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."