Hip-Hop.com

You know, one day I need to go into one of these cable network conference rooms and see for myself what they actually do to come up with TV shows. MTV2 is going to resurrect the old Hollywood Squares game show, and they’re gonna move it from LA and into Brooklyn, and fill it up with Brooklyn’s entertainment capital, hip-hop. With credible hip-hop host Peter Rosenberg mastering the ceremonies, Hip Hop Squares is going to be just like the old show but with a twist (like how Bud Light Lime has a twist)—they’re gonna make it a club party, complete with DJ and alcohol on the set, and a VIP section, albeit the most ridiculous looking VIP section that is actually a tower of 3-by-3 grid of squares capable of displaying an X or O.

As with the old Hollywood Squares, which was a big excuse to have 9 celebs throw jokes back and forth, we have 9 hip-hop-er-ish people (although they are credible and big names) trade one-liners while imbibing on set. The set itself is touted to be in Brooklyn, but it’s so glossy and bright it looks like an ultralounge somewhere Downtown. (You can only tell its Brooklyn by the contestants.) But the names… yeah, they did get some dudes in there. From the few trailers they posted, I gleaned Common, Biz Markie, Childish Gambino, Nick “Mariah Carey is my Baby Mama” Cannon (I’m not hating, he actually said that in one of the clips), Questlove, Miss Info, Fat Joe, Pitbull, Mac Miller, Tech N9ne, MGK, Ghostface, and Ashy Larry from Chappelle’s Show. The show will premiere later this month on May 22, I suppose its only fair to wait until then to pass judgement.

It wasn’t so long ago that Rock The Bells was a revivalist show, about reliving the past. I mean, hell, the name: “Rock the Bells”. Last year’s edition was all about legends, and by legends, we mean established stars (people that’ve been around the block) performing classic albums (stuff that’s been around for over ten years) in their entirety—Doggystyle, Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Illmatic and so forth. All great stuff really, but the backwards looking nature of the show might have implied hip-hop has already gone through its brightest moments long ago.

That’s going to change. This year’s RTB, presented by our buddies at Guerilla Union, will now be headlined by the new generation of hip-hop stars. Wiz Khalifa and Kid Cudi this year will share the headlining duties along with esteemed veteran Nas, who with Life Is Good coming next month will focus on new material. Filling out the top of the bill are twenty-somethings J. Cole, Lupe Fiasco, Mac Miller, and Kendrick Lamar. Now lest people start thinking this was going to be a new jack festival, we still have plenty of legends to justify the “Rock the Bells” name, with Ice Cube, Dipset, Method Man and Redman (performing Blackout in its entirety, so the concept of performing whole albums isn’t dead at all), a reunited Hit Squad–EPMD, Das EFX, Keith Murray, and K-Solo–and special appearances from Missy Elliott and Timbaland, and a reunited Bone Thugs-N-Harmony on the bill.

And that’s just the top of the bill. We have more names for you–do check out the flyer after the jump–but we should mention the venue and dates–and here’s another twist–we’ll be seeing more than one day of RTB at each venue. San Bernadino’s Nos Events Center will host RTB on August 18 to 19, Shoreline Ampitheatre in the Bay Area will be August 25 to 26, and the Tri-State area will have RTB in Holmdel, New Jersey at the PNC Bank Arts Center for September 1 to 2. We’ll have more information as to what to expect each day and when tickets are on sale and will post it once we get our hands on ‘em.

UPDATE: Shoreline Ampitheatre tickets presale will go down this Friday, May 18, from 10 AM to 10 PM Pacific time. Special presale password is “HISTORY”. Check out Live Nation for tickets. We’ll have more info here and on our Facebook page when it comes available. read more »

Danny Brown is a distinctive dude: his hair, most obviously, but also the high-pitched whine of his flow, his a rapid-fire chuckle of a laugh, the somewhat awkward but kinetic way he carries himself, and a smile, with a tooth missing. No one quite like him in hip-hop right now, so naturally, cameras tend to gravitate toward him. Vice/Noisey did their little thing with Danny awhile back, but Pitchfork.tv does it one better with this 20 minute documentary, “Detroit State of Mind”. They follow Danny around Detroit for a few days, talking to his family, following him to Dilla Day Detroit show earlier this year that marked J Dilla’s birth and death, going to the studio to check out what’s coming down the line from him, and ending with news coming about Whitney Houston’s death. All along, we get some stories about Danny from his his family, crewmates, and himself, including what it was like to serve a bid and how that changed him.

With Adam “MCA” Yauch’s prolonged illness and everyone preparing for the worst, it’s not hard to imagine people were collecting their thoughts on MCA and the Beastie Boys for a few years now. And when it happened, the dam burst (in more ways than one), and some damn good writing occurred. Here’s some of the best work we came across.

Cosmo Baker was a young street kid in Philly in the early 1980s, and he remembers vividly what it was like to see Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys sweep through the old Spectrum arena. He took to Twitter and completely flooded his timeline, but he later reposted everything to his blog. “3 dudes on stage covered in Bud dancing in front of an enormous dick saying EVERYTHING THAT WAS IN MY FUCKING MIND!” Enormous dick… yeah you need to read the article.

Sasha Frere-Jones should be a music writer you’re already familiar with, but if you didn’t know, the New Yorker music critic actually went to school with MCA. His first-hand account is a reflection of what it was like to see his buddy blow up from neighborhood hardcore kid to national sensation to humanist.

