REPORT
10 minute read • Playboy
Ever since N.W.A., hip-hop artists have been indicted for words they put on records. This worrying trend hasn't died down, even as hip-hop grew to reach global mainstream acceptance. For Playboy, Jeff Weiss speaks to rappers, defense attorneys and university scholars to understand the deeper implications of this judiciary double standard, and what it means for freedom of expression in the US.
+ A new magazine edited by Jess Weiss and a group of independent journalists in Los Angeles, the LAnd has officially published its first issue.
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POLITICS
14 minute read • The Daily Beast
"The far right doesn’t have a profound philosophy, it has a media strategy" wrote journalist Laurie Penny last year, in an excellent piece on the weaponization of debating by Twitter-era fascists. Her quote comes to mind when seeing the reactions to Cardi B's comments on the US government shutdown, which attracted the same old bunch of alt-right pundits looking for a larger share of voice. In The Daily Beast, Amy Zimmerman explains a moment that, in a way, feels like the negative of Kanye West's MAGA epiphany of 2018.
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LONGREAD
21 minute read • The Cut
Take the most desperate extremes of celebrity culture, the surreal ecosystem of teenage influencers, the irresistible appeal of hip-hop, and you end up with Lil Tay, the 9-year-old daughter of a real estate broker engineered into a viral loudmouth. Her rise to fame – already and thankfully interrupted – feels like an appropriate prelude to the end of the world.
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ANALYSIS
8 minute read • Trapital
By observing Jay-Z and Dame Dash's diverging business approaches over the last years, Trapital's Dan Runcie brilliantly demystifies the idea that Dash was on the losing side of the Roc-A-Fella split. His analysis doubles as a good case study on two strategic principles: one about partnership, the other about ownership.
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COMMENTARY
8 minute read • Vulture
"In the new millennium, the aesthetics of pop, of female empowerment, of shining, of flossin’, of poppin’, are now indistinguishable from the look, sound, and language of hip-hop culture" writes Vulture's Lauren Michele Jackson. Diving in the multiple references behind Ariana Grande's latest single, she notes the increasingly blurred lines between appreciation and appropriation – and why the singer might have a pass here.
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THROWBACK
20 minute read • The Fader (2016)
In March last year, DMX was sentenced to one year in prison for tax evasion. Last Friday, he has been released from Gilmer Federal Correctional Institution in Glenville, West Virginia. As rumors of biopics and new music fly around, let's look back at DMX's signature year of 1998, when the Yonkers MC released back-to-back albums in May and December, and collected seven platinum plaques in the process.
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