NO TRIVIA

September 6, 2012 – So, the trick to finally turning transcendently spare, Bay Area hip-hop into the actual next big thing is not branding it as city-specific? Blame and thank Los Angeles producer DJ Mustard's "ratchet music" tag — a nebulous, know-it-when-you-hear-it minimalism that takes from hyphy, L.A. jerk, and even a little bit of Afrojack's top 40-ready lope by way of L.A. loudmouths LMFAO. That loose EDM comparison isn't facetious.

September 4, 2012 – Given hip-hop's loopy libertarian streak as of late, expressed by even a few of the most cogent, socially-engaged rappers — Kendrick Lamar saying that he doesn't vote, Ab-Soul and Killer Mike suddenly losing all their nuance and telling you that Obama's no different than all the other dudes in power — Nicki Minaj's supposed support for Mitt Romney on "Mercy" off Lil Wayne's Dedication 4 mixtape made sense for a fleeting few

August 31, 2012 – News flash: Clint Eastwood has always been a big jerk! He starred in some of the creepiest, most conservative movies ever made, too many of which involve him as a cop picking off or threatening minorities because some stuffy liberal has made it harder for him to do his job.

August 31, 2012 – Former cocaine trafficker and C.I.A./Contra/crack-conspiracy fall guy Rick Ross only refers to the rapper "Rick Ross" by his real name, William Roberts. You can understand why. It must be pretty strange to be sitting in a jail cell back in 2006, and hear of a new rapper out there with your name, claiming to know all about the cocaine connections that got you sent to jail for a very long time.

August 31, 2012 – Back when rap was just beginning to become big business, it was still relatively ungoverned and, as a result, seemingly a world away from the more restrictive marketplace of rock and pop. Chris Lighty, who died on Thursday, from what appears to be a suicide, was the genre's expert at balancing the artistic expression important to insiders with commercial impulses necessary to keep it moving forward.

August 29, 2012 – I don't buy into much of this "post-regional" theorizing. Rap has always been post-regional. A$AP Rocky's crew, rather defensively explained that grills/gold fronts were in New York years before they were popularized by folks in the South.