hip hop
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Mic Drop: Acid, Lucid, Fever and Aspiring, These Musicians Are Dreaming
The music and accompanying videos released this week all have one thing in common: they all follow some form of expression and aspiration. Music has always been a way for people–artists and listeners alike–to express and identify with themselves while still inspiring listeners to follow their dreams. Those dreams can be more “acid trippy,” leaving…
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Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah and Raekwon Are Bringing Da Ruckus for the Next Verzuz Battle This Weekend
Clan in the front, all others to the back! The ever-popular party-at-home Instagram Live series Verzuz will be taking it back to the streets with its next music battle, Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah and Raekwon are set to face off against each other this weekend. Billboard reports that after the soulful debut of D’Angelo and…
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Snoop Dogg Rage-Quits Madden Twitch Stream After 15 Minutes Only to Leave Stream On for Over 7 Hours
I’m not much of a Twitch streamer, but on the few occasions that I do dabble, I’m hit with a very real fear that I’ll forget to turn off my stream. It’s not even that I do anything that salacious, I just don’t need the internet watching me cry while rewatching Steven Universe: Future. (I’m…
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28 Days of Album Music Blackness With VSB, Day 27: Public Enemy's It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back (1988)
I don’t need a ton of words to describe the way I feel about the cover for Public Enemy’s sophomore album, 1988’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Mostly, I just need to say how bad ass it is. And especially how bad ass it was to a 9-year-old whose big…
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Bobby Shmurda Is Free and Yes, We're All Waiting for the Fitted Cap He Flung Into the Air to Return to His Head
It seemed like a combination of “about a week ago” and forever ago that Bobby Shmurda had us all doing the Shmoney dance in the club to his hit song. Hell, it seems like forever ago that we’ve been in a club (those of us following COVID-19 protocols, anyway). That song, “Hot Nigga” (or “Hot…
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Prince Markie Dee of Pioneering Hip-Hop Trio The Fat Boys Dead at 52
Prince Markie Dee, one of the founding members of the hip-hop trio The Fat Boys has died at the age of 52. No cause of death has been officially confirmed at this time. “Forever in my Heart. Prince Markie Dee was more than a rapper; he was one of my very best and closest friends,”…
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28 Days of Album Cover Blackness With VSB, Day 18: Shut Up and Dance's Dance Before The Police Come! (1990)
It’s possible that you’ve never heard of the London-group Shut Up and Dance. They were (are) a British production/rap duo who got started at the very tail end of the 80s and made music through the 2000s. If you listen to their early music, it sounds a lot like the hip hop coming out of…
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Hip-Hop and Hoops Meet In Diddy's New Web Series The Crew League
Every basketball player wants to be a rapper, and every rapper aspires to be a professional basketball player. Don’t shoot the messenger; it’s in the bible somewhere. The lines have long been blurred when it comes to sports and entertainment, and now Diddy’s Revolt will be dropping an unscripted, first-of-its-kind basketball battle of hip-hop stars…
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'A Lot of My Favorite Hip-Hop Writers Have Been Women': The Root Presents: It's Lit! Hits The Motherlode With Clover Hope
The first rule of working with Beyoncé is: You do not talk about working with Beyoncé. But that didn’t stop us from asking—after all, our sister-in-writing Clover Hope has now worked on not one, but two projects with Queen Bey. Last year, she was one of the writers behind the summer’s gorgeous Black Is King…
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PageTurners: Historic Black Women and the Literary Legacies They've Paved
It has already been a historic year for Black women, and this week we can reflect on the legacies of history-making women who paved the way for our successes today. The long-awaited biography Ida B. the Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells; Cicely Tyson’s, Just as I Am: A Memoir; and…