VMP Magazine

I. 9mm Goes Bang

With hindsight, time has a way of collapsing — off the top of your head, what’s the difference between 1933 and 1935? When we’re dealing with years closer to the present, the sheer number of threads that can come unspooled in 24 months becomes clearer. The beginning of 2007, for example, bears virtually no resemblance to the fall of 2009. With music, though, sea changes rarely come that quickly, and almost never happen at a pace where things that might sound fresh in 1986 are made to sound drab and dated in ’88. But that’s exactly what happened to Run-D.M.C. with Tougher Than Leather, the group’s misguided fourth album, which turned 30 this week and which, in most ways, signaled the end their dominance over rap, and confirmed the status of a new, younger guard.

The West gets painted in broad strokes. There are volleyball nets and cuffed khakis, hyphy hallmarks and conspicuous gang allegiances, all neatly cordoned off and placed in chronological order. But the real history of rap in California is much messier, more cross-pollinated, and more rewarding.

It starts with the story of a consumer. On October 1, 2001, an 18-year-old Compton native named Jayceon Taylor was playing Madden in the apartment he sold drugs out of when two unknown assailants kicked in the door and shot him five times. Taylor was able to call himself an ambulance, but soon slipped into a coma. (In the future — when he was on the precipice of becoming a star — Taylor would rap: “I was two beeps away from a flatline.”) When he woke up in the hospital three days later, he had one request for his brother: that he return with copies of as many classic hip-hop albums as possible.

Every month, we round up the best releases in rap music. This month's edition covers Milo, Lil Uzi Vert, A$AP Mob, and more.

First Of The Month is our monthly rap column, and instead of compiling a list of the 10 or 20 best rap albums--since the genre isn't as album-dependent as the other genres we've done Best of 2016 lists for--our columnist counts down the songs, mixtapes, and albums that defined the genre this year.

Every month, we round up the best releases in rap music. This month's editions breaks down 11(!) albums.

Every month, we round up the best releases in rap music. This month's edition covers Open Mike Eagle, Young Thug, and more.

Every month, we round up the best releases in rap music. This month’s edition covers Payroll Giovanni, Lil Wayne, JPEGMAFIA and more.

Every month, Paul Thompson rounds up the best releases in rap music that you need to hear. We call it First of the Month.

Like any good myth, it starts with a flood.

Sometime shortly after 1993’s Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (VMP Essentials No. 105) dragged hip-hop through the muck and grime of the Wu-Tang Clan’s Staten Island, water began rushing into the basement where RZA, the group’s producer and chief visionary, did most of his alchemy. You picture it seeping in through seams, then blowing holes in the walls themselves — you see the samplers that spark, sputter and die. In a 1996 interview with Vibe, RZA estimated that more than 300 beats were lost. (Two decades later, Raekwon put the number closer to 500, but you know how legends grow.) Nascent records by almost all of the nine Wu vocalists were affected, as were those of several hangers-on; it has been well-documented that Inspectah Deck, whose harrowing second verse punctuates 36 Chambers’ “C.R.E.A.M.,” was planning to release his debut album in early 1995, but saw it pushed to the very end of the millennium.

It was Valentine’s Day, 2014, and thousands upon thousands of fans were rushing to file-sharing websites to download De La Soul’s first six albums, which the group had uploaded as .zip files and beamed directly to the fans’ email addresses, which they had collected themselves. Those albums — including Stakes Is High, De La Soul Is Dead and Vinyl Me, Please’s Essentials Record of the Month in March, their monumental debut, 3 Feet High and Rising — were unavailable anywhere on the legal internet, then as they are today, due to contracts that clear their samples for physical release, but do not cover digital distribution. The delirious, server-crashing mad dash to secure the files was understandable: the records in question were bronzed by critics and burned into the brains of rap fans going back generations. They’ve soundtracked sweaty high school house parties and are even enshrined in the Library of Congress. What I’m trying to tell you is that those albums matter; I’m also trying to tell you that someone owns the copyrights.

“They did tap on our window,” Dave “Trugoy” Jolicoeur said of Warner, to the New York Times in an interview a couple years after the fact. Imitating the conglomerate: “Hey guys, what the fuck are you doing?”

Every month, we round up the best releases in rap music. This month's editions breaks down new albums from Cardi B and more.

Every month, we round up the best releases in rap music. This month's editions breaks down new albums from 03 Greedo and more.

We look back at T.I.’s King, which sold more than 500,000 copies the week it came out, won T.I. a Grammy, and which turns 10 today, March 28, 2016.

First Of The Month is our monthly rap column. These are the 15 best rap albums of 2017.

Every month, we round up the best releases in rap music. This month's edition covers Young Thug & Future, G Herbo, 21 Savage and Offset, Young Dolph, and more.

Every month, we round up the best releases in rap music. This month's edition covers 21 Savage, Jay-Z, and more.

1st of the Month is a monthly column that rounds up the best releases in rap music, from major label albums to Datpiff classics. This month's edition covers T-Pain & Lil Wayne, Brother Ali, Gucci Mane, and more.

1st of the Month is a monthly column that reviews notable rap releases. This month’s edition tackles King Kendrick, G. Perico, Joey Bada$$, and more.

First of the Month is our monthly rap column.

First Of The Month is our monthly rap column.

OutKast's ATLiens is our August Hip-Hop Record of the Month, celebrating its 25th anniversary. You can read new Listening Notes for the record here and below, you can read the essay we published in 2016, celebrating ATLiens on its 20th anniversary.