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 ...

Every year, we’re told that hip-hop is in crisis. But if you ask us, it feels like there’s too much heat to keep up with. What’s lost on the chart-watchers lamenting rap’s mainstream lull is that the ...

In a year that had no rap songs in the Billboard Hot 100’s Top 40 for the first time since 1990, rap thrived in so many other ways. This list of the 25 best rap albums of 2025 includes grand ...

So much rap music comes out all the time, and especially with frequent surprise releases, it can be hard to keep track of it all. So, as a way to help keep up with all of it, here’s a roundup of the 5 ...

The prodigious producer was up for a Best Rap Album trophy for his collaboration with Common, “The Auditorium Vol. 1,” and Best Rap Performance for “When the Sun Shines Again” featuring Posdnuos. On ...

It was the best of hip-hop times. It was the worst of hip-hop times. Ha! 2025 was a rollercoaster of rap music’s highs and lows. The duality was so real. I can’t recall a year with such a wide array ...

Back when hip-hop was seeping out of New York City and becoming the soundtrack of urban American, red states preferred the rootsy melodies of country music. In those years, the idea of combining the ...

As the year comes to an end, we are wading deep into list season. Now that we’ve talked about the best albums, songs, debuts, and EPs of 2025, it’s time to get even more granular and pay tribute to a ...

Hip Hop in 2025 didn’t move in a straight line — it expanded, paused, reflected, and, in many cases, recalibrated. Rather than being defined by one dominant sound or culture-consuming headline, the ...