hip hop

Brooklyn’s been home to rappers from Foxy Brown to Mos Def to Notorious B.I.G. The New York City borough is such a hotspot for hip hop that the shout-out "Where Brooklyn at?" is a staple in rap songs. Plus, each year Brooklyn hosts an annual hip-hop festival where rap royalty such as Q-Tip, KRS-One, and De La Soul have performed. Given the borough’s historic ties to hip hop, why is a petition circulating to convince a new club in Park Slope to showcase "indie" music rather than hip hop? Evidently, the neighborhood’s been gentrified so much that black people are no longer wanted there, even though Park Slope was once a mostly African-American and immigrant ’hood.

Jay-Z is arguably the most successful hip-hop artist in the world. He owns a sports team, created a clothing line, ran a record label and then started his own, and last year beat Elvis Presley as the solo act with the most Billboard 200 hits. This year, he decided to add "author" to his long list of titles. Decoded is part memoir, part argument in defense of hip-hop, part lyrical analysis of his work, both well-known and unknown, and part printed self-aggrandizement with expensive-looking art design to match—like a microcosm of hip-hop itself. (But with more avant-garde black-and-white photography.)

Can’tstoplisteningtoDessa! The only woman in the highly acclaimed underground hip hop collective, Doomtree, Dessa brings a literary beauty to hypnotic rhythms that left me (re)examining the super old and super problematic feminist consensus that hip hop, even what comes from woman artists, is too caught up with rampant sexism to see outside that bubble. Conscious hip hop, thy name is woman!

Yesterday, one of hip-hop's rising stars, Nicki Minaj Tweeted something that caught my eye:

A rumored lesbian (or bisexual, depending on who you ask), Nicki is not "out," but took to Twitter for this random piece of knowledge, which only furthered my curiosity about her and how it relates to closeted women in the hip-hop community. As the "First Lady" of Lil' Wayne's Young Money record label, she recently admitted to feeling a lot of pressure, being a new artist.