George Clooney’s new thriller “The American” takes itself very seriously. Not the bait-and-switch seriousness you would find in a Jason Bourne movie, where “realism” is just a camera style; and not the op-ed seriousness we get from “Michael Clayton,” or “Syriana”, where liberalism makes a pact with entertainment. No, this is a different register altogether: […]
Rick Ross’ rap career should have ended two years ago when the website The Smoking Gun released a photo of the portly MC working as a Florida correctional officer, as big of a hip-hop no-no as one can fathom, especially for a rapper who crafted a larger-than-life drug kingpin persona. But Ross ignored the backlash (without confirming or denying the the photo’s authenticity), focusing so much on his lyrical craft that he morphed into one of rap’s most formidable MCs.
In hip-hop, the only way to trump the inviolable law of Keeping It Real is to establish a whole new reality. That’s why Drake, a Canadian actor turned surprise rap phenom, has emerged as the genre’s new leading man, steering hip-hop out of the streets and into the emotive headspace of information-age isolation. It was a […]
Def Jam Rapstar means a lot for the company, now entering its twenty-fifth year. The house that Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons built has been one of the most influential music institutions in the world, bringing some of the biggest rap and hip-hop artists to the masses. While some would have disdain for the record […]
