Hip-Hop.com

It’s a bit hard to not look at Mobb Deep and start thinking we’re watching their reincarnation. The group that personified the 90′s style of youthful street hip-hop reunited after a lengthy hiatus due to Prodigy’s legal problems and is touring the country to celebrate, stopping at the Mezzanine in San Fran on Sunday night. With the appearance, Mobb Deep came with a more mature, world-wise attitude and delivered a solid, nostalgic performance which placated the impatient and imbibed crowd that never cooperated much with the show’s MC and host, Flossafee. read more »

Revered poet and proto-hip-hopper Gil Scott-Heron has passed away today, at the age of 62. Scott-Heron is of course the man who gave us “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” his most famous and oft-quoted and oft-parodied poem. His contributions to black culture and hip-hop are innumerable, but he always stayed relevant; he was sampled not long ago by Kanye West on “Who Will Survive in America,” the end track of his last CD. After a 16-year hiatus due to personal and legal matters, including bouts with drug addiction, Scott-Heron released his 13th album last year, I’m New Here.

Read more: NPR

Shabazz Palaces releases onto the Internet a new track from their forthcoming full-lengther, Black Up, due July 28. “Swerve…the reeping of all that is worthwhile (Noir not withstanding)” is the second track released for the album’s release, after “an echo from the hosts that profess infinitum.”

The Pitchfork readers out there should know all about Shabazz by now, but in case you didn’t know, Shabazz Palaces is the brainchild of Ish “Butterfly” Butler of Digable Planets, who also fronted the ill-fated Cherrywine project. read more »

Guerilla Union has announced this year’s Rock the Bells Festival lineup, which will tour with stops in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Boston. As with last year’s event, Rock the Bells is going classic, bringing in some of the biggest hip-hop artists around to perform their most memorable material. This year’s headliners are no strangers to the now-classic summertime hip-hop festival, as Ms. Lauryn Hill, performing songs from Miseducation, and Nas, performing from Illmatic, set to grace the same stage. Joining them on the classics tip are Cypress Hill, Mos Def and Talib Kweli as Black Star, half of the Wu-Tang (GZA, RZA as host, Ghost and Rae, and Masta Killah), Erykah Badu, Mobb Deep (along with Big Noyd), Immortal Technique, Black Moon, Souls of Mischief, Evidence of Dilated Peoples, and Slaughterhouse, the supergroup of Joe Budden, Royce the 5’9″, Joell Ortiz and Crooked I. For the cool kids, there’s Mac Miller, Blu, Exile and Fashawn, Childish Gambino (aka, Donald Glover of TV’s Community), Random Axe, Macklemore, Big KRIT, Freddie Gibbs and Roc Marciano, all there on support.

For more, check out rockthebells.net. The flyer is after the jump. read more »

Red Bull will bring back the EmSee competition this year, pitting the nation’s best battle rhymers against each other to crown a national champion. The competition was inaugurated last year, curated by Eminem with a finals battle in Saint Andrew’s Hall in Detroit, the city’s mecca for live hip-hop. In a twist from your usual freestyle battle, each emcee needed to incorporate word and image cues from the stage monitors in their raps to ensure those are really improvised freestyles and not a bunch of clever pre-writtens.

This year’s EmSee: Welcome to the A tour will consist of seven regional competitions and a final, with the first regional in Los Angeles at the Echoplex on Sunset Boulevard on June 9th. Bun B will host the proceedings, while Chali 2NA, Kurupt and Supernatural will be there as judges and will give a special performance. Tickets available now and $10 cheap. The whole series of eight shows will be taped and broadcast nationally. We’ll have more info to come.

Check out a video of last year’s finals below for a taste of what’s to come. Part 2 is after the jump. To find out more, click over to RedBullUSA.com.

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Kanye West headlined the Mawazine festival in Morocco last Saturday. Above are two songs from the set, and here is our man D. Prosper’s (@dpros on Twitter) account of the show, who was there live at the festival:

The night was amazing at OLM Souissi on May 21st. Well over 100,000 people gathered in the city of Rabat for the 10th annual Mawazine Rhythms of the World Festival presented by Morocco’s king, Sa Majeste Le Roi Mohammed VI, and Maroc Cultures. Dressed all in white, Kanye West took the stage late but still raised the intensity of the evening. You can tell by the young Moroccan crowd that his performance was right on time by the high energy and cheering of the diverse crowd. Kanye West’s 2 hour set was sheer genius, from new songs like “Power” to old favorites like “Through the Wire.” Surprisingly, the crowd knew all the words, and despite peoples differences of religion or politics of the world, hip-hop unites us all and remains a global phenom. Kanye West continues to push the envelope and live music experience with his illustrious stage effects, set design and beautiful ballerinas that grace the stage throughout his set—hip-hop artists should take notes. The Mawazine festival was a great moment of history for Morocco, hip-hop, and world music in general. We are all one through the love of Good Music.

Ms. Lauryn Hill, again dressed in a long billowy gown, came back Wednesday night to the Bay Area in her third such appearance in a little over a month, bringing with her to the Mezzanine in San Francisco her usual backing band and perhaps a different demeanor. The stage, tightly spaced but larger than the one at The New Parish that barely contained her ensemble, appeared to carry more weight than usual with a special Bob Marley tribute, where Hill would sandwich her usual set with several Marley classics. Maybe it’s that she is doing a special tribute to a man whose bloodline she carried for so many months and years, but she definitely came with a different, more particular attitude. read more »

While a crystal obelisk alighted by the effects pad on the DJ mixer in the center console, two scratch shamens enter the stage wearing fullbody gowns covering their entire body and face except the eyes, where they wear glasses with lights on the side of the frame. This ain’t your typical DJ show. Such is the beginning of DJ Qbert’s new stage show, “Dymentional Tryportation,” which debuted at Yoshi’s in San Francisco on Saturday. read more »

So, how long has it been since Lauryn Hill did television? Lauryn Hill, accompanied by her usual band and a glorious dookie rope, performed twice on Thursday on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon in celebration of Bob Marley Week, playing his classics “Could You Be Loved” (above) and “Chances Are” (below, after the jump). read more »

If there’s one city where rock and rap can co-mingle with relative ease, that’s Los Angeles, and it will be the home of Rage Against the Machine’s LA Rising festival, taking place at the LA Memorial Coliseum. Along with Rage, Ms. Lauryn Hill and Immortal Technique will be there representing hip-hop. They will join Rise Against, Muse, and El Gran Silencio. Tickets go on sale Friday at 10am at goldenvoice.com.