October 2, 2012 – From that XXL cover that tries to claim that Dr. Dre is responsible for Kendrick Lamar which just isn't true, to Snoop and Dre pulling him up at Coachella to rap on the same hallowed ground as the Tupac hologram, and now, "Compton," the second single from the upcoming good kid, m.A.A.d city to feature the aging-out mega-producer, this Dre connection is really getting a push, isn't it? Industry types seem to have it stuck in their heads that the West Coast production legend can still grab people's ears. Not even his production chops, mind you, just Dr. Dre's presence, because "Compton" was produced by Just Blaze, and "The Recipe" by Scoop DeVille. Dre's here to add some starpower that I'm not so sure he even exudes much anymore. But to old dudes who run radio and the marketing mooks who serve them, the D.R.E.'s involvement still holds a lot of weight. Plus, Dr.

September 29, 2012 – That video of Lil Wayne's deposition getting lots of LOLs isn't evidence that he's lost his marbles. It's proof of the American legal system's absurdity, and that Wayne is painfully aware of this fact. Growing up in the New Orleans projects, then becoming a superstar and getting arrested and jailed in New York for what was an obvious case of rap profiling could make someone like Wayne consider law and order and "justice" a big joke. This video is Frankie "I don't know nothing about that!" Pentangeli from Godfather II on steroids. It's a performance, with Wayne delivering the same overdose of personality found on his best records. He even puts on that sassy drag queen drawl he does when he's really disgusted. As the video continues, Wayne dismantles the whole charade, moving from non-answers to answering before the question's even asked, because really, what's the difference?

September 27, 2012 – DJ Drama likes to keep listeners on their toes. Earlier this week, he hosted perpetually-buzzing street dude Freddie Gibbs' much-anticipated Baby Face Killa mixtape, and not too long ago, he lorded over hip-pop superstar Lil Wayne's Dedication 4. Next week, Quality Street Music, the mixtape curator's fourth major label album, arrives. As is often the case with a Drama-assisted project, its success hinges on his in-the-box thinking tweaked just right, as well as the wild, "let's just try it and see" thrill that comes from discordant, counterintuitive collaborations. Consider "I'm a Hata," in which Waka Flocka wears his DGAF attitude like a badge ("I'm a hater, fuck your wrist!"), and then Odd Future's Tyler, the Creator furiously bursts through to shout out Chappelle's Show Silky Johnson (of the infamous Playa Hater's Ball skit), and add some wordy menace to a Flocka shout-fest.

September 26, 2012 – Florence, Alabama's Bentley, who brays the hooks on G-Side's "No Radio” and "16 Shots" (he has a memorable verse that calls bullshit on the killing of Gaddafi on the latter), and whose solo track "Strap," is something of an Internet goon-rap classic, just released Bootlegs & B-Sides, a jackin'-for-beats mixtape that he's throwing out to tide over listeners until his album, Intelligent Hoodlum, drops at some point in the future. Bootlegs & B-Sides is the decidedly minor work that you release before the work everybody's supposed to be anticipating, which gains much of its power from its tossed-off presentation: Murkily mastered, uncensored street tales over '90s cult-favorite beats. But those fairly obscure beats aren't YouTube wormhole finds in the vein of SpaceGhostPurrp, an MC who never transcends his love of the past.

September 21, 2012 – According to Slate, a whole bunch of people were disturbed by the trailer for Steven Spielberg's Lincoln trailer. Why? Because the voice of Abraham Lincoln (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) was "whiny," and didn't, I guess, sound all booming and bold like it does at that creepy Disney World Hall of Presidents attraction? I was more freaked out by Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens rocking a jheri curl, but hey, that's just me.

September 19, 2012 – What's the most welcome sound on R.E.B.E.L., the new solo EP from ST 2 Lettaz of the now broken-up G-Side? Those shards of Empire of the Sun and Skrillex peaking out from behind the histrionic beats. Pieces of electronic dance and old-wave trance cheese have found a way back into this Huntsville collective's production in a concentrated way not heard since 2008's Starshipz and Rocketz, which introduced the group, and set up the semi-triumphant raps of 2009's Huntsville International and 2011's The One…Cohesive.iSLAND from last fall, then, was the return to earth. Not due to its quality, but because of its frank concept: A paranoid, mean-mugging response to some praise, from a group that was getting bored with big-time back-patting and music-biz bullshit, already.

September 18, 2012 – How should I describe rapper/producer 7evenThirty's Heaven's Computer? A Big K.R.I.T. album if the only influence were 8ball & MJG's Space Age Pimpin'? Devin the Dude in "Zeldar" mode for 50 straight minutes? John Sayles' The Brother From Another Planet meets Forbidden Planet as a hip-hop musical? The Gorillaz's Plastic Beach with a lot more rapping and an '80s obsession that includes the Back To The Future soundtrack and the arch, ironic dialogue of Heathers? OutKast if they were still doing what they were doing?All of those might sound pretty good, but they don't tap into what's so exciting about this concept album that casts 7evenThirty (presumably a Big L reference, right? "If you're 730, that means you're crazy" from "Ebonics") as a take-no-crap alien invader named Max Redrum. Tagging along with him is a super-polite super-computer named Alfie.

September 18, 2012 – Since the tragic death of David Foster Wallace on September 15, 2008, we've seen a small but significant number of works by the author unearthed for the first time, or cannily repackaged. These include his incomplete novel The Pale King, his 2005 commencement speech for Kenyon College, and even his undergraduate senior thesis. Still out of print, however, and selling for hundreds of dollars used, is Wallace and Mark Costello's 1990 book Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present. This book is often diminished by those studying Wallace, even though it is an early example of the author's published non-fiction.

September 17, 2012 – Ideally, Sunday's news that Nicki Minaj will join a new group of new judges for this season's American Idol — along with Mariah Carey and country singer Keith Urban — might be the start of an improvement in the rocky relationship between hip-hop and reality television. Save reality satires like those produced by Ego Trip (The White Rapper Show and Miss Rap Supreme), hip-hop fans have endured a specific kind of exploitative, buffonish trash. Shows like Flavor Of Love (in which the greatest hypeman of all time makes every Public Enemy show since then seem slightly absurd), T.I. & Tiny: The Family Hustle, and Ice Loves Coco, seem intent on cutting some of rap's most larger-than-life personalities down to size. Nicki Minaj is the first rap star to be involved with American Idol and that, in and of itself, is a victory.

September 14, 2012 – So, E-40 was on America's Got Talent last night, rapping with an old guy. To explain: When this season of the show began and they went through the prerequisite freak show, one act was a wrinkly creep named Burton Crane, who dressed like Don Magic Juan and said "whatcha gonna do" over and over again, which was enough for him to declare himself "the grandfather of rap." Old people are weird like that. In the beach town where my grandparents live, there's this guy who called himself the "Old Fart" and walks around with a fart machine and a hat that says "old fart" on it and seems to just harass people. Sounds "hilarious," right? Like I said, old people are weird.