The 20-year anniversary of the Rodney King beating recently passed and during the #hiphoped discussion on Twitter (Tuesdays at 9pm EST/6pm PST), I posed the question: Does hip hop (and the black/brown community as a whole as it was pointed out during our conversation) want a better relationship with law enforcement or simply want the mistreatment to end? After posting it, I decided this was somet
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Does Hip Hop Want A Relationship With Police?
Respect Due: Marley Marl
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There were many BIG moments that happened in hip hop during the 1980s and early 90s and Marley Marl happened to be a part of many of them. One of these moments, and perhaps his first major recognition, came when he produced "Roxanne's Revenge", the response track by Roxanne Shante to UTFO. While coming out on the winning side of that "battle", this would not be the last legendary back-and-forth M
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Sleep When I'm Dead
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Artist:
This book and its author do not have any affiliation with this blog or its contents. It's been a few weeks now and it looks like everything is back to normal. After suffering two seizures, Rick Ross is back on his grind, we seem to be healing from losing Heavy D, and Eric Sermon has assured everybody he's alright after suffering a heart attack. However, there's something that hip hop really needs
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Respect Due: Kool DJ Red Alert
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Artist:
Some people just have a good ear - whether it be for talent, music sound, or both. Kool DJ Red Alert has it for both. After watching and studying Kool Herc at some of the first hip hop parties, Red Alert decided to try his hand (no pun intended) at DJing. After teaching his cousin some of the finer points he picked up, his cousin, DJ Jazzy Jay, in-turn introduced Red to Afrika Bambaata. Soon afte
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Shock Value
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Artist:
After the last "General" post ("Our Past Can't Be Our Present"; not the X-Clan "Respect Due"), there was a brief discussion/debate with my hip hop brethren and all around good-guy @MisterDrake (for all you Twitter lovers out there). You can check the discussion and post out here, but I want to piggyback off of that blog and even the conversation.When I talk about comparing the past to the presen
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More Than One Story
I recently bought Common's book “One Day It’ll All Make Sense”. I’ve been reading it a little bit here and there the past couple weeks, but early on in the book, while I was reading the “Prologue”, one quote really stood out to me: “It speaks to the fact that when you try to tell your own story, you can’t help but tell someone else’s along the way”. I think this line describes hip hop in a numbe
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