(AllHipHop News) The Keith Murray/Fredro Starr contest is just days away. As the two emcees prepare to step into the ring, more of their peers step in front of the camera to give their thoughts about the battle. The latest Hip Hop representatives to speak on Murray vs Starr are Lord Jamar and Lord Finesse.
“They’re both good lyricists in their own right, and I’m curious to see what happens,” says Jamar.
Finesse states, “I think it’s good two veterans are going to go at it. One with the crazy syllables and wordplay, and then a dude that’s straight hype and amp.”
MC WAR’s “Generation X” featuring the Keith Murray vs Fredro Starr battle is scheduled for Sunday, October 4 at Milk River in Brooklyn. The event will also broadcast live on AllHipHop.com. Tickets are available at mcwars.com.
(AllHipHop News) Flo Rida is connecting with New York-based Vintage Rockefeller Wine & Spirits Group for a multi-year promotional and marketing partnership as a global brand ambassador. The company will use the record-breaking performer’s name and likeness in materials for Empire Rockefeller Vodka’s alcoholic beverages.
“I am extremely excited to partner with such a sophisticated, innovative brand such as Empire Rockefeller Vodka,” states Flo Rida. “We share the idea that success should be celebrated with class, elegance and refinement, and that you should live your life to the fullest.”
The deal will include Flo Rida promoting Empire Rockefeller Vodka on social media, through personal appearances, and inclusion on future music videos. Vintage Rockefeller integrates class, elegance and refinement in its #liverockefeller branding attached to products, which include F. Rockefeller and Sons Champagne 2004 Vintage Brut, Signature Rockefeller Cognac VS, VSOP, and XO; and Empire Rockefeller Vodka.
“We are thrilled that Flo Rida will be taking an active role with Empire Rockefeller Vodka,” says Steve Goldberg, President and Chief Executive Officer of Vintage Rockefeller. “As a company that strives to be luxurious and maintains the highest degree of quality, we believe we found the perfect fit with Flo Rida – Vintage Rockefeller is incredibly excited to have him as the global ambassador of our brand.”
Marlo Gold, CEO of D3M Licensing Group adds, “Flo Rida, admittedly selective when it comes to alcoholic beverages, took an instant liking to the Empire Rockefeller Vodka brand, which is produced with the finest ingredients. His attraction to Empire Rockefeller Vodka led to the creation of an arrangement with Vintage Rockefeller that also includes sponsorship of five cities as well as inclusion of Empire Vodka for use backstage & in VIP areas during Flo Rida’s upcoming tour.”
Flo Rida has sold more than 90 million singles across the world. The Carol City, Florida native recently released My House in April. The EP included the Top 10 single “G.D.F.R.”
There are plenty of groups that have come and gone. But after tearing down a show at SOB’s in NYC for their new soon-to-be-released album, Jersey’s Joe Budden, Detroit’s Royce Da 5’9” and Cali’s Kxng Crooked sat with AHH’s MrMecc to reveal the kind of light-hearted chemistry that proves the crews that can laugh together, can last together. Check the technique as the the Slaughter boys cover everything from Slim Jesus & Slaughtermouse to Tupac.
Uh oh! It looks like 2 Chainz is not here for Fox’s ‘Empire’! Clearly many people love the show as the second season returned with 16 millions viewers. Maybe 2 Chainz was counted out for the million of cameos Lee Daniels has lined up for this season. Maybe he thinks the show is corny and isn’t feeling the music selection. We wonder what he hates about the show. Are you feeling season 2 of Empire?
For the last decade, Atlanta, Georgia has been one of the nerve centers of Hip Hop culture. But prior to the ATL dominating rap, the city birthed some of the leading contemporary voices of Rhythm & Blues.
Chart-topping performers like Usher, TLC, Monica, Xscape, 112, and Ciara cultivated their talents in the Georgia capital. In addition, legends such as Whitney Houston, Babyface, Keith Sweat, and Toni Braxton called Atlanta home at one point in their career.
It’s from that cultural history that rising R&B representative Malachiae Warren emerges. Not only has he embraced the soul legacy of his hometown, Warren’s recent effort The Ride Out EP pays homage to ATL’s Hip Hop roots as well.
“We have a lot of greats that came out of Atlanta, and a lot of influential music that came from Atlanta,” Malachiae tells AllHipHop.com. “It’s more special when you’re from a city that specializes in that area. Atlanta is music, so to be from here is a blessing.”
Beyond being raised in a metropolis soaked in music tradition, Malachiae has blood ties to professional musicians as well. His uncle is Grammy-winning music arranger Mervyn Warren, and his mother was once a vocalist.
