Seventeen years ago, Queensbridge prodigy Nas put out
arguably the greatest hip hop album of all time. Today, Detroit lyricist Elzhi releases a loving and skillful tribute to the album with re-recorded live beats:
Elmatic.
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posted by the mad poster!
on May 10, 2011 -
41 comments
On February 18th, Ugandans held Presidential and Parliamentary elections. While the final results are still being tabulated, it appears
Yoweri “Sevo” Museveni has maintained his
position. Museveni, who has held power in Uganda for the past 25 years, is accused of using
intimidation and
corruption in the electoral campaign, and opposition leaders are already calling for
protests and fresh elections. The
official line, however, is that Museveni’s off-the-cuff
rap won over the youth vote after it was it was
remixed and started getting airplay on the radio, in clubs, and as a ringtone.
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posted by Panjandrum
on Feb 24, 2011 -
6 comments
Selene is a hip hop EP inspired by Duncan Jones' fine science fiction film Moon. The beats, which heavily sample Clint Mansell's score for the movie, were created by Max Tannone, best known for mashup album Jaydiohead, Doublecheck Your Head and Mos Dub/Dub Kweli. The MC is Brooklyn rapper Richard Rich.
posted by Kattullus
on Feb 23, 2011 -
21 comments
Basehead, also known as dc Basehead and Basehead 2.0, is an American alternative hip hop group formed by Michael Ivey in suburban Maryland in 1992. Basehead's
1992 debut album,
Play with Toys, was recorded at Ivey's
home with various studio musicians (hits:
Ode to My Favorite Beer, Not Over You,
2000 BC). Ivey formed a touring band for live performances, which contributed to Basehead's second album,
Not in Kansas Anymore (which contained what some consider his best song,
Split Personality).
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posted by Potomac Avenue
on Jan 17, 2011 -
21 comments
(I've seen the term floating around for a bit, so I figured I'd write up a quick summary. My apologies if its too dumbed down; just trying not to leave anyone behind! Please note, most links NSFW due to language.)
Hashtag rap, previously also known as yoda raps (noun, not verb), was
officially coined by Kanye West on Funkmaster Flex's HOT97 radio show on November 2. The term--a nod to the way online posts are tagged (especially on Twitter, which Mr. West is
a noted user of) using hash symbols in order to categorize the post's content--refers to the recent rise in rap lines which drop the usage of "like" and "as", and instead substituting those words with a pregnant pause (which is sometimes dispensed with), thus truncating what is normally a simile or metaphor into a sort of short setup followed by a (hopefully) funny punchline.
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posted by jng
on Dec 24, 2010 -
40 comments
Legendary hip hop producer DJ Premier interviewed in
the XXL Icon Interview and
The Smoking Section. Remarkably candid conversations about his life in East Coast hip hop, with interesting stories about his work with Jay-Z, Biggie, Puff, Nas, Jeru the Damaga, Group Home, Suge Knight, Christina Aguilera and of course, Guru. On finding records to sample:
"Well, there’s still diggin’ spots. If you’re in that world like I am, you know the spots, you see everybody—Just Blaze, Alchemist, Large Professor, Pete Rock—we still pop up in those spots. You got Big City records, you got Turntable Lab, you still have A1, you got Academy, you know. I’m not gonna tell you all the digging spots."
posted by the mad poster!
on Dec 20, 2010 -
11 comments
2010 Has seen its share of
one-
hit-
wonder hip hop acts. Standing out from the crowd is a collective of creative youngsters (ages 16-19) from Los Angeles known as
OFWGKTA (Odd Future/Wolf Gang/Kill Them All).
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posted by broadway bill
on Dec 8, 2010 -
34 comments
It’s maybe a
little early yet for year’s end retrospectives, but who cares:
we’ve got 157 songs, 10.5 hours, 1.12 GB of “some of the best and most notable music from 2010... covering indie, pop, rock, punk, folk, rap, R&B, soul, dance, country, modern classical, ambient and electronic music, and in many cases, hard-to-classify genre hybrids.” —Curated by FluxBlog’s own Matthew Perpetua.
posted by kipmanley
on Dec 3, 2010 -
30 comments
Looking for new underground hiphop? The last 10 years have seen the rise of a growing Asian/Pacific Islander American hiphop scene, including groups like
Blue Scholars,
Native Guns (consisting of
Bambu &
Kiwi),
Power Struggle,
Typical Cats, and
Magnetic North. Also of note is the solid number of women taking up the role of MC'ing in the scene-
Rocky Rivera,
Hopie Spitshard,
The Skim,
Sun The Real Sun(exception - Canadian). (Multiple Youtube links, natch)
posted by yeloson
on Nov 5, 2010 -
33 comments
Jenny Hagel has a three part YouTube series about "a dumpy women's studies professor [who] transforms herself into a ghetto fabulous rap star to convince people to care about feminism. When she's finished rapping...they still don't care." Parts
1,
2 and
3.
posted by Kattullus
on Sep 29, 2010 -
33 comments
Mixtapes have been a way for rappers and producers to promote their music and have it heard for pretty much the entire history of hiphop, and they're still called mixtapes even though most have abandoned tapes for CDs and, in turn, CDs for mp3s. But there's such a glut of stuff on the market - Atlanta's Gorilla Zoe, for instance,
released a mixtape a day throughout February - that it can be difficult to have a clue what's going on. One site I've found useful for just barely keeping up with things is
DatPiff.
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posted by Dim Siawns
on Sep 28, 2010 -
11 comments
