RED BULL THRE3STYLE 10.09.10 | Beta, Denver, CO Red Bull has been steadily establishing a reputation for championing the artistic expressions of up and coming artists, and this evening was no different. At Beta this past Saturday night, the Red Bull Thre3Style brought ten DJs from across the country together…
WIZ KHALIFA With Yelawolf 10.07.10 | Ogden Theatre Last night at the Ogden Theatre for the Denver leg of the Waken Baken tour, Wiz Khalifa completely set it off. The scene at the beginning of the night was set by throngs of teenage girls in Wiz Khalifa shirts, mixed in…
Lenny Lenn has an opinion, and he’s not afraid to express it. He frequently makes big, bold statements about seemingly everything. One moment he’s speaking in a quiet, humble tone about his technical training in post-production, for instance, and the next he’s comparing himself to Andre 3000 with no shame…
Years ago in an interview with BET, rapper Jadakiss was asked the age old question: Why do you rap? He answered, with shrewd honesty, for the money. Innerstate Ike (aka Michael Hope) works under that same premise. A Coloradan to the core, Ike makes music specifically for the streets and…
Mr. Midas, whom you might recall we spoke with last month, is reportedly two songs away from completing his new album, Son of the Crack Era, and is preparing for the release of the Chris Eng-directed video “Run My Town” in early October. In advance of the album’s release, we…
Lindsay Lohan, America’s freckled-faced-sweetheart-turned-hot-freakin’-mess is in boiling water yet again. Ms. Lohan is facing thirty days in the slammer after testing positive for cocaine during a mandatory drug test last week. The actress is scheduled to appear before a judge on Friday who will address the probation violation and determine…
Poetry is the structural rhetoric used to evoke emotional qualities. Rap is, at the etymological root, the chanting of rhymed lyrics in time to a beat. The literary facet of poetry has been around for ages, long before the stories were translated into reading interpretations, while rap was used in…
One of the most anticipated albums in local hip-hop circles this fall is Dispensary Music, the long-awaited full-length collaboration between Whygee and Foe, slated to drop tomorrow on iTunes.The collaboration between these two rappers was inspired by sporadic features on various songs in the past and the undeniable chemistry they…
GirlGrabbers is the cross-pollination of music personalities, Qknox (aka Jerod Sarlo) and DJ GypdaHip (aka Anwar Woody). Together the two are determined to highlight the essence of beat making in its purist form. The duo’s first two beat tapes, GirlGrabbers and Good Time With a Bad Girl, served as a…
Turner Jackson is still a youngster in the game. Just shy of 22 years old, he doesn’t consider himself a “rapper.” You’d be hard pressed to find him spouting capricious odes of gratitude to the heart of hip-hop — he’s still a novice when it comes to the foundations of…
Rakim Allah (born William Michael Griffin Jr.) is the father of lyrical finesse and the king of emceeing. His emergence onto the hip-hop scene in 1987 arguably changed the theatrics in rhyme scheme, impacting the future flow of cats like Jay-Z, 50 Cent, Wu-Tang’s Raek-won and a host of others…
When the crack epidemic hit the streets in the ’80s, it changed the social constructs of a generation. Not only did it birth a legion of children with addicted parents, but from Jay-Z to Rick Ross, it also served as thematic fodder for some of rap’s biggest names. Like hip-hop,…
J-Blev, the latest act out of Colorado Springs, has elevated his sound with the help of Turf DJ Ktone. The title of his latest mixtape, And Then There Was Me, alludes to the solitary nature of being a rapper, in which an artist must step out on his own to…
#COHipHop Unity Concert 2 08.05.10 | Quixote’s True Blue A strong hip-hop vibe permeated the air at Quioxte’s last night — fitting, since we were all there for the #COHipHop Unity Concert 2. Before everything got going in earnest, a cluster of performers and beat battle contestants chopped it up…
Everything about Air Dubai is ironic. While not strictly hip-hop-based, there is a good amount of cadence in the dueling vocals of Jon Shockness and Julian Thomas. There is a melody and harmony that drives the band’s tunes, and its latest effort, Wonder Age, an album about nothing, has evolved…
Spoke In Wordz is a rapper with a background rooted in the structure of poetry. His flow is notably diverse. Like one of his major inspirations, Guru, Spoke uses a velvety voice to deliver his lyrics, but he also spits in Spanish, lightning-fast, with a tone used to provoke thought…
Nofrendo (aka Joseph Meezy) is the beat making equivalent of Nina Simone. Built on his love for soul and all things raw and gritty, his production style begets welcoming anachronistic melodies. Quite different from the sped up soul sample moves of many producers, he takes the properties of a record…
When SP Double signed with Digital Dollar, a record label run by Brian Hutcheson out of Orlando, Florida, it appeared as though he was gone for good. SP moved his whole operation out to the Sunshine State, and got right to work, perfecting tracks for his new album, Loyalty, Honor,…
DJ Cavem Moetavation (aka Ietef Vita) is out to green the ‘hood, one hip-hop element at a time. Activist, b-boy, DJ, MC, graffiti artist, beat-boxer, film maker and journalist, Cavem plays many roles, all geared toward empowering the ‘hood with tools that facilitate evolution of the mind. And musically, Cavem…
The Pitchfork Music Festival, which took place this past weekend in Chicago, is a more friendly outdoor event compared to Lollapalooza and others. Volunteers passed out water to the hot, the dusty and the drunk as they assembled under an unrelenting sun on day one to see acts like Robyn,…
Xperiment (aka Courtland Urbano) is an out of this world supersonic architect of sound. His beats are a perfect synthesis between a test to discover or prove the unknown and the balance of validating tried and true methods, threading analog sounds through digital components. Xperiment’s beats are accessible to the…
Navigating the turgid, contentious waters of hip-hop in Colorado as a DJ isn’t easy. Discussions involving radio play and “breaking records” plague conversations daily. Whether real or perceived, there is a fear that the DJ’s role has all but disappeared into ringtone oblivion. The days of DJs on the block…
