Word: hopping
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...years ago today, hip hop lost its most eloquent and incisive voice with the murder of Tupac Shakur. During his lifetime, Pac elevated hip hop to an art form—he “changed the game,” as rappers like to say—by recording disturbing yet deeply moving songs about the horrors of the ghetto and, later, about the perils of celebrity...
Although Pac lived the so-called “thug life” and predicted that he would die at a young age (he was 25 when his car was ambushed by a gunman in Las Vegas), he should not be remembered as a martyr or a prophet. Hip hop fans worshipped him, but he should not be remembered as a hero, either. Pac should be remembered because he articulated his confusion and rage so well. His music reflects the complexity of a life spent trying to reconcile a career that brought great fame and riches with a youth...
...problem is not that today’s hip hop artists are less talented or ambitious than their predecessors. Instead, it seems that most are more interested in living the gangsta lifestyle—characterized by conspicuous consumption, loud parties, drug use, belligerence toward competitors, and defiance of authority—than in making creative, meaningful records. Somehow, Pac was able to do both...
GAME THEORY THE ROOTS FOR A DECADE, the Roots has been hip-hop's most innovative and politically engaged band--another way of saying it hasn't been the least bit fun. The group is no barrel of yuks here either, but Katrina and Iraq have stoked its outrage into an album of compelling ferocity. Lead voice Black Thought delivers focused and occasionally paranoid rants about a crumbling society ("Watch who you put all your trust in/ Worldwide we coincide with who's suffering") while producer, drummer and resident genius ?uestlove samples dystopian anthems (Radiohead's You and Whose Army...
...fish; he's the only fish. Perhaps recognizing that the water is getting a little brackish, Shadow varies the formula on his latest with a folk ballad, a soul jam and a delicate guitar symphony as emotional as a telenovela. (Qu dramtico!) His more conventional hip-hop tracks pose no threat to commercial radio, but they're perfect platforms for Bay Area rappers Keak Da Sneak and Lateef the Truth Speaker to say the things Shadow's samples...