I thought I’d write about Nas this week. I thought maybe I’d write about the new Kanye West-produced Abstract Mindstate album, too. The parallels were too much to pass up. One one side: a rap deity, coming off of a Grammy win and a whole lot of spousal-abuse allegations, attempting to project composure and wisdom and national...

Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter V was supposed to come out later this year, but now it’s been delayed indefinitely, which is crazy. Wayne is one of the biggest stars in rap, and if he can’t get a firm release date, should we just ball up the whole music business and throw it away? But Wayne [...]

You’ve seen the tremendous(ly violent) video for the Enon-sampling, Waka-featuring “Tolerated.” You’ve heard the fiery NIN-sampling, Jadakiss-featuring “I Can Hear Sweat.” And now you can indulge in the whole of Broken Ankles, the new EP-length collaborative mixtape by trans-Pennsylvani...

Tomorrow, we’ll get to hear what happens when Greg Gillis makes rap beats for extended periods of time and doesn’t shoot them full of Bon Jovi choruses or whatever. That’s when the unlikely combination of Girl Talk and Freeway will release their collaborative free-download EP Broken Ankles. The two already teamed up...

On “Heaven Or Hell,” a track from his great Dreamchasers 3 mixtape, the Philly rap animal Meek Mill flipped the Luniz classic “I Got 5 On It” into a gritty street-life lament. This was a smart thing to do. He also recruited craggy O.G. Jadakiss and R&B singer Guordan Banks for help, and that decis...