Hip Hop Stories, Videos, Interviews of Note

should i start a "hip hop news/stories" thread ?
i like this piece
http://www.okayplayer.com/news/pete-rock-c-l-smooth-talk-troy-complex-video.html
― i didn't even give much of a fuck that you were mod (forksclovetofu), Thursday, June 13, 2013 8:22 PM

Might be good for another thread. Either way keep linking cos that's a great video.
You/others may be interested in this kinda long Kurupt interview
http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/interviews/id.2120/title.kurupt-opens-up-about-foxy-brown-relationship-reconciling-with-dmx
― Spottie_Ottie_Dope, Thursday, June 13, 2013 8:30 PM

Nice.

The True Hip-Hop stories series was pretty cool

Masta Ace on 'The Symphony'
http://vimeo.com/channels/dnicetv/2495934

Bucksot on 'How Many Emcees'
http://vimeo.com/channels/dnicetv/3167702

Monie Love on 'Monie in the Middle'
http://vimeo.com/channels/dnicetv/2976388 (her Big Daddy Kane story is pretty great)

yeah, i like that monie piece!

The Scarface interview for Hardnock tv was interesting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4x7bhUR_H8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bUpeKyy-CE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si-Qn0FG2dQ

love face
"hip hop is like a DRIVE THRU now...fruity loops... ugh"

She’s a good person most of the times. She can go crazy. She’ll pop you, and you don’t know why. That’s one of the things I loved about her, though. I never had a girl fight over me. Inga tried to beat up on my fans. [Laughs.] Girls be like, “Hey Kurupt. I love you!” [And she’d say], “Woah, woah, woah. Do you know who this man is? That’s my husband.”

That used to excite me so much! I would say, “She is such a rider. I can’t even leave her. I never had a girl like this before. She really likes me.” She would just take off like [makes popping sound.] I’ll be like, “You can’t just beat the fans, Inga. What is wrong with you?” I was lit up, like, “Damn, I really like her.” This is the shit. Wow.

“C’mon Inga. Let’s get the fuck up outta here. What’s wrong with you? Beating up the fans. What’s going on? I love you so much.” [Laughs.] She was vicious. We did the boat cruise in Puerto Rico, and they were telling me stories and they said, “Foxy did one of these.” I said, “How long before she got kicked off?” I just knew it. He said, “Shit. Like two days.” Went to the nail lady and the nail lady said, “Wait, I got clients. I can’t do you.” Inga beat her up. Jesus Christ! They kicked her off the boat cruise as soon as they got to shore. I knew it.

def the pinnacle of that interview

bookmarking this thread

been listening to a bunch of Scarface the last week or two actually, great timing with posting those interviews

this is kinda cool
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiNKyBALfuk

corny but cool

Ha, it's good/corny. How badass would that be if Gza came into your science class in high school?

"remember that mother nature screaming that anybody can get it" is kind of a dope lyric

The True Hip-Hop stories series was pretty cool

lol this is THE D-Nice, right?

Yeah

Monie's accent is so weird! great story tho

Yeah I was trying to figure out what that accent was.

seemed like when she mentioned being big in England her accent immediately got way more British

totally gonna rebrand my moves as "player proof" instead of "wussy ass"

Q Tip
http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/q-tip

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KQb4Jx-SeM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXIl1O2o1lA

drunk nas

man that Nas was hard to watch

"life is goooooood," dips head, seems unable to hold it above a crooked nod
peter (or paul) rosenberg continues asking him earnest questions about the first time he met serch

http://oldtothenew.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/old-to-the-new-qa-prime-minister-pete-nice-part-one/

nice

tried searching for this thread using misremembered keywords a while ago to say thanks for the scarface interview, spottie. really enjoyed.

