By: Chris Spurgeon

The computer you’re using speaks the language he invented.

By: Peggy Nelson

Not a life lost and we have been through Hell.

By: Peggy Nelson

Paolo Cirio’s surveillance graffiti

By: Matthew Sharpe

“I know you like how I look cuz yuh eyes be buggin outcha head.”

By: Joshua Glenn

1990: Luvboat Earth begins as a grad-school application scam.

By: Colleen Werthmann

Colleen Werthmann on Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” (1983)

By: Mike Fleisch

The most scrupulously self-aware of comedians.

By: Tom Nealon

“Don’t rap about your car, rap about what a car *is*.”

By: Gordon Dahlquist

Crime cracks open four women’s contained existences.

By: Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons

How — and why — do you get the brick in the dog’s mouth?

By: Douglas Wolk

Douglas Wolk on Busy Bee’s “Cash Money” (1982)

By: Joshua Glenn

Ben is Dead, Kooks, Kool Thangs, Pagan’s Head: zines from ’88.

By: Gordon Dahlquist

He lodged the American noir in the post-war 20th century.

By: Tim Carmody

Tim Carmody on Afrika Bambaataa’s “Jazzy Sensation” (1981)

By: Andrew Hultkrans

Andrew Hultkrans on Treacherous Three’s “New Rap Language” (1980)