Wednesday, October 19 2011
True to the Game: Ice Cube’s ‘Death Certificate’
It was during the period between the Rodney King beating and subsequent court verdict that Ice Cube cut Death Certificate, a chilling glimpse into the anger and frustration South Central Angelinos were feeling.
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.
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.
Friday, July 16 2010
It Was Only Yesterday L.A. Went Up in Flames
Langston Hughes’ proverbial California raisin in the sun exploded to a funky beat. I stared blankly past the familiar storefronts, into a world I could barely grasp. How civil a society was it that my daughter was about to join?
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.
Wednesday, March 25 2009
Part 3: The Sixth Sense to Fight Club (August - October 1999)
Films that have left a lasting impression on their creators (M. Night Shyamalan, Sam Mendes, David Fincher) make up the majority of Part Three of our Films of 1999 overview.
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.
Wednesday, November 26 2008
Ice Cube: The Essentials
It’s hard to give a thumbs-up to an album that calls itself The Essentials when there’s so much essential material missing.