Jeru The Damaja and Premier on the making of Come Clean
http://www.complex.com/tv/shows/magnum-opus/come-clean-jeru-the-damaja-magnum-opus#ooid=B1d2VyZDr4DtZmGx_uDAjI3RgaqavJyf

in honor of the jay-z poll, the making of reasonable doubt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHl43CnfcJI

Joeski Love on "Pee-Wee's Dance" (directed by D-Nice!), the part where he's talking about Soulja Boy and Ice-T is great

http://vimeo.com/2797317

man that's awesome. i always bug out when that song comes on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBFV4gfvrDk

my favorite Red Bull Music Academy lecture is Egyptian Lover's:

http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/egyptian-lover

Documentary on Yo MTV raps
http://vimeo.com/71934383
http://vimeo.com/71973078

OMG @ shock G's Dr. Strange grey streaks!!!!

lol thought you would appreciate that

the making of come clean jeru thing was amazing

Yeah love that one.

love bill adler's opening on the yo mtv doc

why are all these clothing companies paying all this money to fund these documentaries that not a lot of people actually watch and don't have the same quality as actual TV?

there's a whole music nerd niche content/????/profit thing going on with a lot of companies' online presence right now but i'm not necessarily mad at it. you saying 'same quality as actual TV' like visually it all looks crummy or it's not up to the theoretical bar of if MTV or Fuse was doing docs about this stuff?

VH1Docs are a lot more tightly edited and have access to a lot more music and archival footage, so yes

presumably stussy is just paying a marketing "social media" company to create content and they okay'd this as it's evergreen, nerd chic and cheaper than creating a national ad campaign by a damn sight?

Yeah probably about right. Stussy wasnt even a part of hip hop fashion during the Yo Raps days iirc? Was more of a surf/skate/rasta thing I remember anyway. I dont remember it aligning with hip hop fashion until DIlla was immortalized wearing a stussy shirt.

i think of stussy as skateboardery from that era

I think in 5th-6th grade all I wore was stussy pants, gotcha jackets and jordan VI's

here's yr answer btw: http://www.fibre2fashion.com/news/fashion-news/newsdetails.aspx?news_id=150272

this is kind of a dope shirt except for the huge ugly logo
http://www.stussy.com/us/de-la-soul-tee

gangstarr one is nice
tho http://www.stussy.com/us/gang-starr-tee?color_item=210

i ain't paying 36 bucks for a tshirt in any case

yeah no

It's weird to think of wearing a shirt that has three separate brands converging

What's your personal style

tbr i like the stussy logo

about the only fashion logo i like is versace's but i'm not exactly going for that look

and xposting from the gmob thread for posterity: http://www.npr.org/2013/08/20/213531470/goodie-mob-on-hip-hop-made-by-and-for-adults

Love the stussy logo, always have. My signature from like 91-94 was in the exact same form.

did someone say stussy?

stussy brand always aligned itself w/ hip hop even though rappers didn't wear stussy.

going to the taping on this, lookin forward to it

[NPR Music’s Microphone Check presents "Eight Million Stories: Hip-Hop in 1993," a storytellers evening about one of the most singularly productive and creative years in hip-hop culture.

Panelists for the evening include* GHOSTFACE KILLAH (Wu-Tang Clan), RALPH McDANIELS (video director and host of Video Music Box), PRINCE PAUL (producer and DJ), FAITH NEWMAN (former Columbia Recs A&R who signed Nas), and MIKE DEAN (producer/engineer & frequent Kanye collaborator).

The “Eight Million Stories: Hip-Hop in 1993” event is part of the yearlong NPR Music series Hip-Hop’s Golden Year. An edited version of the conversation will be made available as an episode of Microphone Check.

NPR Music’s Microphone Check, hosted by Frannie Kelley and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, offers audiences commentary on hip-hop and interviews with its leading artists, as well as a 24/7 music stream that plays the full breadth of rap music.

*scheduled to appear, subject to change

Cool, link it up whenever it comes out.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/MicrophoneCheck/2013/09/11/221440934/marley-marl-on-the-bridge-wars-ll-cool-j-and-discovering-sampling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkEPtuLGnEQ
"You turn on the radio now, it's all like one big long-ass song. Only thing that change is a different artist's name on it."

love these dudes but some of those complaints are kind of ... off

I dunno about the complaints about radio (why the fuck would I ever listen to the radio) but I don't think you could say that Earl Sweatshirt and Kanye and Chief Keef sound the same, or that they don't express a political viewpoint (well maybe Keef doesn't I can't make it through any of his bullshit)

also weird to hear the head of Def Jam South complain about labels (or does he no longer have that job)

There's some nice stuff in the Combat Jack interview with Big Daddy Kane:

http://thecombatjackshow.com/show/the-combat-jack-show-the-big-daddy-kane-episode/#.UmKIupQ54V8

like Doug E. Fresh teaching him how to be a stage performer by showing him video tapes of James Brown and Pink Floyd concerts

and how he was better friends with KRS than Shan during the BDP/Juice Crew conflict

lots of good Biz Markie stuff too

marley seems like a great dude

http://www.spin.com/articles/wu-tang-clan-enter-the-wu-tang-36-chambers-oral-history/

