Our first dispatch from the 2019 New York Film Festival offers quick takes on a smattering of the festival circuit’s biggest films this year, including: the world premiere of Martin Scorsese’s Netflix-backed, de-aging spectacle, The Irishman; a trio of Cannes Competition entries — The…
At his best, Arnaud Desplechin is a mad tinkerer, creating weird, expansive narratives that follow dysfunctional people through the vicissitudes of every day life. He’s got a big bag of tricks, infusing typically staid, talky family and romantic melodramas with boundless formal energy and…
Imagine old Kanye — heart-on-his-sleeve, pink polo Kanye — mixed with the fiery upstart Kendrick Lamar of Section.80. That’s the intersection where you’ll find YBN Cordae, a rapper whos loves to enumerate his blessings. “Thanksgiving” details a domestic scene a la “Family Business”; “Family…
Brandon Banks is to Maxo Kream what Culture was to the Migos a few years back: a major step forward in terms of personal growth and artistry that signals the growing ambitions of each respective artist. While Maxo’s last project, Punken, was a serviceable collection of Huston-flavored trap anthems, the responsibility…
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s The Message, released in 1982, is one of the most important albums in all of hip-hop. While coming in at only seven tracks, the release is surprisingly diverse in its instrumentation and its vocals: It starts with a few…
A 22-song mixtape called Dum and Dummer seems like a fairly innocuous proposition at this point in the rap game. If you were to tell me that Memphis’s self-made independent icon Young Dolph was teaming up with Key Glock (who?) to make said mixtape, this…
SoundCloud junkies Paul Attard and Joe Biglin run down some rap releases from the month of July in the latest What Would Meek Do?. This eleventh official issue (part of a special double issue, with the second one arriving shortly) features takes on a…
Tracing influence is a tricky proposition. It’s rather easy to duck into any hip-hop forum and post away about how every young rapper with some skin in the game is a child of Future, Lil Wayne, Young Thug, or any other figure of rising…
There’s a lot one can be justifiably angry about when it comes to Iggy Azalea. Before issues of cultural appropriation started to rear their ugly head within the contemporary hip-hop landscape, Iggy was the queen of casually committing microaggressions. She adopted a more ‘urban’…
The last year or so has been bad for the mumble rap scene: from XXXTentacion’s passing in 2018 to the convictions of Lil Durk, Kodak Black, and YNW Melly. One could also include Yung Bans in that cohort, a bubblegum trapper currently on house…
