This article has been handpicked from the Okayplayer editorial archives and included in our Hip Hop 50 collection as a noteworthy inclusion to the genre's rich and diverse narrative. The article has ...

I’m sitting in the basement of a low-rise corner building in Bushwick with 23-year-old rapper/producer Cash Cobain, and it’s finally time to throw on the Spice Girls. The basement is a converted ...

The New York rap scene has a new formula that’s making songs go viral every day. The art of taking a classic song and transmuting it to fit a new era through sampling has been a staple in hip-hop ...

A fusion of New York drill and Jersey club has been bubbling in the tri-state area over the last few months to become the dominating sound of the summer. New York drill has maintained its status as ...

The sound of drill is the brazen brrrrrap of street-level rap over the past decade. It’s the unsettling, aestheticized sound of gunplay evoked by spraying hi-hats, double-tapped rhyme blasts, and a ...

On a recent Wednesday night in Brooklyn, “Hey there, Delilah, what’s it like in New York City?” bellowed from the speakers at Baby’s All Right. Except, the indie rock band Plain White T’s was nowhere ...

Pitchfork writer Alphonse Pierre’s rap column covers songs, mixtapes, albums, Instagram freestyles, memes, weird tweets, fashion trends—and anything else that catches his attention. Baltimore MC ...

Marked by no-frills rapping and nightmarish production, Chicago drill music traveled around the globe at the speed of the internet throughout the last decade. Eventually, Brooklyn rappers tried on the ...