Recently in Hip-Hop Category

Google the phrase "Kanye West is an *sshole" and you get over 81,000 returns. Compare that with, say, “Hitler is an *sshole" (about 58K) or “Kanye is a genius” (around 25K), and you should get a fairly accurate -- if not exactly scientific -- picture of how the public at large now feels about Mr. West. But, you know, this is as much our fault as his. After Katrina devastated Louisiana in 2005, we all applauded West’s “courage” and “honesty” when he publicly decried the government's handling of the crisis. But his outrage has devolved from criticizing a derelict President to going after noticeably softer targets, and though the entertainer claims to always be speaking from his heart, some wonder if the impulses don’t originate somewhere inside his massively bloated, Henny-soaked head. His “performance” at the 2009 VMAs, where he bum-rushed the stage and managed to steal the glory from both Beyonce and Taylor Swift, was just the latest in a long line of outbursts, tantrums and bizarre behavior. Here we present you with Kanye West’s most embarrassing moments.

Jay-Z is a Goliath. Since the '90s, he has ruled hip-hop with a succession of hot singles, classic albums and sizzling guest appearances. The Blueprint 3 is the latest chapter and is available for streaming only on Rhapsody. But we're about more than just great exclusives from your favorite artists. Below, you'll find exclusive Jay-Z material as well as customized Jay-Z radio stations, professionally built playlists in high-def audio, and views, news and more tunes than you could play in a lifetime. Enjoy this on us, and be sure to sign up for the ultimate music experience on the web.

	Watch an exclusive video of Jay-Z discussing his admiration of Michael Jackson		PLAY: 50 Greatest Jay-Z tracks and more playlists
	Review: Our critics discuss whether The Blueprint III meets the Jay-Z standard		Radio: Listen to our wide range of Jay-Z Radio Stations
	DISCOVER: Go deep with Jay-Z's 10 Greatest Verses		LISTEN: The Blueprint 3 exclusively on Rhapsody

One thing that we pride ourselves on at Rhapsody is the variety of radio channels we have. We have professionally programmed radio stations for nearly every genre and micro-genre you can imagine. They're constantly updated, and we're always adding more. We also have artist stations for everyone in the system. And we have custom radio stations that you build yourself based on your favorite artists. All these stations offer nonstop music, making them a perfect fit for throwing on while chilling at your crib, toiling away at the office or working out at the gym. Sign up for your trial Rhapsody account today (you know it's free, right?) to access the artist and custom radio stations. Meanwhile, here are some of the radio stations that we're offering for a free sampling.

At this point in his career, Jay-Z has zero problems. His president is black, his wife is Beyonce, and his bank account is bulging. He pals around with Natalie Portman and Chris Martin. He’s a philanthropist and former CEO. When he rapped in 2006 that he wasn’t “a businessman, I’m a business, man,” it was a viewed as a clever piece of braggadocio. Now, it seems a rather mundane detail -- a depressing fact of life about one of hip-hop’s most legendary lyricists. Like that of 2006’s comeback album, Kingdom Come, the theme of The Blueprint 3 seems to be, “I’m doing just fine, thank you.”

We try to keep up with the times here at ye olde Rhapsody, so during our 10 day premiere of Jay-Z's The Blueprint 3 (which you can also download exclusively at Rhapsody beginning Sept. 9), we will be having a "Twitter contest." The rules for entry are simple -- let us show you how:

  Listen to a Jay-Z song on Rhapsody.com.

Use our new “tweet” feature and tweet the song you’re listening to with a short review of the song.

 Enter as often as you like. We’ll also be having random pop quizzes throughout the promotion giving away special Jay-Z prizes.

During our 3 day exclusive retail promotion we will be giving away free albums to random lucky winners.

It goes without saying that Jay-Z is one of the most accomplished rappers in the history of hip-hop. Whether he's the greatest rapper alive remains a topic of debate, but few rappers have been able to marry voice, lyrics and rhythm as adeptly as Brooklyn's finest. His career spans multiple eras and styles: from early '90s fast rap to mid-'90s N.Y.C. ghetto noir to late '90s party rap to the more confessional, grown-man raps of this decade. And, of course, we have it all, in high-quality audio, on Rhapsody, where you can listen to any song, anytime with no restrictions (click here for your free trial membership).

We decided to compile a list of his most memorable verses. Check out our picks, peep the playlist at the bottom and be sure to check out The Blueprint 3.

Ah, 1999, we hardly knew ye: we were so caught up in preparing for the looming millennial ball drop that we dropped the ball on savoring the waning days of a thousand-year stretch that began with the founding of Norway and ended, as usual, with Dick Clark holding court in Times Square, as I'm pretty sure he'd done every year since around the time of the Norman Conquest. (The big difference at 1999's New Year's Eve parties was that people seemed to be listening to a lot more Prince, for whatever reason.)

