Search Results for: public enemy

They’ve already finished their next record and they won’t be hitting the road with Kiss for another three weeks, so Aerosmith have been keeping busy with various side projects. Last week frontman Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry contributed music to a piece that Public Enemy’s Chuck D wrote for the introduction to the ESPY Awards. The cut, “Let’s Get Loud,” features music by the Aerosmith members and rapping by Chuck, Busta Rhymes, MC Lyte and Fife. The ESPYs will air July 16 on ESPN. Also, look for Perry hamming it up on the Food Channel. On June 27, the… Read more »

On the heels of the murder of its DJ, Jason Mizell (Jam Master Jay), on Oct. 30, groundbreaking hip-hop group Run-DMC has announced its retirement. “Some rock bands can replace the drummer,” said Rev. Joseph “Run” Simmons at a press conference to announce the formation of a coalition to help the surviving members of Mizell’s family at the Rihga Royal Hotel in New York on Wednesday (Nov. 6). “I don’t know any other way but to be the three original members. As a tribute to the positive legacy of Jam Master Jay, we started together and we want the Run-DMC… Read more »

As one of the forefathers of rap, with a history of social activism, Run-DMC’s Jam Master Jay was an unlikely target for the kind of violence that killed rappers Tupac Shakur or the Notorious B.I.G. He was married with three kids, and a fixture in the Queens neighborhood where he grew up. Yet authorities were searching Thursday for the gunman who killed the 37-year-old disc jockey with a gunshot to the head inside his recording studio. “Jam Master Jay was a longtime family man and one of the founders of the group that knocked down all the doors for hip-hop,… Read more »

Jam Master Jay, a founding member of the pioneering rap trio Run DMC, was shot and killed at his recording studio near the New York neighborhood where he grew up, police said. Two men were buzzed into the second-floor studio shortly before shots were fired inside its lounge at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, police said. As of early Thursday, police had made no arrests. The 37-year-old disc jockey, whose real name was Jason Mizell, was shot once in the head in the studio’s lounge and died at the scene, said Detective Robert Price, a police spokesman. Urieco Rincon, 25, who… Read more »

Like so many one-hit wonders before it, the demise of the once iconic online song-swapping service Napster has failed to stir much sympathy. “Really, who cares?” Sebastian, a student at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, told Reuters as he heard that Napster would likely be forced into Chapter 7 liquidation as early as Thursday. “Everybody’s moved on to other file-sharing (services). The interest for Napster in the Internet community just wasn’t as high as everybody originally thought,” said the 28-year old student of IT engineering. During its heyday in 2000, Napster attracted tens of millions of music fans who… Read more »

After a three-year hiatus, groundbreaking hip-hop tour Smokin’ Grooves will return this summer armed with a lineup that includes Outkast, Lauryn Hill and the Roots. The outing, which will also feature West Coast rhyme slingers Jurassic 5, is scheduled to kick off July 18 near San Francisco and hit 15 major markets before wrapping up August 7 in Atlanta. DJ Shadow, Cee-Lo, and Damien Marley and the Ghetto Youth Crew will appear at some of the dates, along with several other surprise performers, according to the tour’s promoter. Two shows, August 1 and 4, will feature Black Lily, an all-female… Read more »

For those who think rap-rock is just about tapped out, Quarashi would like to present their spin on the genre. “We’re trying to do rap music the way Joey Ramone would have done rap music,” said Sölvi Blondal, the band’s producer and drummer. “What we are trying to do is punk-rock rap music, but a little bit more 1990s, like when Public Enemy was doing Fear of a Black Planet and when Cypress [Hill] was coming up with their first album. We tried to approach that style…. We didn’t want to be like Limp Bizkit or these bands that are… Read more »

As the three-man DJ troupe X-ecutioners scratched through their hour-long set Monday, video images projected onto a screen above the stage. There, in grainy black-and-white, were jazz musicians straining away on trumpets and saxophones. It was an interesting choice because, like most DJs, the X-ecutioners never appear to exert themselves – their whole act is based around making daredevil wrist-flicking seem as calm as a hurricane’s eye. On a more formal level, the contrast between jazz and hip-hop DJing couldn’t be more pronounced: While most classic jazz improvisation hinges on a relatively steady beat, the X-ecutioners improvise the beat itself.… Read more »

The cameraman removed the digital video camera from the tripod and got ready for some hand-held shots of the X-ecutioners at Phat Beats record store in the West Village. A look of concern creased the face of the group’s publicist, who hurriedly approached the producer of the shoot. Her idea was to lead into the television news story with shots of the DJs scratching, but the X-ecutioners, whose new record, Built From Scratch, charted at #15 on this week’s Billboard 200 albums chart, don’t normally perform in retail outlets and their label rep was worried that without their precision equipment… Read more »

Following in the footsteps of Public Enemy, Limp Bizkit are inviting fans to remix one of their trademark tunes. Beginning Friday, December 14th, as part of a contest sponsored by AOL, the Bizkit faithful can download DJ Lethal’s “Break Stuff” remix from the band’s just-released New Old Songs remix album and submit their own retooled versions of the track. Titled “Fred Durst’s Favorite Mix Contest,” the competition runs through January 10th. Limp Bizkit themselves will select the winning entry, which will be subsequently posted and featured on the AOL Music Web site. AOL users can access a mixer on the… Read more »