By Thursday

Published: January 19th, 2007

What's good? My name is Sean Bell, I'm a 23-year old NYC resident that was shot to death in Queens. Exiting the club from my bachelor's party celebration I may have been reckless, but I didn't deserve to die. One officer shot 30 times at me, my man Trent and the homie Joe. C-Cypher (the police) should only use reasonable force at times where there is immediate danger to life or limb. Word to life, none of us had heat, why would they clap at us 50 times? Poor Training? Probably. Negligence? You better believe it. Racism? Always a factor, but only time will tell. I was on the come up too yo, after all a brotha was getting married ...

By Thursday

Published: January 19th, 2007

Wonderful are the moments in music when the game is redefined with a soundscape that is so salacious. The inimitable James Brown was just that, an artist who reintroduced music to itself. In 1950's Ray Charles came on the scene and breathed life in to R & B which was sewed together from the threads of gospel, blues and jazz music. Brother Brown on the other hand invoked the soul of music at a time where the melodies were more spirited than the performer himself. If it were not for James the soul would have been shy, and whats more the funk may have been reclusive in the monolithic musical climate of the 50's and 60's. When JB told us ...

By Thursday

Published: December 21st, 2006

I don't mean to dump on Philly, but "The Next Great City" still has a lot of work to do before it is truly worthy of such a title. The city's body count for 2006 is rapidly approaching 400 (and has already reached the highest total in 10 years), homelessness continues to plague the streets, and one in four Philadelphians live in poverty. More troublesome is the effect this crisis is having on the city's youth, who are increasingly growing up in distressed households and even worse neighborhoods and schools. The digital divide is taking its toll, and these kids will soon enter the real world lacking the technological know-how that is becoming more and more of a necessity for ...

By Thursday

Published: November 23rd, 2006

TUVonline is mesmerizing material, its colorful and eclectic like your Lucky Charms cereal. Imagine youtube, with its crudy visuals and down syndrome streaming, that's what I call wackeal o'neal. It's an insult to put up with such low quality. TUV, stands for a truly unique vision, which is the brilliant brain child of Ebele Mora, Fabricio Sousa and Jason Smikle. The goal is to showcase stories of college life across the nation. I think these three are angels from the future, here to deliver us from the evil of corny websites. TUVonline is like the Halle Berry (or Hillary Swank for girls that like girls) of interactive entertainment, and it just happens to be brought to you by the prestigious playaz ...

By Thursday

Published: July 21st, 2006

In light of 2pac's 35th Birthday(June 16th, 2006), I wonder what Makaveli would say in the year two-thousand and six. It has been a second since we poured out a little liquor for our own thug angel. In fact it is a nose hair short of a decade, September 13th will earmark the 10th Anniversary of this tearfully tragic day. There is no doubt that a myriad of magazines, websites and opportunists alike will try to stake their claim in this momumental event. Fortunately, this article will not take such a shameful and exploitative approach. Instead we'll come to the mic with a more imaginative twist. Please, suspend your disbelief and do remember to turn off your cell phones. 1996 was ...

By Thursday

Published: June 18th, 2006

Back in the day, it seemed to me that the hungriest headz were the nastiest. Kids that came from the poorest and roughest conditions, came to the mic starving, enough to bite an opponent's ear off. Previous to ripping MC-Shan and the Juice Crew on "The Bridge is Over," KRS-1 lived in a homeless shelter. This example in itself is the essence of hip hop's beginnings. So it's no secret that our music flourished from the rugged, wretched pits of the blue and grey ghettoes of the DisUnited States of America. A concern we should all share, is whether art is reflecting life in hip hop. Let me put a bug in your ear. Hip hop was created on the premise ...

By Thursday

Published: May 26th, 2006

Vibrate with your boy for a moment. You've been given a great opportunity of such enormity it stops you dead in your tracks. A notion is weighing so heavy on your mind, time and space have ceased for an acute moment of contemplation. It's time for you to look life dead in the eye. Meet our star protagonists, Sam Doom and Loki. They can relate to such introspective reflection. In fact, they made a song about it. For your listening pleasure, we are privileged to witness what seems to be a momentous conversation in closed quarters entitled "The Time is Now." CAUTION: Gems are being dropped, ignorant kats maybe inclined to catch a headache. The essence of this song is ...