“I started taking music seriously around 11 or 12. It runs in the family. My mother started in a group,” discloses Malachiae. “She was actually signed to a record label, but when she was pregnant with me she had to put it to the side to make sure I was nurtured and raised right. So now I’m living her dream and mine at the same time.”
The 20-year-old singer/songwriter has been building towards his dream of being a star for a great part of his young life. His early performances included a limited time providing tunes in church, but it was at-home experimentation that foreshadowed Warren’s undeniable drive to make it as an entertainer.
“My mother bought my first cheap little USB mic. I had the Logic Pro program on my Mac computer,” recalls Malachiae. “I said, ‘I want to record music, so I’m going to teach myself how to work this.’ I hooked the mic up, learned how to use the editing system, and started recording from there.”
Malachiae’s maturation consisted of posting covers to YouTube as well as attending the Dallas Austin Music Academy (formerly Don’t Stop the Music). The program provided the North Atlanta High School student immeasurable insight into the business side of the music industry.
“A lot of artists get in the game not knowing what goes on behind the scenes. They don’t know about royalties, percentages, splits, and stuff like that. [The Dallas Austin Music Academy] taught me how not to get screwed over,” Malachiae states. “I look at things differently. I move differently.”
Gaining knowledge about his profession from a program established by a successful music producer surely played a role in Warren’s decision to sign on with a record company. And he’s not just under a “ boutique label.” Malachiae is connected to the same brand that helped turn Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, and Michael Jackson into global icons.
“To be in the midst of those artists is definitely great. That means they see something in me, and not just for the moment,” states Malachiae about being signed to the legendary Motown. “All those artists on the label have had great careers. I just one to bring that to the table too, and let them know I want to be here for the long run.”
Warren’s campaign to possibly join other members of Motown’s roster in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame could one day be traced back to his 8-track effort The Ride Out EP. The collection hit the internet in July, and it features an integration of his signature “ghetto smooth” sound, his love for Atlanta, and his respect for rap greats.
Track 3 on The Ride Out quotes T.I.’s 2003 breakout hit “24’s,” and Malachiae’s single “R U Down” samples 2Pac’s Top 20 record “I Get Around.” As Warren reaches back to honor some of the artists he grew up listening to, the crooner is simultaneously introducing his peers and fans to classic records from Hip Hop headliners like Tip and Pac.
“What’s so crazy is my generation sometimes skips over [the references]. They’re like, ‘I love the new song.’ They don’t know I referenced it from other artists,” explains Malachiae. “Some people catch ‘24’s.’ But a lot of people my age didn’t really get it.”
Warren is not even old enough to legally drink yet, but he is already setting forth a path to have future artists interpolating his music two decades from now. Even though he views having a major label behind him as a bonus, every piece of art presented to the public is cultivated in the mind of Malachiae.
“I was 100% involved. Every song that I do I have creative control,” says Malachiae. “I like to make music that comes from what I go through and experience. It wouldn’t be fair not to play a part in writing my music or producing it, because it has to come from me. I feel like that’s the music that people listen to longevity wise.”
He adds, “A lot of people think once you get signed, you’re going to blow up and become this huge superstar. But in most cases that doesn’t happen. Everybody that you see out right now has been through the grind process. It doesn’t happen overnight. You have to work hard and be self-motivated.”
Malachiae’s next project set to drop is an EP titled Heard You Was In My City, anda full length studio album is scheduled for the top of 2016. As his profile continues to grow, the media microscope will begin to focus on Malachiae Warren, which means he will be in a position to influence the young people that follow him. The “Thank Yo Momma” singer does not take that responsibility lightly.
“I make sure I go about things the right way. I make sure my attitude comes off in a positive way and through my music of course. Especially for our generation. I feel we’re so influenced by the music,” maintains Malachiae. “I feel like we need more love and positivity. All we hear nowadays is the club stuff. A lot of that is cool. I’m still young, and I still have my fun. But at the end of the day, people want to be inspired.”
T-Pain has been releasing music sporadically for the past year or so, but now he is ready to release a full project. The Tallahassee singer/rapper took to his Twitter to announce that fans could expect his new album, Stoicville:The Phoenix, on Dec. 11th.
December 11th "Stoicville: The Phoenix" rises!!! Taking you to new levels of T-Pain…one banger at a time! pic.twitter.com/gVHrrSjjA5
“I’m not the sad person but there are some things you need to know that went into making this album,” he told Billboard. “There are some situations that happened between the last time you heard from me and now, so here’s all that, here’s why everybody hasn’t been seeing me — I didn’t want to bring anybody into that negative world, and I definitely didn’t want to be talked about, as a bad person.”
He has already dropped the album’s first single “Roof On Fye.”
