August 23, 2012 – Last night, the music video for "Bitch Bad," Lupe Fiasco's muddled, mealy-mouthed missive about rap and misogyny was released. Directed by Gil Green — who is best known for ambitious mini-movie-like videos for DJ Khaled and friends and as such, is no stranger to the kind of objectification and thug-celebrating that Lupe's video attacks — the video stays close to Lupe's loaded, three-act storytelling rap. Before we get started, note that you won't read any reference to the music or even style of rapping here, because it is clear that Lupe is mining the moronic “lyrics over everything” attitude, reducing rap to a game of preaching to the converted. The concept of "Bitch Bad" is how two different young people, one male, one female, can encounter mainstream, "bitch"-spewing hip-hop in quite different contexts and come to different conclusions.

August 22, 2012 – So, just like that, music writers have gone back to ignoring the Insane Clown Posse? There was window of time there — which seemed to hit its peak with "Miracles" — where it was cool to condescend to the duo, play armchair Jim Goad, and project some thoughts about the white underclass onto their music. But, no more. And that's too bad because along with last week's pretty good album The Mighty Death Pop!, ICP also released the bonus album Freaky Tales (one of three bonus albums, actually), which stretches Too $hort's 1987 rhyming laundry list of sex encounters set to gulping synthetic bass, from eight minutes to a full hour of endless dick jokes and dirty-minded raps. Suggesting Freaky Tales is tasteful is a bit ridiculous, but producer Mike E.

August 21, 2012 – This morning, when Google Play's music section offered a free download of Busta Rhymes' new album, Year of the Dragon, Google awkwardly wandered into a lane previously occupied by sketchy mixtape-hosting websites like DatPiff and LiveMixtapes. Year of the Dragon is a free download, though you still need to provide your credit card information to download it. Google conspiracy theorists are surely, right now, drumming up nefarious reasons for this, but it mostly seems to hinge on the fact that Google Play is a pay-to-download site and so, the interface demands an account and credit card. Arguably, it isn't all that different from iTunes, which asks for an account connected to at least, a Paypal, even for free downloads of podcasts.

August 20, 2012 – Last month, Lady Gaga and Kendrick Lamar began tweeting at one another. On July 4th, Gaga directed a tweet at Lamar that said, "What a sweetie calling me this morning to see how I'm doin. See you soon. Love from across the pond. #Rigamortis." A follower then asked Gaga, "Are all of your fans gonna jump on him now?," to which Gaga answered, "I hope so. He and his lyrics are the shit." And so, Gaga became a hip-hop tastemaker. On July 15, at the Pitchfork Festival in Chicago, Gaga was spotted backstage during Lamar's set. The same day, Lamar tweeted, "The power is in my hair nigga!!!," an indirect reference to Gaga's Born This Way song, "Hair." Gaga retweeted Lamar's shoutout, and also said this: "@kendricklamar #womenweedandweather listening to The Recipe.

August 18, 2012 – I think I wandered into a rap blogger version of a Beckett play the other night. I drove all around southern New Jersey on a Thursday evening, pulling into every supermarket and pharmacy with a Redbox trying to rent month-old Wiz Khalifa and Snopp Dogg straight-to-DVD-vehicle Mac & Devin Go To High School, only to discover that it is either sold out or not carried in that specific RedBox. I must've gone to five or six of these things looking for that stupid movie. It seemed pretty good! I'm a big fan of the straight-to-video rapper movie. It's the only exploitation cinema we've got left. Sure there are those cheapo CGI-fests that try to cash-in on recent blockbusters, but for pure, sincere, gut-punching trash, rappers are the only ones doing it still.

August 17, 2012 – Back In March, producer Ryan Hemsworth's mix for the website Live For the Funk singlehandedly made the beyond played-out mash-up vital again. That hour-and-then-some, kitchen-sink piling-on of music from anywhere and everywhere even took the time to sonically connects all its dots (Grimes slamming into Mariah!), featured an inspired mash-up of Three Six Mafia's "Late Nite Tip," and the Microphones' "Instrumental" off The Glow Pt. 2. That mash-up was clever and weird enough to grabs some "likes" on Tumblr, but within in context of the LFTF mix, which managed to top Rustie's maximalism and out-curate Girl Talk's A.D.D. energy, it felt like an organic blurring of seemingly disparate musical borders.

August 15, 2012 – Who: DJ Rashad, a producer from Chicago's thriving footwork dance scene whose stuttering, chaotic tweaks of other local styles like juke and house has helped create a manic, experimental type of global party music. In June, on his label Lit City Trax, Rashad released Teklife Vol. 1: Welcome to the Chi, the scene's most cohesive and imaginative release yet. "I wanted [Teklife Vol. 1] to be raw, fun, fresh, footwork-ish, juke-ish, a little ghetto-tech-ish, a little jungle-ish, you know?" Rashad says excitedly.

August 14, 2012 – Right up there with the endless search for the gay rapper, the biggest waste-of-time hip-hop controversy involves whether an MC has or hasn't used a ghostwriter. And apparently, even one of hip-hop culture's finest chroniclers couldn't resist the chance to throw someone under the bus. On Twitter yesterday, in response to a follower who asked, "Is Jay[-Z] really that concerned with losing [money] that he can't just say "Fuck my image" and make an Untitled (Nigger Album) like Nas?," writer Dream Hampton dropped this bomb on the rap Internet.

August 10, 2012 – Have you checked out Gwyneth Paltrow's "Summer Jams" playlist over at Jay-Z's Life + Times website? It's a slideshow with YouTube embeds of her choices and brief, naively moronic comments from the famous actress about each song. Or, maybe an intern added the comments, it's hard to tell. Here's the list if you don't wanna indulge Hova's pageview bait: Kendrick Lamar's "The Recipe," Pinback's "Loro," Grimes' "Genesis," Hot Chip's "Motion Sickness," Juicy J's "Who Da Neighbors," Frank Ocean's "Thinking About You," Chief Keef's "I Don't Like," Usher's "Climax," Beach House's "Other People," Deerhunter's "Helicopter," French Montana's "Pop That," Neon Indian's "Halogen (I Could Be a Shadow)," and Wugazi's "Shame On You" (Wugazi is a Wu-Tang/Fugazi mash-up novelty). This is the most baffling celebrity list since Michael Mann's Sight & Sound poll featured Avatar!

August 3, 2012 – Rick Ross' God Forgives, I Don't is another epic, empty Rick Ross album. He's repeating the success of Deeper Than Rap and Teflon Don — both entertaining, well-crafted listens that did all the things that they needed to do, but nothing more. Now, Ross is rap's biggest star, so he coasts a little more than usual, with the aid of the most expensive-sounding beats this side of Kanye West, because, well, who else is going to get them these days? Unlike, say, that strange Roc-A-Fella era when an amoral eccentric like Cam'ron was privy to a sample clearance and beatmaker budget of the highest caliber and took full advantage, Ross is someone hiding inside the beats, letting them do all the work. Moreso than on his warmed-over album, the video for God Forgives' street single "Hold Me Back" best sums up Ross' feckless take on street rap.