Editor's Note: The Life & Arts senior staff combed through this year's pop culture and selected the artists, albums, books and movements that they think, in one way or another, helped define...

Editor's note: The following tracks contain explicit lyrics Snoop Dogg & Wiz Khalifa, Mac & Devin Go to High School Released Dec. 13 Hip-hop veteran Snoop Dogg and rising rap superstar...

 In his follow-up to 2010’s Passion, Pain & Pleasure, Trey Songz brings the heat in his new, sexually-charged EP Inevitable. On this EP, Songz refines his R&B vocal chops with five new...

Very little music of worth or at least notoriety has come out of Washington since the heyday of Kurt Cobain and grunge music. In the ’90s, Sir Mix-A-Lot managed to move out of the Seattle scene and...

New Orleans’s Curren$y has had a busy year. From performing at this year’s South By Southwest to releasing a handful of mixtapes and albums, the chilled-out, newfound leader of stoner rap is...

Minneapolis-based collective Doomtree has become a resonating voice in hip-hop’s ever-changing scene. Alongside Minneapolis’ Rhymesayers Entertainment, which features the likes of underground-turned-mainstream...

Music is a fairly subjective art form. A piece that somebody may love will leave someone else cold. It doesn’t transcend generations very well, with parents and children forever fighting over which...

The Largo on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles was a magical place — a small hole in the wall with terrible food, no comfortable seats and filthy restrooms that somehow managed to attract impressive...

The digitized voice on the introductory track of the latest Gym Class Heroes album, The Papercut Chronicles II, states he’s “back to blow your mind.” He’s right. The sequel to the...

Rihanna is horny and gets right into the action on her sixth album in as many years, Talk That Talk. Apparently, “S&M” and “Rude Boy” were mere foreplay. Following in the...

With each nimble stroke, strum and pluck, the strings buzzed, sounding an ethereal melody into the small living room. Leaned against the shoulders of their players, music junior Meredith McCay and nursing...

What began as a new venture to break away from comfort metamorphosed into a serendipitous collaboration of like-minded musicians for local band The Asteroid Shop. Spearheaded by lead vocalist and songwriter...