His last release was back in March when dropped a mixtape, The Iron Way. Stoicville: The Phoenix will be Pain’s first album since his 2011’s Revolver album.
There’s no doubt that J. Cole is NICE, but have any of his albums changed the game? Cole is regarded as a ‘top 5 or 10 artist of the moment,’ and he has dropped at least 3 albums, but some feel that not 1 is deemed historically relevant, classic, or at least borderline classic. Have any had a huge impact? Does Cole have more than ‘personal favorite’ bodies of work? Perhaps some feel that J. Cole is a great lyricist, but he’s one dimensional. Maybe Cole has solid albums just no genre defining moments. What are your thoughts?
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Before Drake was hip-hop’s golden child, he blended in with every other up and coming unsigned artist. As his music floated around, Akon was one of the heavy hitters who heard what he had to offer. After Kardinal Offishall brought his tracks to the Konvict Music label head, he decided to not give him a chance.
“I honestly did pass on him because at the time, he didn’t sound like what he sounded like today,” Akon said during a sit down with Montreality. “The ‘Best I Ever Had,’ it wasn’t even close to what that sounded like. I think he was at a position where he was finding himself.”
Though he passed on signing who would be one of music’s top artists, Akon said he has no regrets.
“I don’t regret any of the decisions I’ve made because you can never foretell the future on who’s going to be what.”
After Ja Rule spent over two years behind bars for tax evasion, he came out a changed man and ready to get back to doing what he loves. Besides having a double album in the works, the Queens rapper is also planning on linking up with his former Murder Inc. songbird Ashanti for a world tour, movie and EP.
“Me and Ashanti are about to go on a big world tour,” Rule told Billboard. “We’re putting together a music and film project with our whole Natural Born Killers tour and EP. It’s kind-of like a Streets is Watching type of film.”
Rule says the film will be fictional with a “musical feel to it” and “street-edge.”
Ja is also partnering with MTV for a family-friendly reality show. Set for a Oct. 26th premiere (10 p.m), the series will bring viewers into his home that he shares with his wife Aisha, their three children, his mother and his mother-in-law. Queen Latifah serves as the show’s producer.
“You can’t be mad at a man for raising his kids and taking care of his family,” he said. “There’s something wrong with you if you have a problem with that.”
50 Cent has inked a new deal with the Starz network. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the “Nine Shots” rapper’s company, G-Unit Film & Television, now has the green light to go ahead and develop new shows for the network as well as continuing to executive produce the hit series Power.
“Starz has been the perfect partner to make Power the success that it is and I am looking forward to developing many more record-breaking series with them,” 50 said in a statement.
Starz managing director Carmi Zlotnik is also excited to be keeping 50 around, saying he is a “wonderful hands-on producer” and that the network looks “forward to expanding his roles behind-the-camera with Starz over the next two years” in a statement.
As 50 is inking deals, he is still dealing with his bankruptcy case. He is currently trying to keep the details of his underwear endorsement deal with Frigo RevolutionWear and his Vitamin Water deal from being revealed and taken into consideration in the courtroom.
Rumor had it that DMX, was now working at IHOP when a picture of the rapper cooking in an IHOP kitchen went viral. Fans of the rapper would be happy to know that it HASN’T gotten that bad. X was actually in the kitchen showing off his culinary skills as the food the chef made him was great. Supposedly he went to tell the chef how good the food was and ended up making his own omelet all in fun. We know it’s been a bumpy ride, but we are happy that things are getting better for the veteran rapper who became a household name when he released two #1 albums in the same calendar year.
The Game recently let us know that no one wants to battle him or respond to his track “Bigger Than Me” because their life would end up with their career in shambles and they would get their “a** lyrically slayed.” The Game also recently called Lupe Fiasco “weird” on his latest album, ‘The Documentary 2.’ Lupe Fiasco obviously got wind of this and seems to be dissing Game with a tweet to game referencing Radiohead’s “Creep”. Lupe seems fine with being different as some of the lyrics found in Radiohead’s “Creep” are,
“But I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo,
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here.”
Will this be the beginning of yet another rap beef involving Game?
Snoop Dogg is teaming up with AOL through his company, Snoopadelic Films, for a reality show about his youth football league, according to Billboard. The show, which will last for eight episodes, will follow coaches and players involved in the Snoop Youth Football League as they travel across the country to go head-to-head with their rivals.
“Mentoring kids through SYFL means more to me than anything else I do,” Snoop Dogg said in a statement. “It’s my way of continuing to connect with the communities that move me. I get to know kids and parents with great spirits from all over, and it becomes something far beyond football. It is important to not only be a football coach to these kids, but to be a life coach as well. It’s our way of sharing a life together. This series will finally give the world a chance to witness the stories, talent, and commitment SYFL represents in the same way I do.”
