The Formula, Season 2: Why Collaborations Still Rule Rap

The Formula, Season 2: Why Collaborations Still Rule Rap In hip-hop, collaboration looks like a young DJ named Kool Herc passing a hot mic to his homie Coke La Rock at a back-to-school jam in the Boogie Down. A shared blunt becomes a shared aesthetic, building on the call-and-response impulse that survived the Middle Passage and laid low until it was less forbidden to bang the drums and coalesce. Even math becomes a faulty calculator: One plus one no longer equals two, but a single unified voice and sound containing infinite possibilities. Over five new episodes of our video series, we'll sit with some of hip-hop's rising and most respected artist-producer duos — Isaiah Rashad + Kal Banx, Tierra Whack + J Melodic, Westside Gunn + Conductor Williams, Rico Nasty + Kenny Beats, Freddie Gibbs + The Alchemist — as they dissect one or two songs emblematic of their collective body of work, be it an album, an era or a moment in rhyme.