Jay-Z

Prince & Bon Iver visit Blue Ivy Carter on Saturday Night Live

Justin "Vernon" Timberlake.​Call this the skit from this weekend's Saturday Night Live that they expected would end up on the blogs. In it, the power couple of Beyonce and Jay-Z are receiving guests to visit their newborn Blue Ivy Carter. Portrayed by various members of the cast, LL Cool J, Nicki ... More >>

5ingles: Black Dice, Jay-Z, Priurient & More

​Whether you're dealing with Black Dice, black metal, or Blue Ivy, 2012 is figuring to be a year filled with dark, rich shades -- none of these half-assed hues, please! These five singles are a cross-section of the bizarre, the boastful, and the quiet moments we spend in noisy spots.

Warm up in the Twin Cities at these hot spots

​The Twin Cities are a pretty decent place to live thanks to our thriving art and performance scenes, our lakes and parks, and our cutting edge fried food at the Minnesota State Fair. Unfortunately, in order to enjoy these treats you must also survive our never ending winters of despair. But tak ... More >>

5ingles

​The Twin Cities are a pretty decent place to live thanks to our thriving art and performance scenes, our lakes and parks, and our cutting edge fried food at the Minnesota State Fair. Unfortunately, in order to enjoy these treats you must also survive our never ending winters of despair. But tak ... More >>

New Doomtree record, 'No Kings,' coming in November

Photo by Nick Wosika​With all of social media abuzz about Kanye West and Jay-Z's new record, Watch the Throne, which finds the pair kicking back and flaunting their reign over the hip-hop world, it seems like the perfect time to learn that one of the Twin Cities' most commanding crews, Doomtr ... More >>

Kanye West offers subscription to his life, here are 13 possible special features

​Talk about putting your business in the street - or out on the Internet, as it were. Basically, for between $3.99 and $4.99 per month, you get to watch a carefully edited version of Kanye West's Life. As Pitchfork reported yesterday, this quasi-Orwellian cash-in includes concerts, rehearsals, det ... More >>

Cards on the table: Four songs for the bipartisan debt showdown

​So this is kind of a weird time to be alive, when the President and the Republican Congressional leaders and the Democratic Congressional leaders are doing these press-conference showdowns where each faction is offer gentile smack-talk about the other factions, apparently en route to achieving a ... More >>

Five songs President Obama could sing to drive home our national indebtedness

​Let's not kid ourselves: our national fiscal house isn't anything close to in order these days. By all rights, our government should be shut down right now. Congress is perpetually fighting tooth and nail to figure out which budgetary sacred cows to sacrifice. And it's hard to make it through new ... More >>

Dipset: Reunion Tour

​Let's not kid ourselves: our national fiscal house isn't anything close to in order these days. By all rights, our government should be shut down right now. Congress is perpetually fighting tooth and nail to figure out which budgetary sacred cows to sacrifice. And it's hard to make it through new ... More >>

Lady Gaga's 'Born This Way' parodied by young Vikings fans

​High school students Danny Chamberlain and Sarah Winter of Minnehaha Academy decided to take their frustration with the Vikings out by creating a parody song set to the tune of Lady Gaga's new dancefloor single "Born This Way" -- and you know what? It's not half bad.

13 most fascinating hip-hop album covers of all time

Jay-Z, Kanye West, and Riccardo Tesci's art for their freshly announced single "H.A.M." seems a love-it-or-hate-it type situation. Rotts, nautical stars (remember high school, when the seniors started to get tattoos?), scopa crowns, and platinum does not a consensus make, apparently. All up in that ... More >>

DMX: Will the Ruff Ryder rise again?

Hear exclusive new songs from the troubled rapper

Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Fridays: What's Really G.O.O.D.?

