Historic hip-hop imprint Priority Records has been given a new lease on life, this time as a producer-centric electronic music and progressive urban music label. A joint venture of Insurgency Music and Capitol Music Group, the refurbished label will be headed by Insurgency co-founder Michael Cohen, the two companies announced July 22.
Operating out of the Capitol Records building in Hollywood, the new-look Priority will officially launch in August with single “Higher,” a collaboration between hip-hop beatmaker Just Blaze, “Harlem Shake” creator Baauer and Jay Z.
As Cohen explained in a statement: “We are looking to establish the new Priority as a home for producers. The emergence of the producer as an artist and brand within the global electronic music scene and beyond has heralded a paradigm shift in the way music is created, discovered and spread. We are firm believers in nurturing artists and scenes that develop in the underground, and we intend to infuse the label with the most progressive artists we can find, wherever they may be.”
Founded in 1985 in Los Angeles, Priority first hit paydirt with novelty releases from the California Raisins, but it was as a hip-hop imprint that it truly made its mark. The label released such landmark gangsta rap albums as N.W.A.’s “Straight Outta Compton” and Ice Cube’s “AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted,” and later forged a hugely successful alliance with Master P’s No Limit Records in the mid-1990s. Priority pacted with EMI in the 1990s and was eventually merged into Capitol.
Priority releases will be distributed by Caroline in the U.S., with parent company Universal Music Group handling international.
via Priority Records Relaunched as Electronic Music Label | Variety
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Jay Z and Justin Timberlake took a moment out of their recent show at New York City’s Yankee Stadium to honor the late teenager Travyon Martin. The duo was in New York City this weekend for the latest stops on their co-headlining Legends of the Summer Tour.
Jay Z and Timberlake closed their Friday show with a performance of Jay Z’s “Forever Young,” dedicating the song to the 17-year-old Martin who died last year.Take a look at the duo’s dedication below.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQqLhBGaV3o&w=560&h=315]
While in New York this weekend, Jay Z also attended a rally for Martin with his wife, Beyonce, joining a crowd speaking out against the recent ruling that aqcuited Florida man George Zimmerman in the case of the shooting death of Martin. Beyonce also recently made her own tribute to Martin, holding a moment of silence for the young man at her Nashville show after the ruling was announced.
Other celebrities who have spoken out on the case include singer Bruce Springsteen, who dedicated his song “American Skin (41 Shots)” to Martin at a show in Ireland, and Stevie Wonder, who announced that he will no longer perform in the state of Florida until it changes its Stand Your Ground laws.
article via huffingtonpost.com
Jay Z and Timberlake closed their Friday show with a performance of Jay Z’s “Forever Young,” dedicating the song to the 17-year-old Martin who died last year.Take a look at the duo’s dedication below.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQqLhBGaV3o&w=560&h=315]
While in New York this weekend, Jay Z also attended a rally for Martin with his wife, Beyonce, joining a crowd speaking out against the recent ruling that aqcuited Florida man George Zimmerman in the case of the shooting death of Martin. Beyonce also recently made her own tribute to Martin, holding a moment of silence for the young man at her Nashville show after the ruling was announced.
Other celebrities who have spoken out on the case include singer Bruce Springsteen, who dedicated his song “American Skin (41 Shots)” to Martin at a show in Ireland, and Stevie Wonder, who announced that he will no longer perform in the state of Florida until it changes its Stand Your Ground laws.
article via huffingtonpost.com
NEW YORK (AP) — Jay-Z’s new album has sold more than 500,000 units its first week. Nielsen SoundScan said late Tuesday that preliminary data shows that “Magna Carta Holy Grail” moved about 527,000 copies. It will debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart this week. The album was officially released on July 7. Samsung bought and gave 1.2 million copies of the album to Galaxy mobile phone users on July 4. Billboard is not counting those sales on its charts.
“Magna Carta” has the second-best first-week debut of the year after Justin Timberlake’s “20/20 Experience.” The album features Timberlake, Beyonce, Frank Ocean and Timbaland. Jay-Z’s 12th album had more than 14 million streams in its first week on Spotify, beating a record that Daft Punk set in May with “Random Access Memories.”
