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Written by Jamal Bell
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 Simply put, beef is all part of the game when it comes to Hip Hop. In an arena where everyone is competing to be the best, battles are bound to come around. The high-profile beef going on at the moment involves two artists that I assumed would get along. This time around, veteran rapper Common and newcomer Drake are on opposite sides of the ring. I'm sure the two rappers have had previous beefs with other artists but I never expected the two to be beefing with each other. I say this because Common is tagged as a "conscious" rapper who raps about politics and empowering the people and Drake is relatively new to the game and doesn't exactly fit the mold of a hardcore or gangster rapper. |
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Written by Jamal Bell
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 Over the years, rap has been straying further and further away from the music. While new songs, albums, and mixtapes still prove to be newsworthy, a huge chunk of Hip-Hop headlines have nothing to do with the music. Reading Hip-Hop news is almost as bad as reading the tabloids in the grocery store, plenty gossip but no substance.
I understand that stardom in Hip Hop has totally changed. Artists from the past didn’t necessarily get the media exposure that they wanted or deserved. Nowadays, all you have to be is a fresh new artist to be easily marketed and in the spotlight. And the exposure for big names is out of the question. Kanye West’s outfit can be news. We must understand that technology plays a huge role in this. We have mobile phones that capture everything, right in our front pocket. Back in the day, people had to really dig to find out information. Nowadays, a simple tweet can cause a ruckus.
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Written by C.B. Forde
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 Are Rihanna and Chris Brown still in love? That is a question that only two people can truly answer, but what is obvious is that there is still a tremendous amount of affection between the two. With their new singles “Man Down” and “She Ain’t You” it is obvious that the two are singing about and to each other.
I am not trying to trivialize what happened. But I will make a bold statement and will chalk it up to the tragedy of young love. We have all been there, we made mistakes, and we have hurt people. Fortunately most of us don’t have such a traumatic situation occur, but sadly far too many young women have to suffer such abuse in silence. Violence perpetrated against women by men is a serious issue. It pervades the human experience, and something we will truly suffer from until we evolve as a species. But this violence often has more than one victim. Human beings are animals, and human children akin to other animals learn from observation. Tragically young boys learn to express their anger by watching their fathers, and young women learn what to expect from a man by watching their mothers. This perpetual cycle of violence is something that we are going to really have to look at and find new ways of addressing. Both Chris Brown and Rihanna grew up in abusive households. |
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Written by The Company Man
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 In retrospect, it was my fault.
All the signs were there, loitering for the better part of the aughts, screaming out like nicotine warnings from the Surgeon General.
“Hazardous For Money Holder”
“May Complicate Checking Account”
“Purchase At Your Own Risk”
I should’ve seen this coming from satellite distances. I should’ve mentally prepared myself for another craptastic outing from one of the most important, yet consistently most disappointing performing artists in recent Hip Hop history.
I should’ve predicted that Lauryn Hill would shit the proverbial bed -- again -- during her highly anticipated set at the 2010 Rock The Bells Festival.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I trekked to New York City’s Governor’s Island packing a pocket full of unqualified expectations, impatiently awaiting my first live show from the Illest Femcee Ever.
And to say Lauryn Hill is anything short of the Illest Femcee Ever is asinine. It’s more than just the indelible nature of The Score and her solo, seminal offering, The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill. It’s more than her pristine delivery and ridiculous word play and Mike Tyson-type power punchlines like “even after all my logic and my theories / I’ll add a mutherfucker so you ignant n***** hear me” that seamlessly ooze into the air like lyrical incense yet remain potent enough to floor the most elite of emcees. It’s more than her world class vocals and her ability to touch heavenly octaves, stirring souls and shaking asses simultaneously, through every syllable sung.
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Written by The Company Man
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 ...His unwavering respect for the history of The Culture and the resolute place it holds in his genre pushing musical endeavors.
At it’s core, Yeezy’s entire career has always included shout outs and mini memorials to rap’s flag bearers, reminding heads where Hip Hop has been.
Whether it’s the sped up soul samples and cross-boundaries collaborations that defined the sound of his early work while paying homage to Golden Era icons absent from the commercial radio radar through lines like “The way the beat knock / New version of Pete Rock” and “Do the fans want a feeling of A Tribe Called Quest / But all they got left is this guy called West”, or his penchant for crafting party jams that simultaneously jam the mind with a message a la Hip Hop’s earliest origins -- Kanye consistently bridges the gulf between generations while pushing the margins to the brink of breech.
His latest historical redeux: the true remix.
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Hip Hop
