Meanwhile, in New York, a talented up-and-coming MC named Jay-Z was trying to blow up the old-fashioned way: by shopping his demo around...

There's a reason why heads from Watts to Harlem wanted Lauryn Hill on the solo tip from the very beginning. A few reasons, actually. One:...

New York birthed turntablism, but West Coast DJs also spun the movement toward revolutionary realms. Influenced by Steve Dee, the Bay...

Rap royalty has found its fun in south Florida's city of vice for a long time. Some have bought property, even if only for seasonal...

Cypress Hill came straight outta South Gate, baptized in a haze of smoke, blood-shot eyes hidden beneath low-riding bucket hats that...

The MC Hammer story mirrors that of a tragic protagonist in an Orson Welles film. MC Hammer is one of the most famous cautionary tales in...

Outkast certainly didn't make loving them all the way easy. Andre, who stopped smoking and drinking, and had become a vegetarian,...

Eve represented women being empowered and empowering themselves, and not being viewed upon as a sidekick to men. In 1999, the same year...

One of the more underreported happenings of summer 1995 took place on a humid June night at Nell's, a club located just blocks from NYU...

Black women have a lot of names in popular culture, from "girl" to "girlfriend" to "sister" including more creative turns of phrases,...

Many cite the birthplace of Hip Hop soul as the offices of New York's Uptown Records, the label owned by Andre Harrell, one half of the...

While 50 Cent and G Unit were sinisterly plotting a world takeover, an exuberant, gold-toothed industry vet had simpler ambitions in...

How did T.I. change the rap game? It comes down to two words: the trap. Consider the scene before his 2003 arrival onto the national...

"The South's got something to say. That's all I got to say." Outkast, of course, was nothing of the sort. Andre and partner Antwan "Big...

Before the Matrix of Hip Hop upgraded to the Dirty South version of its software to reduce southern Hip Hop to nothing more than just...

Nonbelievers turned off by Weezy's wild style called his verbal nonsense, no better than nursery rhymes. Some of those who turned up...

Ronald "Slim" Williams and his younger brother Bryan grew up in New Orleans' hardscrabble Magnolia Projects; Calliope was its rival hood....

In 1989 when a 22-year-old kid from New Orleans' Calliope Projects named Percy Miller received $10,000 from a family malpractice suit...

To begin to understand the alchemy of Outkast the dynamic duo that's consistently made amazing music for more than ten years, both as a...

"I'm A Ho" is mechanized saggy pants from the leather-legged '80s. You can hear it sauntering underneath "Front, Back & Side To Side,"...