Reuters - Rappers have a propensity for christening themselves with royal titles to promote their standing in hip-hop (e.g., King of the South, Prince of Rap). But for Bun B, the less-regal handle Trill OG was the most fitting.

When Pimp C died late in 2007, it looked like the legendary Texas rap duo UGK was finished forever, just a few months after their Underground Kingz album topped the Billboard charts and brought the group to an unlikely new commercial peak. But last year, I interviewed Bun B, the duo's surviving half, and he told me that there'd be another UGK al...

T-Pain and Akon might want to update their résumés. If 2008 was the year hip-hop remade "Paper Planes", 2009 is shaping up to be the year rappers get their hooks from Santogold. Sampling the same track as Jay Z's Kanye West-produced "Brooklyn Go Hard" (presumably due for an official release this year), Memphis' Three 6 Mafi...

The long, strange life of M.I.A.'s Kala crime spree "Paper Planes" continues. More than a year after Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit's "Tengazako"-- and a few months after the Pineapple Express trailer and T.I.'s star-studded hip-hop recasting, "Swagga Like Us"-- comes Jim Jones' claim that they're "Jackin' Swagga From Us". It's a darker-sounding tr...

Hip-hop's sleeper romance with eminently deserving London boundary-smasher M.I.A. is a fun thing to behold. The love affair probably peaked, profile-wise anyway, with Kanye West's lackluster appropriation of Kala's Clash-sampling "Paper Planes" for T.I.'s "Swagger Like Us", with such famous swaggerers as Jay-Z and Lil Wayne. But this has been a ...