Monday, February 13 2012
Hip Hop Es Mi Cultura
This travelogue takes us four locales: Havana, Chicago, Sydney and Caracas. Each locale translates into distinctive interactions with hip-hop and its pillars of deejaying, emceeing, b-boying, and graffiti.
Monday, January 23 2012
A Joy to Experience: Neo-Soul Singer Bilal Oliver
Bilal Oliver belongs to an elite class of late '90s Neo-Soul singers, but his guest appearances may be the true gems of his career.
Thursday, December 8 2011
Art for the Hip-Hop Generation
The Legends of Hip Hop chronicles 50 deserving pioneers of the culture, and ultimately transforms and humanizes them.
Monday, November 14 2011
Symbolic Weight & the Def Jam Aesthetic
A coffee table book about rap does not sound too "hardcore" or "gangsta", does it? Well, that's because it's not. What it just might be is sincere.
Friday, November 4 2011
The Quest to Understand Tribe
This is supposed to be a documentary, not a fan letter. So how about some balance? It's big picture time when it comes to telling the story of hip-hop.
Thursday, September 22 2011
Watch the Discourse: Luxury Rap, Success and Self-Absorption
The value of a release as large as Watch the Throne is that it goes beyond the gargantuan personalities involved or even the monster show dates designed to promote it. Part of the value is the discussion it generates.
Monday, August 15 2011
My Favorite Aaliyah Things
Ten years after her passing, R&B and popular music fans still love Aaliyah. The continued vitality of her legacy speaks directly to our connection to her style, poise, talent, and potential.
Monday, July 18 2011
The Hate for Southern Hip-Hop: Why So Serious?
The way some of us disparage Southern rap, you'd think rappers like Gucci Mane and Waka Flocka Flame had recorded a record dissing Kool G. Rap and Big Daddy Kane.
Thursday, June 16 2011
Prince’s Parade: It’s Really All About the Music
A large part of what I love about Prince is his ability to take his influences and synthesize them into a whole that suits his fancy. So it's not so much that he brings a new dish to the table. It's more that he explores new ways to enjoy what's already there.
Friday, May 13 2011
The Wonder Year: Inspiring Soul with 9th Wonder
The RiverRun International Film Festival showcases a moving portrait of a man in his element, standing at the transformative intersection between hip-hop, education, and craft.
Wednesday, April 6 2011
Nate Dogg: Can’t Be Faded
Nate Dogg's contributions, and the workmanlike way in which he executed them, frequently garnered praise and commendations from his associates.
Tuesday, March 8 2011
Is There a DJ in the House?
If video killed the radio star, some might argue that technology crippled the hip-hop mix masters. Crippled, maybe, but the deejay is not obsolete.
Thursday, February 3 2011
Walk This Way: The Commodification of Hip-Hop
Now here's a little story, we've got to tell, about the business of hip-hop, you know so well. It started way back in history, from Alexander Hamilton down to Jay-Z.
Tuesday, January 4 2011
Deciphering the Jay-Z Code
He's got 99 problems but a book ain't one. Jay-Z's nonlinear memoir illuminates rap as personal narrative, lyric poetry, and transformative medium.
Thursday, November 18 2010
Hip-Hop’s Laboratory of Language
What do William Wordsworth, Robert Frost, Ice Cube, and Ghostface Killah have in common? Finally, they all appear in anthologies.
Friday, October 15 2010
Their Mics Still Sound Nice: BET Puts Ladies First
Do women rappers have to shake it in our faces in order to get us to listen? As this doc. notes some, like Salt 'N' Pepa do it with sassiness and sex appeal "...you know, if I was a book, I would sell / 'cause every curve on my body got a story to tell".
Monday, September 27 2010
Keeping It Real: Dreams, Mind-Alteration, & Misperception in Hip-Hop
Hip-hop has been engaged in an ongoing tension between fantasy and reality, art and artifice but rappers, like all good artists, sometimes have to lie in order to tell the truth.
Thursday, August 19 2010
Hip-Hop Storytellers: The Heist Motif
Bluster and bravado are considered par for the course in hip-hop, but rappers adopt cunning personas to tell stories of money, power, and respect.
Thursday, July 22 2010
Hip-Hop Storytellers: The Vignette
"That story is over, but my rhyme ain't done." Vignettes are important tools in hip-hop's rich and plentiful storytelling tradition.
