Earlier this year, the enormously successful rapper Nicki Minaj told Vibe:

The highlight of last night's BET Hip Hop Awards might have been when Missy Elliott came out during the Chris Lighty tribute to rap "Get Ur Freak On," as she does sporadically. The crowd freaked out, as it also does sporadically.

This Prince/Roger Troutman salute from two people who are steadily leaving the shadows of their former group associations has been circulating for about a week, but it's finally commercially available. Everyone is doing their job really well on it!

What starts out as typically snotty swiping really ignites by the 4:20 mark (how perfect) when Bay Area rappers Plane Jane and Iamsu! speed up the pace in their lyrical battle of the sexes and instead of verses, start trading bars rapidly back-and-forth. "Like Me" hearkens back to female-male duets like Yo-Yo and Ice Cube's "The Bonnie and Clyde Theme" and MC Lyte and Positive K's "I'm Not Havin' It" (and Positive K's "I Got a Man," in which he rapped with his pitched-up female alter ego). Why don't people do this anymore? At a time when the amount of musical collaborations is at an all-time high, on-record interaction is a rarity. It's strange to hear a woman and man who sound actually engaged with each other rapping together.

Today's bit of Internet musical theater came courtesy of Sacramento's Death Grips, the electrocore/hip-hop hybridists who weirdly signed to Epic based on their caustic-as-fuck, not-at-all-commercial 2011 mixtape Exmilitary. It seemed a bizarre match at the time and, surprise, surprise, it turned into turmoil today when the group leaked its new album NO LOVE DEEP WEB not only without its label's permission, but before its label had even heard it.

On "L.A. Again," San Fran MC K. Flay and New York/Miami producer Michna team for a sunny electronic hip-hop track that reminds me of '90s near-novelty, very focused tracks like Skee-Lo's "I Wish." There is also a really big Luscious Jackson tribute happening here, even if it's not intended.

When DMX is made to Google himself he flies into a tizzy, mostly over the concept of Googling. That tizzy, broken down.

President Obama went on Orlando's Power 953 early this morning to debate, among other things, how hip is daughters are and unregistered voter Nicki Minaj's claim that she's "a republican, voting for Mitt Romney."

It's been an exceptional week for female rappers. Azealia Banks released a video for "1991" that does justice to that year's aesthetics (she called it homage to Madonna, Crystal Waters and Aaliyah, but I detect some swag copped from Black Box mouthpiece Katrin Quinol, too). Her clip has made my affection for the track jump exponentially. Missy Elliott debuted some new songs live. All we got was this shitty, blown-out YouTube video as a result, but still: new Missy. People care about Nicki Minaj's voting choices, and also she proved to be the best thing about the new Alicia Keys single, "Girl on Fire." (Too bad Alicia didn't release this earlier this year so she could have at least gotten some mileage out of the Hunger Games reference.)

Forbes has named the brolic and dormant Dr. Dre this year's Hip-Hop Cash King, the result of him taking in $110 million almost entirely from the immense success of his Beats By Dre headphones. Dre, Forbes explains, "collected $100 million pretax when handset maker HTC paid $300 million for a 51% stake in the company last year."

Jay-Z's "99 Problems" has been refashioned as rap-rock so many times (via Danger Mouse and Linkin Park and there's also this alt-country cover that that irritating, self-consciously cheeky and ironically white sensibility that these things usually do). It makes sense — Rick Rubin's original production was riff-based and tougher than Tougher Than Leather. So why not join Pearl Jam onstage on Sunday at Philadelphia's Made in America concert for yet another go? One Judgment Night isn't enough for this guy.

A ridiculous person named Vincent Peters sued Kanye West in 2010, alleging West had stolen a song Peters had sent the rapper in 2006. The overlap in question came in the chorus of Kanye West's "Stronger," which starts, "N-n-now that that don't kill me / Can only make me stronger."

He's the Reading Ranbow theme with interjections from DMX. The conceit is the punchline.

The just-released video for Nicki Minaj's Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded highlight is literally brilliant, with a neon color scheme and skewed sense of geometry that recalls Beetlejuice. The self-conscious oddness against this cartoon-goth backdrop is reminiscent of Missy Elliott's "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)." For the raw eye candy alone, this is probably my favorite video of the year — the insane amount of visual wit (courtesy of director Colin Tilley) is a good match for Nicki's tightly packed bars. "I'm a brand, bitch, I'm a brand," Nicki bellows in this latest round of brag-rap. If that is true, it's a wildly inconsistent brand, but her lows (see: virtually every one of her pop/house songs) make the highs that much more eye-popping.

I love Busta Rhymes on musical type of level but let's all recognize and realize that Busta Rhymes tends to give interviews where he just says different levels of words out of his mouth that go together to form the types of sentences that do not mean anything on the level of reality, okay? HuffPo has the scoop:

Mykki Blanco is the "teenage female rapper" persona of the 25-year-old New York rapper Michael Quattlebaum. At least she was — in the video for Quattlebaum's intoxicating "Wavvy," which Gawker is premiering, Quattlebaum appears in and out of drag going from a backward cap and tight-jeans look to wig-and-makeup evening wear and back.

Big Boi suggests that he may collaborate with Kate Bush. Wow uh wow uh wow uh wow. Unbelievable!

Long live boom-bap.

Drake is rumored to be working on a posthumous Aaliyah album. Maybe it will be great, maybe we'll cry all over again.

Like any person with functioning ears, I am inclined to hate Kreayshawn, but with "Go Hard," she's hitting really close to the hypnotic inanity of the entire reason why anyone still talks about her in the first place, her breakout track, "Gucci Gucci."