Blame the Y2K bug for our inattention. But at least we danced. Oh, how we danced. Basement Jaxx, Underworld, the Chemical Brothers, Moby and other relics of the rave era were enjoying proper pop credibility. Dr. Dre was "Still D.R.E.," while Britney was, well, still Britney, but without the "b*tch." Le Tigre proved that riot grrrls were down with the disco. And the underground was teeming with activity, from U.K. garage to minimal techno. Relive it all with our five-hour playlist of the best dance tracks that 1999 had to offer. Don't you deserve a break from the "oughts"? Thought so. Check a sampling below, and get the whole thing here at Playlist Central.

From left: Nathaniel Motte, Sean Foreman

Colorado krunk superstars 3OH!3 have been on a collision course for success since an unforgettable performance on the Denver stop of 2007’s Vans Warped Tour inked them a spot playing every date of the tour in 2008. The same year, they signed to Photo Finish Records and released their debut album, Want. In the past two months, they’ve headlined the entire Warped Tour, and most recently, their debut single, "Don’t Trust Me," has gone platinum, becoming the No. 1 single in the U.S. Behind the aggression of heavy bass drops and Lil’ John-influenced beats, 3OH!3 bring humor to the rap game with line after line of infectious, tongue-in-cheek rhymes that have people hooked from coast to coast. The band took a break from the chaos that is Warped Tour and sat down with Rhapsody to discuss rumors about touring with Barack Obama and what it is like to have a No. 1 single.

Over the past decade, hip-hop and R&B have become the musical equivalent of peanut butter and jelly. When R&B was looking for direction in the '90s, it turned to hip-hop's thundering bombast, and when hip-hop began falling from grace this decade, it adopted R&B’s sexy swoon. And though genre purists from both sides have cried foul, this cross-pollination has resulted in some great music. In honor of this week’s release of the T.I./Mary J. Blige single "Remember Me," Rhapsody has picked the 10 greatest R&B/hip-hop duets of the past decade.

The sound of L.A. group Sa-Ra Creative Partners is hard to pin down. Their brand of psych urban music straddles the line between funk, soul and hip-hop. It references Funkadelic, Prince, Sly & the Family Stone and J Dilla, but ultimately the music manages to sound like nothing you've ever heard. It's jerky electro, ethereal hip-hop and secular gospel. It's beautiful music that is, at times, difficult to listen to. Consisting of (from left, in photo at left) Om'Mas Keith, Taz Arnold, and Shafiq Husayn, the group became darlings of the underground in 2005 with a series of 12-inches and remixes. They released their debut album, The Hollywood Recordings, in 2007, and followed up this year with Nuclear Evolution: The Age of Love. In that time, an entire echo-system of psychedelic soul acts sprang up, but Sa-Ra remain at the forefront. Even if you haven't heard of the group, it's likely that your favorite artist has. The trio has worked with Erykah Badu, Kanye West, Dr. Dre and John Legend, among many others. In fact, Keith is currently serving as Diddy's musical director.

We recently caught up with Om'Mas Keith. By chance, we spoke with him on the afternoon of June 25, just when the news of Michael Jackson's death was reported. We discussed Jackson's influence on the group, as well as a wide range of subjects including Thelonious Monk's funeral, Keith's father, the group's future, and the influence of Sly and the Family Stone.

Jamie Lidell

What do hypersoul crooner Jamie Lidell, futuristic beatsmith Flying Lotus and psychedelic math-rockers Battles have in common? Aside from their shared penchant for turning traditional forms inside out, and the ability of all three artists to combine experimental-music rigor with refreshing good cheer, they all make their homes on Warp, the iconic U.K. label that turns 20 this year. Despite a roster heavy on electronic agents provocateur like Aphex Twin and Autechre, no single sound dominates Warp's catalog, which ranges from bleepy electronica to mind-bending hip-hop to smart, snappy rock 'n' roll. Here are 10 Warp artists you need to hear now.

From left: Young Jeezy, Lil Wayne, Drake

Hip-hop tours are always a bit of a crap-shoot. For every beyond-belief blockbuster like last year's Jay-Z/Mary J. Blige tour, you have a debacle like the '97 Wu-Tang Clan/Rage Against the Machine rampage, where our favorite Shaolin warriors seemed more interested in visiting local jail cells than in performing music for sold-out crowds. More recently, Lil Wayne's  traveling adventures have included arrests for everything from cocaine possession to weapons charges. But, lord willing and cops permitting, this summer looks like a monster for hip-hop live shows. We have the Rock the Bells Tour featuring Nas, Talib Kweli, Wu Tang and Slaughterhouse among others, as well as the Jay-Z/Ciara tour that is already well under way. But perhaps the elephant in the room is Weezy's monster America’s Most Wanted AKA Young Money tour featuring Weezy F., Drake, Young Jeezy and Soulja Boy. Over 21 days, Weezy and crew will scour the continent, playing everywhere from Scranton, Penn., to Edmonton, Canada (you can check complete dates here). And though it’s an open question whether these guys can stay out of trouble (Drake should be safe), we already have a pretty good indication of what kind of live show they put on. Below you’ll find our exclusive and all-inclusive tour guide.

