-coated—have recognized the strength of manipulating sounds beyond convention, making something bigger than just a song. The Wall of Sound that they all utilized becomes a symbol: both a hurdle that obstructs the listener and an overwhelming experience that engulfs them.  It’s a sonic representation of our greatest demand of our favorite music, to transport us beyond the physical plains we inhabit. Waka and Ross aren’t the best rappers, and Lex Luger isn’t the best producer, but they connected with so many people because their music was transcendent and moving. When the needle hit these records and the clubs erupted, all that loud, dense, confrontational and progressive energy coalesced on the dance-floor, becoming something that was itself greater than all of its parts: hip-hop.