March 23, 2012 – New non-commercial radio stations are now one step closer to popping up on the FM dial in communities across the country. Earlier this week, the Federal Communications Commission adopted new rules implementing legislation signed last year by President Obama. The FCC's move clears the way for untold numbers of new low-power FM radio stations, particularly in urban areas where licenses for such LPFM stations were previously unavailable. Sure, in an era of streaming audio and constant online connectivity, the idea of terrestrial radio stations that might reach no further than a couple of miles maybe doesn't sound like much. But of course, many people still don't have access to the Internet, and LPFM can provide communities with an intensely local experience in a way commercial radio rarely if ever does in these post-consolidation times.

March 23, 2012 – Although 4AD isn't especially known for hip-hop, the venerable label's recent signing of woozy Miami rapper/producer SpaceGhostPurrp is almost too on the nose. After all, the once-unlikely intersection between shoegaze druggy atmosphere and hip-hop druggy atmosphere has attracted increasing attention the past few years — as critic Ian Cohen was probably first to point out on Twitter, Midwest nightmare-pop misfits SALEM have been doing this for years now. And SpaceGhostPurrp's vowel-averse mixtapes have been just as much about the type of foggy gloom that has long been a mainstay of the 4AD sound — or, to an extent, that of Southern rappers like Three 6 Mafia — as they are about this A$AP Rocky associate's sneering, free-associative rhymes.

March 23, 2012 – The mighty E-40's middle-age creative renaissance enters its next phase on Tuesday, when the Bay Area hip-hop legend releases not one but three albums — his The Block Brochure trilogy. "They Point," from first (and slappingest) installment Welcome to the Soil 1, features help from three Dirty South-based artists who've also been doing it a few years. Producer Bangladesh ("A Milli") sets out a squelchy, trunk-rattling backdrop for Juicy J's hilarious quips about Lionel Richie and 2 Chainz' boasts about "selling work since we had Bill Clinton." Leading it all off, of course, is Charlie Hustle himself, saving his best flow for the part where everything drops out except a thumping drum-machine break. It's all goofy and effortless-seeming, as is the song's new video, which involves expensive cars, scantily clad women, and, why not, a rotary phone that 2 Chainz carries on his belt.

March 23, 2012 – When Danny Brown turned 31 earlier this month, the occasion marked a bigger milestone than it would for most people. Brown's 2011 breakthrough, XXX, alluded to his then-age of 30 in its title as well as in its opening and closing tracks. As that free download album finally receives a physical release, with a limited double-vinyl plus bonus 7" edition due out on April 21 for Record Store Day, the idiosyncratic Detroit rapper looks to be on the brink of something big at an age when too many MCs are already considered washed up. "Us older rappers can say it, and we know the outcomes of the street, but the kids are living it," he acknowledged in a recent Village Voice interview. "Grown Up," which premiered yesterday at the Fader, is, like all things Brown, a hybrid.

March 22, 2012 – Call her Game Genie. Rye Rye cracks video game after video game in the new video for feather-light electro-pop earworm "Boom Boom," from the Baltimore rapper-singer's long-awaited Go! Pop! Bang! (due out May 15). It's a winning approach for the song, which already resembles video game music in its Vengaboys-derived hi-NRG simplicity. Where Lana Del Rey prefers to watch her man play "Video Games," Rye Rye would rather take over. And where recent video game release Street Fighter X Tekken combines two rival fighting game series, the video for "Boom Boom" mashes up elements from old-school games of all stripes, with the colorfully coiffed popster always as the star.

March 22, 2012 – Jason Mattera finally bum-rushed the wrong liberal celebrity. Which, well, the person he ambushed wasn't a celebrity at all. Mattera, a conservative activist who gained attention for previous gotcha-style interviews involving Chris Rock and Vice President Joe Biden, earlier this week posted a video purporting to show him firing tough questions about taxes at U2 frontman Bono during a pre-Grammy event in Los Angeles. The trouble is, he was directing his charges of hypocrisy at a Bono impersonator, who didn't even bother to answer in an Irish accent and was actually kind enough to throw in some hints that he's not the real McCoy, er, um, Bono. Gawker calls out a particularly amusing exchange: Mattera: You have no say in what U2 does? Bono: Not particularly. Mattera: You don't?

March 22, 2012 – Cornershop's 1997 breakthrough When I Was Born for the Seventh Time is a quintessential example of a record that awoke listeners with a forward-thinking sound in the moment. The Anglo-Indian outfit led by Tjinder Singh are having a different kind of moment now: As online connectivity has made the pop world so small that Switch, Q-Tip, Nick Zinner, and Buraka Som Sistema all have production credits on Santigold's hotly anticipated new album, here's Cornershop merging elements of dub, hip-hop, and Singh's own Punjabi folk roots on "Milkin' It," the groove-driven advance track from May 15 album Urban Turban (itself the follow-up to last year's sadly slept-on Cornershop & the Double O Groove Of). Directed by Astrid Edwards, the video spotlights the Oakland, California, dance style known as turf dancing.

March 22, 2012 – "Now everybody seen that shit," Kendrick Lamar boasts coolly at the end of "The City," from Game's tepidly received summer 2011 release The R.E.D. Album. And everybody really has: The younger of the two West Coast rappers demonstrated his criminally high-wattage star power at SXSW, made the jump to Interscope for his next album, and demonstrated not only impressive technique but also, more importantly, a distinctive conscious-yet-totally-fucked-up perspective to one of last year's best rap albums, debut Section.80. He also shared the mic with hip-hop up-and-comers from Tech N9ne to Drake (and, more recently, Gunplay). Lamar's guest spot on "The City," for its part, is a passing-of-the-torch moment on an album with only flickers of Game's old fire.

March 22, 2012 – "Semper fidelis," the U.S. Marine Corps' slogan, takes on an an ironic shade of meaning in the military-themed new video for Katy Perry's latest single, "Part of Me" (from aptly titled March 26 deluxe reissue Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection). The Latin means "always faithful," and Perry's lover in the clip — who, as it happens, looks more like Chris Martin than real-life ex Russell Brand — decidedly isn't. As singles from Perry's chart-dominating 2010 album Teenage Dream go, her latest uptempo electro-popper isn't as frothily exuberant as, say, "California Gurls," but in the weeks since its debut the recent pop No.

March 16, 2012 – The second track to leak from Killer Mike's upcoming album, R.A.P. Music, produced entirely by El-P, is a different animal, but no less ferocious. The Atlanta rap firebrand and the New York indie-rap luminary previously brought together their respective brands of non-self-righteous righteousness on "Big Beast," a clanging, exuberant burst of fury featuring Southern aplomb courtesy of T.I. and Bun B. A second cut, this one titled "Untitled," premiered earlier today on satellite-radio channel Shade 45's Sway on the Morning. While it's a more contemplative, solitary affair, it's similarly compelling. This morning, Killer Mike introduced the track, saying it was inspired by the thoughts of mortality that truth-speaking civil rights leaders must have shortly before they're killed, and he said his grandmother recently died in his arms, which, wow.