J. Cole is, if anything, consistent: He’s dropped an album every two years for his past three projects; he’s constantly tried his damnedest to…
Trying to cover every rap album, mixtape, EP, collaborative project, and “selective playlist” released over the past year seems like a fool’s errand; in…
The albums that defined the past year were projects that subverted typical genre norms and traditionalist views, making themselves hard to rigidly categorize in the…
In the early 1980s, as the West was succumbing to the avaricious allure of Reaganism, Taiwan was undergoing a profound, progressive transformation. The country…
The central premise of Susanne Bier’s Bird Box sounds like some unholy (and unlikely) mashup of John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, without the…
The music that Gustav Åhr made as emo-trapper Lil Peep was confessional, misanthropic, self-loathing, bringing fans some solace just by showing them that their pain…
Toxic masculinity had a year; scan the top three titles on this list and you’ll find three films about self-involved men belaboring the value…
Ski Mask the Slump God is one of the most naturally talented rappers in the Soundcloud scene. His Busta Rhymes-inspired flow seems to trip…
The “If young Metro don’t trust you I’m gon’ shoot you” tag has been a source for hip hop-related memes at least since it popped…
The closest work from this year that one can compare Vince Staples’s FM! to, stylistically, is Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You: Both are colorful,…
In an effort to reboot our music coverage, In Review Online has launched monthly features devoted to reviewing new album releases. One such feature is What Would Meek…
For those of you who haven’t followed XXL’s recent Freshmen of the Year lists, J.I.D is something of an anomaly. Where most rappers selected by XXL lately have been young…
Touted as controversial New York rapper/walking meme 6ix9ine’s debut album, Dummy Boy is also his second project this year — after hastily-slapped-together mixtape Day 69, a cash-grab milking the overnight success…
On the surface, Anderson .Paak’s Oxnard is a little obnoxious. There’s the obvious aping of Kendrick Lamar’s voice (and sound) and the the jazz/R&B instrumentals that almost…
In the uncommonly crowded year of the female MC — with two projects by Cupcakke and other high-profile ones from Rico Nasty, Cardi B, Tierra…
Bodied ends with a needle drop: “Hi, My Name Is.” As explicated in our Kicking the Canon piece, Eminem sought to make a villain of himself…
The first shot is a marvel — a quiet, lovely reverie that ends with a punch to the gut. As a young couple walk hand…
Imagine a script development meeting where everyone involved in making Aquaman sat down to solve one all-important question: “How do we make Aquaman cool?” Now…