There have been a lot of big moments in hip-hop this year, but most of them have had little to do with actual music. Frank Ocean came out. MCA died. 2Pac came back to life…as a hologram. Long since having overtaken rock as our dominant musical genre, hip-hop is both…

I remember the first time I saw a Confederate flag in Wisconsin. It was my sophomore year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and I was driving with my friend Kevin to go see The Roots in Milwaukee. Complaining how we needed to drive an hour and a half just to…