This year's BET Hip Hop Awards aired earlier this week on Oct. 16, but were filmed back on Oct. 7 at the Miami Beach Convention Center. That night, DJ Scheme, a musician who attended the taping, tweeted that during one of the program's cyphers (which themselves were pre-recorded), a rapper criticized by name the recently murdered South Florida rapper XXXTentacion, focusing specifically on his credible...

If Rob Zombie’s clunky 2007 remake was any indication, it would seem that anyone attempting to revive Halloween for the 21st century is setting themselves up for failure. John Carpenter’s 1978 classic popularized the slasher genre and its myriad tropes. Adequately paying homage to the original, while also bringing something fresh to the franchise, is no easy task. By those standards, the new Halloween---directed...

Tom Krell didn’t expect Los Angeles to feel like this. The 34-year-old songwriter known professionally as How To Dress Well is sitting cross-legged on his bed, struggling to describe the tension at the heart of a city he calls both “extremely beautiful” and “borderline psychotic.” “I have a little yard and a nice house that I like, and it’s just a little easier to live out here in some...