Summertime '06

Lots of West coast rappers are married to signifiers. Khaki suits, low riders, blunts, palm trees, G-funk. Vince Staples doesn't need any of them. His double-disc Def Jam debut, Summertime '06, is cold and industrial; the Clams Casino-produced "Norf Norf" is one of the album's sparsest cuts, and Staples populates it with Porches and abortions and, in the video, crooked cops. The... Read

Vince Staples has never fit a mold. The streetwise rapper from Long Beach and 2015 XXL Freshman has a long lineage of rappers whose model he could follow as he begins to assert himself on the hip-hop landscape, dating back to Nate Dogg, Snoop and Dre and their funkified, bouncy party jams, or more recently with the Compton-bred MCs YG and Kendrick Lamar, anchors of opposite sides of the current Ca

Over the weekend, California-based clothing brand Vans celebrated the third and final date of Vans' Almost Summer music series at the House of Vans in Brooklyn with special guest performers Pusha T and new XXL Freshman Vince Staples. ...