iTunes’ Official Music Charts for the week ending December 29, 2014: Source: Yahoo Music Link: The top 10 songs and albums on the iTunes Store

North Carolina rapper J. Cole visited Ferguson, Missouri, to demand justice for Michael Brown and protested in New York for Eric Garner – but none of that political fire burns on his third album. Cole still can’t separate his interest in world issues from what’s in his pants: He speaks…… Source: RollingStone Link: 2014 Forest […]

Rick Ross – a man of XL fantasies, XL luxury and XL bass – is, of course, the only rapper brazen enough to drop two full-length albums in a year when no one’s going platinum unless they’re named Taylor Swift. Sadly, though, the Miami MC’s seventh LP explodes with none…… Source: RollingStone Link: Hood Billionaire

From her Smack DVD origins to her present day Rolling Stone cover status, Nicki Minaj has always matched her ferocious rhymes and larger-than-life persona with a sharp visual aesthetic. As she’s scaled the pop charts and become an icon, Minaj has turned into one of hip-hop’s most consistently entertaining video artists, filling…… Source: RollingStone Link: Vid It […]

Indie rockers Broken Social Scene have commemorated 2014 as “a year of incredible brutality” with a montage video for “Golden Facelift,” an outtake from the sessions for their 2010 LP Forgiveness Rock Record. The video, premiered by Pitchfork, is a montage of both the innocuous (kittens, Guardians of the Galaxy) and the serious (grand…… Source: RollingStone Link: See Broken […]

When influential bluegrass fiddler Art Stamper died in 2005 at 71, the style of playing he popularized with the Stanley Brothers in the Fifties was already well established. The old-time mountain sounds of his native Kentucky, however, lost one of its greatest champions and historians. Fortunately, there is another: Art’s…… Source: RollingStone Link: Bluegrass Pioneer […]

Speaking out for the first time about the spate of police violence against unarmed black men this year, Nicki Minaj calls the unpunished killing of Staten Island man Eric Garner via a chokehold “sickening” in the new issue of Rolling Stone. “It’s sickening, and I’ve been reading so many people saying,…… Source: RollingStone Link: Nicki […]

Nicki Minaj just may be the hardest-working diva in show business. “I do everything myself,” she explains in Rolling Stone’s new cover story (on stands Friday), telling contributing editor Jonah Weiner about the exhausting process of getting her 15-minute Pinkprint movie to iTunes in time for release. “I’ve gone over all the…… Source: RollingStone Link: Nicki Minaj […]

John Oliver may not be the biggest fan of New Year’s Eve, and he’s definitely got a point about wasting December 31st by “having to stare at Ryan Seacrest for five solid minutes, waiting for him to tell you what the time is.” But fear not, revelers — Rolling Stone has…… Source: RollingStone Link: New Year's […]

In an age of surprise albums and lengthy hype-building mixtapes, Nicki Minaj embarked on a slow-burning campaign for her third album, The Pinkprint, which ended up encompassing nearly the entirety of 2014. From her first “album mode” surprise track in the final hours of 2013 forward, everything she released carried…… Source: RollingStone Link: 19 Nicki […]