Nicki Minaj paints hip-hop pink — and changes the game
The 2010 Nicki Minaj album Pink Friday brought vibrant new shades to hip-hop.
Music Features
Podcaster brings rich context in documenting the rise of K-pop
NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with Vivian Yoon. Her new podcast K-Pop Dreaming is a personal and historical journey through Korean pop music.
Wayne Shorter, From Here to Eternity
Nearly six months after his death, a tribute concert and a documentary attempt to capture the spirit of the perpetually exploring saxophonist and composer.
When the world's your stage, can an album capture the feeling?
New albums by Jon Batiste and Louis Cato arrive with high expectations. Both — as their experience leading led the band at Stephen Colbert's The Late Show has proved — are stellar live performers.
The sunset of Sonic Youth: An oral history of the band's final U.S. show
For the first time, the band members, their crew and their fans tell the story of a landmark moment they didn't realize was happening. Sonic Youth's new album, Live in Brooklyn 2011, is out this week.
Be Your Own Pet's Jemina Pearl rages on
In the mid-2000s, Be Your Own Pet's frenetic punk sneered at the trappings of adulthood. The group returns after a 15-year hiatus with Mommy, an album that builds on its oppositional beginnings.
2023 'Til Infinity
Giving rap the future it deserves means smashing the infrastructure as it is. But with the battle lines drawn, we can still take heart in the artists teasing just how much further the culture can go.
How LA proved hip-hop could go global — by staying thoroughly local
There may be no better case for the power of hip-hop's geographic diversity than Los Angeles, whose sprawl of distinct creative microclimates is a genre unto itself.
2 Live Crew fought the law with its album, 'As Nasty As They Wanna Be'
In 1989, 2 Live Crew's As Nasty As They Wanna Be became the first album declared legally obscene, and the group's legal battles set a precedent for the rappers that followed.
How the Bay Area became a rap incubator with a chip on its shoulder
Though the vibrant Bay Area rap community lit the fuse on many of the stars, styles and innovations that have blown up across the map, the region might still be best known for being underestimated.