Blog: The Tape

Silly title, eh? In honor of our favorite holiday—the month long No Shave November, we asked some of our favorite artists questions about their facial hair. All interviews are entirely devoid of musical questions, as we see No Shave November as a time of repentance and self-reflection, focusing on a self-evaluation of where one is [...]

Welcome to The Art of the Video, our collaborative series with Sean Stout and Terroreyes. Sean will be taking you behind the scenes of videos he’s directed, and once in a while we’ll add in some commentary as well. For our second volume, we present Sean's work with Death Grips and their video for the [...]

Why is it all the rage these days for hip-hop and R&B artists to make fame, drugs, women, and money seem like one monumental pain in the ass? Eminem, B.O.B., Kanye West, Kid Cudi, and Drake (especially Drake) are all guilty. Even Jay-Z, formerly the master of keeping it cool, raps “I’m fucking depressed” on [...]

The Museum of the Moving Image looks like one large pixel. The cubic structure occupies half of a city block in Queens, New York and illuminates like a lego brick stuffed with LED lights. I walked in and picked up my ticket, which came in the form of a lenticular wristband—it changed shape and color [...]

My purchase of a crystal lowrider fitted with a teal dyed leopard skin leather interior and an all neon lined stereo system found ridicule at first. “It’s ugly.” “It ruins the neighborhood.” “It’s making my eyes go all ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ and I’m not even a Nazi.” And I was like guys, trust [...]

• Rustie - Ultra Thizz (taken from Glass Swords)

When I saw the Glow in the Dark tour with my friends in 2008, I waited til Rihanna's set to go get a hot dog. And then I wandered around the United Center aimlessly for an extra 10-15 minutes, just because I thought it would be more fun and interesting than seeing "Shut Up and [...]

I was born in Queens, raised on Long Island. I currently live in Brooklyn. I've never farmed though I did own an Aero Garden for nearly a year. I'm an agnostic and Asian. So there's zero reason for me to be anything but terrified of musical forms that are closely linked to the southern United [...]

My experiences with Kendrick Lamar and Nosaj Thing are mostly limited to seeing their respective names on blog posts a dozen times a month. Still, I've heard Kendrick on a solo track or two that elicit immediate "This dude can spit his ass off"-type thoughts, while also being blown away by his cameo on "The [...]

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How big can M832s sound get before the brilliant, synth-led climaxes cancel each other out? I'm not sure but a double album is definitely a serious test of a band's mettle, even a great one like M83. When it feels like every song is basically begging you to have a life-changing catharsis, the result can [...]

I didn’t do homework in high school. I don’t know why, exactly. Part of it was the vague antipathy toward authority that is so common among adolescent boys it is a cliché. Part of it was probably my parents’ fighting, separation, and eventual divorce, although that sort of story is much too neat and Freudian [...]

This is a re-post from our first week. We liked it so much thought y'all might wanna read it again! Story by Marcus Hunter A quick search of “Goblin” on Wikipedia will lead you to some pretty basic and common facts. A goblin is a mythical, evil and demonizing figure: small, menacing, mischievous, entirely sinister. [...]

In 2006 Spank Rock released YoYoYoYoYo, an extraordinarily fun (and smart) record that talked about little besides women, and Naeem Juwan’s involvement with them. The LP succeeded because it was the independent rap scene’s response to the mainstream. He talked about girls much in the way rappers on the radio did, but the beats belonged [...]

• Spank Rock - Everything is Boring and Everyone is a Fucking Liar

This is a re-post from our first week. We liked it so much thought y'all might wanna read it again! Journalists and music fans use labels to give listeners an idea of what they’re about to hear. Terms like “retro” and “old-school” are often tossed around as weightless descriptors for certain types of music that [...]

Tristan and Michael saw Das Racist, Danny Brown and Despot last weekend in Pawtucket. This piece is a companion review to the Danny Brown article, and will also run in the coming issue of The College Hill Independent. Danny Brown entered the stage at The Met wearing a Mishka varsity jacket, skinny jeans, and Jordans—also sporting [...]

Tristan and Michael saw Das Racist, Danny Brown and Despot last weekend in Pawtucket. This piece is a companion review to the Danny Brown article, and will also run in the coming issue of The College Hill Independent. I was first acquainted with Das Racist by a friend of mine who was at Wesleyan while [...]

This is a re-post from our first week. We liked it so much thought y'all might wanna read it again! We’re all professional personalities in development. Buzz marketing our wares to a shallow pool of Xeroxed selves, smiling our toothy grins or grimacing sternly depending on the campaign. Genuine sentiment has successfully been commodified thanks [...]

One of the joys of growing up in the twenty-first century has to be digging through your parents’ old records and seeing what kinds of gems you can find. Taking the crates in from the garage/down from the attic, rooting through them for an hour or two, plucking out the perfect disc (“Sweet Baby James” [...]

Kanye West’s “Best Collaborative Album Released on August 23rd, 2011 Awards Ceremony” was going smoothly, until someone started playing Flash Bang Grenada’s 10 Haters. In the middle of Kanye’s acceptance speech (he was on ‘E’, with 270 more names to go), “Good Cop, Bad Cop,” the first track on Flash Bang’s new LP started blasting. [...]

"F.A.M.E.": it's "defiant," it's "triumphant," it's a "comeback," it's pretty dope. As far as Thug Motivation 103: Hustlerz Ambition's (many) advance songs go, up until this point Young Jeezy has felt 50/50; "Lose My Mind," and the lesser known but also very awesome "Scared Money," featuring Plies and Lil Wayne respectively, both exemplify to me [...]

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Today, Grantland blogger Rembert Browne wrote a post discussing how T.I.'s release from jail and the climax of the Atlanta Braves's collapse work as a pair. You can check out the entire piece here, but the aspect of the post I'll be responding to can be found below: T.I.'s freedom gets our hopes up because [...]