Author Archives
Beat Construction: El-P
The producer is one of the most crucial yet anonymous figures in all of music. Every other week, with Beat Construction, an extension of our column in the magazine, we aim to illuminate the role … read more »
Beat Construction: Mike Will Made It
The producer is one of the most crucial yet anonymous figures in all of music. Every other week, with Beat Construction, an extension of our column in the magazine, we aim to illuminate the role … read more »
Beat Construction: Kenoe
The producer is one of the most crucial yet anonymous figures in all of music. In some songs, the producer is both the band leader and the band, yet his or her name is often … read more »
Beat Construction: KY Engineering
As crucial as the producer is, they’re not the only set of ears in the studio. For this installment of Beat Construction we go further down the hip-hop assembly line to talk to an even … read more »
GEN F: Young Sam
The best trends tend to outlast their shelf lives. In 2009, the limber-legged teenage dance craze known as jerkin took Los Angeles by storm, fueled by appropriately energetic bedroom raps and electro beats. The scene … read more »
Beat Construction: FKi
The producer is one of the most crucial yet anonymous figures in all of music. In some songs, the producer is both the band leader and the band, yet his or her name is often … read more »
Beat Construction: Harry Fraud
The producer is one of the most crucial yet anonymous figures in all of music. In some songs, the producer is both the band leader and the band, yet his or her name is often … read more »
Interview: Ab-Soul
As our recent Black Hippy cover story showed, the Los Angeles rap quartet is a complex compound of several moving parts. None, perhaps, more complex than Ab-Soul. Perpetually hidden behind a pair of shades (he … read more »
Black Hippy: A View from the Center
As Black Hippy, Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul, Jay Rock and Schoolboy Q rewrite rap’s future. The inauspicious nerve center for Los Angeles’ most promising hip-hop movement is the back room of a residential home at the … read more »
Memphis Rap: Parting the Dark Clouds
Can Memphis rappers reclaim the sound of their city and still find success? Memphis can feel pretty barren to the uninitiated. Locals tend to herd visitors instinctively, if not to Graceland then to its eerily … read more »
