Matthew Ramirez

Lil Yachty is weird. Not avant-garde, but unpredictable. After exploding onto the scene with an array of viral hits and an…

The first time I heard Hawaiian Punch-braided teen rapper Lil Yachty was, fittingly, in a viral video. There’s no way in a million years…

Vince Staples records feel like transmissions. On early mixtapes like Stolen Youth and his Shyne Coldchain series, they were the raw, unfiltered diary entries of…

DJ Khaled is a movie star. You won’t literally see him at the Megaplex, but an invite to the Oscars red carpet isn't completely out…

Kendrick Lamar didn’t have to do this. Not even a year has passed since he released his grand statement, To Pimp a Butterfly, an intimidating epic…

2015 could have ended Future’s career. After years of calling himself an astronaut, Fire Marshall Future, and even Future Hendrix, he embraced a villainy that…

Dirty Sprite 2 to me will always signal the first Friday I remember new music being released. There was a slow period in the summer…

What a Time to Be Alive is not the best album of 2015, but it is the album that best defines 2015 so far. After…

A rodeo is a series of endurance tests: bronco riding, barrel racing, calf roping, and, of course, bull-riding ("the longest eight seconds in sports"), and…

Detox has arrived. Except it’s not Detox, it’s Compton. And fortunately, Compton is not hip-hop’s Chinese Democracy — a mythical, long-awaited record released to shrugs…