Wednesday, June 16 2010
We Don’t Die, We Multiply: R&B Posse Tracks
Take Whitney Houston's "Saving All My Love For You", a steamy tale of a mistress longing for romantic bliss with a married man, and imagine how it might play out with a multi-perspective delivery.
Tuesday, May 18 2010
Fear of a Rap Parody
Underrated in the annals of hip-hop cinema, Rusty Cundieff's Fear of a Black Hat is biting and unflinching, and forces hip-hop fans to stare soberly at the culture's flaws and to revisit their own reasons for loving the music.
Thursday, April 15 2010
The Revival: A Declaration for Female Emcees
Hip-hop needs a women's movement ala Seneca Falls. The Declaration of Sentiments used the Declaration of Independence as its structural model (in hip-hop we call that "sampling").
Friday, March 12 2010
Tupac Shakur: An Icon in Context
How do you tell the story of Tupac Shakur? One book tries connecting his life, and sometimes his music, to the social and historical climate of the times.
Wednesday, February 17 2010
There’s a Message in the Music
Hip-hop can, and should, promote the historical and cultural ideals that underscore the value of historical awareness.
Wednesday, January 13 2010
The 411 on R&B
A new decade promises to bring fresh sounds and renewed vigor to R&B. Let's hope it keeps its promise.
Tuesday, December 15 2009
I Still Love H.E.R. (And So Should Everyone Else)
One surprisingly successful technique for converting hip-hop haters and deepening the existing fan's love for the culture is to expose them to "old school hip-hop".
Tuesday, November 17 2009
Hip-Hop & the Contrast Principle
Hip-hop, as a culture and a musical genre, moves at lightning speed. Keeping up requires an awareness of our expectations and a willingness to revisit our assumptions.
Monday, October 12 2009
The Messengers
K'naan's The Messengers series is a trilogy of episodes designed to highlight the genius of Nigeria's Fela Kuti, Jamaica's Bob Marley, and the United States' Bob Dylan.
Friday, August 21 2009
Hip-Hop Marketing in the Digital Era
In the Digital Age, music and information sit at our fingertips. How do rappers use tools, new and old, to distinguish themselves from the competition?
Monday, July 20 2009
It Ain’t Hard to Tell: The Legacy of ‘Illmatic’
The "half-man, half-amazin'", Nas' persona is part myth and part "everyday kid" from the Queensbridge projects.
Tuesday, June 9 2009
Prince’s Paisley Pals
Minneapolis, Minnesota was the center of Prince's musical kingdom, but there were a lot of musicians associated with his purple music. Here's a short list, with a few ground rules.
Monday, May 11 2009
Janet Jackson: Regain Control
With the musical world filled with young "divas", there's little room for Miss Janet, an innovator who popularized the Sexy Diva With Choreography paradigm in the first place.
Monday, April 13 2009
T.I.‘s Winding Road to Redemption
The road to Grammy-winning rap star Clifford "T.I." Harris, Jr.'s positive outcome may be paved with good intentions, but self-interest fuels the journey.
Friday, March 13 2009
Hip-Hop Hooray: Tributes in Rhyme
Forget the beef, let's talk about honoring our hip-hop icons. Perhaps the best way to pay homage to hip-hoppers is to let them speak in their own words.
Monday, February 16 2009
Biggie Gives Us One More Chance
Biggie Smalls' mythology hasn't afforded him a dreamy endgame à la Tupac or Elvis. Nobody imagines Biggie pulling the ultimate Machiavellian coup by making the world believe he's dead while he's secretly chillin' in Jamaica.
Monday, January 19 2009
Seven Ways to Detox
It's 2009, and that means it has now been a full decade since Dr. Dre's last official release. Here are some suggestions for survival while you continue to await his long-gestating follow-up, Detox.
Monday, January 5 2009
We Don’t Die, We Multiply: Posse Tracks
Having more than one rapper on the scene enhances and galvanizes a song, as the central theme is strengthened with each successive verse. As the saying goes, there's strength in numbers.
Tuesday, November 18 2008
Hip-Haute Couture
Although "hip-hop" means different things to different people, everyone seems to be confident that they know what "it" is. Through this subjective lens, there is also a unique brand of investment and ownership in the meaning of "hip-hop".
Thursday, October 23 2008
Songs in the Key of Rap
The relationship between singing and rapping has had a transforming effect on hip-hoppers and singers alike.
