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.
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.
Friday, January 16 2009
Notorious
Notorious looks back on the day when hip-hop was coming into its seeming own, when telling stories was a way to make order from chaos, as well as money and, as Biggie saw it, mo problems.
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.
Wednesday, November 26 2008
Who Says Country Can’t Hip-Hop?
Poverty, crime, disenfranchisement, sinning, saving, and no-account women: Stereotypical subjects of the average country song, or the average hip-hop song?
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.
