Signed, sealed & delivered as promised. Read the rest of this entry »

The calm before the storm. Read the rest of this entry »

This year’s VH1 Hip-Hop Honors show has taken on a whole life of its own.

Building from the momentum of previous years, the show & the channel are proving to be accurate to the essence of Hip-Hop music & culture. Digging deeper into the history each year, they’ve managed to recognize artists whose catalogs were not sacrificed for the sake of fame or critical acclaim. By choosing respectable artists, VH1 has garnered the attention & praise of fans across the map.

And some of those fans included a new crop of MCs, DJs and producers.

Which brings us to the topic at hand: Mick Boogie’s The Honor Roll. A musical mashup, the endeavor is a well engineered project featuring music from the catalogs of this year’s honorees, covered by a new generation of emcees & producers.

For more of the back story on how the project came together, The Crew’s Gotty™ got up with Mick Boogie, impresario Dan Solomito & Notherground’s 6th Sense for an impromptu Q&A about what all went into the making of The Honor Roll.

TSS: Whose idea was the tape originally?

Mick: Mine. Two weeks ago, I was sitting on the beach in Miami with my wife and we were talking about how dope the Honors are every year. And the idea just hit me. So for the rest of our vacation she sat at the beach reading and sunning while I sat under an umbrella with my Blackberry and iPhone and got the thing in motion. Then when we got back, I commissioned a few of my friends to really help get things popping, since we had less than two weeks to knock it out. Since it was so last minute, VH1 was not involved initially but they are very impressed and we are in negotiations to make it official next year, which is really exciting.

TSS: Who all helped out with this project?

Mick: In addition to myself, my homie Dan Solomito, who also manages Kidz In The Hall, stepped in and brought some cool new artists to the table that definitely deserve to be on this project. The kid that runs my blog – PressPlayFashionForward – his name is Christopher Truth. He definitely stepped up and helped coordinate stuff because I was out of town a lot. Lastly, one of my favorite new producers in the game, 6th Sense, produced the majority of the project and coordinated the engineering and mastering on mostly everyone else’s songs.

TSS: Dan, how did you connect with Mick Boogie to assist with this project?

Dan: It was great finally working together. He did a project with one of my artists, Kidz In The Hall, called Detention, which was an idea I had where we brought a mixtape DJ over to the RIAA-approved side of the business. I had him host a mixtape formatted album which was all original content and therefore legal to be sold via an exclusive we did with iTunes. But our interaction that project was minimal. It was not until The Honor Roll where we truly had a chance to work together; brainstorm, come up with some great ideas, and bring this project to fruition…and all in just under two weeks.

TSS: Can we expect more collabos in the future from two nerdy white guys?

Dan: We already have some big ideas on a few new projects. Mick is doing a great Obama-related mixtape and shirt coming next week. It’s always nice to come across someone in the music industry who has the ability to balance the rigors of the business side while still being passionate about what they do. Mick Boogie is that guy.

TSS: 6th, how hard was it to coordinate all of these beats at the same time?

6th: This was one of the first experiences I had with sending ProTools sessions back and forth. I’m used to doing everything in one studio, but this proved to be a little bit of a challenge. It wasn’t like I just sent the beats out and that was it. All them cats sent their vocals back and I would mix the song. Lotta credit to everyone, all the MC’s, managers, and engineers. Mick, Dan, everyone that helped out. I mean we did the damn thing in a week and a half. Beat creation, lyric writing, recording and mixing. I tip my hat to everyone on that.

TSS: And you guys got MC Serch to narrate the project. How did that come about? Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Chris “Preach” Smith

Let’s say you were setting out to pull a Quentin Tarantino move. You’re looking to create an action movie with just a touch of gunslinging a lá “spaghetti western” style. In order to open the film with a masterful theme that would make Sergio Leone proud (get hip to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly if you haven’t already), it all begins with a song that sticks with you long after the movie ends. And in this day and age, I can think of none better than “Tequila Sunrise” by Cypress Hill. Read the rest of this entry »

I can’t front, I’m low-key looking forward to Monday night.

