Beyoncé opened the 2016 BET Awards with a ferocious performance of “Freedom.”

In the opening stretch of track seven on Untitled Unmastered, Kendrick Lamar runs down what sounds like a list of things that can’t quite elevate you like his music can. It’s mostly a series of nouns, a catalog of positive and negative forces. Love, drugs, fame, chains, juice, crew, hate, life, He, She. They all…

It might’ve felt endless but the Grammy Awards broadcast eventually drew to a close. And amid performances good (Alabama Shakes) and bad (that Lionel Richie tribute, good God) and just WTF (the Hollywood Vampires????), they did hand out some awards.

On Monday night, Kendrick Lamar performed a medley from his Grammy Award winning album To Pimp A Butterfly, including “Blacker The Berry” and “Alright,” demonstrating what a show from an artist with vision should look like.

Following the release of songs like “Real Friends” and “No More Parties in LA,” Kanye West, according to Kanye West, has completed “the best album of all time.” Do you believe him? You want to, right?

“Pink fur got Nori dressing like Cam” is obviously the best line of this track on listens 1-10, and despite it, Kanye sounds less like a dad here than on any other tracks he’s teased from SWISH, out February 11, so far. “No More Parties in L.A.” is the fruit of a My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy-era session, and…

God damn, that’s a smile. Here’s another.

Kendrick Lamar, with the live backing of the Roots, performed about five minutes of straight mellifluous bliss, while debuting a new untitled song on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on Thursday.

This year’s Grammy nominees are out, and for the most part, it’s business as usual: a bunch of people who topped sales charts, a couple of wild cards and seemingly random choices (Meghan Trainor, Best New Artist?) and Taylor Swift.

Weekly-ish, a pre-approved, snap-judged music guide based on our very scientific, non-subjective Yes/No rating system. There’s really no debating this, come on stop.

Kendrick Lamar performed hits from his sophomore album, To Pimp A Butterfly, on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Wednesday night, wearing fresh cornrows and an all-black outfit with two modest necklaces.

A bright spot on an otherwise bleak album, Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” instantly feels necessary. Besides being the most celebratory jam on To Pimp a Butterfly, it’s a modern-day liberation anthem. It’s that first salvational gasp after nearly drowning. Yet, for such a happy song, “Alright” is innately sad. By design,…

Weekly-ish, a pre-approved, snap-judged music guide based on our very scientific, non-subjective Yes/No rating system. There’s really no debating this, come on stop.

Kendrick Lamar’s spark of a single, “Alright,” has become an official pick-me-up anthem for black people. In a powerful moment on Sunday, students at a protest near Cleveland State University used it as a rallying cry against police brutality.

During the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, following the murder of Michael Brown by Police Officer Darren Wilson, a few activists rose from the fray. Johnetta Elzie, 25, was one of those people along with her partner DeRay Mckesson, and as a St. Louis local, she was on the scene shortly after Brown was killed and…

Weekly-ish, a pre-approved, snap-judged music guide based on our very scientific, non-subjective Yes/No rating system. There’s really no debating this, come on stop.

Alessia Cara is going to be a star. You can hear the 18-year-old Def Jam signee flex quietly in her first single “Here,” a track that drags and flutters like Amy Winehouse in a haze of suburban innocence; Alessia’s got a preternatural sense of a beat’s interstices and pockets, and a voice that’s all rough, silvery,…

Over the weekend, just as some feminists were firing up their pens to write scathing takes on Rihanna’s “Bitch Better Have My Money” video and other feminists were nimbly rebutting them, director Ava DuVernay was able to sum up the climate with just a tweet:

Essence magazine is for black women and so is the Essence Music Festival, but the latter attracts both men and women. For years, I’ve wondered what dudes were doing at an event hosting speakers and performers like Iyanla Vanzant, Real Housewives of Atlanta’s Kandi Burruss and Mary J. Blige.

Kendrick Lamar is literally floating above the chaos in the video for his anthemic uplifter “Alright,” from To Pimp a Butterfly.