Search Results for: hip-hop

Los Angeles – According to the Chinese calendar, 2005 will be the year of the rooster. Looking back at the year in music, 2004 goes down as the year of Usher, not only in pop, but certainly in R&B/hip-hop. The seemingly invincible singer-songwriter commandeers the top of the R&B and pop charts this year, thanks to his album “Confessions.” In the R&B realm, the Atlanta-based artist takes the No. 1 spot on year-end recaps including Top R&B/Hip-Hop Artists, Top R&B/Hip-Hop Artists-Male and Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. That’s in addition to his status on the pop recaps: Top Pop Artists, Top Pop… Read more »

In the midst of one of the most passionate and pivotal elections in history, as the early returns are coming in, the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN), the organization co-founded by Russell Simmons and Dr. Benjamin Chavis which has spent the past 18 months dedicated to inspiring and mobilizing young people to go to the polls, is witnessing the fruits of its labors today – long lines of young voters. In April of 2003, HSAN launched its Hip-Hop Team Vote Youth Voter Initiative at a Hip-Hop Summit in Detroit with Eminem and Nas. Its Philadelphia Summit in August of 2003… Read more »

Miami – WHO: Multi-platinum superstar hip-hop artist/producer Missy Elliott WHAT: After 33 days and 26 cities in 10 states on the road, The Hip-Hop Team Vote GOTV Bus Tour, a national joint effort by HSAN and America Coming Together (ACT) to increase youth voter turnout in the presidential election, tomorrow November 2nd, the southern Bus will pick up youth from all over the Miami area and take them to the polls. Missy Elliott will get on the Hip-Hop Team Vote GOTV Bus and drive with some of the kids to a polling place where she will encourage young people to… Read more »

Some of the biggest names in hip-hop are stepping up their drive to register young people to vote with a radio campaign that could reach more than 2 million listeners a day. The Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, founded by mogul Russell Simmons, announced its “One Mind. One Vote.” partnership with syndicated radio personality Doug Banks at a news conference Wednesday. The new radio campaign will launch Jan. 19 in Times Square. “Radio is the drumbeat of our community,” said Dr. Benjamin Chavis, the hip-hop group’s president and chief executive. The nonpartisan network hopes to register 2 million voters in 2004… Read more »

Marching to a different beat for its eighth installment, MTV’s Campus Invasion tour will split into separate rock and hip-hop tours for the first time. Fabolous and Talib Kweli kick off the hip-hop-oriented stretch April 19 at Lincoln University in Philadelphia. The Used, the Exies, and Finch are headlining rock-geared gigs starting May 3 at Towson University in Towson, Md. Tagged with a $18-25 ticket price (to be determined by each university), Campus Invasion 2003 should spread to 20 dates through the spring. Sponsors for this year’s tour include Nintendo Gamecube, Skittles, and T-Mobile. Fabolous is touring in support of… Read more »

Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network said an economic boycott of Pepsi would start next week unless the company runs an ad featuring the rapper Ludacris that was pulled last year. “Falling out of favor in the hip-hop community could be very damaging,” Simmons said Wednesday. He also wants Pepsi to issue an apology and donate $5 million to his charity organization. Pepsi yanked the Ludacris ad in August, a day after Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly ran a segment criticizing the company for using the rapper. O’Reilly questioned Ludacris’ appropriateness as a spokesman based on… Read more »

About 15,000 people were sent home early from a rap and hip-hop concert after a fight broke out and spilled onto the main stage, police said. The “Beat Summer Jam 2002” concert at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater started at about noon on Sunday and ended after the brawl erupted about 7:30 p.m., said Lt. Al Muir of the Irvine Police Department. Security officers at the event were overwhelmed by the fighting and called for help, Muir said. Officers from six nearby police agencies and Orange County Sheriff’s deputies responded to the site and by 9 p.m. had evacuated the concert… Read more »

Rapper Eminem’s success is a sign that whites will take over hip-hop in the same manner they took over jazz and rock and roll, according to an outspoken North Carolina minister. Reverend Paul Scott says he’s worried that the white influence on rap music will weaken the culture. Scott said, “Malcolm X once said that when you have a cup of coffee that is too black and too strong you add cream to make it weak, and the thing that used to wake up now puts you to sleep.” Scott is calling for a new “black power movement” within the… Read more »

Papa Roach’s upcoming album, lovehatetragedy, may find the group gravitating from rap-rock to a more straightforward rock sound, but that doesn’t mean the band has abandoned hip-hop entirely. The group plans to pay homage to the style as part of its set on the upcoming Anger Management tour, which also features Eminem, Ludacris, and Xzibit. Papa Roach frontman Jacoby Shaddix said. “We’re gonna do, like, a medley of, like, just flip a bunch of hip-hop classics, like the hooks, so, you know, for the fans that are like, ‘OK, we like this band but…’ Like, in the middle of the… Read more »

Fieldy’s Dreams was hardly a home run when the project debuted early this year, but the Korn bassist is not about to hang up his hip-hop hat. At Saturday’s ESPN Action Sports and Music Awards, where he performed in an all-star rap-rock band with Jay-Z and others, Fieldy said he planned to start work on his second solo album sometime this year. “[Korn is time-consuming], yeah, but we have a lot of downtime,” Fieldy said before the show. “So there will probably be some more stuff from me.” Fieldy, a self-described Rock N Roll Gangster, has been staying up in… Read more »