By Thursday

Published: April 10th, 2006

Welcome to Rahm Nation Baptist Church. As you cross the threshold of this divine institution please, close your mouth and open your mind. I am trying to find the spirit behind the choir of Hip Hop music, because it seems to be missing its boisterous voice. The recipe of Hip Hop has marinated for far too long, without the appropriate array of ingredients. Emcee/producer and RAHM Nation's (Reform And Healing Movement) founder, Ohene, feels the game needs to acknowledge the humanist dimension of the music. "The reality that we live in, you have merchants that say, okay... we can take the music and we can package it, but you can't package emotions and feelings. I don't think you can. ...

By Thursday

Published: April 4th, 2006

One, two, three and to the fo' Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dr. Dre is at the do'/Ready to make an entrance, so back on up cause you know we're bout to rip shit up. And God said, let there be "crap music." This verse from "Nuthin' but a G Thang," a budding track on The Chronic, was a 16 track blunt that got the game lifted. A game that was once captivated by the Edutainment of BDP, was Liscensed to Ill with the Beastie Boys and entertained Mecca and the Soul Brotha while kickin' it with Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth. But when The Chronic came on the scene, rap was clearly too cool to hang out with hip-hop, so they ...

By Thursday

Published: March 24th, 2006

Nowadays, respectable black women are hard to find in Hip-Hop. Ever since the popularization of hedonistic rap music, audiences have foolishly embraced the cocktease "stereotype" of black females. What’s particularly disenchanting is the apparent decrease of female emcees with worldly ideals. Don't get me wrong, Jean Grae does a number on worldly perspectives, this is a truthitude. However, further consideration shows that artists such as Jean Grae get less airplay than her poontang promoting peers. I don't know if you've noticed, but this is a felony, worthy of dismemberment. Let the execution begin. Lackluster exposure of positive female rap acts is a major misgiving for black women in Hip-Hop. The climate of rap music is controlled by “gold diggers” and “whoremongers” ...

By Thursday

Published: March 17th, 2006

The Truth shall set you free. This notion is not subjective because it has a profound meaning which is universal to all human beings. And without further ado, I must introduce you, the audience, reader, et cetera, to the truth. You may not know him as the truth, because bad publicity has, essentially, give him a bad rap. Although this man is a good rapper, hip-hop culture vultures and money-hungry record company pimps sneer at rappers such as these because of the truth-seeking nature of their music. "Nature of the Threat" is the omen I wish to present to you, and Ras Kass is the seer who will unleash this beast. First, please heed the words of W.E.B Dubois: "In the first ...

By Thursday

Published: March 15th, 2006

Yes, Busy Bee(Love Bug Starski) vs. Kool Moe Dee was the origin of "Beef" and Hip-Hop warfare. And yes, you are correct again to say that UTFO vs. Roxanne Shante was the very start of beefing on record between artists, but we must make a distinction. The nuclear missiles that Boogie Down Productions (composed of KRS-ONE + DJ Scott La Rock) launched against the Juice Crew was fresh, fierce and fearless. This record didn't simply throw darts, fireballs were darted into Queens in an incendiary fashion, questioning which borough was really the birthplace of Hip-Hop music. This song was not simply about one man's pride, reputation, or status on the mic, proper and appropriate representation of the South Bronx, the ...

By Thursday

Published: March 12th, 2006

After being enlightened by an article enitlted "I WANT MY MTV....Where Have You Gone?" by Ryan here at Freshout Media, I thought to myself, hey self, there are many more sell-outs to exploit, why not expose them, too? After a moment of pure ponderance, I concurred with my conscience. She was right. BET is among the Uncle Tom, backbiting, two-faced, "sell you up the river" manipulative media dream team. If MTV is going to catch hell for their Benedict Arnold impersonation, we must not forget those who aided and abeted them. R.I.P Black Entertainment Television, because you have turned into Brainwash Everyone Television since the late 90's, the real BET is a memory. Amen. In my younger years ...

