Word: hip-hop
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That remains to be seen. Even though there's no money to be made in hip-hop, it attracts top talent. In Havana's lush Miramar neighborhood, Equis Alfonso, a.k.a. X Alfonso, 28, is talking about his upcoming hip-hop/son fusion album titled X-More. He also has some sharp words about the Buena Vista Social Club, the geezer vocal group that popularized prerevolution balladry everywhere but Cuba. "People think because of Ry Cooder and Buena Vista that Cuban music became better known," says Alfonso, who is also a member of the hot fusion group Sintesis. "That...
...this tradition, De Castro brings a sound that fluidly, intelligently and winningly blends disparate genres--samba, bossa nova, drum 'n' bass, hip-hop and soul--into futuristic music that echoes the past. On his debut album, Samba Raro (released last year on the Trama label), De Castro's lyrics, all in Portuguese, have an engaging, understated simplicity. The title song compares the movement of a beautiful woman to a samba (Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes made a similar comparison on their bossa-nova standard The Girl from Ipanema). Another song, Pra Voce Lembrar, tells the story...
...some point or another, everyone thinks about taking a baseball bat to the radio. There's nothing on the air, goes the traditional gripe, aside from the latest flavor of mainstream pop, hard rock and hip-hop. It's a sterile teenage wasteland spanning the dial, disrupted only by the odd college station...
...also a global phenomenon. The two most recent albums he has produced, his own Chronic 2001 and Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP, have sold 25 million copies worldwide. He's a multiplatinum seller in territories--Japan, New Zealand, Australia and Eastern Europe--that were distant hip-hop outposts a few years ago. Dre's distributor, Interscope Records, receives 4,000 requests a year from labels in such places as India, Turkey, Southeast Asia and Israel that want to add Dre tracks to international hip-hop compilations. Beyond his mere reach, Dre has also brought depth. Pepe Mogt, a composer...
...wail, Fassie has entered a new phase of her career. The kids call her the Queen of Kwaito, a pulsating pop style that exploded out of the townships in the early '90s and that Fassie quickly adopted. Kwaito (slang for "these guys are hot") fuses slowed American house and hip-hop, British garage and Jamaican reggae, held together with laid-back bass lines and percussion from traditional African chants. Like hip-hop, kwaito has become a cultural movement that incorporates lifestyle and fashion. And like hip-hop, it sells. In South Africa, where a platinum album means sales...