Monday, September 29 2008
We Don’t Die, We Multiply: Heartbeat Props
The Digital Underground party has apparently come to an end. If so, we must acknowledge the group for more reasons than popularizing "The Humpty Dance".
Wednesday, August 20 2008
We Don’t Die, We Multiply: Hip-Hop Groups
Group identification creates interesting scenarios within hip-hop culture, from the formation and maintenance of group identity to the difficulties of promoting the lyrical skills of a group's various members.
Friday, July 11 2008
Truth in Humor
The second season of The Boondocks tackles issues that are important to the hip-hop community with contributions from numerous hip-hop artists. Boondocks Response Syndrome explains why we react to this series the way we do.
Thursday, June 26 2008
Daytime TV Goes Gangsta with Snoop Dogg
Hip-hop's top dog touches down in soap opera territory for two days of music and melodrama.
Friday, May 16 2008
Mama Said Knock You Out: Hip-Hop & the Family Unit
There are four hip-hop rules for families. One: Fathers, take care of your children and their mothers. Two: Don't talk about other people's mamas. Three: Be good to your own mother. Four: Repeat as necessary.
Friday, April 11 2008
Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: Hip-Hop’s Fight Against Time
Hip-hop fights haters, record labels, rival emcees, and even the law. Time, however, has proven to be a formidable opponent.
Friday, March 14 2008
The Ballot or the Beef
It's possible that hip-hop and the US government have been engaged in the longest running beef of all, from the infamous FBI letter sent to NWA in 1998 to the Congressional Hearings in 2007 seeking to investigate hip-hop lyrics.
Friday, February 15 2008
El Che & the Thriller
Rhymefest's mixtape tribute continues hip-hop's longstanding affection for the Jacksons.
Wednesday, January 16 2008
101 Hip-Hop Albums of 2007
A hundred and one reasons why hip-hop is not dead, say these three opinionators.
Friday, January 4 2008
For the Love of the Art
How cool is it to go to the "Self Help" section of a bookstore and get a book with life lessons from N.W.A., Little Brother, and Ghostface Killah?
Friday, November 9 2007
Yo! Your TV Raps: Hip-Hop on US Television
Hip-hop's TV exposure has been strong, giving us a mixture of critique, celebrity, and celebration. Who, in the '80s, would've guessed that hip-hop would have such cultural presence?
Friday, October 26 2007
A Righteous Boy’s Hip-Hop Journey Through Babeland
Songs, more songs -- the prolific singer-songwriter and musician Ani Difranco keeps coming up with them. Here's some help for finding the best of Difranco, especially if you also like De La Soul.
Monday, September 10 2007
From Boogie Down to Tinseltown
Rappers in showbiz: Did hip-hop land on Hollywood or did Hollywood land on us? For those in 'the land', some of the 4,079 hip-hop laws of crossing-over.
Friday, June 22 2007
Hip-Hop at the Crossroad: Time, Testimony, & Identity
In the '90s, X-Clan took us "to the east". This year, the group returns from Mecca in "vanglorious" fashion.
Wednesday, May 9 2007
P.M. Mixtape, Vol. Two: Love and Trouble
Since relationships are tough, we need all the help we can get. Sometimes the best advice comes from listening to the right song.
Tuesday, March 20 2007
P.M. Mixtape, Vol. One
Maybe the sun has set on the days of the cassette tape, a format that made you work for your music. Huff, feeling nostalgic for the "fast forward" and "rewind" buttons, makes his own theoretical cassette mix of oddball hip-hop tunes.
Monday, February 5 2007
The Purple Experience: Your PopMatters Primer on Prince’s Pop Life
So many Prince albums, but where do you start? Here's a funky little list designed to aid your quest.
Friday, January 5 2007
Word Problems: The Snitch’s Dilemma
What if you and your friend were arrested and you were offered leniency in exchange for information about your friend or "the streets"? The hip-hop community believes the very existence of the deal begs us to reconsider our concepts of loyalty and law enforcement.
Sunday, November 5 2006
Please Call It a Comeback
That scene in Superman III, with the boy yelling words of encouragement to the struggling protagonist? That's how I feel when I think of Lauryn Hill.
Monday, October 2 2006
Unsung Heroes: The Band of Extraordinary Women
Huff fantasizes about wielding Diddy-like power to create a supergroup of underrated, under-the-radar female musicians. Danity Kane, eat your heart out.
