The late Black Rob was always great, but around the time that he released his second album, The Black Rob Report, he really hit his stride and recorded two tracks that I still listen every chance I get. ‘Jeans and Sneakers’ was originally an unholy alliance between a heavily-edited promo rap for Biggie’s planned Brooklyn…
Before rap blogging, print magazines dipped their toes into the wacky world of making fun of rappers. More often than not, this led to someone getting put into a yoke at an open bar even the following week. Let’s hope that no interns were harmed following the release of the 5th anniversary issue of XXL…
The year? 2002. The Internets was still but a niche amusement for those with the patience to wait five minutes for their dial-up modem to connect through their phone line to spend another fifteen minutes to load a nude. But then the publishing world was blessed with a shining beacon of light to guide us…
I did some work with DJ Pizzo this year over at Cuepoint, but previous to that I’d been a loyal customer of the main mail-order hip-hop stores, one of which was HipHopSite, which was founded by Pizzo and Warren Peace in 1996. He explained how the wild west that was the early internet allowed their…
Here’s a look back at the ill-fated marriage between Kool G Rap and Rawkus Records that I put together for Red Bull Music Academy Daily: Kool G Rap’s The Giancana Story: An Oral History
Eminem‘s second major label album cemented him as a rap superstar. But does it still hold up in 2015? No Country For Old (Rap) Men: Fifteen Years On – Remembering The Marshall Mathers LP
Can Curtis Still Cut The Mustard In 2014 Or Nah? No Country For Old (Rap) Men: G-Unit Is Still A Wash
A decade ago, the magic of the Blogger platform allowed many an aspiring rap message board warrior step into the big leagues and pull themselves up by their bootstraps to become the media big dogs that they are today. The characters covered here have risen to the ranks of published authors, college professors, internets celebrities,…
Why is it that The Heatmakerz, Swizz Beatz nor Dame Grease never snatched up this Giorgio Moroder 80’s epic from Stallone’s arm-wrestling magnum opus Over The Top? With it’s action packed synths, cock-rock geetar, tinny drum rolls and built-in chorus stabs, this could have been the tipping point for one of the numerous Dimplomats Diplomats…