The best rap beats are nerdy as hell. Every drum placement, every melody, every chopped-up sample sends me down a YouTube rabbit hole trying to piece together the way a producer contorts and dissects ...

East Coast-based hip-hop drew heavily on jazz samples and was generally characterized by rougher-edged, jazz-sample-based beats. On the West Coast, “gangsta” rap was the order of the day ...

There was a time when artists representing two of America’s biggest homegrown musical genres wouldn’t get a look in at the ...

Benjamin Booker entered a new sonic world when he tapped LA-based, “producer’s producer” Kenny Segal to work on LOWER, his ...