hip-hop
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Hip-Hop’s Best Year Ever Can Almost Buy You A Drink
It should come as no surprise to most of you that I wasn’t the most popular kid in high school. During my 1995 – 1996 freshman year, I endured an awkward post-pubescent, pre-growth-spurt phase that had me looking like the love child of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man and Associate Bob from Demolition Man. Making matters…
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Prince Be of P.M. Dawn Dead at 46
Yet another ’90s rap icon has gone on to the ancestors. Attrell “Prince Be” Cordes of the rap-pop act P.M. Dawn is dead at 46. People magazine confirms that Cordes died Friday of renal kidney disease from diabetes. The Jersey City, N.J., native is survived by his wife, Mary, and three children. Prince Be started…
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It’s Easier to Blame Hip-Hop for Concert Shootings Than It Is to Address America’s Violence
As common as death by gun in America is, the hand that holds the gun often defines how those deaths are depicted. So it was not surprising to see the kind of reaction generated by one man being killed and three people being wounded at a T.I. concert in New York City recently. It concerned…
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Hip-Hop Has a Woman Problem
Let’s go down memory lane for a bit. Twenty-eight years ago marked the release of MC Lyte’s seminal debut album, Lyte as a Rock. It was hip-hop’s first meaningful album from a female emcee. Twenty years ago marked the release of Bahamadia’s Kollage, the best hip-hop album ever from a female rapper. With the help…
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If NYC Top Cop Bill Bratton Wants to Discuss ‘Thugs,’ He Should Start With the NYPD
New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, one of the architects of New York’s racist stop-and-frisk policy, has weighed in on the fatal shooting that took place at a hip-hop concert at Manhattan’s Irving Plaza Wednesday night, and his statement was as prejudiced and hypocritical as one would expect from New York City’s top cop.…
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Black Music Month Means Studio Sessions at The Root
June is almost here—that means sunny skies, warm weather and black music, of course! For Black Music Month, The Root and McDonald’s will honor and celebrate the music (and musicians) of the African Diaspora with Studio Sessions at The Root. This video series will feature contemporary artists from a gamut of genres: global, hip-hop, soul—we’ve…
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Nia Long Said That J. Cole Isn’t Too Young For Her and I Got Hype!
To say that Nia Long is a national treasure is an understatement. Long has been a part of most of our lives since at least the mid-’90s, when she played Beulah “Lisa” Wilkes on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and when a visionary Ice Cube saw fit to cast her in cult classic Friday. Thank you, Ice…
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Rest In Power Afeni Shakur, You Are Appreciated.
We are having what could be considered one of the Blackest years on record. Larry Wilmore dropping the n-word at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner is peak Blackness no matter what side of the “appropriate” aisle you sit on. In fact, in any other year it’s the runaway winner, except moments prior to that moment,…
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An Ode To SWV
I grew up in Frankfurt, Germany, as a military brat in the mid-’80s and early ’90s. Those of us who grew up overseas had one channel to watch on television: AFN, which stands for the Armed Forces Network. We all watched the same cartoons, the same soap operas (General Hospital was followed by Guiding Light), and the…