Finally, here’s Questlove’s remembrance, which is definitely from a different perspective from the other two and focuses a bit more on what it was like being a fan of them, and on how amazing the Beasties’ early 90′s transformation was. “I mean even the beatles imploded 5 years post spiritual enlightenment.” The Roots played for the Beasties’ Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction earlier last month.

UPDATE: One more to note: Hua Hsu on Grantland focuses on the Beasties after Check Your Head and the virtues of growing up, and especially MCA, “unafraid of going gray”.

Adam Nathaniel Yauch, better known as MCA of the Beastie Boys, passed away today at the age of 47. He had been battling cancer, which his announcement in 2009 lead to the canceling of several dates, including the Outside Lands festival, and a postponement of their latest album (and now last album with all original members) Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2. As the Beastie Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame earlier this year, MCA was noticeably absent.

The relatively gravelly-voiced Beastie, who provided aural balance to the higher-pitched stylings of Ad-Rock and Mike D, MCA has been with the crew from the very start, since their beginnings as a hardcore punk outfit who first played together on his 17th birthday. Since then, and Beastie’s rise as a hip-hop/punk hybrid (the first example of the two styles compatibility), MCA had evolved from being a beer swilling, women objectifying party animal (what the pop cultures would now call “bro’s”) to a more enlightened and practicing Buddhist, rare in the world of hip-hop and American music in general, revising the lyrics from Licensed to Ill in his later concerts. He also became an activist, organizing all-star concerts to aid the Tibetan cause. Along with his mic work and the guitar chops that he showed off frequently on tracks like “Sabotage”, he was a film director, handling many of the groups music videos under the pseudonym Nathaniel Hörnblowér, and helmed “Awesome! I Fuckin’ Shot That!”, the concert film made with fan footage in the crowds, along with “Gunnin’ for that #1 Spot”, a documentary about basketball prospects from New York.

Yauch is survived by his wife and daughter, and bandmates. [UPDATE: Here is the Beastie Boys' statement on MCA, via stereogum.]

Check out some of our fondest memories of the Beasties after the jump. read more »

“Hello Brooklyn…” If you got the Beasie Boys in your head, or even Lil Wayne and 808′s, that may not be an accident. The playoff-less New Jersey Nets, with Jay-Z as a minority shareholder, has now been officially rechristened the Brooklyn Nets, and as all such things go, the first thing to change is the logo. And from the looks of it, it was Jay-Z behind the rebranding as he is credited as the designer of the logos the Nets will use next year along with the new black and white color scheme. And their new tagline, from a Beastie Boys track on Paul’s Boutique and reminiscent of a track off of Jay-Z’s American Gangster album a few years ago, is going mesh quite well with the vintage hip-hop theme the Nets are going for in their merchandising, with plenty of cues towards Beastie Boys, Biggie Smalls, and of course, Jay-Z songs (or even Biggie AND Jay-Z songs, even).

And to say it, Jay-Z didn’t do a bad job at all. It’s the NBA logo equivalent of a slim suit with a skinny black tie, and in a sea of logo misfires that is the modern-day NBA (gaddam that Golden State Warriors logo still looks clunky as hell) it’s nice someone finally can put something vintage looking on their shorts that actually looks classy as well. Speaking of vintage, here’s another sign that hip-hop has aged to the point where we can be talking about vintage hip-hop.

President Obama makes an unexpected stop on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon the other night, and with Jimmy and The Roots on support, they make student interest loan rates sound sexy(-ish). Always nice to see Black Thought in soft focus behind the president.

Remember when Dave Chapelle gave Wayne Brady instant hood cred with one little skit on his old Comedy Central show? The now-Lets Make A Deal host is doing street things again, this time he’s freestyling over 2Pac and Public Enemy beats on Sway in the Morning on Shade 45 for their Five Fingers of Doom bit. And really, he’s a bit rusty but he’s not bad for a game show host.

Thanks to MissInfo.tv

4/20 is a special day in San Francisco, and A$AP Rocky understands the urgency in such matters. He swept across the city yesterday, starting with a day at Black Scale in Union Square, moving on to the Bill Graham Auditorium for the show with Wiz Khalifa, then heading to the Mezzanine for Black Scale’s afterparty in his honor.

Sometime before they filled the stage with girls (which happened quick) and kicking them off (not so quick) we got this footage of A$AP Mob’s empathetic reaction to the beat from “Pretty Flacko”. Check out the pics we got of him at the party and at the in-store appearance at Black Scale, and also check out Grady Brannan for his pics from the show.

Ice-T—rapper, heavy metal vocalist, actor, reality TV star, and now, film director. The original gangster has helmed a documentary shown at the Sundance Festival and they’re now getting ready for the film’s big national debut. “Something out of Nothing: The Art of Rap” is a sprawling documentary where Ice-T talks to not literally (it just seems that way) every rapper alive about rap, from Bambaata, Rakim, and KRS-ONE, to Yasiin Bey, Kanye West and Eminem, and its trailer just hit the street (technically, the Internet, but whatever). And it does look to be special: all the other elements got their documentary treatments before (Skratch, Wild Style, and Planet B-Boy come to mind), but none of those were ever hosted by someone of the stature of Ice-T. If you were wondering what difference that makes, notice how chatty the usually reclusive Dr. Dre is in the trailer. The film is out June 15, chock-full of interviews and freestyles, and if you really need a review of it now, check out the Hollywood Reporter’s review from Sundance.