Hip-Hop
This section covers album stories, birthdays, and anniversaries tied to hip-hop artists, producers, and labels, along with vinyl reissue news as titles come back into print. The 12-inch single has always had an outsized role in hip-hop: it's the format DJs built sets around, the one that carried instrumental and a cappella versions for mixing, and the source material for the sampling that shaped the genre's early sound. Expect stories here about how specific records were made, the samples, the studios, the crews behind them, along with notes on why certain pressings still matter to DJs and collectors alike.
93 STORIES
Tupac Shakur: How a Seven-Day Rush Became Makaveli
Tupac Shakur's fifth studio album, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, arrived on November 5, 1996. It was credited to Makaveli and released four months ahead of schedule.
· 4 min read
Why Did Eminem Revisit The Marshall Mathers LP?
Eminem released The Marshall Mathers LP 2 on November 5, 2013, a sequel to his third album that began as an accident of songwriting rather than a plan.
· 3 min read
Why Did Three 6 Mafia Aim for World Domination?
Three 6 Mafia released Chapter 2: World Domination on November 4, 1997 through Hypnotize Minds and Relativity Records. The album turned a Memphis cult following into a top-40 Billboard 200 placing.
· 4 min read
Why Did Alicia Keys Call Her Album Here?
Alicia Keys wrote roughly thirty songs in ten days at a New York studio called The Oven. That burst became Here, her sixth album, released on RCA Records on November 4, 2016.
· 3 min read
How Ja Rule Turned a Feud Into Blood in My Eye
Ja Rule released Blood in My Eye on November 4, 2003, a project that began as a mixtape and became a full album aimed at 50 Cent, G-Unit, Eminem and D12.
· 4 min read
How Kool Moe Dee Ran Over LL Cool J
Kool Moe Dee released How Ya Like Me Now on Jive Records in November 1987, with a cover showing a Jeep crushing LL Cool J's red kangol hat.
· 4 min read
Why Did Mariah Carey's Rainbow Turn Into a Label War?
Mariah Carey released Rainbow on Columbia Records on October 27, 1999, after publicly fighting the label over which song should be its third single.
· 4 min read
How Birdman and Lil Wayne Made Like Father, Like Son
Birdman and Lil Wayne's Like Father, Like Son opened with 176,000 copies in one week and hit number three on the Billboard 200 on October 31, 2006.
· 3 min read
How Jay-Z Turned a Compilation Into The Dynasty
Jay-Z's fifth solo album, The Dynasty: Roc La Familia, arrived on October 31, 2000. It began as a Roc-A-Fella compilation and became a number one record.
· 3 min read
Why Did ASAP Rocky's Live. Love. ASAP Change Rap?
ASAP Rocky's debut mixtape Live. Love. ASAP, released free on October 31, 2011, built a New York record around Houston's chopped and screwed sound.
· 4 min read
How MF DOOM Turned Loss Into a Masked Hip-Hop Empire
Daniel Dumile, the London-born rapper behind MF DOOM, died in Leeds on October 31, 2020, leaving a masked persona that outlived the man who built it.
· 4 min read
How Ariana Grande Turned Healing Into Chart History
The opening track of Positions arrived draped in pizzicato strings and orchestral passages, while the lead single had already crashed onto the top of the Billbo…
· 4 min read
Why Did Bomfunk MC's Freestyler Take Over the World?
Bomfunk MC's released Freestyler in Finland on October 30, 1999, and the breakbeat single went on to top charts in more than ten countries.
· 3 min read
How Ice Cube Made Death Certificate a Battle Plan
Ice Cube's second solo album, released on Priority Records on 29 October 1991, split into a "Death Certificate" half and a "Life Certificate" half.
· 3 min read
E-40's Tha Hall of Game at 30
E-40 released Tha Hall of Game on October 29, 1996, through Sick Wid It Records and Jive Records. The Vallejo rapper's third studio album reached number 2 on Billboard's Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.
· 3 min read
Why Did Eminem's Lose Yourself Almost Never Happen?
Eminem was supposed to be acting, not writing a hit. Yet between takes on the set of the film 8 Mile, the Detroit rapper scribbled verses on whatever paper he c…
· 4 min read
Why Did Too Short's Get in Where You Fit In Go Platinum?
Too Short released Get in Where You Fit In on October 26, 1993. The album reached number 4 on the Billboard 200 before earning platinum certification from the RIAA.
· 4 min read
Why Did Black Eyed Peas Return to Boom-Bap on Masters of the Sun?
Black Eyed Peas released Masters of the Sun Vol. 1 on October 26, 2018, their first album in eight years and their first without Fergie, built on boom-bap drums and raw verses.
· 4 min read
Madlib: The Beatmaker Who Built His Own Universe
Madlib, born Otis Lee Jackson Jr. in Oxnard on 24 October 1973, built a career from crate-digging, alter egos and collaborations from Lootpack to Madvillain.
· 4 min read
Fat Joe's Jealous One's Envy Turns 31
Fat Joe's second solo album, Jealous One's Envy, arrived on Relativity Records and Violator on October 24, 1995. It also gave Big Punisher his first recorded verse.
· 4 min read
How Gorillaz Built Song Machine While the World Stopped
Gorillaz released Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez on October 23, 2020. The seventh album grew out of a web series of singles that kept running as the pandemic shut down touring.
· 3 min read
How DMX Captured a Nation's Anxiety on The Great Depression
DMX released The Great Depression on October 23, 2001, and the album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with 440,000 copies sold in its first week.
· 4 min read
Drukqs: The Aphex Twin Album That Was Never Meant to Exist
Aphex Twin's Drukqs began as 180 unreleased tracks on an MP3 player left on a plane, and Richard D. James rushed it out on Warp Records in October 2001.
· 3 min read
How Kendrick Lamar Turned Compton Into a Short Film
Kendrick Lamar's Good Kid, M.A.A.D City arrived on October 22, 2012, as a concept album framed as a short film about growing up in Compton among drugs and gangs.
· 4 min read