While B.D.P. and Jay-Z have lent their respective “blueprints” for hip-hop, there’s one album that pretty much laid the foundation for everything that would follow, and didn’t have even have the gall to put “blueprint” in the title. Hell, this album didn’t even need a title, it was just “Run DMC”.    Prior to [cont.]

    There are certain emcees that are extremely dope, the problem is, that you never ever get to hear their material. They can easily be placed on the back of a milk carton because we always wonder where they are at. After Skillz dropped From Where??? a decade ago (yes, a decade), hip hop heads [cont.]

By Darin Gloe What’s up fellas, how you living? Magnif: Chillin, What’s good how are you? Griot: What’s up chillin, everything is real good. How big was it for you guys to be co-signed by the OkayPlayer camp? Magnif: It was real big. Okayplayer is something that is respected by the fans and the hip-hop [cont.]

    Cassidy caught attention by battling Freeway, so when his debut album “Split Personality” dropped in 2004, people expected a vicious pitbull to be let loose in the game. What they got though was an album with a lot of R&B hooks and songs for the ladies. Cassidy returns in 2005 with “I’m a Hustla,” [cont.]

       Cage can pretty much be looked at as the New York indy rap movement’s first born son. In the late nineties, just as the independent 12inch market began to take off, Cage was one of the early settlers, sticking his flag in the dirt with the classic “Agent Orange” 12inch single on Bobbito’s now [cont.]

      After turning the scene upside down with their out of nowhere debut, The Listening, LB has taken hip-hop by storm over the past couple of years. 9th Wonder became the “go to guy” for production, Phonte floored fans everywhere with his collaboration with Nicolay on the Foreign Exchange album and Rapper Big Pooh shut [cont.]

    Getting the entire Wu-Tang Clan together is hard. Not 9th grade high-honors geometry hard, I’m talking about, mapping out the human genome hard. Well, maybe not that hard, but let’s put it this way, you’d have a better chance acing the math section of the SAT’s than getting the original Shaolin warriors together. But [cont.]

    The third album. If you have gotten this far as an artist, it means that you have won over enough fans with your debut and debunked the so-called “sophomore jinx.” Now is the time to deliver. Many third albums have found artists in their “comfort zone,” thus delivering albums full of incredible music. Outkast [cont.]

    Every artist has them: the posse, the entourage, the crewmembers, the hangers-on, the yes-men, the down-since-day-one homies, the distant relatives - all of which happen to rap. Eminem has D12, Jay-Z has Memphis Bleek, Ice Cube had Da Lench Mob, the list goes on and on. For some reason, major artists always feel the need [cont.]

    I first reviewed Kaze’s “On” b/w “Move Over” 12″ almost a year ago and to be honest, the only thing that I can recollect from that first encounter with Kaze was that I wanted to hear more. I had heard nothing about him, hadn’t seen his bio regurgitated across the pages of all the [cont.]

As the story goes, before Dame Dash sold Roc-A-Fella he was signing acts left and right. But out of the 20+ artists on the roster, Kanye West was literally the label’s last priority.  Fast forward to today, with Jay-Z in retirement, Kanye West is not only Roc-A-Fella’s top artist, but also leads the revolution of [cont.]

     As 1/4 of the now defunct Ohio collective known as MHZ, Jakki Tha MotaMouth has received the short end of the stick when the group unofficially set out to pursue solo careers. Jakki was the only artist that never really got a chance to make a name for himself with a solo release or [cont.]

    Everybody knows that hip-hop started on the east coast, but in the mid-90′s the west coast was ruling the airwaves and our television screens.  The east coast was falling back with no where to go. Until two young men from Queensbridge decided they had enough. With the Dogg Pound’s “New York, New York” being regarded [cont.]

   With the exception of Eminem, most battle rappers have difficulty translating their rhymes into something that is enjoyable for a full length album.  Unlike battling, which relies mostly on witty one-liners, creating an album often requires a concept.  While C-Rayz’s championship battling skills are displayed on his second Def Jux full-length recording, The Year of [cont.]

       Herbaliser ain’t nothing new to this, as the duo of Jake Wherry and Ollie Teeba, with the help of numerous co-conspirators, have been putting it down for years. Helping jump off Ninja Tune as a label, the instrumentalist/occasional hip-hop beatmakers have released four albums with the label, each to critical acclaim. Their latest adventure, [cont.]

    Stones Throw’s latest discovery is Koushik Ghosh, who unlike many other projects from the label, has nothing to do with Madlib, and is not a funk reissue. Instead, Koushik is a new breed of artist - one that meets at the crossroads of hard-hitting, atmospheric production (ala DJ Shadow) meshed with lightly sung 60′s psyche-rock [cont.]

     When you think of hip-hop’s original sounds, you probably think of that good ol “boom-bap” sound. Many of us miss it and pray for the day it comes back. But until our prayers our answered, Seattle Washington has produced the Boom Bap Project, a group that should hold us over. And with a name [cont.]

    When The Black Eyed Peas debuted, they were critically acclaimed, with many claiming them the heirs to the Native Tongue movement.  Three albums later, the Black Eyed Peas have undergone a huge makeover, mainly the addition of former Wild Orchid member Fergie, and have gone from acquired taste to world pop stars.  While some [cont.]

Compilation; no rating given.     When Jaysonic, Mekalek and Comel dropped Slow Your Roll, many jaded fans of hip-hop welcomed the debut album with open arms. Not because of its punchlines and metaphors or its trunk rattling, but because of the way the album carried itself. As a light-hearted hip-hop album that didn’t take itself [cont.]

     Famous last words. There have been many throughout hip-hop’s long history – such as Large Professor saying “Main Source Forever” just prior to their break-up or Dr. Dre proclaiming he doesn’t smoke weed on “Express Yourself”, and then later recording The Chronic. Slim Thug is next in line to eat his words with the [cont.]