Monday Night Football will get a one week reprieve while I watch VH1 put BET & MTV to shame once again when they air 2008′s installment of the Hip-Hop Honors. I can’t wait to see the performances and see the honorees get their just due. Read the rest of this entry »

In celebration of VH1′s Hip-Hop Honors show , The Crew is taking a look at a few of the honorees & their impact on Hip-Hop culture. This time around we take a look at Too Short and his famed usage of the word “bitch.”

One of Hip-Hop’s biggest points of detraction has been its harsh treatment of women in most albums on the market. We’ve all heard the speeches calling for the end of the use of words like “bitches” and “hoes.” I’m all for it and would lead the charge against uses of those words towards women.

Under one condition: Too Short should always continue to say “Beeeeiiiitch.” Read the rest of this entry »

In celebration of VH1′s Hip-Hop Honors show , The Crew is taking a look at a few of the honorees & their impact on Hip-Hop culture. This entry, Dirty Jerz representatives Naughty By Nature.

What makes a group successful? Is it classic albums, a slew of singles, commercial play with street reverence and high mark sales? If so, Naughty By Nature fits the bill with Hip-Hop’s upper crust. But it’s that harder to grasp the stratosphere where Treach, Vin and Kay Gee excel beyond mixed company.

The only way to solidify a spot in music industry outer space is with intangibles. There are no numbers, pie charts or bar graphs used to gauge legends. It’s not the weekend Sound Scan numbers or iTunes downloads. It’s the facts – like Treach wrote Kriss Kross’ “Jump” – that will make you remember an artist forever. The group that put East Orange on the map was stacked with intangibles. Witness five of them… Read the rest of this entry »

In celebration of VH1′s Hip-Hop Honors show , The Crew is taking a look at a few of the honorees & their impact on Hip-Hop culture. This entry, Oakland’s own Too Short.

“I sold tapes everyday, me and Freddy B/ Been famous since 1983/ Give me $10 and you’ll straight get blessed/ A rap all about you, called the ‘Special Request.’”

Take a second to really think about that line: In 1983 Too Short was selling his own tapes out of the trunk of his car, and for $10 he would record a song about you. In 1983 Short’s debut Don’t Stop Rappin’ — a prophesied title released on the independently operated 75 Girls label (in my opinion, one of the greatest label names in the history of rap.) And in 1983 Run DMC also debuted with “It’s Like That,” two years before “La-Di-Da-Di” and four years before Eazy let the world know about the “Boyz-N-The-Hood.”

“You can’t do it like this homie, so just pass it/ And stop kissing them white folks asses.”

A man about his money, Short embodied the entrepreneurial MC from the start. He was a hustler with a knack for Read the rest of this entry »

Words By Khalid Strickland

In celebration of VH1′s Hip-Hop Honors show , The Crew is taking a look at a few of the honorees & their impact on Hip-Hop culture. This entry, Cypress Hill.

Many corporations can thank rappers for a business boom. Clarks, the footwear company behind Wallabees, needs to cut Ghostface a check for keeping its shoes relevant. The makers of Cristal should swallow their contempt for Black folks and honor Jay-Z and Puff. And the Phillies Cigar company should build a shrine for the rap group who helped them sell millions of their cheap-ass blunts — Cypress Hill.

Potheads wrapped Mary Jane in cigar skins long before Cypress Hill endorsed it, but the first Latino rap group to go platinum helped introduce blunts to the mainstream. In 1991 Cypress Hill dropped a self-titled debut album celebrating L.A. gang culture and, more prominently, marijuana. They weren’t the first rappers to talk about weed, just as N.W.A. wasn’t the first to spit gangsta shit. But B-Real’s nasal vocals, Read the rest of this entry »