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press via thegrio.com
Nas has found a new home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard University’s W.E.B Du Bois Institute and Hip-Hop Archive announced the creation of the Nasir Jones Fellowship. The fellowship named after the rapper who is known for his philosophical bars, will allow scholars and artists to use their education through a creative outlet. The Nasir Jones Fellowship key purpose is based on the motto: Education is real power.
The Hip-Hop Archive press release states the mission:
“To seek projects from scholars and artists that build on the rich and complex hip-hop tradition; to respect that tradition through historically grounded and contextualized critical insights; and most importantly, to represent one’s creative and/or intellectually rigorous contribution to hip-hop and the discourse through personal and academic projects.”
The fellowship will cover the works of Nas and other prolific hip-hop artists who contributed monumental work to the genre. Recipients of The Nasir Jones Fellowship will be selected by Harvard faculty.
The MC who received the privilege of his own fellowship at the Ivy League states:
“In my roller coaster of a life I’ve endured good and bad for sure, and I’ve truly been blessed to have achieved so much through art in my short life thus far. But I am immensely over-the-top excited about the Nasir Jones Hip-Hop Fellowship at Harvard. From Queens, NY to true cultural academia. My hopes are that greed for knowledge, art, self-determination and expression go a long way. It is a true honor to have my name attached to so much hard work, alongside great names like Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and W.E.B. Du Bois and to such a prestigious and historical institution, and all in the name of the music I grew to be a part of.”
Before forming his own fellowship, Nas has helped Grammy-award winning music producer 9th Wonder with his own academic research project called These Are The Breaks. The research was based on compiling original samples from hip-hop albums that were permanently archived in the Harvard Library; Nas’s Illimatic was a part of the research. 9th Wonder’s research project and journey to Harvard has become a documentary called, The Harvard Fellow.
article by Lauren R.D. Fox via madamenoire.com
Jay-Z reached out to a number of producers while creating Magna Carta Holy Grail, his 12th studio album. The usual suspects — Timbaland, Pharrell, and Swizz Beats — were there, but a budding 16-year-old producer from Canada, Ebony Oshunrinde, a.k.a. WondaGurl (pictured), also made her mark on the album, according to The Star.com.
WondaGurl produced the track “Crown” on Holy Grail, which was released digitally July 4th and in stores Tuesday, but the Brampton native first got in to creating beats after watching a video of Jay-Z and Timbaland in the studio together. “It inspired me, and I wanted to do the exact same thing that he did,” she said. At age 9, Oshunrinde downloaded music software, teaching herself to use it via YouTube tutorials.
She coined the WondaGurl name by switching the name of fellow Canadian producer Boi-1da (pronounced boy wonda). In 2011, she caught her big break, winning the Battle of the Beatmakers competition. This caught the attention of Boi, who began mentoring WondaGurl at Toronto’s Remix Project Studio. A year after winning the competition, the musical prodigy signed an exclusive management deal with label Black Box and began working in a studio.
The “Just Churchin’” Comedy Show, Woman of Purpose Concert and the Ball Up Streetball Classic Tour Championship game are just a few of the electrifying entertainment events that will captivate audiences during the upcoming Labor Day weekend.
“MegaFest is about coming together to strengthen each other and our families, and leaving refreshed and ready to help our communities,” said Jakes. “There’s no better way to get inspired than by having fun, creating memories and laughing together.”
Making its triumphant return to the United States for the first time since 2006, MegaFest will be held at the Dallas Convention Center, American Airlines Center and other venues throughout the city. This supersized event marries four of Jakes’ most popular conferences: ManPower, Woman Thou Art Loosed, MegaYouth and MegaKidz with a plethora of entertainment, business and other empowering features for the entire family.
Hosted by Cedric the Entertainer and Niecy Nash, stars of the TV Land hit sitcom The Soul Man, the “Just Churchin’” comedy show is a MegaFest favorite. Slated for Friday, August 30 at 8 p.m. at the Dallas Convention Center Arena, “Just Churchin’” guarantees a flavorful mix of comedic talent, with hilarious, family-friendly stand up routines from seasoned veteran comedians to the hottest up and coming talent. Tickets went on sale June 28.
