NO TRIVIA

June 6, 2012 – Piling accolades on top of the album while we were premiering it seemed a bit gauche, but Oddisee's latest, People Hear What They See, is one of the year's best. Lush live instrumentation and beat-breaking are at its core, but it moves into sunny orchestration, country-fried interludes, and a loose improvisational swirl of instruments that traverse the D.C.

June 4, 2012 – On "What Would You Do" off Nottz's In My Mind, the masterful boom-bap beatmaker and gruff, ornery rapper threatens to take out any producers who swipe one of his basslines. It's a funny though genuine threat from someone who takes their craft quite seriously, having built their reputation by lacing major label rap albums with the right kind of hard-ass, irregular hip-hop (Kanye West's "Barry Bonds" and G-Unit's "Footprints").

June 4, 2012 – "Now hold on, before I get to the real hip-hop shit of the day, because I see the real hip-hop heads sprinkled in here, I see 'em. I know there's some chicks here waiting to sing 'Starships' later, I'm not talking to y'all right now, fuck that bullshit. I'm here to talk about real hip-hop shit. People here to see A$AP Rocky today. People here to see ScHoolboy Q on this stage.

May 31, 2012 – The unfair assault on rap's mega-millionaires never ends. Sean "Diddy" Combs and his son, Justin Combs, are being criticized after it was revealed that Justin received a football scholarship to UCLA, which is valued at about $54,000.

May 31, 2012 – It's easy to forget that the word-stacking brilliance of Gucci Mane was not always an inarguable fact. Only a few weeks ago, in fact, when I suggested Gucci Mane should play Robert Johnson in my completely imaginary, never-going-to-happen movie of Alan Greenberg's literary screenplay Love in Vain, I received an angry "Well, I never"-style rant in my Tumblr inbox. People do not like Gucci Mane.

May 30, 2012 – For those keeping score at home, the list of rappers who are ostensibly in favor of same-sex marriage now includes Ice Cube, T.I., 50 Cent, and Kendrick Lamar. I don't know this because they made bold, formal statements like Jay-Z. I know this because they were asked by Ad Age, MTV, Vibe, and DJ Drama's Streetz Is Watchin' Sirius/XM radio show, and then their answers were turned into blog fodder and disseminated across the Internet.