Hip-Hop Browse All

Goodie Mob, Age Against the Machine

2013 | Label: The Right Records

By Nate Patrin eMusic Contributor

08.27.13 Expectations are intrusive enough when you’re dealing with a reunion from a long-dissolved beloved musical act. With the new Goodie Mob album, Age Against the Machine, that reunion is coupled with a reinvention: 14 years separate this record and the pop-leaning World Party, the last album Goodie Mob made with all four members and something of a contentious stylistic departure in itself. Things get even cloudier if you factor in the styles that the core members have been indulging since — the dearth of straight-up rap on Cee-Lo’s solo and… more »

Earl Sweatshirt, Doris

2013 | Label: Tan Cressida/Columbia

By Jayson Greene Managing Editor

08.22.13 When Odd Future crashed the party in 2010, they seemed, momentarily, like marauders. Now that the Golgi Apparatus of the music industry has more or less broken them down for useable parts — a cartoon show, a pop-up clothing store, corporate sponsorships — they resemble nothing so much as a good, old-fashioned, harmless dysfunctional family. Like any family, they have their louts and their geniuses, their ne’er-do-wells and good kids — Tyler, the Creator is the braying patriarch; Frank Ocean is the successful cousin who moved to Europe and who… more »

Kanye West, Yeezus

2013 | Label: Roc-a-fella Records

By Michelangelo Matos eMusic Contributor

06.18.13 Earlier in his career, Kanye’s ego was the one getting all the attention, but Yeezus, his sixth solo album, is all snarling Id. Nothing can wait, not even the “damn croissants,” which he demands with characteristically insta-quotable brio on “I Am A God.” Fittingly, Yeezus is West’s leanest, tightest, most to-the-point album ever: 10 songs, 40 minutes (almost to the nose), and full of the aggression of mid-’80s Def Jam.

No surprise, then, that Rick Rubin worked on several tracks here, or that Kanye links up with Daft Punk again (their… more »

J. Cole, Born Sinner

2013 | Label: Roc Nation/Columbia

By Christina Lee eMusic Contributor

06.18.13 Is J. Cole a disappointment? That question hangs over the rapper’s somber sophomore LP Born Sinner like a storm cloud. As he did on his breakthrough major-label debut The Sideline Story, Cole wrestles openly, and touchingly, with his identity and place — at one point, he confesses that Nas hated his biggest hit, “Work Out.” The Cole of Born Sinner shows none of the optimism of his “Dollar & A Dream” songs: On “Trouble,” he flounders in label expectations and creative ennui. Success, and cash, turn him forlorn (“Runaway”)… more »