The 50 best albums of 2024
Topped with Charli xcx’s swaggering yet vulnerable Brat, here are the year’s finest LPs as decided by 26 Guardian music writers
A timeline of allegations and charges against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs
Most recent lawsuits include accusations of drugging and raping as recently as 2022, and Jay-Z added as accused
The Long Wave: The Lamar v Drake beef has gone legal – what does it say about today’s hip-hop industry?
In this week’s newsletter: Lawyers are now involved in the most explosive rap feud of the century. A look at the potential cultural and commercial impact, and how hip-hop became big business
Five of the best music books of 2024
From stories of queer artists reshaping the pop landscape to an insider’s view of Tupac and Biggie, the highlights of a tuneful year
The Guide #167: Could Kendrick Lamar’s GNX jumpstart a new wave of surprise releases?
In this week’s newsletter: Just when it seemed there was nothing shocking about an unexpected album drop, Lamar made a truly transgressive move
Eminem and Debbie Mathers showed that hip-hop is the genre where men come to terms with their mothers
Most rappers venerate the single mothers who brought them up – but Eminem shockingly lambasted his. Yet even he couldn’t keep up the enmity for long
‘They felt they couldn’t market us to white people’: 90s hip-hop iconoclasts Digable Planets return
As they mark the 30th anniversary of album Blowout Comb, the Grammy-winning trio revisit their egalitarian ethos, anti-fascist lyrics and Pink Floyd influences
War’s Lonnie Jordan: ‘We don’t shoot bullets; we shoot rhythms’
The frontman of one of the great groundbreaking rock-funk-soul acts of the 60s and 70s talks about politics, peace and their influence on rap music
Rapper Rhymefest on Trump, Kanye and David Cameron: ‘There’s a political realignment happening in the US’
Che ‘Rhymefest’ Smith co-wrote some of Ye’s biggest hits. Now he’s plunging into the vipers’ pit that is Chicago city politics
Kendrick Lamar: GNX review – amply backed-up grandstanding
Fresh from his feud with Drake, the US hip-hop star’s latest album finds him on imperious form
Drake claims UMG and Spotify ‘artificially inflated’ Kendrick Lamar’s diss track Not Like Us
Feud escalates as rapper’s lawyers file two petitions alleging Universal Music Group and streaming giant conspired while also accusing them of defamation
Kendrick Lamar: GNX review – stunning surprise from a rapper determined to be the greatest
After his beef with Drake, Lamar expands his list of targets with enthralling rhymes and adventurous arrangements. At this point, he’s deferring only to God
The Chronicles of Doom review – unmasking hip-hop’s peerless prankster
SH Fernando Jr’s exhaustive biography of MF Doom takes us on the underground rapper’s strange musical journey from New York suburb to Yorkshire social club
Kendrick Lamar drops surprise album, GNX
Rapper caps off 2024 with release of 12-track album featuring guest spots from SZA and Kamasi Washington
Bad girls do it well: MIA’s 20 best songs – ranked!
Mathangi Arulpragasam has been mixing it up for more than 20 years, blending Bollywood and Suicide samples with funk, electro and hip-hop. We select her standout cuts