Friday, August 5th, 2005

A Convo On Hip-Hop Writing

If you didn’t know already, Tamara Palmer–whose Country-Fried Soul: Adventures in Dirty South Hip-Hop is out now!–and I have been blogging on SOHH.com’s Connect Politic… about hip-hop writing. Check it out and let us know how much we suck. Meanwhile if you have a hip-hop book jones, peep the reading list on the right!

posted by @ 2:39 pm | 2 Comments

Friday, August 5th, 2005

Boogie Down

After a long unexplained absence, your boy is back up at Sticker Shock today–with a long-lost Bronx favorite. Keep tickin’ and tockin’ for a limited time!

posted by @ 7:30 am | 0 Comments

Thursday, August 4th, 2005

Mos Def Calls Out Suge Knight In LA

Finally getting some light on SOHH and The Situation UK is the fact that Mos Def climaxed his concert at the Hollywood Bowl on July 24th by shouting: “Tell them who killed my man (Biggie), Suge. Tell them who killed my man, Suge!”

I was at the concert.

The crowd was shocked at first, but then responded with loud applause. Mos said, “Gotta tell the truth. We fear nothing.”

The concert itself–sandwiched in between performances by the excellent Senegalese rap trio Daara J and an high-energy show by Femi Kuti–was billed as “Biggie, the big band experience”. Mos came out on a bed with neon signs reading “Freedom” and “Oysters” next to it. The concept was to have a jazz band, featuring Will Calhoun, play covers of songs that would trace the story of Biggie’s life.

It was uneven, at best. The band opened with a fascinating cover of “Stakes Is High” and moved through long versions of stuff like “It’s Just Begun”, “Miles Runs The Voodoo Down”, and ended with “Umi Says”. It was loose and unstructured, with Mos dictating changes onstage as the band played, and apparently not a lot of thought given to pacing. When the clock came up on an hour, Mos admitted they had prepared a lot more but they had run out of time.

That’s when he got into the line about Suge.

The song that Mos went into after that had him solo at the piano banging out a two-chord drone in which he sliced together lyrics from “Jam Master Jay” with comments on Biggie’s death. He ended by flipping the classic “Run DMC and Jam Master Jay” into a scream: “Who killed Pac, Biggie and Jay?”

Brave shit. But probably not ready to be recorded yet…

posted by @ 10:19 am | 6 Comments

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005

Jim Farber on The Source


Supply your own caption.

From today’s New York Daily News:

Observers feel the magazine’s spiraling problems mirror a central struggle within hip hop itself. “The roots of the music are very ‘street’,” says Minya Oh, alias Miss Info, Hot 97’s hip-hop gossip. “But that has to get along with its newer role, which is very big business.”

Many industry insiders feel the biggest blow to the magazine’s credibility stems from its two-year war against Eminem, whom the magazine has cast as a racist, out to whitewash an African-American art form. (The Source’s own founder, David Mays, is white.)

“By battling Eminem, they end up battling the whole family he’s down with – 50 Cent, Dr. Dre, Lloyd Banks – the biggest people in the game,” explains Nelson George, a long-time observer of popular music and the author of “Hip-Hop America.” “How can you sustain and not cover those guys?”

“Regular readers really don’t care about the whole back story of the magazine’s problems,” says Oh. “But they do want to know what Eminem is doing on his vacation or what 50 Cent has to say about Vivica Fox.”

To get that information, readers are increasingly flipping over to The Source’s rival, XXL. That upstart mag began eight years ago (The Source kicked off back in 1988). In 2003, the younger mag’s circulation was little more than half that of its role model. Since then, its circulation has increased by more than 10% to an audited figure of 273,257, the overwhelming majority of them moving on newsstands.

“XXL is now the biggest to us,” says a source at Def Jam Records.

posted by @ 6:51 am | 3 Comments

Monday, August 1st, 2005

Judith Miller: No Journalistic Martyr

From Elizabeth Mendez Berry (now a hard-boiled reporter for Time Magazine!): Arianna debunks Judith Miller’s martyrdom–Miller is the source.

posted by @ 9:23 am | 3 Comments

Monday, August 1st, 2005

I Just Want It To Be Over

posted by @ 8:33 am | 2 Comments



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