Interview

Lem Jay Ignacio and Jena Malone are an odd pairing. Together they are The Shoe, a contemporary duo with a small cadre of dedicated fans, and they debuted their first full-length album, I'm Okay, last June. Jena is perhaps better known to her fans for her role as Johanna Mason in The Hunger Games and Gretchen in cult favorite Donnie Darko...

Brittany Howard's got moxie, as they say. The guitarist and frontwoman for roots-rock outfit Alabama Shakes, Howard is known for gritty, towering vocals that defy gender. (Your parents may already know her from that song in that commercial...

When you first listen to a song by British trio The Wytches, they draw you in with a lull of spooky surf-rock, but that '50s noir illusion is usually pulverized at the chorus with a righteous storm of hair-raising shrieks, dissonant guitar squalls, and low-buzzing bass...

In this era of all-turnup-everything and producers-as-celebrities, North Carolina MC Deniro Farrar is a throwback to the days when living what you rap was the name of the game. The matter of authenticity may no longer hold sway in popular music today, but Farrar has managed to make it matter for him...

The first time I came across SD, it was only for a fleeting moment. Around the 2:20 mark of the third episode of Noisey's web series "Chiraq," released in February, a bubbly beat fades in, and the words "White Bitchez, SD" flash on the lower third of the frame...

Deniro Farrar isn't a household name in rap yet, but the North Carolina MC has already made himself the center of a movement, as the self-proclaimed leader of cult rap. He has amassed a passionate following, thanks to his mix of grizzled street lyrics, gravelly vocals, and an affinity for swirling, gloomy beats...

Last week, after making an early-morning trek from North Carolina to New York with his crew, Los Angeles rapper Ty Dolla $ign stopped through our office and plopped down on the couch. Currently signed to Wiz Khalifa's Taylor Gang Records and Atlantic Records, the 29-year-old is the musical genius behind mega-hits like "Paranoid" and "Or Nah," and was recently named to the 2014

Chances are, you know Jocko Sims. He's been a mainstay on TV shows like Crash, Masters of Sex, and The Last Ship. And he's appeared in movies like Dream Girls and Jarhead. This weekend, you'll see Sims as "Werner" in the latest installment of the Planet of the Apes movie series, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes...

Who can really explain hip-hop's contrived interest in the art world lately? On Magna Carter Holy Grail, Jay Z included the track “Picasso Baby." On “Drunk in Love,” his duet with wife Beyoncé, Jay rapped, “Foreplay in the foyer, fucked up my Warhol...

By now, you know the story of the GIF: looped animation file born in the '80s, rendered doofy in the '90s via waving-flag and "under construction" cartoons, revived in the late aughts, and now we've reached the point of "GIF or it didn't happen" saturation...