The making of Gang Star - Hard to Earn interview with Premier
http://nahright.com/news/the-making-of-gang-starrs-hard-to-earn-with-dj-premier/

Also this grantland wu piece should be itt:
http://grantland.com/features/wu-tang-clan-20th-anniversary-reunion-rza-gza-ghostface/

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/14/magazine/does-a-sugar-bear-bite.html?pagewanted=all
kind of an amazing article from 96

"It's sort of hard to keep up with the apocrypha on Suge," says Warren Beatty, who has become quite friendly with Suge while researching a movie project set in the rap world. "I mean, Puff Daddy, Muff Daddy, whatever. I know Suge was very close to the man who died. And I know he was very upset. The apocrypha is just talk, even when it's pungent."

great article!

lol Beatty

it's even better when you read it because the beatty quote comes out of nowhere

lol this guy
http://beatsandrants.blogs.com/.a/6a00d8342039be53ef0133f149e81d970b-200wi

yeah, the danny boy sidebar is kinda wow

it's crazy they've never really been able to pin anything serious on Suge. I mean, it seems kind of inevitable but at the moment he's free on "unsupervised parole"

http://www.crazyhood.com/diggin-files-eric-b-rakim-bill-adler/
amazing stuff

it's wild how little respect rakim gets in those old articles; the emcee used to be an afterthought to the dj

Oral history of Rawkus

https://myspace.com/discover/trending/2014/04/16/the-oral-history-of-rawkus-records/

I never linked this!
http://www.npr.org/blogs/MicrophoneCheck/2013/11/11/239941174/eight-million-stories-hip-hop-in-1993

Nice, gonna to dive into these (at some point)

I listened to one of those NPR Microphone Check interview podcasts hosted by Ali Shaheed Muhammed and some other person and they basically let E-40 talk about contract details and publishing royalties for an hour.

which was awesome

Yeah that was linked to in the e40 thread I think, one of the best things I've read this year
There wasn't an E-40 thread

definitely gonna read that Rawkus one, thanks.

a bit afar of topic but interesting
http://www.archdaily.com/501449/the-fifth-pillar-a-case-for-hip-hop-architecture/

http://www.crazyhood.com/diggin-files-wu-tang-clan-bill-adler/

http://www.crazyhood.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/wu-tang-rap-pages-1.jpg
http://www.crazyhood.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/wu-tang-rap-pages-2.jpg
http://www.crazyhood.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Source-4-93-VV-6-94.jpg
http://www.crazyhood.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/source-editorial-by-cheo-8-94.jpg

ha those illustrations!

when the illustrations are bad enough that they get the writer punched

lmao at all of this

Man those ODB and Raekwon illustrations bear such little resemblance to the men in question.

the follow up story is interesting as well:
http://www.crazyhood.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/toure-1-10-10-95.jpg

These days we know Toure as a fairly ubiquitous talking head on tv. He is the host of Fuse’s “HipHop Shop” and “On the Record” and co-host of MSNBC’s “The Cycle.” Back in the Nineties, he wrote not only for The Voice, but for The Source, XXL, Rap Pages, Spin, Essence, and for the English magazine The Face.

Here Toure goes deep. in his opinion, The Wu-Tang, J.U.N.I.O.R. Mafia (a/k/a Biggie Smalls’s crew), and the Suge Knight’s Death Row clique each comprised a hiphop family. All of them were following in the wake of “the first true hiphop family,” Public Enemy, differing from PE’s model “only in character, not structure.” He calls this phenomenon Blockism.

Cheo had suggested something similar in his piece for Rap Pages. “The rules for survival” in the hardrock section of every sprawling metropolis – Staten Island’s Stapleton Projects, in the Wu-Tang’s case — “are quite simple: Never travel anywhere without a crew of brothers ready to fight alongside you like the group’s collective ass depended on it. And never, ever leave home without your sword, kid.”

Cheo then went on to quote Inspector Deck as follows: “We on some real family shit, and if you don’t have your family, you’re fucked, man.”

