Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

We are given the definition of Afterparty Babies by Cadence Weapon a few minutes into Do I Miss My Friends?, the opening track of his brilliant sophomore effort. Weapon, it turns out, is an afterparty baby, the end product of a conception occasioned by a drug and/or ...

Simply put, this is an album that is a joke but plays like a hardcore entry in to the N.W.A music catalogue.  This collection of songs is based on a mockumentary (think This is Spinal Tap)  about a fictitious gangsta rap group.  The film, so I’ve been told, is of ...

Do you remember Rapture by iiO? I remember being thirteen, sitting on the floor of my room when it came on the radio. I got up and contorted my body in weird dance gestures. Body rolls. Booty shaking. All alone. But I loved that song. I could never remember the ...

Kinky was originally introduced to me as a Hispanic rap band (before the term “reggaeton” became popularized). While there are hip hop (as well as electronica and rock) elements to its music, however, Kinky is more of a world music dance band, populated by multi-instrumentalists. And while ...

Mr. Capone-E has been releasing all sorts of projects on his Hi Power/PMC imprint, and most of it --- especially his own --- is actually pretty good. Just about everyone on the label, it seems, shows up on Forbidden Love, Miss Lady Pink’s debut project. In fact, ...

I don’t know if, at this point in history, we need a double CD of rap music, whether you choose to call it Chicano rap, or, as Mr. Capone-E refers to it, Sureno rap. Regardless, if you hear Dedicated 2 The Oldies 2, you’ll want it. Mr. ...

Not only did the band sound like a few of my kind of people, (because, honestly, I have a platinum membership to Procrastinators Anonymous and flash the thing like a pro), but as soon as the first minute of the first track passed, I knew they were my kind of ...