The SYFL recruits players from low-income communities in Los Angeles between the ages of five and 13. Many of the youth who have played in Snoop’s league have went on to play football professionally.
The Soul Rebels and Joey Bada$$ have a chemistry that has already created some great music for Hip-Hop fans. A careful listen to Joey’s B4.DA.$$ album and you can hear Joey sampled the Soul Rebels on track “O.C.B,” which features a killer Joey verse.
That aside, the two acts have teamed up for two big shows together next month in New Orleans and you will not want to miss this if you find yourself walking about the “Big Easy” in the days leading up to Halloween.
Set for Oct 29th at the House Of Blues and Oct 30th at Voodoo Fest, the all acoustic brass and drums band is collaborating with Joey for the first full length shows they will have done together.
In support of the collab they have created a mini documentary that was released just a few hours ago. Check it out below!
Recently iconic graffiti artist RISK announced that he will be opening an art gallery in Santa Monica, California just a few miles from the beach. The gallery has taken on the name of the, Buckshot Art Gallery and will feature a mixture of urban and fine art. The gallery is set to have its first exhibition on October 17th this year and will launch with an online e-commerce site to sell prints and original works of art online.
Kelly Graval, also known as RISK, has been synonymous with the Los Angeles art community for decades and the multi-talented fine artist, illustrator, and graffiti artist has become a world-renowned graffiti legend after putting in 30 years of work in the graf game. If you know anything about that, it’s a life filled with dodging the law, tagging trains and is one of the essential elements of Hip-Hop according to KRS-ONE.
But, RISK has come a long way since he pioneered the painting of freeway overpasses, signs and billboards, dubbed “heavens.” Although RISK loves aerosol art, he sees it as, “just one genre in his life’s work.” From his days as a student at the USC School of Fine Arts to gallery and museum showings around the world, RISK has transformed from a street artist to a respected icon in the contemporary art world.
The partnership includes Kevin Zinger and Ivory Daniel from Regime Management, a well-known entertainment management firm, and local entrepreneurs/philanthropists Howard Spunt and Bryan Spunt.
For more information check out BuckShotPrints.com, where you can find out more about the gallery and RISK’s 350 page book Old Habit Die Hard. We’ve also included some images below and videos of RISK doing his thing!
Bushwick Bill of The Geto Boys is in the process of creating a documentary about his life and he is asking for help from the Hip-Hop community.
“Bushwick Bill: A Geto Boy – A Documentary Film” will be “Chronicling the life of the gangsta rapper who happens to be a charming, hysterical one-eyed dwarf,” according to a statement. Bushwick was on of the various incarnations of the Geto Boys, but certainly one of the most visible.
Now, the OG rapper has set up a crowd funding site to help raise dollars to create the movie.
The film maker further made their case:
“For the past 3 years, we have been filming and documenting the life of the infamous Richard Shaw, AKA Bushwick Bill, original member of the Geto Boys and all around fascinating presence and one of the most unique entertainers ever. Our desire to do a documentary on Bill has been one that stretches over a decade long. It finally became a reality a few years ago when we were able to track Bill down in Austin, Texas. A bit of a rolling stone, Bill may jump from town to town, but one thing is certain, no matter where he lands, people always recognize him. He is undoubtedly a hardcore rap legend. He has the stories to back it up. He has rapped lyrics that command it. And he literally has the scars to prove it.”
At present day, the film has raised $13,122 of the $50k goal with fans continuing to add on.
While the release of his The Documentary 2 album coming next week, The Game teams up with his Compton brethren Kendrick Lamar for an Erykah Badu laced track “On Me”. Let us know your thoughts below in the c-section and pre-order The Game’s The Documentary 2 album now on iTunes!
Treacherous C.O.B’s Niqle Nut and in-house producer Aktive are fresh out of the lab with brand new music. On the track “Greedy”, Niqle holds nothing back as he makes no apologies for his insatiable ways. Aktive’s production offers listeners dark yet melodic piano notes that set the tone for Niqle’s uncut and unforgiving wordplay.
This video popped up on Tumblr…and it could be the final chapter in this wonderment around whether or not Young Thug is gay. The Thugger has never specifically said he was gay. He has had a girlfriend and he does wear mostly women’s clothing because of the fit. But this…this video is something else.
With Travis Scott’s “Antidote” being one of the big hits from his Rodeo album, French Montana and Chris Brown couldn’t help but do a remix to the Kanye protege’s epic hit. Both French and Chris were on tour for Chris’s One Hell Of A Nite nationwide tour that saw packed arenas across the country and also included Kid Ink. While Breezy is still trying to get into Aussieland the two unleash this joint that is pure fire. Press play below.
