Music Reviews: Hip Hop/Rap

In the audiophile ghettos otherwise known as "hi-fi shows" Hip Hop music rarely if ever gets played. Blues? Yes. A lot of blues. Jazz? Yes a lot of jazz. Some classical too, but Hip Hop? Not that I can recall. Some say it's the coarse language. Around the time this now classic Hip Hop album was released late 1992, a Howard Stern Show character named "Stuttering John" (Melendez) stuck a microphone in Walter Cronkite's face at a press event... Read More

After dominating the UK music scene in 2021 with her epic, bombastic LP “Sometimes I Might Be Introvert”, Little Simz (real name Simbi Ajikawo) wasted no time in returning with another magnificent expression of her partnership with producer Inflo. While her latest LP “No Thank You” was released on streaming services in December 2022, the physical formats, including a range of vinyl variants, finally surfaced in mid-June 2023.Before turning to the exceptional Little... Read More

(This review, written by Carl E. Baugher, originally appeared in Issue 5/6, Winter 1995/96.)If Coolio ain’t careful, he's gonna give gangsta rap a good name. ‘Course, he’d be the first to tell you he’s not a gangsta rapper anyway and, despite the album title, that’s a fact. This collection of intelligent, positive, smoothly gliding, retro soul/R&B, hip-hop is impressively varied and wide-ranging.It all adds up to way more than one normally gets in... Read More