Anatomy of a Verse

Part 2 of the MF DOOM story. We discuss his alter-egos, his commitment to music over image, his relationship with Madlib, his dizzying rhyme schemes, and his ridiculous ability to dissect how old words, memes, and cultures can morph and shift into somethings new.

The Independent Hip-Hop movement exploded in the early 2000's. While MF DOOM was on the forefront in New York, a triple threat who called himself Madlib was turning heads in Los Angeles.

The greatest Hip-Hop comeback story of all time. The music industry rejected him, so he rallied an entire community and became a legend.

MF DOOM's beats deserve their own category. With unconventional breakbeats, sloppy drum programming, and sample choices that could be adventurously unadventurous, DOOM made everyone rethink the rules of Hip-Hop production.

Episode Notes Earth, Wind & Fire's keyboardist – Larry Dunn – created one of the coolest and most underappreciated instrumental interludes of all time by playing along to a different song... backwards. This is just one of many ways in which EWF helped usher in the Hip-Hop revolution without actually making hip-hop music.

Kendrick's Lamar groundbreaking verse on Big Sean's 2013 song 'Control' is a brilliantly written love letter to the era of competitive Hip-Hop, in which Kendrick hides clever references and homages in every single nook and cranny. Unfortunately, the media feeding frenzy that followed its release meant that a lot of people missed the big picture.

Andre 3000 is known for his adventurous style, both in music and fashion. But in this song, he sheds that momentarily and gives us a peak inside his journey to "success."

In the early 90s, Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg helped usher in a new era of mainstream Rap Music based in Los Angeles – 2500 miles from Hip-Hop's original birthplace of NYC. And while this new brand of Hip-Hop was much newer and fresher sounding, it also contained elements and that were part of Hip-Hop's ancestral DNA.

Happy Halloween to all the listeners, and Happy 10-year Anniversary to the Kanye West song, Monster! Today, we discuss how Nicki Minaj was able to break down the industry hurdles that made it all but impossible for a female rapper to have any kind of success in the first decade of the 2000s.

The first rapper to have a number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 was not Vanilla Ice, or MC Hammer, but Debbie Harry from the band Blondie. On this episode, we talk about how the song 'Rapture' helped fuse two parallel music scenes in New York City, and how Fab Five Freddy played a key role in that merger.

Although this song seems like a simple story about a shallow woman who doesn't take her man seriously, it is actually a deep analysis and questioning of Hip-Hop's relationship with the communities that it represents.

Kanye West was able to change the course of Hip-Hop music in the mid 2000s by being ridiculously persistent, and by carefully choosing collaborators who would get him the sounds he needed. This episode shows how one of those collaborators – the film composer and Fiona Apple producer, Jon Brion – transformed the final verse of 'Gone' into a powerful and emotional musical experience.

Pimp C's guest verse on the 1999 hit song Big Pimpin' can be viewed as a turning point for mainstream Hip-Hop, when Southern rappers began influencing the genre more than the East or West Coasts. In this episode, we look at how Chad Lamont Butler, aka Pimp C, played a central role in this shift all throughout the 90s.

In this episode, we discuss the story that makes up the third and final verse of 'One Love' by Nas. By examining this verse and it's relationship to the overall message of the song, we begin to understand why the album 'Illmatic' is now considered one of the most important artistic depictions of New York City in the 1990s.

In this episode, we talk about what has made 'It Takes Two,' and specifically the opening verse, so enduring by examining DJ EZ Rock’s legendary beat, MC Rob Base’s impeccable phrasing, and the song’s relationship to hip-hop’s early days in the 1970s.