Hip-Hop Drake “mines his past, not as a reason to change but as rationalization for his worst behavior” Author Drew Kaplan Date 28 June 2016 Starting with the ornate melancholia of “Take Care,” from 2011, Drake elevated the unfurling...
Hip-Hop “Drake’s songs will be unavoidable come summer…” Author Drew Kaplan Date 16 June 2016 Drake’s songs will be unavoidable come summer, as the soundtrack for sports highlights, inspiring...
Hip-Hop, Music, Pop Culture “Minaj may have had a fair amount of influence over the fact that pop stars are constantly telling us they’re bosses…” Author Drew Kaplan Date 2 November 2015 Minaj may have had a fair amount of influence over the fact that pop...
Hip-Hop, Radio “In a sense, classic hip-hop is following a radio trend that began in the early 1970s…” Author Drew Kaplan Date 17 August 2015 The Beat, and stations like it, target listeners in their mid-20s to mid-40s: people...
Hip-Hop, Semantics “While the word “tautophrase” didn’t take off, the phenomenon it described blossomed, abetted by hip-hop” Author Drew Kaplan Date 17 April 2015 While the word “tautophrase” didn’t take off, the phenomenon it described blossomed, abetted by...
Music “Weird Al has been cool for so long because pop makes everybody feel uncool; that he is the only one to admit it has made him a pop star” Author Drew Kaplan Date 28 September 2014 Anxiety starts early for pop audiences. For decades, I have had twenty-somethings tell me...
Comedy, Music “Every aspect of Weird Al’s art is enthusiastic and cheerful, a throwback to an earlier era of comedy and pop culture…” Author Drew Kaplan Date 19 September 2014 Every aspect of his art is enthusiastic and cheerful, a throwback to an earlier...
Music Musical verisimilitude is part of what Yankovic provides – it’s a form of comfort that’s slightly different from comedy” Author Drew Kaplan Date 12 September 2014 Musical verisimilitude is part of what Yankovic provides—it’s a form of comfort that’s slightly...
Music Weird Al “has become popular not because he is immensely clever…but because he embodies how many people feel when confronted with pop music” Author Drew Kaplan Date 5 September 2014 …what is it that Weird Al actually does? I don’t laugh at his songs,...
Hip-Hop “Hip-hop has not always been a safe place for Yiddishkeit” Author Drew Kaplan Date 24 April 2014 Jews have produced and distributed African-American music for more than a century, and have...