Oliver Wang

On an unlikely tribute album, singer Dionne Farris and guitarist Charlie Hunter tackle Warwick classics with revealing subtlety — and nods to the musicians' own origins in early-'90s rap.

Under most circumstances, the release of a new Mobb Deep album would be notable in and of itself. This veteran rap duo from Queens had a short-lived but very public falling out in 2012, casting any future collaborations into question; as it is, their new The Infamous Mobb ...

Long before Amy Winehouse or Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, there were the Poets of Rhythm: a group of young, 20-something musicians out of Munich. In the early 1990s, they perfected the sounds and rhythms of '60s and '70s American funk. In the process, they became ...

Marcos Garcia took his alter ego Chico Mann not from the 1970s TV series Chico and the Man but from a bit of dialogue in the early-'80s hip-hop film Wild Style. For years, Garcia was best-known as one of the members of the New York Afrobeat ensemble Antibalas. ...

Rapper Kanye West experienced two births of a sort over the weekend. Most important would be the birth of his child with Kim Kardashian. Then there was the leak of his latest album, Yeezus, an event that also set the social media world atwitter. After months of speculation, the ...

This isn't the first time Shuggie Otis' masterpiece, Inspiration Information, has been reissued — but that's OK. It's an album that absolutely deserves to be rediscovered every decade or so.

Released nearly 40 years ago, the album became Otis' most acclaimed work, and also his last official release: Otis continued ...

The very first notes on Laura Mvula's new album feel like a powerful invocation. You're not sure for what, but the moment is awesome — with an emphasis on awe.

On paper, Sing to the Moon may seem like yet another album by a young, big-throated British singer, but ...

It's tempting to describe the voices of Charles Bradley and James Hunter as timeless, but that's not quite right. When we hear the jagged tear in their singing, we know exactly which era they're honoring.

Bradley, who's now in his mid-60s, was signed by Daptone Records ...

In the late 1980s, no clique in New York seemed more dominant than the Juice Crew. Assembled by producer Marley Marl, the group's core included the larger-than-life spectacle that was Big Daddy Kane, the slippery tongued Masta Ace, the profanely prickly Roxanne Shante and the clown prince, Biz ...

R&B singers Nicole Wray and Terri Walker both had promising starts to their careers more than ten years ago. Wray came up on the Virginia coast under the wing of mentor Missy Elliott. Walker, a Londoner, was classically trained yet released her debut on a Def Jam subsidiary. ...

In the early days of hip-hop, Run DMC made music with a mission, like the 1986 track "Proud To Be Black." KRS-One and his group Boogie Down Productions called a 1990 album Edutainment. Now, motivational or educational lyrics are met with skepticism. Today, we discuss the viability of hip-hop with ...

By the end of the 1990s, hip hop was flexing a lot of music-industry muscle. But at the close of this decade, things are very different. Music critic and author Oliver Wang joins us to explain how the digital music revolution changed the genre. Plus: Oliver's picks for the best ...

Many rappers see their relevance fade with age, but a few have managed to stay in the picture without losing credibility. Music writer Oliver Wang explains how Jay-Z is maturing with grace on The Blueprint 3, while New York magazine contributor Josh Eells tells us why rap is still "a ...

In the third installment of our "Seven Sins" series, we look at the role greed has played over time in music. Oliver Wang, music writer and assistant professor of sociology at Cal State-Long Beach, talks about money and power in hip-hop. And Dan Kennedy, author of the music-industry memoir "Rock ...

The new album from Kanye West has some fans scratching their heads. Other fans are applauding. The often-brash rapper has turned down the volume for a new album marked by the grief and loss in West's personal life. Music writer Oliver Wang joins us to talk about "808s and Heartbreak." ...

One story compiled in "Best Music Writing 2008" tells the story of a Latin music craze that briefly reigned supreme in 1960s New York. Music writer Oliver Wang shares the rise and fall of the boogaloo.

A growing number of retro-soul singers from the UK are taking over the album charts. Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black" scored the highest ever debut for a British woman (number seven), and Joss Stone's "Introducing Joss Stone" followed a week later, debuting at number two. On today's show, LA Times ...