Sample article ideasWith Kendrick Lamar's hotly anticipated debut, good kid, m.A.A.dcity (TDE/Aftermath/Interscope) just weeks away [it dropped on Oct. 22] the rapper is in the middle of a relentless run that began in earnest with the first of a 30-date self-titled tour, sponsored by BET Music Matters and TDE, in early September. Last night, he was in Baton Rouge, La., picking up a sold-out spot date at Varsity Theatre that was tacked onto the New Orleans stop of the Music Matters tour the previous night. Before New Orleans, Lamar was in Atlanta taping a rack of segments for the BET Hip-Hop Awards, including a performance of "Swimming Pools" and "The Recipe" (the Dr. Dre-assisted single that will appear on the deluxe edition of good kid, m.A.A.d city), presenting the I Am Hip-Hop Award to legendary MC Rakim; appearing in the West Coast cipher alongside the likes of E-40, DJ Quik, Kurupt and Snoop Lion; and collecting an award for lyricist of the year. Tomorrow, he'll push back his flight home in order to crash in a magazine photo shoot, a radio station appearance and a stop by BET's "106 & Park." On Saturday, he'll drive himself to Fresno, Calif., where he'll perform in the Big Fresno Fair. Two weeks ago, he had been scheduled to have the week off.

"I don't look at no dates," Lamar says, explaining how he manages to stay afloat. "I just go to the crowd and do shows. I don't look at days of the week or none of that -- that's how I get another 12 months [out of myself]. If I sit down and think about it now, I'll go crazy."

A few months ago, A$AP ROCKY's career seemed mired in purgatory. The 24-year-old Harlem rapper had a spectacular 2011, snagging a still-crazy $3 million deal with RCA based on early buzz and then silencing skeptics with his breakout LiveLoveA$AP mixtape. But throughout 2012, LongLiveA$AP repeatedly failed to materialize. It was slated for July 4th, then September 11th, October 31, and eventually, sometime in December. When the final pushback happened, into the dead zone just after the new year, it began to feel like RCA was attempting to quietly jettison their investment from the corporate hull.But LongLiveA$AP delivers on and even exceeds the promise of LiveLoveA$AP. Like that mixtape, the album is a triumph of craft and curation, preserving Rocky's immaculate taste while smartly upgrading his sound. A third of the record remains close in style to LiveLoveA$AP while most of the collaborations follow in the steps of last spring's "Goldie“, which stamped producer Hit-Boy's signature Mini-Boss Musik with a screwed-up hook and gumball-spitting flow that marked it as unmistakably Rocky's. Plenty of rap-industry heavies appear on LongLiveA$AP, and they mix well with Rocky's younger comrades. More importantly, the French-braid gold-teeth kid named after Rakim never cedes the centre. For someone often criticized

You can't listen to any station that plays hip-hop for an hour and not hear a Rick Ross song. He's become one of the very few people who pretty much anyone would list if you said, "Name some famous rappers" (and they didn't say, like, MC Hammer). And one of fewer still who can make millions of dollars a year rapping. Elliott Wilson, the editor of Rap Radar, classifies Ross this way: Right now he's still technically a street rapper, though just barely. "Street" means his bread-and-butter demographic is black people, and mostly males. But he is at the very pinnacle of street. He has started to exhibit the signs of mainstream iconic status—appealing to the full spectrum of teenage boys, culturally curious white people, ironic college kids. Basically anyone who listens to rap on the radio sometimes. "There's Jay-Z, Kanye, and Wayne—and Eminem is the king of his own domain," Wilson says. "And then there's Rick Ross, right on that cusp." Three of his last four albums have debuted at no. 1 on the hip-hop charts (the other one at no. 2). If his new record, God Forgives, I Don't, doesn't follow suit, it will shock everyone in the music industry who knows anything.

I will include similar articles in my magazine. Focussing on upcoming artists, new single and album releases and successful hiphopartists.

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