​Like death, taxes, and incomprehensible, wrongheaded Fox News/Tea Party memes, we've become used to Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Fridays series. Unlike death, taxes, and the GOP, G.O.O.D. Friday eucharists will cease to arrive at about the same time that Santa Claus begins his annual international rever ... More >>

The Week That Was: Jacko posthumous, Girl Talk is back, spectre of Cher somehow inescapable

​We adjusted the clocks. We became a little leerier about dropping by UPS and Fed-Ex locations. We got a little more excited about Jay-Z's Decoded. We got all indignant about Wal-Mart playing "Little Drummer Boy" over the PA system. We bundled up, shivered. This is the first week of November, as r ... More >>

Beyonce Knowles is (probably) pregnant

​Those of you who were wondering if and when Beyonce Knowles and Jay-Z would ever pull a J.Lo/Marc Anthony and collaborate on a full-length album? You folks can keep right on wondering about that while the rest of us figure out how to digest the (alleged) news that the first couple of urban pop ar ... More >>

Top five musical idols who need to drop autobiographical tell-alls, stat

​Chin-stroking musos everywhere were stoked to learn that next week's issue of Rolling Stone will include an excerpt from Life, the long-awaited, drug- and debacle-soaked memoir from storied Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. This in a season that will already see the release of stocking-stu ... More >>

5ingles

​Chin-stroking musos everywhere were stoked to learn that next week's issue of Rolling Stone will include an excerpt from Life, the long-awaited, drug- and debacle-soaked memoir from storied Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. This in a season that will already see the release of stocking-stu ... More >>

Astronautalis

​Chin-stroking musos everywhere were stoked to learn that next week's issue of Rolling Stone will include an excerpt from Life, the long-awaited, drug- and debacle-soaked memoir from storied Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. This in a season that will already see the release of stocking-stu ... More >>

Video of the day: St. Cloud guys spoof Jay-Z, Alicia Keys

East of the Dakotas, dont hate the north state/Thank us for Scotch tape, home of ten thousand lakes.

25 Hip Hop Classics of the Decade

For a genre that's been declared dead a dozen times over, hip hop had a pretty good (if splintered) decade.

Top Five Most Hummable Indie-Rock Smash Hits of the '00s

The aughts saw indie rock go mainstream. Here's the top 5 indie songs we couldn't escape this decade.

Fall Out Boy

The aughts saw indie rock go mainstream. Here's the top 5 indie songs we couldn't escape this decade.

The Popstream: Menahan Street Band, "Make the Road By Walking"

The Traveling Wilburys of retro-funk and the single that got Jay-Z's attention.

Lady Sovereign announces new label, album

The Songs We Can't Escape

The Songs We Can't Escape

5ingles

The Songs We Can't Escape

What's $elling

The Top 10 Discs This Week at Urban Lights Music

5ingles

The songs we can't escape

5ingles

The songs we can't escape

5ingles

The Songs We CanÕt Escape

Concert Highlights for the Week Of June 13-19

The Songs We CanÕt Escape

12/14 Morning Communiqué

The Songs We CanÕt Escape

The bad and the ugly

The Songs We CanÕt Escape

Artists of the Year

Hurricanes, war, avian flu, locust plagues, that annoying song you couldn't get out of your head. It wasn't the greatest of all possible years. Nor was it halfway decent. But to prove that it wasn't all bad, we asked 29 writers to rave about the ar

Edutainment

Kanye West gets an honorary degree in Afro-American studies

And the Wind Cries Maya

Even more galanging about M.I.A.

No Sellout--Also No Record Sales

Busdriver laughs through car troubles and a struggling career

Shiver Me Timbers

A disquisition on horripilation, cutis anserine, gooseflesh, and goose bumps

Missy Elliott: This Is Not a Test!

A disquisition on horripilation, cutis anserine, gooseflesh, and goose bumps

Basement Jaxx: Kish Kash

A disquisition on horripilation, cutis anserine, gooseflesh, and goose bumps

Wasteland: Amen Fire

A disquisition on horripilation, cutis anserine, gooseflesh, and goose bumps

The Roots: Phrenology

A disquisition on horripilation, cutis anserine, gooseflesh, and goose bumps

Andrew Broder: Modern Hits EP

A disquisition on horripilation, cutis anserine, gooseflesh, and goose bumps

Straight Outta Academe

A hip-hop exhibit bridges the gap between the dis and the dissertation

Go Ahead, Punk, Make My Day

Is Slug's hip hop the yawp of a new blank generation?

Neighborhood Watch

Fireball Espresso Café Keeps an Eye on Local Hip Hop

Celebrity Skin

Hip hop's morph master Kool Keith raps about beauty, porn, and life without bodyguards

Just So So Stories

Hip hop's morph master Kool Keith raps about beauty, porn, and life without bodyguards