Gossip and rumor have always been a big part of the hip-hop game, but what was once confined to dumb rumors such as ‘Does Big Daddy Kane have AIDS’ has now become a cottage industry to itself. Every morning I have to trawl through a seemingly endless stream of emails announcing ‘Lil’ Wayne Is Pregnant…
Category: Not Your Average
Never less than ill
Rap Beardos – A Photo Essay
Supply And Demand – Scholarwise Interview
Photo: Alexander Richter Here’s another sure-shot from Phillip ‘Half-A-Mil’ Mlynar, who has managed to track down someone so obscure that even Lace Da Booms was like, ‘Oh, snap!’. Over a decade on from its 1998 release, Scaramanga‘s Seven Eyes, Seven Horns album now sounds like one of the purest statements from the mid-to-late-’90s indie rap…
Roc Marciano – The Unkut Interview, Volume 2
Photo: Alexander Richter The first time I spoke to Marciano, his UN crew had paired down to him two members and he had just landed a solo deal with SRC, with plans to put together a project for early 2008 release. Since then, he was pretty much MIA for a couple of years with the…
Big Twins (Infamous Mobb) – The Unkut Interview
From his days as a member of Mobb Deep‘s entourage to his role as a third of Infamous Mobb up until last years superb solo debut The Project Kid, Twin Gambino has stood out from the pack. Currently completing work on his ambitious Infamous Queensbridge double CD (which features a mix of over 30 new…
When Are Dedications…Exploitation?
It’s only been a few days since another hip-hop legend has been taken away, and already the fuckery has reached fever-pitch. It’s almost like an unwritten law that with each and every death in the rap world, the same circus springs-up and goes through the motions. The extent varies according to how well-known the artist…
TJ Swan’s Lost Single
First there was The Search For TJ Swan, followed by the Tribute and eventually this: tj swan is my father…i mean sperm doner..he fell off and is gonna stay off..he doesnt take care of his daughter’s (he has 3) i am his 1st daughter n i want evryone to know he’s a liar and a…
Producer, Engineer or Beatmaker?
Some things are hard to define. What exactly is the role of the ‘Executive Producer’ on an album? Is it the guy who paid for the record to be made? The dude who decided which beats to use and which guests to invite? Or the character who sat up the back and simply nodded his…
Rick Rubin – The Man, The Myth
When Rick Rubin is written about in the media, he is either portrayed as “the most important producer of the last 20 years” or as the shaggy ‘Wolfboy’ guru who carries lapis lazuli Buddhist prayer beads and dislikes footwear. While many of the startlingly broad range of musicians that have worked with Rick gush his…
10 Things I Discovered From The Book ‘Def Jam, Inc.’
Somehow or other, I recently found myself at the local library, where I stumbled across a book titled Def Jam, Inc. The author, Stacy Guerseva, did a great job of recalling the history from the early days of the label based in Rick Rubin‘s dorm through to the powerhouse that it would eventually become. Of…
Toney For Mayor?
Guess some Nas stans got a little butt-hurt over the last piece. Of course, they failed to read the part where I declared that “there’s no denying that Nas is one of the greatest MC’s of all-time” and shed tears over the fact that I didn’t list ‘If I Ruled The World’ as a ‘classic’….
How Can Nas Be Garbage?
“With the exception of G Rap, Nas has more dope songs then anyone from Queens and just as many as any other rapper in the world” – Johnny Hardcore Following this challenge of sorts by a guy who seems to have taken his screen name from a male pr0n star, let’s take a look at…