But here’s Toure:

These families conform to the classic matriarchal African American family structure except that here the matriarchs are men – which is also traditional, since in African American families, roles are always adaptable. That black men organized themselves into largely female families speaks to sexism…but also to a hunger to experience maleness.

Toure ends with a very sympathetic, even lyrical, appreciation of the hip-hop-crew-as-family, by way of explaining why RZA decided to keep the music business at arm’s length and to rely on his homies instead:

Blockism, then, is a more pragmatic nationalism and the hiphop family a comfort zone for strangers in a strange land. A mobile home to make your trip – through the industry, across the Atlantic, from the cradle to the grave – a little mo better.

Whether or not this theory strikes you as deeply insightful or wildly fanciful, it is not standard hip hop critical discourse. I emailed Toure recently wondering why it didn’t earn him a punch in the eye when it was first published.

“I heard, much later, that some folks wanted to beat me up for that. But they never did. Maybe they didn’t know where to find me,” he replied. “Also The Voice was not a prime concern for those folks and their friends. That same piece in The Source would’ve been war, but The Voice was largely invisible to them.”

http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/magazine/bob-power-interview
I like the comparison of dilla to monk, that feels right.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/microphonecheck/2014/07/31/336885624/cormega-i-just-want-to-be-a-soldier-for-my-culture

Probably the wrong thread, but Houston has a classic hip-hop station now. 92.1 - I heard Warren G, JJ Fad, Snoop, Too Short,

Wish we had one in DC

this is a good watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08rPLhdBpQI

that was so good, wish it was longer!! ty for sharing

love that adobe sponsors that
would never have intuited that september 11 was the moment that stopped the gold rush

crazy that they did 19,000 covers

the price options look to explain that; you could get an $800 design job for your album cover.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLVGrZGSFXg

interview with Wendy Day on helping Tupac when he was shot, getting No Limit and Cash Money deals, Freddie Foxx putting a gun to Birdman's head outside Hot 97, great interview

http://nahright.com/news/2014/11/20/a-conversation-with-wendy-day-pt-1/

good read

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F4fQy0Rc6Q

I've been on-and-off watching this Art of Organized Noize doc on Netflix over the past few days, it's allright - kinda sloppily made but everybody participates and some good anecdotes. Big Gipp is predictably entertaining.

yeah got that in the queue

Puffy's interview bits (idk why he's even in it tbh) are straight out of that Chappelle sketch about him. At one point an intern walks on camera and gives him a vial of some sort of clear liquid to drink and all I could think of was "the finest breastmilks"

please someone test drive that pimp doc and tell me if a 30 minute complex video is worth sitting through

no

watched most of it. was fine.

Freeway talks about his kidney failure
http://www.okayplayer.com/news/okp-exclusive-freeway-on-kidney-failure-dialysis-free-will-album.html/2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYwDrhSNn3Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1f-94TjF9M

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/entertainment/golden-age-of-hip-hop/

Is this rap’s real golden age?

It’s long been the dominant style of American pop, but this year, the music’s sweep feels astonishing

By Chris Richards

wrong thread? wrong thread

Ok. Just stuck it on Industry Plant one...

Dear friends and fam,

I'm delighted to share the news that Cornell University has posted a significant batch of materials from the Adler Archive on their website. Largely comprising hip-hop-oriented newspaper and magazines articles spanning 1979 through 2013, the trove concentrates on the careers of LL Cool J, Queen Latifah, Public Enemy, Salt-N-Pepa, Eric B. & Rakim and the roster of rappers who recorded for the Sugarhill and Enjoy Records labels.

Here's the link:
http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/hiphop/adler.htm

Once there, click on "View the collection" and you're rolling.

It is a fine start to the digitizing of the whole collection, which encompasses over 1400 files on some 900 subjects:
http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/RMM08092.html

Enjoy,
Bill Adler

I did this

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/the-oral-history-of-2pacs-digital-underground-years-w474890

cool

good piece well done whiney

thx man :)

loved it

https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify_in_residence/playlist/18c2td4Wd6sFuEU30csvDl

Mogul: The Life and Death of Chris Lighty
By Spotify Originals

Chris Lighty was a giant in hip-hop. He managed Foxy Brown, Fat Joe, Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes, LL Cool J, 50 Cent—anyone who was anyone worked with Lighty. But in 2012 he was found dead at his home in the Bronx, a death that left the music world reeling.

