NO TRIVIA

October 29, 2012 – Not enough hip-hop stories end well. About the best we get is that some legendary MC fades away gracefully and grows up and out of the industry, to live comfortably. Jay-Z is the anomaly. For awhile there, it seemed as if Run-DMC were going to age, with relative grace, which would have been, in its own way, a minor victory. They made some great albums, then some not-so-great ones, and from time-to-time, they toured.

October 26, 2012 – <p>G.O.O.D. Music's <I>Cruel Summer</i> just kind of came and went, didn't it? It sold pretty well, and I still hear songs from it crawling out of car radios, but overall, it was an underwhelming release. And so, we of the up-to-the-second rap Internet all just pretended like it never really happened. It was better to do that than get bummed out about it not living up to the hype, right?

October 26, 2012 – Hot Sugar (producer Nick Koenig) first popped up on my radar when he contributed the foggy, tone-setting opening rap track "Sleep" to the Roots' excellent and severely underrated undun last year. The central tenet of Koenig's beatmaking approach involves treating found sounds like classic hip-hop breaks ready to be chopped, looped, and contorted however he sees fit.

October 26, 2012 – <p>Houston-based music writer and "tank-top enthusiast" Shea Serrano (<a href="http://www.houstonpress.com/2012-08-02/music/blackie-houston-musician" target="_blank">read his excellent profile of No Trivia favorite B L A C K I E</a>) and Houston rap legend Bun B have teamed up for <a href="http://rapcoloringbook.tumblr.com/" target="blank">"Bun B's Jumbo

October 25, 2012 – Did you check out Rework, that recent Philip Glass remix album that Beck put together? Yeah, me neither. Here's my stupid complaint with it: How do you tackle minimalism in 2012 and ignore the ambitiously simple sounds coming out West Coast rap? Shame on you Mr. Hansen and Mr. Glass for being less with-it than Wiz Khalifa, who reached out to producers like the Invasion and League of Starz for Cabin Fever 2.

October 25, 2012 – Kendrick Lamar's good k.i.d. m.A.A.d. city is the best rap thing to come out this week. Hell, it's the best rap thing to out this year. You already know this. One unfortunate by-product of Kendrick-mania, though, is that Main Attrakionz's Bossalinis & Fooliyones, which certainly deserves some attention, has been overshadowed. So, it's my pick of the week. I'm sure I'll circle back around to good k.i.d. soon enough.