New York rapper and banjee-pride purveyor Le1f is the talk of the Internet after last week's release of his "Wut" video. It's an outrageous clip, in which Le1f sits on the lap of a built, oiled-up dude wearing a Pikachu mask, among things. How is that for unabashed queerness?

Nas' 10th album Life Is Good is officially out today and it is...not Illmatic. While it is generally assumed that the rapper is chasing the elusive glory of his classic 1994 debut, there is a confidence that pervades Good. The result is a spotty-as-ever Nas record that is as enjoyable as it is dismissible. For example, the kiss-off to his ex-wife Kelis, "Bye Baby," is more exhibitionistic than it is profound ("Reason you don't trust men, that was ya daddy fault / He in the grave let it go he no longer living / Said you caught him cheating with mom, fucking other women / Fuck that gotta do with us? Here's the keys to the newest truck"). On the album cover, he sits with her green wedding dress draped over his knee.

When Frank Ocean came out recently, Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons remarked, "Today is a big day for hip-hop."

When Odd Future's Frank Ocean came out last night, people praised his method — Ocean wrote about a man he'd been in love with on his Tumblr — and his choice to be honest about his sexuality.

Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" is the actual song of the summer, but Pink's just-released "Blow Me (One Last Kiss)" is bound to be nipping at its heels on the Billboard Hot 100 in no time. What sounds like the product of tossing Modest Mouse's "Float On" in a blender with some stadium rock and a pinch of house, this is the most undeniable ear candy I've heard from Pink since her debut single, "There You Go" (back when she was R&B and of ambiguous ethnicity). The yelping she does at the end of the chorus ("I've had a shit day, you had a shit day, we've had a shit day") is the best, riskiest use of her pipes yet. Pink often irritates me for carrying herself like she's above her pop peers, but here she actually is, so hooray for her.

Between the steely beat, the timbre of her voice and her flow, Ms. Banks is serving "Is That Your Chick?"-era Missy Elliott on "Nathan," a song from her Fantasea mixtape, due out next week. It's just as well: if Missy's not going to release robotic, just-leftfield-enough hip-hop, I'm glad that someone's doing it. Aided by producers Drums of Death, Azealia continues to impress and Style P's verse is fantastic, too. Dig his Batman words.

A recent study out of New Zealand, a Middle-earth soaked through to its very core with mead, has discovered that alcohol is often depicted in music videos.

Why do celebrities publicly endorse certain consumer products? Usually, it's because some company gives them a staggering amount of money to do so. But not Jay-Z—he does it because he really believes in the Duracell Powermat battery-charging device:

Remember how a few years ago, 50 Cent accused Oprah Winfrey of being a white woman, just like one in her audience, after she had taken various stances against the facet of hip-hop culture that once made him such a musical force? Me neither, but she sure did and she confronted him on it long and hard in an interview that ran alongside her Paris Jackson sit-down on last night's Oprah's Next Chapter.

One of my favorite things that Malcolm X ever did was admit that he was wrong. His hajj to Mecca expanded his worldview and in an epiphanic letter home, he advocated his new-found belief in racial unity, explaining, "on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions."

Some melodrama went down at New York hip-hop radio station Hot 97's annual Summer Jam this weekend. Before the show, morning-show host Peter Rosenberg publicly dissed headliner Nicki Minaj for her increasing pop appeal: "I see the real hip-hop heads sprinkled in here. I see them. I know there are some chicks here waiting to sing ‘Starships' later - I'm not talking to y'all right now." "Starships" refers to Nicki's current screaming pop-house hit.

One night last week, Houston rapper/viral phenomenon Riff Raff was sitting in my living room in Brooklyn, eating a bag of Wise BBQ potato chips. The day before, he'd flown to Daytona Beach, Fla., to shoot a music video with 19-year-old viral rap ingénue Kitty Pryde, and now he was in New York to do photo shoots and interviews for two major rap magazines. He was scheduled to play The Bamboozle festival in New Jersey the following day. He sat on the couch next to the two attractive women that he'd brought with him—"my girl and her friend," he explained—and while his girl's friend rolled a small joint, Riff Raff and I played NBA Street Vol. 2 on my PlayStation 2.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the album that has ruled my week (and is a strong contender for my favorite album of the year so far), Killer Mike's sixth full-length, R.A.P. Music. Produced by El-P and sporting an acronym that represents Rebellious African People, the album is marked with clarity — in Mike's voice and lyrics, in its homage to the past 30 years of hip-hop, and in its agitated spirit. Chris Weingarten says it best on Spin: "It's an impossible rap record that appeals directly to 'golden era' purism (i.e., 'back when rap was good' for people aged 35 and up), but is still noisy enough to shake off the cobwebs and scare the squares. They really should put it out on cassette."

Following Jay-Z's co-sign of Obama's proclaimed support of gay marriage, rapper T.I. was asked about his thoughts on the issue when on Hot97's morning show yesterday. Here's his take:

About three years after its originally scheduled release, Baltimore rapper Rye Rye's debut album, Go! Pop! Bang!, has at last been released. It's a hoot that sometimes skews a little too close to radio trance, but otherwise has the ability to tease wild things out of her collaborators like Bangladesh — the dude who produced Lil Wayne's "A Milli" flips into full-on dance mode with Rye Rye.

This is beautiful. Responding to President Obama's endorsement of gay marriage, commander-in-chief of hip-hop Jay-Z has weighed in with his own support of equality. In the video below, you can see Jay say:

There are a slew of young, talented rappers coming out of New York these days, but none of them sound very "New York." The A$AP crew of Harlem, which recently toured with Toronto's Drake and Compton's Kendrick Lamar, have a "placeless and universal" sound that seems more influenced by Houston's chopped and screwed beats than DJ Premier's horns; Azealia Banks has a distinct enough flow, but her tracks are more electronic than anything practiced by New York's hip hop gatekeepers. And out of Brooklyn, Kilo Kish has outsourced beats for her casual, monotone rhymes to The Internet, Syd the Kid's spaced-out L.A. duo.

Today, M.I.A. announced on Twitter that her bangin', raucous "Bad Girls" was spawning remixes featuring contemporary female rapper heavyweights Missy Elliott, Azealia Banks and Rye Rye. If it turns out that they're all on the same track (and not separate remixes), that "Bad Girls" remix will be the equivalent of this remix of Brandy's debut single, which featured the bigs of the female rap world in 1994. (In 1997, Lil' Kim went for the same effect by drafting Missy, Left Eye, Da Brat and — haha — Angie Martinez for the "Not Tonight" remix.) For as much of an event as gathering titans together to flip a Brandy track (way before her vehicular death debacle), what I admire about the "I Wanna Be Down" remix is how laid back it is. There's a matter-of-factness about women coming together for the sake of hip-hop that we're just getting back to, almost 20 years later.

Last week, after learning that Adam "MCA" Yauch of the Beastie Boys had died at 47, Gawker asked sometimes Deadspin contributor Peter Nash—also known as Prime Minister Pete Nice of 3rd Bass—to share his thoughts about MCA's legacy and being a white MC during the golden age of New York hip hop. He obliged.

Speaking of male R&B crooners, here's something more sleazy than soulful from Usher's forthcoming, inanely named album Looking 4 Myself. Despite the tactile production of satisfying synth smears, tough thwacks and insistent ticking, the track kind of falls apart when Ursh flips out of his longing falsetto to a whining lechery. This comes after the underwhelming release of the by-the-numbers house of Usher's "Scream" — here's hoping that Looking's first single, the lovely, Diplo-produced "Climax" is, isn't in fact its climax.