Hua Hsu edits the hip-hop section of URB Magazine and writes about music, culture and politics for Slate, the Village Voice, The Wire and various other magazines and weeklies. Hsu hails from California's Bay Area but he currently resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is seeking a PhD in the History of American Civilization at Harvard University.
Before there was a family, there was the Dungeon — otherwise known … more »
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-… more »
“I knew damn near everybody,” the late trumpeter and bandlead… more »
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-… more »
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-… more »
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-… more »
“The world looks at this album as very personal,” a tired-sou… more »
Musicians aren’t always the best interlocutors of their own work, b… more »
Of the many things a time-traveling, 1988 Juice Crew fan wouldn’t u… more »
The French producer Onra first came to prominence with Chinoiseries, an a… more »
It should surprise no one that Gary War was once part of Ariel Pink… more »
The approach toward the year 2000 was an ominous one: the techno-paranoia… more »
The family business is in good hands: Janelle Monae’s freak flag fl… more »
Cee-Lo always had star power: his pesky scampering rapping anchoring Good… more »
Slowly, the circle widened. In 2007, with Goodie Mob broken up, Gipp coll… more »
After the dissolution of Outkast, Big Boi attempted to recreate the Dunge… more »
Expectations were unreasonably high for the Dungeon Family album, and it… more »
With his bugged-out shades, Bic-clean dome and flashy threads, Sleepy Bro… more »
With his bugged-out shades, Bic-clean dome and flashy threads, Sleepy Bro… more »
Goodie Mob wasn’t in great shape circa 2003. Cee-Lo had left a few … more »
It was a break-up record without any real allusions to the break-up. Inst… more »
It was a break-up record without any real allusions to the break-up. Inst… more »
The Bay Area’s DIY Solesides collective aspired to make a movement … more »
There have been a lot of great solo rappers — or rappers with great… more »
As they age, extreme metal merchants often inject various non-metallic styles into their songs in order to hasten their musical growth. Sometimes, as with Alcest and Jesu, they develop to the point where their original… more »
