Harold Stallworth curbs your enthusiasm. For all the technological advancements that have altered the ways in which musicians have earned their keep over the last three decades, one constant has remained: Rappers, by in large, still generate the bulk of their income via live performances. Over the last few years, Freddie Gibbs, Big Krit and […]
Slick Rick invented swag. That’s what Domo Genesis claimed when I interviewed him in 2011. And if Ricky Walters survived into a generation of kids conceived around the time The Show was filmed, that’s the true test of longevity. You can still see the DNA of Uncle Ricky in the weird accents, gold chains, and […]
Roughly once a year, Slick Rick crawls up out of his chamber to read us a raunchy bedtime story. In 2007, it was “Hip Hop Police.” In 2009, he laced us with the sand storm narrative-shifts and anti-Iraq rant of Mos Def’s “The Auditorium.” Last year, he inflicted ad hoc carnage to Snoop’s “I Wanna […]
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Rocking With the Ruler March 15, 2010
  Run through the class of ’88. Rakim’s last album was so sleep inducing you’d have thought the 18th letter stood for Rohypnol. No one’s checked for a Public Enemy song since they sampled Buffalo Springfield, and Chuck D writes the words “ex-Air America host” on his resume. Kane was last seen in velour, wandering […]
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