Every rapper takes pride in his ability to paint pictures with words. So it’s fitting that one of the world’s most famous MC’s has decided to take that ability to heart. Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, one third of the legendary group Run-DMC has decided that after years of being a fan of comic books that now is the time to start his very own publishing company, the aptly named Darryl Makes Comics.
“I’m just the bait,” DMC says to the watching crowd during his press conference at Midtown Comics. “This ain’t about a rapper starting a comic book, this is about a life-long fan!” To underline his sincerity DMC points out that in the 1985 classic “King of Rock” he proudly rhymed way back then that “I’m DMC, I can draw.”
Taking his role as publisher seriously, McDaniels has teamed up with a who’s who in the world of comic books and entertainment to guarantee a top-notch product.
In the wake of the George Zimmerman acquittal, the singer said he would not be performing in the Sunshine State until its Stand Your Ground law is “abolished.” He also said he would not be performing in any other state that recognizes the law, which some say contributed to Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26, 2012.
“I decided today that until the Stand Your Ground law is abolished in Florida, I will never perform there again,” Wonder said Sunday while performing in Quebec City. “As a matter of fact, wherever I find that law exists, I will not perform in that state or in that part of the world.” Some have argued that the law played no role in the acquittal. However, The Atlantic‘s Ta-Nehisi Coates pointed out that it was cited in the jury instructions.
Meanwhile, Wonder also called for his fans’ support of his boycott. “The truth is that — for those of you who’ve lost in the battle for justice, wherever that fits in any part of the world — we can’t bring them back,” he said. “What we can do is we can let our voices be heard. And we can vote in our various countries throughout the world for change and equality for everybody. That’s what I know we can do.” (Watch Wonder’s full announcement below.)
Protests have broken out in major U.S. cities including New York and Los Angeles since the jury rendered its not-guilty verdict last week. Recording artists including Beyonce, Young Jeezy, Wyclef Jean and Lil Scrappy have already paid tribute to Martin.
article via hollywoodreporter.com
One of the most important vinyl record collections in the history of hip-hop will be on display to the public when archivists sort, organize and even play music from the crates of DJ Afrika Bambaataa – the godfather of hip-hop culture and an instrumental figure in the rise of electro funk. Gavin Brown’s enterprise and Johan Kugelberg/Boo-Hooray Gallery, together with Afrika Bambaataa, the Universal Zulu Nation and Cornell University Library are organizing the records for the Afrika Bambaataa Master of Records vinyl archive, which will permanently live at Cornell University’s Hip Hop Collection in fall 2013.
From July 11 through Aug. 10, Kugelberg and his team will be organizing, cataloguing and documenting Afrika Bambaataa’s peerless vinyl collection on business days between noon and 5 p.m. at Gavin Brown’s enterprise, 620 Greenwich Street, Manhattan. Visitors are encouraged to stop by, hear some great music and see how the cultural artifacts of this important strand of American history are preserved.
Please join the Afrika Bambaataa vinyl archive mailing list at afrikab@gavinbrown.biz and follow Gavin Brown’s enterprise on Facebook and Twitter for announcements of visiting DJs playing selections from the archive during the sort. Originally from the South Bronx, Afrika Bambaataa is among the most influential American DJs. He is considered the godfather of hip-hop culture and was instrumental in the rise of electro funk and break-beat deejaying beginning in the 1980s.
Nicki Minaj poses for the August cover of Marie Claire and in doing so, she became the first rapper to grace the magazine’s front page. The glossy features the YMCMB rapper in a cover spread where Minaj discusses her thoughts on music, men and motherhood. On the cover, Minaj sports a short blonde bob and an embellished plaid top. Yet inside the mag’s editorial spread, she dons a black, white and grey form-fitting dress, among many other curve-hugging ensembles.
The music star provided an in-depth interview and dishes about her former feuds and the possibility of crossing over to acting. “One day, when I start getting a couple gray hairs, maybe it will all be only acting,” she said. I just never know. . . I’ve kind of become the poster child for doing the things that no one expects.” The August issue of Marie Claire is on stands now.
article by Lilly Workneh via thegrio.com