January 25, 2013 – This week, Nicki Minaj was bored and annoyed. On Wednesday, it manifested itself as grand gestures of frustration, and on Thursday, by a dead-eyed episode that ran only one merciful hour, instead of two. See, Nicki is slowly realizing that she's with a crew of fundamentally uncool and clueless oldheads (it pains me to type this about Mariah, but it is true) who remain baffled by the idea that someone could enjoy both country music or rap, and as was the case on Wednesday night, that a young black woman could be into rock'n'roll, or that a young white woman could move from singing country music to soul. Let's start with Taisha Bethea, the black rocker. She sang Johnny Cash's “Folsom Prison Blues” and Alanis Morissette's “You Oughta Know,” only to be hesitantly embraced by Mariah Carey and Randy Jackson.

January 24, 2013 – Right now, the worst song in the country is the biggest song in the country. Wouldn't be the first time, right? But Macklemore & Ryan Lewis' "Thrift Shop," sitting at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, is a special case. Namely, it's a rap from a white guy celebrating common sense and sustainability — spending money at the local Goodwill or Salvation Army instead of at the mall or some streetwear boutique — that misses the mark and ends up as a party track for privileged dweebs.

January 23, 2013 – "It should be impossible to consider the Keefs and Flockas and Gunplays of the world completely outside of moralized critique." That's a quote from a ThinkProgress piece titled “White People and Hiphop (sic): Tourists, Expats, or Colonists?” Writer Alan Pyke's essay attempts to wrestle with this ongoing debate about whether or not Chief Keef should be allowed to rap about things. "Rappers should be somewhat responsible for their words" isn't a controversial statement and it's probably necessary given how many people reviewing rap music for a living suddenly think they're Walter Pater and start pontificating on art's transgressive qualities beyond good and evil. "How do we wrestle with music that makes us or others feel weird?" could be an interesting starting point for a debate if the participants involved weren't so factionalized from the get-go.

January 23, 2013 – Harmony Korine's upcoming Spring Breakers stars James Franco as an eccentric hustler (with quite a few tics in common with pure-of-heart Internet absurdist Riff Raff), who links up with four high-school girls/bank robbers (played by Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine). Judging by the trailer, "Badlands meets Jersey Shore directed by Michael Mann" seems like the shorthand schlockmeister movie pitch for the thing.

January 18, 2013 – If you're a rap fan who has ever had a hardrive crash, a laptop stolen, or just wasn't thinking straight and deleted a bunch of mid-to-late-2000s mixtapes because you thought they'd be available to download forever, then the Tumblr Diskography is a godsend. Whoever runs the Tumblr has been uploading entire mixtape discographies of rappers from Gucci Mane to the Cool Kids, with all the wonky tagging removed. "Mixtapes that have been re-tagged to work correctly on your iPod/Windows Media Player/Last.Fm etc. --> LEGAL & FREE MUSIC!" reads the blog's summary. This is important work. The story of rap music must include mixtape culture and by the late 2000s, physical copies of these things were quite hard to come by, if they existed at all. Like, imagine a Doomsday Preppers wetdream in which the Internet just ends and all its data disappears.

January 18, 2013 – Reality shows are great equalizers of taste. If you don't find a sitcom like Parks & Recreation funny, or a fancy drama like Homeland emotionally devastating, then there's not a lot that those shows can do for you. But reality television works differently. If you want to kick back and condescend and get your thrills that way, then you can. And if you just decide to buy into the hammy melodrama of it all like you're supposed to, then a show like American Idol, entering its 12th season, with new judges Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj, and Keith Urban (plus "dawg"-spouting dude-bro Randy Jackson, as always) will own your life for the next few months.Frankly, Nicki is the only actual human up there on the stage. Randy Jackson is clueless and, hey, Mariah Carey is the greatest ever, but she's most certainly channeling the J.

January 16, 2013 – It's a little too easy to ramble on about the death of Dipset. Yes, their flamboyant assholism in the early 2000s now hinges on a bleary-eyed Cam'ron, a trend-chasing Jim Jones, and their avant-ridiculous ear for production carried on exclusively by Heatmakerz replacement AraabMuzik, who has slung his trebly street hiss over to the world of EDM, dubstep, and anywhere else that'll claim him.

January 16, 2013 – Who: Mykki Blanco, real name Michael Quattelbaum, is a fast-rapping MC who reaches the wigged-out heights of Lil Wayne at his mid-2000s creative peak (the manic "Riot"), taps into the chant-rap fury of Atlanta clubs ("Virginia Beach") and does it wearing a wig and women's clothing. "Drag kind of, like, polarizes people's minds," Blanco says, "Once you put that into [a performance], they don't see anything else." Quite simply, "Mykki Blanco" is "a stage name," no different than Dwayne "Lil Wayne" Carter, or ex-corrections officer William Roberts transforming into coke-rap superhero Rick Ross.Just Another City Kid: On the mixtape Cosmic Angel: The Illuminati Prince/ss, released last month, blazed-out rhymes combine with off-kilter dance production from Sinden, Brenmar, and Gatekeeper with just enough of the snaps, claps, and grind of the radio.

January 11, 2013 – Pensado's Place is a public access-like nerd-out about the inside baseball ins and outs of engineering and mixing records. It's hosted by Dave Pensado, whose credits kind of speak for themselves, and who is probably best described as the Dude from The Big Lebowski meets Brian Wilson meets that nice older guy who bought you beer when you were underaged but also, like, gave you some Captain Beefheart records to check out, as well. The most recent episode of the show features a 50-minute interview with Derek Ali, or MixedbyAli as he's better known, who recorded and mixed Kendrick Lamar's good kid, m.A.A.d city, a rap record that really does sound incredible. It's a really fascinating episode and you should check it.

January 9, 2013 – Some rappers, who are content to turn their lives into superhero-gone-Tarantino tales of being down and out, then find success and enact hater retribution. And some rappers, it seems, couldn't pull off hip-hop tall tale-telling if their lives depended on it. Young Scooter, part of Auto-Tune diarist Future's Freebandz Entertainment is one of those can't-tell-a-lie guys. Somebody who always allows a little too much reality to leak into even the most rote drug-rap boasts. The quasi-official video for Scooter's minor hit "Colombia" — kind of a mix of Rick Ross' “Hustlin'” ridiculousness ("I just left Colombia / Always making bricks, me and Hector") and Future in charmingly moronic "Tony Montana" mode — consists of hastily edited footage from a TV documentary about the work-a-day details of the cocaine trade for Colombians.