By Thursday

Published: February 25th, 2006

"You will not be able to stay home brotha, You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out." These are the words of a revolutionary named Gil-Scott Heron. Witness lyrics that emanate from a revelation entitled "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." Gil Scott Heron was born in Tennessee and came up in the Boogie Down Bronx. He sharpened his poetical prowess while attending Lincoln University, a Historically Black College in Chester, Pa. Subsequently, 1970 was the year he began recording Small Talk at 125th and Lenox. This LP had something which targeted the American couch-potato preoccupation with TV and the inactive elements that desensitize people to political proactivity. The name of the song was "The Revolution Will ...

By Thursday

Published: February 21st, 2006

"The Message" is simply one of the greatest Hip-Hop songs to date. Regardless of the fact that it's 2006, this song is arguably one of the best hip-hop songs ever released. Humor me. Three years after the debut of the Sugar Hill Gang's Rapper's Delight, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five released "The Message." Once it dropped, Hip-Hop changed forever. It may not have been a big party song, or made them a lot of money, or even given them a lot of notoriety, but it showed that hip-hop music had a serious message to offer the world about social problems in a decaying inner city setting. A song like this is unheard of at this point in time. In it's time, ...

By Thursday

Published: February 21st, 2006

No! You're wrong, Hip-Hop is certainly, unquestionably and without a doubt alive and well. It is very cliche to say "Hip-Hop is dead." That's really a positive self-fullfilling prophecy. Yes, I'm a sarcastic pin-head, but I do understand why heads claim Hip-Hop is "six feet deep." Hedonism, hypersexual lyrics, illusions of grandeur and pathological "crime" rhymes are the venomous creatures eating away at our beloved culture. Since the advent of such foolishness, I too have been catching up on my sleep. Smell me? Once upon a time, hip-hop had "Krusty the Klown" status. Nowadays, it seems that the culture has garnered "Side Show Bob" merit. This is true to a degree. As much as we honor the Golden Era (1986-1993) of ...

By Thursday

Published: February 16th, 2006

You know whats hot? Hip-Hop mascots are scolding hot. In a way that no homo-sapien has experienced before, hip-hop culture capitalizes on the zany character embodied by the artist, or the hypeman(amongst others). I guess no other genre of music has enough personality to conjure up mascots, or wacky personas that intrigue as well as entertain the audience. The Question is: Why does hip-hop have mascots? I would imagine that the mascots in hip-hop came from the influence of disco and funk music. These two genres are given credit as the precursors of hip-hop music. Artists likes James Brown, Funkadelic and Bootsy Collins clearly gave way to Afrika Bambaata, Fab Five Freddy and Flavor Flav. The personalities that hip-hop is comprised ...

By Thursday

Published: February 11th, 2006

Mario, Luigi, the Princess, evil koopa troopers and big bad bowser are but a mere memory for many generation X and Y video gamers. Super Mario Brothers was a the epitome of childhood bliss. Before the internet captivated us with its vast and unfathomable matrix of ideas, game systems like Nintendo were there to babysit us when our parents were too damn cheap to hire a baby-sitter. Playing this game was a good way to laugh in the face of a two-week confinement to your bedroom. Even though Mario had few redeeming qualities, him and Luigi had a way of making time and space evaporate. Wow, I get an extra life for that thought. Why? Because this is my segue; music ...

By Thursday

Published: February 10th, 2006

Artists like Wilson Pickett, Jackie Wilson or even Curtis Mayfield definitely put the capital S in Soul. However, many music enthusiasts give Sam Cooke and the Soul stirrers(Cooke's original group) credit for championing the recipe for soul food(music). Flaunting a melody that made Motown artists green with envy. Sam Cooke confuses me. He says he doesn't know much about history, but then he tells me he's an expert on "Cupid" while "Having a Party." But when he told me "A Change was Gonna Come," I knew he wasn't playing. Released during the upheavel of the Civil Rights Movement, this soulful ballad was a godsend. When your people are considered 2nd and 3rd class citizens, change is a must. When your people are ...

By Thursday

Published: February 8th, 2006

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze, strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees." Pull up a plate, this is "Strange Fruit" served to you by Billie Holiday. Hopefully this imagery was morbidly descriptive enough for you to visualize. Maybe you are turned off by this, but this was the stark reality that Afrikan American people suffered through between 1880 and 1920. This era saw the rise and fall of black progress during what was considered the Reconstruction period. In order to maintain the white power structure in the South, death of Afrikan(a k is used in Afrika instead of a c, because we hold contempt for the colonization that imposed ...