Damn, see if I went to SXSW, I might’ve been all up in this video. The four-headed monster that is Slaughterhouse finally drops the video to their first single off Welcome to Our House . Look out for all the cameos, backstage and around beautiful Austin, including Mr. Shady himself. Welcome to Our House drops June 12th. charliedigital is [...]

Legendary rapper/producer Q-Tip has signed a deal with Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Music imprint(Def Jam). The former A Tribe Called Quest frontman released a statement:

“I’m excited to be a part of the great iconic Def Jam label. I’m humbled to be a part of such a storied history. To reconnect with Barry Weiss(Universal CEO) is a great [...]

Still listening to “Theraflu”? That’s sooo yesterday. A tagged version of the first single for the upcoming G.O.O.D. Music album has made its way onto the internets. Kanye is joined by G.O.O.D. comrades Big Sean and Pusha T, along with 2 Chainz, who appears to be everywhere right now. He more than holds his own [...]

The South by Southwest Interactive Festival kicks off today in Austin, TX. It’s where all the hip technorati, musicians, filmakers, and just generally cool kids are right now. They’re having fun while you and I are stuck in crappy (insert your crappy state). But all is not lost! “Black Card” poster-child Hov and Black Card-maker, American [...]

  “N****s In Poorest” has been floating in audio form for the past few weeks. But yesterday, on the anniversary on Malcolm X’s death, Bey drops a powerful video to complement his heavy, hyper-provocative flip on Jay-Z/Kanye’s “N****s In Paris” . “N.I.P” is heavy on social, political, and economic themes as you expect from the artist [...]

  Along with every hip-hop blog-comment section on the planet, I’ve decided to drop my own opinions on MTV Hottest MCs list for this year. Now, for those that know me, indeed I like to flow , probably expect me to come in here and defecate all over this list and b!tch about how all my favorite indie [...]

Despite the shadow of Whitney Houston’s death hanging over the evening, it was still a huge night for Adele and others. Brit soul-pop phenomenon Adele pretty much owned the Grammy Awards last night. She won six awards out of her six nominations, including Album of the Year(“21″), and Song of the Year (“Rolling In The [...]

Phonte drops the second video from arguably the best album of 2011, Charity Starts At Home . Because of the reality and relatability in his music, Phonte often gets labeled the “everyman MC” and the 9th Wonder-produced “The Good Fight” is an “everyday struggle”-type song that showcases this side of him. The mix of  middle/working class imagery and current [...]

Jay-Z shoots us all right in the heart with this one. A little less than two days after the internets went internuts over the arrival of Jesus Blue Ivy, Father Hov unexpectedly drops this sweet, heartfelt loose track to honor this proud moment. In its three-and-a-half minutes, “Glory” captures: Blue’s conception:

You don’t yet know what [...]

#newtigallonewtigallonewtigallo EXACTLY 100 days after the release of his critically-acclaimed debut, Charity Starts At Home , Phonte drops the first video from the project. “Dance In The Reign” is the opening song on CSAH, an uptempo head-nodder that gives Phonte room to pack in his trademark wit, wordplay, and punches.

Suicide mission, straight sabotagin’ Flow so addicting it’s like [...]

Rating: 4.5/5 Remember Universal Mind Control ? Yeah, me neither. But Common comes back with a possible album-of-the-year contender with The Dreamer, The Believer . “ How can I say this, f*ck it, I’m the greatest! / I am the A-list for all these great debaters! ” Common lets you know on “Sweet” that he is again back in top form. Not [...]

Rating: 4/5 Did Drake just slip us a (very good) R&B album? Take Care is the follow-up to last year’s platinum-selling Thank Me Later , a good but admittedly rushed debut. This album represents a slight evolution of Drake as an artist and hip-hop star. A star whose penchant for singing divides the audience to those you that love [...]

Yesterday, tech super-giant and future-Skynet, Google, officially launched Google Music. Until now, Google Music was just a pretty awesome music storage-plus-streaming service. Google has now added a full mp3 store like its buddies Amazon and Apple’s iTunes. It has also included some social features via strong Google+ integration. So, what so great about it? Well, [...]

For about the last 36 hours, rap-blog comment sections and twitter-ninjas have been waxing over Ludacris’ recently released mixtape, 1.21 Gigawatts . In particular, the aggressive, “Bada Boom.” Upon listening to it and it’s preceding track “History Lesson,” you’d be hard pressed to deny that it’s aimed at Big Sean and Drake. So what’s this all about? [...]

Okay, for a moment, just for a moment, let’s imagine that we live in an alternate universe where the Shady 2.0 BET Cypher did not happen. That the Shady cypher did NOT make you look at the earlier cyphers with disdain and pity. That Em, Slaughterhouse, and Yelawolf did NOT make ninjaz wanna tuck their [...]

After a long battle with pancreatic cancer, tech visionary and iconoclast, Steve Jobs passed away yesterday (October 5th) at age 56. To much of our younger generation, Jobs is synonymous with Apple‘s iPod, iPhone, and iPad. While those are all individually global-culture-changing products, there is a lot more to Jobs’ impact on the world. Whether you’re reading [...]

Quite literally in the shadow of the South Carolina State House with the Confederate flag on its grounds, a very diverse crowd of South Carolinians gathered for a uniquely progressive event at the Columbia Museum of Art. The tag-line for Cola-Con was, “comics meet hip-hop and alternative culture.” As soon as you walked into the [...]

The “Watch The Throne” hype-machine is still chugging along this week. The iTunes-exclusive digital version was released a few days ago, and the physical CD hits stores Friday. The much anticipated video premiered on a few of Viacom’s networks (MTV, MTV2, BET, MTV476, etc.), then to its websites. The visual direction is provided by Spike [...]

Rating: 3.5/5 After a few delays, 2010 XXL Freshman and Kanye West-protégé, Big Sean releases his G.O.O.D. Music/Def Jam debut, Finally Famous . Maybe I shouldn’t call him a newcomer, Sean has been putting out some good music for the last few years on the mixtape scene. Will he follow the same hot-mixtape- to-mediocre-album path that so many [...]