Sheldon Pearce

Rap is the CNN of the ghetto. An idea espoused by Public Enemy frontman Chuck D since the 1980s, it has since grown into a key hip-hop ideal, defining the music’s relationship with its public. Throughout its history, hip-hop has spotlit the turmoil faced by Black communities, in housing projects and neighborhoods from coast to coast — and, eventually, around the world. Chuck’s framing was a bit limited — rappers […]

LL Cool J's 2024 album The FORCE finds the rapper looser and more agile than he's sounded in years, assisted by eclectic production from Q-Tip. Cory Grimes In 2016, De La Soul, one of rap’s most elemental groups, had to start from scratch. After elevating hip-hop in the late 1980s and ‘90s with a four-album run that rivals any in the history of the genre, the trio found itself snake-bitten […]

Doechii channels a panoramic relationship to her own thoughts and voice on the new mixtape Alligator Bites Never Heal. John Jay Virality stoked an insatiable hunger in the effervescent Tampa rapper Doechii. After the 2021 cut “Yucky Blucky Fruitcake” amassed millions of tags on TikTok, she finally found herself playlisted by Spotify, and all she could think about was the next stage of her breakthrough. “I was like, OK, how […]

Quantum Baby is Tinashe's seventh album, and the second in a purported trilogy that began with last year's BB/ANG3L. Raven B. Varona “I don't like to be stuck in the ‘R&B box,’ ” Tinashe told USA Today in 2014. By that point, “R&B” had come to feel almost like a pejorative to a certain kind of artist, particularly Black women experimenting with form. As Dawn Richard put it in 2017: […]

JPEGMAFIA performs in 2023 at The Rooftop at Pier 17 in New York City. Keeyahtay Lewis on behalf of The Rooftop at Pier 17 In January, the rapper and producer JPEGMAFIA ignited some frustrated chatter online when a photo of him and Kanye West, hinting at a collaboration, appeared on his Instagram. JPEG had long been vocal about how much he revered Kanye, and the role that the G.O.O.D. Music […]

Two years after her breakthrough single, Ice Spice released her debut album, Y2K!, on July 26. Coughs/Courtesy of the artist We nearly reached the Ice Spice singularity the weekend of the Super Bowl. The evening of Feb. 11, just as an ad featuring the Bronx rapper debuted on the biggest night in American television, she popped up in a box at the game itself, side-by-side with the most gargantuan force […]

Kendrick Lamar performs during "The Pop Out — Ken & Friends," his June 19 concert event at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif. Timothy Norris/Getty Images for pgLang, Amazon/Getty Images North America When Kendrick Lamar released Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers in 2022, he was jittery with agitation. There were many reasons within the songs for him to be anxious, which spend hard-earned therapy hours working through trauma, but […]

Vince Staples' latest album, Dark Times, represents a new direction in an already singular major-label rap career.Shaniqwa Jarvis/Courtesy of the artist There is an early episode of The Vince Staples Show, the titular rapper’s Netflix tragicomedy about a fictional version of himself, that puts the dual nature of his fame in stark terms. The onscreen Vince applies for a small business loan at a high-class bank, and is effectively laughed out […]