Every year, we’re told that hip-hop is in crisis. But if you ask us, it feels like there’s too much heat to keep up with. What’s lost on the chart-watchers lamenting rap’s mainstream lull is that the ...

In 2016, as "mumble rap" was being used as a slur for the first time, and SoundCloud had become a bolt-hole offering asylum to young hip-hop castoffs, a handful of the movement's defining figures were ...