Most mixtape DJ’s these days are overly concerned with the future: breaking new songs, new artists, new beefs. Occasionally, a posthumous blessing from a late MC may make the mix. Otherwise, expect nothing from yesterday. A Brooklyn DJ with the capability to be a mega-bomb dropper, opted to do otherwise. In June, DJ J Period […]
Ice Cube has been a fixture on the hip-hop scene for almost 20 years now. Many watched in awe as a group of N##### With Attitudes burst on to the hip-hop scene and changed the landscape of the game’s terrain. After a split from NWA due to money, a consciouss awakening through religion and politics, […]
AllHipHop: What are your duties entail as the president of Diplomat Records? Freekey Zeekey: With Diplomat its no set duty. I can have the camera or the tape recorder. I answer phones. I write checks, to sweeping floors. That’s my duty, because this is my business and we still up and running fabulous. Thank Dame […]
April 25, 2003, about 3 a.m. Freekey Zeekey was dazed, bloody, but alive. He had just been shot in the chest and abdomen and run over by his assailants’ vehicle in the Chelsea area of Manhattan. He looked down and his friend Eric “E” Mangrum was lying on the ground with what appeared to be […]
Most people know Randy "Macho Man" Savage from his legendary bouts in the professional wrestling arena. Most don’t know that the man who took wrestling to the mainstream, hopes to do the same with his debut hip-hop album, Be A Man. The album drops October 7th on Big 3 Records. Savage convincingly does the hip-hop […]
Harlem’s smoke is still rising. But this time the fire burns from the rap industry’s latest artist, battle rapper Jae Millz. Our first introduction to Jae Millz on a mainstream level stems from his guest appearance on P.Diddy’s “Making the Band,” when he went toe-to-toe against the group captain Ness. However, Jae Millz is ready […]
AllHipHop: How did you join the Panthers? GJJ: I never joined the Panthers. My function, after Martin Luther King was killed, was to come and defend our community. That was something we had to do. So, when I came out, I worked in the South and then East – New York. I didn’t get to […]
For real, for real: To understand – better yet – to know Tupac Shakur, you must peer beyond hip-hop into history. The family tree that bore Tupac has a lineage of political activists, Black Panthers, and a tightly woven unit all rolled into one prolific individual person that was stolen from the Earth on September […]
A memory. One evening when I was eighteen years old I came home after my night shift at McDonald’s to a police officer standing in my driveway next to my second used car, a fly burgundy ’78 Volvo. He informed me that my car had been seen leaving the scene of a crime. Allegedly someone […]
Grand jury. What is a grand jury? According to the American Bar Association (no liquor, but lots of drunk lawyers) "the primary function of the modern grand jury is to review the evidence presented by the prosecutor and determine whether there is probable cause to return an indictment." Basically, the grand jury was designed as […]
Cathy Scott, the author of the bestseller The Killing of Tupac Shakur, as well as the jaw-dropping The Murder of Biggie Smalls is one ambitious lady. In addition to her teachings (journalism at UNLV) and her column ("Crime and Punishment" for Las Vegas CityLife), she even manages time to solve a murder or two. Her […]
E.D.I., so named for his physical semblance to former Ugandan President Idi Amin, may be an outlaw by moniker, but he’s a hustler by nature. The Co-CEO of One Nation Music Inc., along with his Outlaw partners, Young Noble and Kastro, has managed to triumph over tragedy and advance through adversity to become a major […]
Chuck Philips is a Pulitzer Prize winning writer for the Los Angeles Times, he’s also the man who shocked the hip-hop community and the world in September of 2002 with his two-part investigative report on the murder of Tupac Shakur. The first part of his piece introduced claims that had never previously been made public, […]
California-based emcee Paris is a throwback to an era when red, black and green medallions were standard issue, and hip hop, still a pre-teen, was deemed unmarketable and something to be feared by corporate America. In 1990, Paris released his debut album and single, The Devil Made Me Do It, and became part of a […]
To a nation of teenagers and kids in their early twenties, September means only one thing: Back to School. And after a long summer basking in the sun, and hugging the block like quarter water, it’s time for students to get to stomping in a fresh purr of Air Force Ones. And for Murphy Lee […]
AllHipHop: Everybody thought you and LaChat were enemies because people started calling her the new Queen of Memphis. Gangsta Boo: That was all a conspiracy started by Hypnotized Minds. Juicy (J), me and Chat talk on the phone quite often. We was just brainwashed. I was trynna figure out why she was saying certain things […]
As a member of the Three Six Mafia, Gangsta Boo was part of one of the most successful independent rap groups to emerge out of the south. She shocked the rap world last year when she announced that she would clean up her profanity laced rhymes and was actually seeking out god. In this candid […]
Jedi Mind Tricks is the name – once you hear it you can’t forget it. The subterranean duo began somewhere around early 1996 in Philadelphia. Producer Stoupe the Enemy of Mankind and Vinnie Paz have dropped acclaimed records like Amber Probe EP in 1996, 1997’s Psycho-Social, Chemical, Biological & Electro Magnetic Manipulation(which was recently reissued) […]
On the cover of his first LP, 1996’s Soul On Ice, super emcee Ras Kass ominously appears reclining in the belly of the beast – behind jail bars. Even back then, Ras’ artistic efforts were pushed back a number of times despite the million dollar price tag, pre-album acclaim and hype. Nevertheless, through all of […]
Dwelling from the newly unearth underground hip hop scene of Detroit, King Gordy is determined to make you believe the name. With his hair braided into the configuration of horns and an unapologetically big-b#### crew called the Fat Killahz, King Gordy’s is not your usual emcee. His skills on the mic and who-the-f###-are-you confidence attracted […]
