Hip-hop turned 50 last year. During that half-century, the technology used to create this globally influential sound has continually moved forward. However, there's one tool that has remained ...

Having previously charted hip-hop artists by their vocabularies (and compared those vocabularies to Shakespeare and Moby Dick), Matt Daniels is back with another project that looks to recontextualize ...

Any conversation regarding the historical context of rap music will almost certainly rely heavily on the near ritualistic practice of sampling, essentially using older songs as the basis as the basis ...

Lizzo called out music sampling laws as racially biased during a Million Dollaz Worth of Game interview and accused the system of criminalizing Hip-Hop’s roots. Lizzo called out music sampling laws ...

Albums like To Pimp a Butterfly and 1999 blend jazz harmonies with sharp lyricism, proving the genre’s deep connection. Hip-hop may keep evolving, but funk and jazz remain its heartbeat, fueling its ...

PBS’s docuseries Soundbreaking recently dug into the history of Hip-Hop sampling with Chuck D, Q-Tip, RZA and more. In the sixth episode of their Soundbreaking series, PBS provides a well thought out ...

Sometimes you hear a new hip-hop song and think, “I know this song — I’ve heard these sounds before.” You’re probably right, because hip-hop music is built on sampling, the process of using existing ...

[Editor's note: Weekly scribe Jeff Weiss's column, “Bizarre Ride,” appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday. His archives are available here.] For four decades, one of hip-hop's biggest external ...

If there's one thing about Drake that every hip-hop fan should should know, it's that the Canadian superstar is a student of the game. Growing up influenced by the rap culture and its artists, Drizzy ...

What's the difference between a librarian and a hip-hop DJ? The answer is not as much as you think. Both are archivists, preserving and organizing the past, one through books, the other through music.

I’ve almost driven off the 405 twice. Once was because I blinked for a really long time. The other time was because of a song on the radio. It was a hip-hop song driven by a sample. The sample was ...