Lil Wayne Pupil Drake Thrills in NYC

Jay Sean finds a home on Lil Wayne's Cash Money label

(NEWSER) - “It doesn't matter if we're from a little place called Hounslow,” Jay Sean tells the BBC. “If you have some good music, you can make it anywhere.” That’s how the British R&B singer found himself collaborating with Lil Wayne, and climbing to No. 2 on the US charts—making him more successful abroad than he is at home in the UK. More»

Rap's up-and-coming name follows in the footsteps of Kanye West, Andre 3000

(NEWSER) - The premise of Kanye West protégé Kid Cudi’s Man on the Moon: The End of the Day is that he’s “not on the same planet as other rappers. The truth is that he’s not in the same genre,” writes Julian Benbow for the Boston Globe. The debut album “is a lot of things. It’s spacey, adventurous, and ridiculously intriguing if only because it’s so different. But it’s not rap”—more like “experimental and emotional hip-hop.” Elsewhere: More»

(NEWSER) - Jay-Z's new Blueprint 3 seems to have critics divided. Some see flashes of brilliance showing the rap veteran at his best, while others see a mediocre effort that relies too much on celebrity.

• Jay-Z sounds "hungrier than he has in years on about half the tracks, while sharing time with guest stars or grappling with undercooked production on the rest," writes Greg Kot for the Los Angeles Times. "Yet even at three-quarters speed, Jay-Z can still be formidable."

Sure, her life wasn't all hard, but don't write her off as a rapper

(NEWSER) - “Even in a ‘post-race’ world, street sells,” writes Amy Granzin for Pitchfork. That would explain why some looked at Speech Debelle—the once-homeless UK rapper turned Mercury Prize nominee and "hip-hop's next big thing"—and spun “a tiny bit of flash into blinding bling.” The truth is, Debelle had a middle-class, “girl-next-door” upbringing—but don’t write her off. Her debut, Speech Therapy, is “fine, fresh, serious (yet never dour),” and it “speaks for itself.” More»

Lyrics, though awkward, manage not to be petulant

(NEWSER) - Somehow, rapper Drake recorded an album concerned mostly with “the stresses and travails of fame, even if he recorded the damn thing when he wasn’t famous in any meaningful way”—and then became famous thanks to said album, writes Tom Breihan for Pitchfork. Though he’s “not a great rapper,” Drake’s So Far Gone “still scans as one of the most compulsively listenable mixtapes of a great year for mixtapes.” More»