Loud Sound Studios is home to two of Rwanda's up-and-coming hip-hop acts: Pro-Zed and Kenny K-Shot. Hip-hop is all about the beats and the flow. For two Rwandan artists, that flow sometimes comes in ...

You might say it was Drake, DJ Premier, or Ice Cube. But the real idea of a beat flip starts with the DJ. In the early days of hip-hop—when DJing was the center of the action and park jams at rec ...

Despite how they’ve at times been ideologically pitted against one another, country music and hip-hop are often compared as the two forms of pop music that speak most directly to the everyday problems ...

Every month, The FADER's Vivian Medithi showcases all the standout rap songs from the past 30-ish days in one unranked list. Over the sort of subtle ShunGu beat that makes you sit up and listen a ...

The best rap beats are nerdy as hell. Every drum placement, every melody, every chopped-up sample sends me down a YouTube rabbit hole trying to piece together the way a producer contorts and dissects ...

As hip-hop celebrated its 50th anniversary this year, headlines swirled around its potentially diminishing force as a commercial juggernaut: The first half of the year didn’t see a rap song or album ...

HIP-HOP WAS BORN IN THE BRONX IN the summer of 1973. To celebrate the music’s 50th anniversary, “ Rolling Stone” will be publishing a series of features, historical pieces, op-eds, and lists ...

We should address the elephant in the room: hip-hop did not have a strong year on the charts. In fact, rap music had its worst showing in years. Back in October, it made headlines when—for the first ...