It was the best of hip-hop times. It was the worst of hip-hop times. Ha! 2025 was a rollercoaster of rap music’s highs and lows. The duality was so real. I can’t recall a year with such a wide array ...

The best rap beats are nerdy as hell. Every drum placement, every melody, every chopped-up sample sends me down a YouTube rabbit hole trying to piece together the way a producer contorts and dissects ...

Good music and a good drink often go hand in hand, but do we ever really stop to appreciate the pairing? We do now, because 2025 has been a banner year for rap music, but it’s also quietly been an ...

Explore the best rap albums of 2025, from Clipse to Cardi B. These projects defined the year’s sound and spirit. Dive into ...

This month YouTube’s most successful stationary mic platform On The Radar Radio savvily diversified. While the channel started with more boilerplate interview and trending news coverage, the channel’s ...

So much rap music comes out all the time, and especially with frequent surprise releases, it can be hard to keep track of it all. So, as a way to help keep up with all of it, here’s a roundup of the 7 ...

Week in and week out, there are plenty of brand-new rap songs, no matter the time of year. It can be really difficult to stay aware of what's out and also what's hot, so XXL decided to make things ...

In 1894, “The Little Lost Child” went “platinum” off sheet music sales in what might be considered the first successful music video marketing campaign. Innovations in aurafarming have taken things to ...

In a year that had no rap songs in the Billboard Hot 100’s Top 40 for the first time since 1990, rap thrived in so many other ways. This list of the 25 best rap albums of 2025 includes grand ...

We should address the elephant in the room: hip-hop did not have a strong year on the charts. In fact, rap music had its worst showing in years. Back in October, it made headlines when—for the first ...