After Pop Smoke's tragic death in 2020, many wondered what would become of New York drill, and many naysayers claimed it died with him. Over the next year, several booming voices would knock at that ...

Ambient music can feel left-field and unfamiliar. It often abandons the tropes people use to define music in the first place—beats, hooks, vocals, or even a time signature (though to make it more ...

This article has been handpicked from the Okayplayer editorial archives and included in our Hip Hop 50 collection as a noteworthy inclusion to the genre's rich and diverse narrative. The article has ...

DRUMS WEEK 2025: Despite being much maligned, the 80s were an incredibly interesting and vibrant time musically speaking. The dust was beginning to settle on the punk phenomenon, and that can-do ...

The practice of music sampling, which is the integration of pre-recorded sounds into new musical gestures, experienced a golden, unregulated age in the late 1980s that is almost unimaginable today.

A-Trak is reflecting on the evolution of the art of sampling. In a Twitter thread over the weekend, the producer/DJ/all-around industry titan—whose extensive ...

Sampling is a common practice in music, where an artist uses a piece of an older song to create something new. We rounded up 15 popular singles that include prominent samples you may have missed.

The New York rap scene has a new formula that’s making songs go viral every day. The art of taking a classic song and transmuting it to fit a new era through sampling has been a staple in hip-hop ...

… Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s “Crazy in Love,” from 2003. Turns out it’s the same sample, a sleight of ear designed to trigger warm nostalgia, and also maybe a little confusion. Something sounds very familiar ...