sampling (music)

The long history of sampling in music, and a new tool that lets artists sample without fear of copyright claims.

This metamorphic record is a teaching tool, a flirtation device, a college radio favorite, a nostalgic object, and more. BOOP!

How modern songwriting evolved into a game of aggressive credit—even for the people who didn’t technically do the composing.

No rap album has quite the mythology attached to it—as a game changer, a king maker, a genre expander. But legends aren’t exactly fact.

You know that punchy percussive sound popularized by Phil Collins and Prince? This is where it came from.

A search for the source of Southern hip-hop’s magic will always lead you to three men from Atlanta, known to the world as Organized Noize.

An elegiac retelling of rap's origins, "Hip-Hop Is History" also ends with a sense of hope.

After 40 years and more than 25 million copies sold, what story does ‘Legend’ tell us about Bob Marley and the people listening to it?

We cannot understand the last fifty years of U.S. history—certainly not the first thing about Black history—without studying the emergence and evolution of rap.

How the album pays homage to hip-hop's mythical and martial arts origins.

The Sugarhill Gang song remains one of rap's most beloved. But it took serendipity, a book of rhymes, and an agreement to settle a lawsuit for it to survive.