Is it just us, or is LMFAO's "I'm in Miami B*tch" a whole lot like the Lonely Island's "I'm on a Boat" -- except not as funny and not, frankly, as funky? But the QWERTY-loving gag-rap duo and their new album, Party Rock, got us thinking about other occasions where funk has been put into the service of humor, unwittingly or no. Featuring tracks from the likes of Blowfly, Too Short, Eddie Murphy, DJ Assault and, uh, Leonard Nimoy, this playlist takes in filthy banter, faux-gangsta boasting, good-natured absurdism and (just for good measure) everyone's favorite dancing-banana meme. Oh, and it's totally NSFW, as though you hadn't figured that out already. Listen to selected tracks below, and get the whole playlist here.

Irony Doesn't Kill People, Curmudgeons Do
Being allergic to most things ironic, I half-expected to get some kind of rash from rubbing up too close to Guns Don't Kill People, Lazers Do, Diplo and Switch's kinda-sorta concept album about a one-armed commando from Jamaica named Major Lazer. (It's all very Gorillaz meets, oh, I don't know, Dr. Alimantado or something, or Rex the Dog meets rockers uptown.) But the record's actually kind of awesome. The first track alone features surf guitar; horse whinneys and clip-clopping hooves; Nokia ringtones; cash-register bells; a hyperactive Santigold loop; and gruff, absurdist chat from Mr. Lex. The album's first half offers a solid stretch of dancehall bangers and earnest lovers' rock; Major Lazer achieve genius with "Baby," a 67-second sketch featuring the roly-poly-voiced Prince Zimboo waxing philosophical to a newborn. (The baby has "built-in Auto-Tune," wouldn't you know.) For all the goofiness, Diplo and Switch flex considerable muscle with tracks like the supercolliding "Anything Goes" and the martial, minimalist "Pon De Floor." To make the latter beat, one imagines the producers having rigged up a Whac-a-Mole game with those toy cans that moo when turned upside down. As The Hudsucker Proxy's Norville Barnes would say, "You know, for kids."

This week, Ghostly International's Spectral sublabel releases Immune, the impressive new album by Bodycode. Inspired by the classic deep house of New York and Chicago, it nevertheless sounds little like anything else from the recent deep-house revival. That might have something to do with the background of Alan Abrahams (pictured). He was raised in a South African township, where he began producing after he discovered Chicago house music -- not so unlikely, considering the music's centrality to South African kwaito. He moved to London in 1997, recorded a handful of EPs and founded his Süd Electronic label; today his discography includes releases on Perlon, ~scape, Musik Krause and Spectral, which signed his Bodycode alias. But unlike most of his peers, he didn't wind up in Berlin. Instead, Abrahams relocated to Lisbon, whose qualities -- a postcolonial city on the periphery of Europe -- are evident in the way he comes at dance music from the margins. His shuddering machine rhythms and balmy chords don't break radically with house traditions; his tough, rubbery basslines come straight from Larry Heard, via Luomo, and there are plenty of pumping chords, woozy leads and soulful vocals. But like Pepe Bradock, Move D and DJ Koze, Bodycode manages to make the music sound unusually alive and refreshingly weird. It's flush with hazy, underwater melodies and electronically treated tribal percussion, so you're never quite sure what's really going on -- just that the music makes perfect sense, once you're deep inside it.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the deep end, England's Faze Action recently released their first album in five years, Stratus Energy. Following a handful of recent singles (and a nice boost last year from Carl Craig's remix of their reissued single "In the Trees"), the new album continues to mine the same vein of classic disco that they've been working for a decade. Chugging Italo synths and Gamble & Huff strings are all over this thing; the sound of it is enormous, a mammoth amalgam of live instruments and dubby studio smarts. For highlights, check the happily overblown "Danae's Journey," the Bullitt-worthy thrill ride "Stratus Energy" and "Keep It Coming," an invigorating fusion of cocksure string vamps and fibrillating Clavinets.

That rather purplish prose makes as good a transition as any to the last album I want to discuss, Kotchy's 89. I don't know if he's explicitly down with dudes like Gemmy, Guido and Joker -- who have settled upon "purple" as the working title for their shared approach to dubstep and hip-hop -- but his knock-kneed beats and garishly colored synths certainly bear similarities. The Brooklyn musician's lurching beats lean closer to boom-bap: Prefuse 73, Dabrye, Flying Lotus and of course Dilla are obvious antecedents. But Kotchy's mix of electro-acoustic samples and buzzy synths doesn't sound much like anyone else, and the vocal tracks are even weirder, suggesting an accidental fusion of Mouse on Mars and the Sea and Cake over clomping, clunky breaks that seem to reassemble themselves with every bar. Just because this funk is far-fetched doesn't mean it won't make a believer out of you.