We really love a spectacularly ridiculous hip hop album cover. You know, one that deploys all the common cliches with copious jewelry, fancy cars, naked women, suits, cigars, a lurking posse, toned and oiled muscles, maybe a skyline, the works. It’s hip-hop, it’s all about showing off and having fun doing it. All of those [...]

One time while were riding in the elevator in a really, really tall building one of our favorite jams came on the muzak, and we felt transported to a dark, light-dappled dance floor. We’re not sure the other people in the elevator were transported to quite the same place, and it became clear when the [...]

If you got a lot of Halloween loot you’ll be happy to know that nobody can stop you from eating as much as you want today: it’s National Candy Day! Somebody was thinking synergistically when they scheduled these two days so near each other. We’re going to take this opportunity to think about candy in [...]

When it comes to music, few things (aside from great music) win us over more effectively than a beautiful, clever or ambitious music video. Here are music videos for groups and artists we’ve mostly never heard pf before, but because they were able to put together these 10 Marvelous New Music Videos, they’ll forever be [...]

On this date in 1962, the seminal Halloween hit “The Monster Mash” by Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers reached the number one spot on Billboard’s Hot 100. Because this was way back in the day before real music videos, however, no official visual accompaniment for the song exists. This has allowed innumerable artists to [...]

The Star-Spangled Banner, better-known to some as the national anthem of the U.S.A., was first sung exactly 195 years ago, we’re told. Though it was not approved as the official national anthem until 1931, the 1814 poem “Defence of Fort McHenry” by Francis Scott Key was immediately set to the popular British drinking song “The [...]

We love the idea of hip hop supergroups, except that so often they end up sounding like so much less than the sum of their parts, which is a tragic shame. That’s assuming they put out any music at all, which is not always the case. Then there are others, like The Firm, which deliver [...]

As perhaps the subculture that has embraced Internet meme culture with the greatest enthusiasm, hip hop has produced some of the most memorable cross-over mainstream web memes. StreetLevel recounts some of the funnest in their listicle of The 9 Best Hip Hop Memes, from consciously created movements like Souljah Boy’s “Crank Dat” dance or the [...]

Few seem to appreciate a far-out music video as intensely as we do, so much so that one of the crazy clips included in Brainz’s listicle of The 15 Weirdest Music Videos Ever was featured in one of our listicles several months back – that would be Tommy Sparks’s “She’s Got Me Dancing.” Among the [...]

In case you hadn’t heard, Mary Travers – one third of the hit folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary – died yesterday at the age of 72 after complications from leukemia. Obviously, for anyone raised on that group’s songs – or who raised someone on that group’s songs – today is a very sad day, [...]