Hey gang,

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/funk-you-up-legacy-of-the-sequence-hip-hops-first-ladies-w483588

looks good man; checking it out

Sweet!

Netflix Stretch & Bobbito doc is great fyi

I assume you are all listening to the podcast Mogul: the Life and Death of Chris Lighty

Another one from me: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/salt-n-pepa-our-life-in-15-songs-w500728

Man, really sad about Combat Jack. I'd listened to him a little bit before, but really enjoyed his podcast about Chris Lighty this year and was starting to go back through his radio shows. Seemed like a really great dude.

this has a lot of good nuggets. what a life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqKCqmD213M

the interviewer/narrator dude in Netflix's Hip Hop Evolution is a total clown but there's some good clips/bits from various folks in there. The south and Bay Area ones were v good. The more recent one about the "underground" was... odd. I really never thought Freestyle Fellowship was that big a deal?

flow innovators
kinda awkward to go straight from a Puff/Jiffy era hagiography to "ok now here's a whole episode about ppl who hated that shit" lol

I like the series ok but it focuses almost exclusively on MCs & lyrics. Has he even mentioned the concept of sampling?? I can only remember producers showing up on screen to talk about MCs.

that hadn't occurred to me but that's an interesting point. You'd think that would have come up re: like, PE/Bomb Squad or Organized Noize (or even Puffy lol)

Yeah exactly. I think narrator dude said in initial episode he was a (failed) MC so I get that would be the lens he primarily views the genre thru but cmon now.

I feel like there's a clear from Freestyle Fellowship to Kendrick

Btw Season 2 of the Mogol podcast is running now, this time about Luther Campbell

It's really good so far

https://www.amc.com/shows/hip-hop-the-songs-that-shook-america/full-episodes/season-01/episode-04/elevators-1996

lol is that just where Big Boi does interviews now? For the Netflix Hip Hop Evolution segment on Outkast he was in the same seat/backdrop

prob his studio?

I assume so

I enjoyed this

https://theundefeated.com/features/oral-history-shaq-shaquille-oneal-shaq-diesel-the-making-of-rap-hip-hop/amp/

Loving the Open Mike Eagle podcast that's just him interviewing Prince Paul, it's called What Had Happened Was. Three eps out so far, on Gravediggaz, "Three Feet High & Rising" and "A Prince Amongst Thieves". Paul is a really funny, engaging speaker.

It’s so great! I just posted about it in the Prince Paul thread yesterday.

Yeah, it's really great - I'd love a version with more production and longer excerpts of the music, but Paul is such an entertaining speaker that it makes sense they're keeping a light touch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw4H2FZjfpo

the story of kool herc extending breaks comes up in a lot of birth of hip hop celebration articles, but the way the story is told doesn't really make sense to me... beat-juggling relatively short breaks is extremely tricky, and ime generally done to impress a crowd (or win a DMC championship) - cool as it is the groove suffers and it's not something you dance to (I'm also uncertain abt the chronology of this because it seems to me that the craft of beat juggling is a much more recent development, maybe something from the golden DMC days of the... 90s?)

so... maybe he was doing this with longer breaks? or maybe the whole merry go round/beat juggling between the same record thing is not the key as much as the novelty in itself of using a double turntable setup?

what kind of mixer would be availabe for him? not something with a crossfader I imagine

I really would like to hear a recording of one of his sets from that era, but I guess it didn't make sense to tape it (although tbh if your primary goal in 1973 was to extend and repeat breaks then tape would probably be the easiest way to achieve this, I believe that's what they did on a lot of classic 4/4 disco kick beats)

I've always been under the impression that the breaks early hip-hop DJs played were typically several bars long, and so wouldn't require super fast technique to work with.

I believe they did have mixers with crossfaders, or approximately equivalent functions, by the mid/late-70s as well

And I also think the ability to "cue" records with your headphones via mixer is a Flash innovation

according to this article Kool Herc at some point acquired a GLI 3880 which has a crossfader, but it appears to have been after 1973
https://djmag.com/news/dj-kool-herc-soundsystem-sells-over-200k-christies-auction

in an interview in The Record Players: DJ Revolutionaries (by Bill Brewster, Frank Broughton) Grand Mixer D.ST (Derek Showard) recalls that Kool Herc did not "cut", explaining that the transitions "would be all off-beat"

https://i.imgur.com/Pi6VsHr.png