Not long ago, the only people in a pair of Nike Air Max trainers were sneaker geeks and those rave babies who couldn’t quite get over the fact that acid house was dead and the Nineties were, like, totally over, man.

Manchester music festival Parklife Weekender has kicked off a fortnight of line-up announcements with the news that reggae specialist DJ David Rodigan will both perform and curate his own stage.

London's 2012 Olympics opening ceremony raced into the British charts on Sunday with a collection of music from the kaleidoscopic extravaganza becoming the week's fifth-best selling compilation album after just 24 hours on sale.

Only Dizzee Rascal can save us from this mess

Olympics organisers have revealed how they intend to enhance the spectator experience at London 2012 with music and other visual presentations.

The Chemical Brothers are following in the tracks of electro pioneers Kraftwerk and releasing a cycling-inspired song for the Olympic Games.

With expectations of England’s footballers suddenly on the rise, the nation needs a new anthem to unite behind.

You don't have to be a Mercury prize winner to drift into obscurity – but it helps. The 2009 winner, the rapper Speech Debelle, and Ms Dynamite (2002) are examples of winners whose commercial prospects dived after their moment of triumph.

To the untrained eye it looks like a picture of an empty Jacuzzi, taken on a phone camera that went off accidentally. It is, in fact, one of a series of shots taken by the award-winning rapper Dizzee Rascal as part of his new creative impulse.

Chancer or genius? As Mike Skinner releases Computers and Blues, his final album as The Streets, John Walsh explains how rap's own Cole Porter finally got under his skin

I've no idea who's responsible for the African rap on "No Problem, which opens Chase and Status's album, but he deserves the kind of star billing given here to the likes of Plan B and Dizzee Rascal.

Rock's death has been predicted almost from the moment it was born in the 1950s. In the early 1980s, for instance, it was widely assumed that frowning synth-pop duos would soon throw guitars on history's scrap heap. REM were among the young bands who gave vigorous and mysterious new strengths to guitar-led music back then, and it has always leapt up from its sickbed.

When fans mobbed Bashy in his cab, the rapper knew it was time to get off the 183 to Golders Green and plan a route to stardom. Charlotte Cripps goes a few stops with him

A successful British DJ was found dead in the bedroom of his Tenerife apartment on his 32nd birthday, his family said.