If  you’re in the ATL, check for STANZA’s  feature on Comcast’s, The Stand On Demand. Stanza was featured here on IHH sometime ago.

Indie artists who want to find out more about The Stand On Demand can follow on Twitter. @standondemand

Former Death Row aritst, DR. Dre has filed a lawsuit for reportedly not receiving royalty payments from his 1992 album, The Chronic

Dre claims he hasn’t been paid a penny since he bounced out on Death Row in 1996. Since then, Death Row filed bankruptcy and was recently bought by a company called WIDEawake.

“When it came to paying artist royalties and honoring limits on Dr. Dre recordings that could be released, the “new” Death Row Records, to quote our client, ‘forgot about Dre,’” Young’s attorney Howard King said in a statement. “This lawsuit will make sure they remember.”

Dre is suing for unspecified damages of more than $75,000.

Hmmmm …Sounds like a teachable moment. Check my past article on how music royalties work. Look forward to a more in-depth post about how artist royalties are calculated.

spotted at www.prohiphop.com

This very sad but true commentary on why females are M.I.A. in hip hop, should make all of us who claim to love the music and culture take a look at themselves. The absence of women in hip hop is the big ugly elephant in the room that few want to talk about. It’s really a scary sign that the culture is not moving forward.  In fact, women are playing less of a role than they did just 10 years ago. Some say that they’re not good enough to compete with their male counterparts. Start kickin’ that shit to me, and I have a Jim Crow story I’ll tell you about. I get very few submissions from females, and I wish there were more.

Sure hip hop can be degrading to women and chauvinistic. I also believe that this is reflective of society as a whole. But, even the porn business has women who are running companies, distributing and producing their own products. This is a problem in hip hop that needs to be fixed. Women have something to say and we need to listen. Their absence could be one of the reasons why hip hop started going sour. Think about it!

When I started this blog, I made a vow to myself that I’d rarely use this space as a platform for my own projects. This can sometimes can pollute a good thing (see The Source Magazine). Anyway, Chicago, the city that I live in, has become the most dangerous city in the U. S. for school children. Read the rest of this entry »

 

 Save Me_Chicago Hip Hop Against Violence: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

For me it was another year and another subpar BET Awards show. I usually make it a point to miss them and the MTV awards because they’ve consistently been so disappointing, but due to the tragic loss of Michael Jackson, I decided I’d watch this year. There were close to no memorable moments but even worse, hip hop added more damage to it’s image last night. I decided I’d grade the hip hop performances with commentary. Read the rest of this entry »

Very seldom is Michael Jackson’s connection to hip hop mentioned. Here’s a map and list of some of the most memorable hip hip songs that sampled some of his music.

* Got to Be There (1971) sampled by Havoc on Be There (2007)
* Maria (You Were the Only One) (1971) sampled by Fat Joe on Bendicion Mami (2006)
* Ain’t No Sunshine (1972) sampled by Ghostface Killah feat. Sun God on Street Opera (2006)
* I Wanna Be Where You Are (1972) sampled by Grand Puba on I Like It (I Wanna Be Where You Are) (1995)
* I Wanna Be Where You Are (1972) sampled by MURS on Can It Be (2008) Read the rest of this entry »

I’m leaving the world of music production and blogging to explore the fine art of Pimpin’…just kiddin’

These young ladies helped me promote my website QuickBeats.net. and they did a great job. I threw this pic up because a reader said that I hardly have any women on the site and this was my quickest, temporary remedy for it.

Anyway, I’m going to slowly change the focus of this blog to cater more to fans of hip hop rather than to artists. What do I mean by that? Right now, most of my readers are people in the industry because of the music business related posts that are usually on the site. While I think that this is a good service and valuable, I want to become a better resource for exposing independent hip hop artists rather than solely being a blog centered around music business. Read the rest of this entry »

Real talk! Malice from the Clipse just became my muthafuckin’ hero. With all these fake ass gangsters in the rap game today, cats ashamed to say they held an honest job, even it was as a corrections officer, and beefs that have become an outright embarrassment to the culture, this dude’s words felt like a swig of water in a hot ass dessert.

Why can’t some in hip hop separate fact from fiction? Entertainment from reality? That puzzles me. It wasn’t always that way. A climate has been created in hip hop that says if you’re not living what your spit in your rhymes then you’re a fraud. It’s been costing some the Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe I’ll write a commentary about this later because if I do at this moment, it will be filled with too many expletives.

Okay, Mr. Face drops a few jewels in this interview. The ones I’m particularly referring to are those encouraging up and coming artists to keep striving to reach their goals, BUT this Rock n’ Roll shit is gettin’ outta hand!!

Last week or so, there were hip hop news headlines that Lil Wayne and Lupe Fiasco were making the jump from hip hop to rock music in their future projects. Now I’m all for expansion and evolution. And, being an artists myself, I would never confine a fellow artist to one box. Freedom of creativity is thing that makes music grow and expand….but this may become embarrassing.

Did anyone see Kanye’s last performance on SNL? That’s what a rap star trying to be a rock star looks like. That was painful to watch. When rap meets rock successfully, you get Rage Against the Machine or even Red Hot Chilli Peppers. I also saw the Roots kill a few rock joints in concert. When it’s done bad, you get Ice-T’s band, Body Count. You have to respect and be embraced by the culture before you can just jump in it. You wouldn’t respect Lenny Kravitz if he said he was spittin’ verses on his next album would you? Read the rest of this entry »