December 14, 2010 – "I represent my entire generation," a female vocal careens from Studio A at Daddy's House, the dingy midtown Manhattan recording mecca owned by Sean "Diddy" Combs. When the studio door opens, there is Nicki Minaj, wearing a cotton-candy-colored fright wig. She is surprisingly short -- Kewpie-ish, even -- in jeans, a T-shirt, and brown riding boots, mouthing along to every word of her new song, "Fly." Two cameramen, a boom operator, a recording engineer, her publicist, and her hype man and closest confidant, simply known as S.B., surround her. She is smiling, but not happy. "Do you mind if we tape this?" she asks, immediately after I ask the same exact thing. Our conversation is being filmed. Of course it is. Because Nicki Minaj is the most beguiling female rapper since Missy Elliott and the most exciting new artist of the year.

September 14, 2010 – He's a uniquely gifted rapper who's scored a left-field hit, forgiving fans, and a coveted co-sign from Kanye West. So why does Kid Cudi appear to be sabotaging his own success? [Magazine Excerpt] Kid Cudi twirls a neon-red, Darth Maul--style, double-bladed lightsaber skyward, and then catches it, mid-spin. "I need this on tour, so when motherfuckers run up, I can just be, like, 'Breach!'?" He twists his head around and shoots me a devilish look. Dressed this August afternoon as casually as one can be wearing black leather pants and a gold Jesus piece pendant, Cudi, 26, is hanging at home, a sparse, high-ceiling loft in Manhattan's tony TriBeCa neighborhood. But the reference to defending himself is not quite a joke. Last December, onstage in Vancouver, Cudi picked up a wallet, thrown from the crowd, that he claimed had struck him square in the face.

June 15, 2010 – [Editor's Note: Drake's debut full-length, Thank Me Later, was released today, June 15, 2010. This article originally appeared in SPIN's January 2010 issue.] Though hip-hop has always defined itself by its aspirations -- fiscal, political, sartorial -- Drake did his damnedest in 2009 to move the genre out of a thirtysomething malaise and into an age of feeling. Whether that means the music enters a mature growth period or a midlife crisis remains to be seen. But there's no doubt that the MC born Aubrey Drake Graham has changed the perception of what a rap star can sound like. Before this year, Drake, 23, was best known as Jimmy Brooks, the wheelchair-bound Lothario on the Canadian teen soap Degrassi: The Next Generation.

March 31, 2010 – "You call yourself a bowler? More like Ebola!" sneers Patrick Stickles, singer-guitarist for po-mo New Jersey punks Titus Andronicus, trashtalking the competition at Brooklyn's Melody Lanes on a cold January night. "Watch this," he continues, before chucking a strike. That swagger should be familiar to fans of the impassioned fivesome: punny, goofily menacing, maybe a little insecure. Lately, though, Stickles, 24, bassist Ian Graetzer, 23, drummer Eric Harm, 24, multi-instrumentalist Amy Klein, 24, and guitarist-keyboardist David Robbins, 26, haven't had much to worry about.

October 15, 2009 – Wale is sitting quietly at a table in ESPN Zone, a grotesque Times Square tourist-trap restaurant. Dressed in black jeans and a T-shirt, with his trademark fitted Washington Nationals cap, he nods his head nervously. Servers gawk at the rapper, nearly tipping over plates of soggy Buffalo wings as they pass by, but dejection covers his face. "Look at this, it's on the blogs already," he says. Furiously flicking the rolling ball on his BlackBerry, the man born Olubowale Victor Folarin is having a moment of fame, but he can't enjoy it. He says he hasn't earned it. Yesterday, he was photographed in Central Park with Solange Knowles, Beyoncé's younger sister, and R&B gossip blog Concrete Loop is implying a relationship that he claims doesn't exist.

October 7, 2009 – A young Jay-Z came up with rhymes in his head in order to impress his friend, the Notorious B.I.G. Atlanta's Playboy Tre learned to do the same thing for a less playful reason: He didn't want to get fired. "My boss hated the fact that I would come off the truck to write raps," says Tre, 30, taking time out from breakfast at a Kansas City, Missouri diner to reminisce about his days loading cargo vans. "He told me, 'If you come off that fuckin' truck again to write these silly-ass raps, I'm gonna fire you!' So I had to learn how to memorize." He didn't get fired; he quit and took the skills he acquired on the job into the lab. Combining a strident flow with boozy philosophy, Tre has belatedly emerged from a new stable of thoughtful Southern MCs that also includes Spree Wilson and Pill.