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 ...

New books collecting objects central to rap’s physical history demonstrate the importance of celebrating these relics before they vanish. Credit... Supported by By Jon Caramanica For the last year, ...

As an art form, hip-hop has often been focused on what’s new, original and youthfully exuberant, constantly churning out fresh approaches to sound, fashion and language. As it celebrated its 50th ...

“The smooth criminal on beat breaks / Never put me in your box if your shit eats tapes,” rapped Nas on his 1994 classic “N.Y. State of Mind.” Like other underground genres that hit their stride in the ...

Websites offering up free — and not always legal — music flourished in the gap between the fall of the CD era and the rise of streaming. Keeping those archives intact is proving difficult. By Brian ...

It’s no secret that there are a lot of hip-hop documentaries. As the first genre to really break in an era where it could be widely documented in real time by camcorders, tape recorders, and ...