Early rap didn’t have a single sound. It had a dozen scenes growing at once: park jams, radio hits, battle rhymes, party records, and crews trying to be louder than the next block over. That’s why ...

There’s a reason we don’t hear too much anymore about ’80s rappers like Kool Moe Dee, Doug E. Fresh, and EPMD. It’s because the music outgrew their particular rapping style. Shut, it’s not even called ...

Before hip-hop topped charts, it was raw, political, and underground. From New York basements to 2Pac’s rage, here’s how “street music” broke through. From the underground of New York to Philadelphia, ...