Last year marked the inaugural local installment of the traveling hip-hop extravaganza known as Rock the Bells. Breathing some much-needed golden-age and conscious-type air into Miami’s bling-ridden environs, the lineup featured everyone from Jedi Mind Tricks to Mos Def and Talib Kweli, from Nas to a recently reunited Wu-Tang Clan…
Speak to anyone in their 50s about Carly Simon and their eyes flicker. It’s like asking today’s youth about Jay-Z or Radiohead; she’s a musical powerhouse that changed the trajectory of boomer culture. Her life story is made for daytime TV, from her early rise in her hometown of New…
You can’t help but be intimidated by KRS-One’s voice, a booming tone that shakes walls from concert halls to Ivy League classrooms. It is deeply distinct, like what you’d get if James Earl Jones rapped about b-boys, Jesus, and Bobby Seale. So imagine what it’s like to pick up the…
On a lone desolate strip off Broward Boulevard, among barefoot crackheads and auto-body chop shops, lies a deserted strip mall with few signs of life. One can drive by it for months without figuring out that, on the corner of SW 27th Avenue and SW Seventh Street, stands one of…
The Marlin Hotel’s dimly lit lobby is quieter than usual. A tall, bearded man wearing a checkered paperboy cap points to a raggedy basketball jersey hung on an easel; its bottom is tattered, seams are busted, and the bright-red color has faded to gray-maroon. It appears to have been used…
Amid rumors of a bad breakup and cheating hearts, Common and Erykah Badu still continue to straddle that awkward “ex-lovers/now-friends” line in public. Who can forget their Billboard hit “Love of My Life,” which for many hip-hop fans gave hope that these two would one day manifest a child —…
From first impressions of Fort Lauderdale-based rapper Protoman, one can´t help but notice the wrinkles under his eyes. With his rugged face and mature presence, you´d guess his age to be late 20s or early 30s. Not close. The 5-foot-10 lanky MC shows you his driver´s license, displaying DOB: 09-29-1985…
As if the name ¨Boca Raton¨ (variously translated as ¨Mouse´s Mouth¨ and ¨Thieves’ Cove¨) isn´t awkward enough, just imagine being a hip-hop group named after a street in this upper-crust South Florida city and trying to eke out some street cred. That´s hard on its own, but when the actual…
On the tenth floor of an anonymous building in the Brickell district is a small room that looks like a college dorm room, decorated with random pictures of graffiti and a boom box on the computer desk. This is the quiet, abnormally normal headquarters of RK Netmedia, one of the…
