In the rap world, Long Beach, California, carries with it a certain stylistic connotation. When most hip-hop fans think of the town on Los Angeles’s southern edge, they think of hard-edged rappers laying down rhymes about gangster life set to that classic laid-back G-Funk sound. Not surprisingly, the all-white rap…

The Chicago-bred, Brooklyn-based rapper Common (born Lonnie Rashid Lynn) has never been one to follow doctrines — or to shy away from voicing his opinions, even when those opinions differ radically from the general American party line. Consider his thoughts on the case of Assata Shakur, an African-American woman who…

The lineage of the African diaspora resonates in the raps and sounds of Reflection Eternal, a duo consisting of Brooklyn-based Talib Kweli and Cincinnati-bred DJ Hi-Tek. Combining raps about the middle passage, shout-outs to Nina Simone, jazz-inflected B-boyisms and streetwise jams, Reflection Eternal traces a musical journey from the present…

Sometimes, even if you are an up-and-coming artist with a major-label deal and steady album sales, it can take a near-tragedy for the hip-hop powers that be to take notice. Consider the Los Angles-based The Jurassic 5: Despite the fact that the group sold an entire pressing of its independently…

Barnyard blues for ballin. Thats what you might call the one-man mutated backcountry stomp offered by Bob Log III, who performs Friday, September 1, at the Ogden Theatre with Maraca-5-0 and Frank Hauser Jr. Stuck somewhere between Captain Beefhearts codpiece and the front-porch funk of Mississippi Fred McDowell, the Tucson-based…

Superstar collaborations now seem de rigueur for any hip-hop album or movie soundtrack that utilizes urban contemporary vibes to score points with audiences. But how many of these collaborations actually occur and succeed on the artist’s own terms, and how many just exist as a result of some executive producer’s…

Before he was an artist who sensed he was just about to hit — and before many people came to consider him Colorado’s greatest hope of penetrating the national hip-hop scene — there was a time when rapper Don Blas felt the allure of street life, when even a brush…

Let’s Get Free marks a welcome return to the days when rap articulated a political consciousness, as Dead Prez members SticMan and M1 spit a vision “somewhere in between and N.W.A.” Like those groups, the Brooklyn-based duo is on a serious black community empowerment tip. And also like them, the…

The Big Tymers with the Cash Money Millionaires (Juvenile, Lil Wayne, Turk, B.G.), Thursday, July 13, at the Paramount Theatre, are the latest group to emerge from the Cash Money Records franchise in Louisiana — an imprint that sold more than nine million records last year. Featuring in-house label producer…

The bling-bling of shiny platinum jewels adorning commercial rap and R&B might blind some people to the fact that there is a creative resurgence going on in hip-hop right now. Yeah, that’s right — it’s rising up from the underground at this very minute. The strength and success of recent…

You can almost picture Bob Costas, Bill Walton and even the late Harry Caray crammed into a wide-angle camera frame, microphones in hand, attempting to provide the commentary for a Technics World DJ Championship competition. “DJ Sadboy cuts to the left by using his thumb on table one, adjusting his…

If you tell Thes One and Double K of the L.A.-based hip-hop duo The People Under the Stairs that they sound dated or old-school, they take it as the ultimate act of appreciation. “That’s the best compliment ever,” says MC Thes One. “I don’t want to sound new. I want…

The definition of underground rap differs depending on whom you ask. To some, it’s a state of mind where one refuses to compromise for commercial dictates — to others, it’s just another clever marketing strategy peddled by industry playas and journalists. Though few words are contested more in hip-hop, the…

Since the death of Tupac, the incarceration of Suge Knight and all the bad blood associated with the alleged Mafioso-like business tactics of Death Row Records, the West Coast has gradually lost its reign over the rap world. Recent albums by Kurupt (despite its hateful diatribe against DMX, which he…

Rahzel, with Mix Master Mike and Choclair, at the Fox Theatre Sunday, March 26, must be seen to be believed. A self-described “vocal percussionist,” he has perfected the art of beat-boxing. Also known as the “Godfather of Noyze,” Rahzel can duplicate the sounds of whole albums — with his mouth…

Dannell McNeil is a rapper, singer and soon-to-be music mogul with ambitions as stratospheric as Don King’s hair. As the point person for his own record label and production company, W&D Productions/Risk Entertainment, McNeil has set some lofty goals, and he pulls no punches when naming them. “I want to…

If Miles Davis were still alive and in need of a turntablist, it would make sense for him to hire New York native Jason Kibler, aka DJ Logic. Logic is a DJ who, like the legendary trumpeter, consistently stretches the boundaries of the musical landscape with his instrument of choice…

With each subsequent release of the various Wu solo projects, the individual members (perhaps with the exception of Method Man), have all seen diminishing returns in the fickle rap marketplace. Which raises the question: Does the public still crave product from the Wu-Tang dynasty? With this followup to his classic…

The Jungle Brothers. 9 p.m. Wednesday, January 26, Fox Theatre, 1135 13th Street, Boulder, $23, 303-443-3399.

Very rarely does a musician, in his or her experiments with new sounds, come along and flip the script in a way that helps create a whole new genre of music. QBert, the Bay Area-based super DJ, is an artist who has done just that. Drawing from the rudimentary scratch…

On “Fear Not of Man,” the intro cut to his first solo full-length, rapper Mos Def reflects on the state of hip-hop as we enter the 21st century: “People be asking me all the time, ‘Yo, Mos, what’s getting ready to happen with hip-hop?’ Whatever’s happening with us, if we…

Slick Rick’s fourth release, The Art of Storytelling, has recently gone as gold as the caps on his front teeth. This is particularly good news for the legendary MC, né Rick Walters. Since releasing a solo full-length five years ago, he’d all but disappeared from the rap realm that he…