June 5, 2012 – Two weeks ago, the brilliant fashion mavericks at Dis Magazine tweeted, "The @CHANEL #resort collection takes on tumblr style.#TheBattleforRelevance #tweedGargoPants #ACTUALLYwearable." Presumably they were referring to Tumblr's scads of tween GPOYs having pajama jammy jams and posting late-'90s Natasha Gregson Wagner fan flicks, but they hit on a big point: Tumblr culture, with its endless throwback visual reblogs, bled into young designers' collections in an even more overt way for a/w 2012. And with the advances made in digital printing (check venerable designer Risto Bimbiloski's galaxy prints from 2009 — here’s Santigold wearing a more recent fur-print piece from his 2011 collection), .jpg realism will be here long after the Tumblr teengirl fantasy moves on from PLUR styles. But of course, the Tumblr influence hit with varying degrees of success for fall 2012 lines.

May 31, 2012 – Rustie’s Glass Swords (Warp) was one of the most innovative electronic releases of last year. Amid the glut of bass-heavy records that were dominating subs, the Glaswegian producer’s bright, technicolor treble effects distilled his affinity for cross-spectrum music — from prog, to quiet storm, to contemporary rap — into a gleaming piece of work that bursts at the seams with sensuousness. Glossy funk riffs are topped with ecstatic vocals (by himself and his girlfriend, fellow producer Nightwave), yet the music doesn't adhere to any strict definition of genre beyond loose electronic, which makes it the perfect album to accompany everything, from raves to dates. Fresh off a recent, crucial "Essential Mix," Rustie (born Russell Whyte) will be touring the whole summer before going back to the lab.

May 14, 2012 – Mykki Blanco is one of the hardest up-and-coming performers in New York and "Join My Militia" is one of her toughest tracks. Over an Arca-produced beat that sounds like it was teleported in from Myst, the song embodies what critics see as a city-wide reclamation of the grit that defines NYC, an aggressive, snarling stance from the fringes that dares anyone to step to her. It's no coincidence that she shouts out Nas, one of her favorite rappers, and forgoes a chorus for lyricism and storytelling about a double-agent boyfriend: "Damn, I didn't know my man was in the Taliban," abstractly expressing not just how badass her dude might be but also how deep she must be to mess with him.

May 7, 2012 – After MIA's action-packed 2010, which included both the commercial release of /\/\/\Y/\ and the mixtape Vicki Leekx — the latter, arguably her best work since Arular — the lightning rod that is Maya Arulpragasam has been fairly low-key (the stunning "Bad Girls" video notwithstanding). It turns out she's been working on her next album, Matangi, in India and London with Switch and others as well as doing the theme song for Wikileaks don Julian Assange's new television show. In addition to all that, though, MIA's been doing a lot of visual art, too, which is inextricable from her music. So when Beck's Beer came calling with an opportunity to do a limited-edition label collaboration, Arulpragasam sent them some of the art she'd been working on in India, which stamps a yin-yang at the center of a beer bottle. When SPIN rang her up to chat, M.I.A.

May 2, 2012 – "Foreign Shit" is Waka Flocka Flame's freestyle over French rapper Booba's "Repose en Paix," which is a decade old but which is something like a Euro version of Biggie's "Warning" — a crucial cut to freestyle over for anyone hoping to pop off in Paris. Waka Flocka wrote and recorded the track in his Palace Vendome hotel room (a session you can read about in our current cover story) in about an hour, then shot the video with the Special Delivery crew on location at the Eiffel Tower, on the River Seine and around the Louvre. We also managed to locate Paris' weirdest strip club, which featured only two strippers (those in the video) and a clutch of co-eds there to hear the DJ, who seemed to specialize in solely Atlanta hits from 2004-2008.

May 1, 2012 – Luscious Jackson emerged in 1991 as the coolest girls strutting the East Village. Playing a mélange of hip-hop rhythms, brooding bass, and mysterious harmonies, the group — founding members Jill Cunniff, Gabby Glaser, and Kate Schellenbach — hit hard among the then-burgeoning alt-punk-hip-hop scene in New York, propped up by their lifelong friends the Beastie Boys. By the time 1997 rolled around, Luscious Jackson had hit the Billboard charts ("Naked Eye"), and solidified themselves as one of the era's most unique bands. But when their final album, Electric Honey, failed to pop off — and Cunniff wanted to have children — they went on hiatus in 2000.

May 1, 2012 – It's the final party of Paris Fashion Week, and the scene is extra fancy in the VIP. Kanye West just presented the runway show for his 2012 autumn/winter women's-wear collection, drawing a celebrity swarm: Musicians (Diddy! Alicia Keys!), actors (Rosario Dawson!), models (Joan Smalls!), reality-TV stars (Kim Kardashian!), assorted socialites, marquee fashion editors, and plus-ones are all velvet-roped into a corner of an airplane-hangar-size warehouse. Swathed in furs and stilettos and jewels and importance, they sip hand-delivered flutes of champagne. Hapless cameramen worm into the spectacle, hoping for a shot of Kanye with Kim, but everyone else wants to be seen, too, and they're holding their best sides aloft, just in case.

April 30, 2012 – South London grime producer Darq E Freaker has been around for a hot minute — check the beat he did for 2009’s Tempa T crucial cut "Next Hype" — but it wasn’t until early last year that his sound really began to ignite. The catalyst: the nasty, space-bubblegum instrumental "Cherryade," which sounded like sounded like a weeded cartoon puppy barking at an iced-out bird, and and helped usher in the super-exciting new generation of grime artists who honor their predecessors but aren’t hemmed in by them.

April 17, 2012 – Frank Ocean is a dreamboat — soft eyes, strong jaw, swoony gap teeth, quiet intellect. But on this balmy November evening, his suit jacket's looking kinda tight. The acclaimed, Los Angeles–based singer-songwriter is launching his first-ever solo show in New Orleans — the hometown he left more than five years ago after Hurricane Katrina — and his nerves are clearly in flux, no doubt amped by the handful of girls who showed up carrying copies of his high school yearbook. He is dressed in an impeccably tailored and pressed ink-black suit, with his signature Japanese naval flag bandanna tied around his skull. A sensual video collage of underwater shots and clips from classic '90s hip-hop films plays behind him, emphasizing the gauziness of his music. The women populating the first seven rows of the venue alternately salivate and weep.

April 11, 2012 – When Rick Owens premiered his autumn/winter 2012 line in Paris last month, his avant-garde designs provoked the usual flurries of interest, but stoked a lot of music fires, too. Playing Zebra Katz's "Ima Read" exclusively for the 12-minute duration of his show, the loop embedded itself in the heads of fashion editors across the spectrum, and they were willing to preach about it. Style writer Derek Blasberg called it the song of Paris Fashion week (and, uh, "ethnic subversive pop," uhhh), and mentioned that Vogue Japan editor/insane fashion hoarder Anna Dello Russo wouldn't stop singing it (the Italian-born style muse apparently loved saying the word "bitch"). And while at the time those top editors seemed somewhat oblivious as regards the song's context ("ethnic subversive pop"?