Beyond the hood? Detroit Techno – Article exploring the relationship of Techno, dance music and its inner city roots. [fiar] A Noisey Film – The Police vs Grime Music Black British musical identity is being erased by culture-less dance music – Writer Kele Okereke thoughts on the social-political-economic issues happening in the UK music scene. [Noisey] Meanwhile, 6th and Mission – San Francisco based artist Wendy McNaughton illustrates her story of the changing landscape of the neighborhood around 6th & Mission street. …
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– The Roots recently released another concept album And Then You Shoot Your Cousin following the previous concept album 2011’s Undun. The concept of this new album is made up of characters, stories, satirical commentary on violence in Hip-Hop and American society in general. In an interview with Sway, Questlove and Black Thought reveal the name of the album And Then You Shoot Cousin was inspired by a line from a KRS One song. MC’s more worried about their financial backin’ Steady packin a gat as if …
With the World Cup going on in Brazil, for those not caught up by football (soccer) fever it’s a good time to revisit DJ/producer Diplo and his label Mad Decent’s 2008 documentary Favela On Blast. The documentary is about the music sub-culture in the city of Rio de Janeiro (in the poor neighborhoods, the favelas) called Baile Funk or Funk Carioca: a bass heavy sound with electro drum beats, reminiscent of Miami bass and electro funk of artists like MC …
Bad Rap, a documentary about Asian American rappers had a successful crowd funded campaign, exceeding their $25,000 goal by the end of their campaign this past week. As promotions for the documentary and the rappers involved, the director/producers Salima Koroma and Jaeki Cho along with three of the four central rappers from the documentary: Awkwafina, Lyricks, and Reksitzzy have been doing shows and interviews this past week. They’ve also had an interview on Hot 97, with DJ Cipha Sounds, talking about the …
Ruby Dee, a ringing voice for Civil Rights, onstage and off, dies at 91. Ruby Dee had a long successful acting career, most of us as students may have read Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun and was shown in class the movie based on the play in which Ruby Dee played the memorable role of Ruth Younger, more recently she was in 2007’s American Gangster playing the role of Mama Lucas. She was also known for her work in …
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