Last Friday, Berkeley rapper Lil B announced the title of his latest album, "I'm Gay," to great outcry. The not-actually-gay 23-year-old (who also refers to himself as "The Based God" and basically did for "swag" what Snoop Dogg did for "snizzle," i.e. made it ubiquitous) claims to have gotten death threats for his album title. As he explained to NY magazine, it's about not using "words of separation": This is ......

Hip-hop artist Kristine Flaherty, who goes by “K. Flay,” has earned a following in the Bay Area for her well-wrought mashups and edgy, intimate lyrics. Fans flock to her because they don’t always know what to expect; her shows offer a giddy mixture of dexterous wordplay, electronic manipulation, and plenty of personality to boot. Her narratives often peel off into unexpected directions; even within the darkest tracks, self-deprecating humor emerges ......

Big Freedia — the Queen Diva of New Orleans — turned a freezing Thursday night in the Mission District into a sweltering Saturday bacchanal in the Big Easy with an delirious, obscene, and emancipatory set of sissy bounce at Public Works. The 20 year-old New Orleans rap style "bounce" is party music, consisting of simple sampled and looped beats played at high tempo, over aggressive call-and-response rapping. Bounce has influenced ......

After elections officials on Wednesday declared Jean Quan, the popular Oakland city councilwoman, the city's next mayor, political observers pored over the varied factors that catapulted Quan past Don Perata, the influential former president of the California state Senate, to be crowned the first Asian-American and woman leader of the city in its 158-year history. Was it due to a progressive wave of young voters — energized by Prop. 19 — who ......