Fab in NYC
Everyone loves a concert they don’t have to pay for. And when the lineup consists of Fabolous, Busta Rhymes, Keyshia Cole, Swizz Beatz, Ludacris and more, well it doesn’t get much better. Recently Boost Mobile RockCorps just wrapped a nationwide tour in New York City. Technically the concert wasn’t free because in order […]

Q-Tip on stage in NYC
Onstage, a man with a mic is rhythmically delivering more words than you’d typically hear between breaths. Most of what he says is hard to make out, until the entourage of anywhere from 2-30 highly animated friends chime in for 16 measures. Bass is blaring from speakers. There’s no band in […]

Photo. Jonathan Mannion
The following appears in Dime #36, on newsstands now…

On the same night in late-July when 2K Sports gave us a very-early sneak peek of NBA 2K8, they brought NBA ballers Andre Iguodala, Gerald Wallace, Rudy Gay and 2K8 cover guy Chris Paul to Rucker Park for the first-ever outdoor, nighttime motion-capture session. In […]

Tomorrow, Chamillionaire will drop his sophomore album, Ultimate Victory (Universal Records). A couple weeks ago I spoke with Chamillionaire about his forthcoming release and what he could have been on the basketball court…

Dime: Living in NY, your first single, “Hip-Hop Police” seems especially relevant.
Chamillionaire: [The song] is actually not even about the police […]

The One Man Band Man

In hip-hop, maybe more so than any other musical genre, artists are constantly forced to defend their credibility. That said, as a producer, there are very few in the game who can touch Swizz Beatz. For the better part of the last decade, Swizz has been making hit songs for Nas, […]

Marco Polo’s Port Authority, available now.
A couple months back I got a package of CDs from a friend over at Red Marketing. On one of the album covers, I saw a pale-complexioned face looking at me with distrusting eyes that seemed to be asking me the same question I was asking it: “Who are […]

The Lox Live at the BBQ

This weekend Microsoft Zune’s summer concert series, “Live at the BBQ,” made its way to New York City. The stage at Brooklyn’s Empire-Ferry Fulton State Park overlooked the East River, offering a backdrop that made you quickly forget about the sweltering heat. The mic was blessed by Baby Cham, Boot […]