AHH Stray News: ‘Paid In Full’ Hip-Hop Reader, Right To Vote, Steve Rifkind

Entertainment Weekly recently named Eric B. and Rakim’s Paid In Full as the greatest Hip-Hop album of all time. The magazine listed their top 25 albums in the current issue and the Long Island duo snagged the top spot. Fellow suburbanites De La Soul landed the number two slot with 3 Feet High And Rising. […]

Entertainment

Weekly recently named Eric B. and Rakim’s Paid In Full as the

greatest Hip-Hop album of all time. The magazine listed their top 25 albums

in the current issue and the Long Island duo snagged the top spot. Fellow suburbanites

De La Soul landed the number two slot with 3 Feet High And Rising.

The Notorious B.I.G, Public Enemy, and Run DMC round out the top five. Among

contemporary acts, OutKast (Aquemini) landed at number 11 with Jay-Z

(The Blueprint) and Eminem (The Marshall Mathers LP) at numbers

15 and 17, respectively.

The National Urban

League was awarded an $800,000 grant last week (Nov. 9) from the Verizon Foundation

for the organization’s Online Hip-Hop Reader Program, which began as a

pilot program in New York earlier this year. The funds will allow the program

to continue to design operatives to enhance student’s reading habits.

Literacy experts, educators, rappers and other celebrities form the Hip-Hop

Leadership Council, which selects reading materials for the children. "The

Hip-Hop Reader Program is designed to provide urban high school students with

inspiration and incentives to increase and enhance their reading habits, to

get online, and to participate in our emerging cyber-civilization," the

NUL president and CEO Marc H. Morial said in a statement. "We salute Verizon

for its continued support of this important program, which will help our youths

gain the skills needed to compete in the 21st century."

Right To Vote,

a campaign to end felony disenfranchisement, announced today the organization’s

intention to release a CD featuring rappers Kanye West, Mos Def and Talib Kweli.

The album will help to raise awareness regarding felony disenfranchisement and

the disproportionate number of black and Hispanics who lose their right to vote.

David Banner, dead prez, Common, Erykah Badu, Scarface, Ludacris and Boot Camp

Click are also expected to contribute to the compilation. An “Unlock the

Block” tour featuring several of the artists is scheduled to being in

February.

SRC Records CEO

Steve Rifkind, who signed ODB and Wu-Tang to his label Loud Records in the early

nineties, released a statement offering his sympathy to the family of Dirt McGirt

AKA Russell Jones. “I’d like to extend my heart-felt condolences to the

family of ODB and the Wu Tang family. I have had the pleasure of his friendship

for over a decade, when I first signed him and Wu-Tang to Loud Records. Through

Wu-Tang and his own solo career as an artist, songwriter and producer, ODB came

to not only define a generation, but a musical movement that continues today.

We will miss him."