Oliver Wang

Photo by Jonathan Mannion JAY-Z The Blueprint (Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam) He’s the jigga you hate to love: Practically everything Jay-Z espouses — rampant materialism, reckless bravado, sexual objectification — reflects hip-hop’s tiresome self-focus and social irrelevancy. But it’s a testament to his irresistible charisma that no matter what Jay puts out,......

CANNIBAL OX Cold Vein (Def Jux) The dirt-slathered beats lumber with a sinister lope, escapees from a mad scientist’s lab. Pieced together from electronic splinters, lost analog loops and other mangled music, the downtempo tracks sound like trip-hop gone to hell and back. They’re the antithesis of the shiny perfection......

Since I left Los Angeles for the Bay 10 years ago, what I‘ve missed most is the driving. Maybe that’s because turning 16 in L.A. felt like gaining the (car) keys to freedom, even if that only meant lunch runs to In-N-Out and late-night cruises through the Westside. Now that......

From the very first time I heard Betty Davis, she owned me. It might have been her voice -- swinging from a deceptively seductive lilt to a jagged dagger in the blink of a bar. It might have been her music -- a tidal force of funk, rock and blues......

Photo by Michael Lavine FATBOY SLIMHalfway Between the Gutter and the Stars (Skint/Astralwerks) He’s come a long way, baby. Once pop music’s funk soul brother, Fatboy Slim now sheds his image as dance music’s crossover star, reinventing himself as a DJ with more than just e-friendly tracks in his record......

TALIB KWELI AND HI-TEKReflection Eternal (Rawkus) Talib Kweli dreams of Africa. But unlike Kim Basinger‘s Great White Mother fantasies, Kweli’s vision quest speaks on “how it is and how it could be,” an analogy to hip-hop‘s reality and potential as he loses himself among the talking rhythms of Bossi Kouytate......

How do you draw a scratch? It’s easy enough to see one created when we observe a DJ‘s deft handiwork producing vinyl-warped screams and stutters. But how do you notate a sound that’s neither melody, harmony nor rhythm, but a stylus-generated collision of the three? At the recent Skratchcon conference......

Los Angeles hip-hop finds itself in the midst of both a renaissance and a revival. It’s a renaissance in the sense that L.A. hasn‘t been this flush with underground talent since the heyday of the Pharcyde, Freestyle Fellowship and the Good Life Cafe in the early ’90s. In just the......

PAUL BARMAN It’s Very Stimulating (Wordsound) PRINCESS SUPERSTAR Last of the Great 20th Century Composers (Corrupt) These two albums from the paler side of the rap spectrum are living proof that 1) being/sounding white is the hottest new trend in hip-hop since parachute pants, and 2) Prince Paul could make......

Photo by Christian Lantry It’s a mystery how hip-hop and cinema, both such expressive art forms, have failed to find any real synergy despite their numerous collaborations. The problem is not one of quantity — it seems like every new film has a hip-hop soundtrack attached to it — but......