Published: 5/12/2010
Types: Music, Hip-Hop/R&B
The fact isn't just how badly Sista Otis wants — nay, needs — to play music. The fact is she virtually breathes and lives music. Her life, for many years now, has consisted of little else. Perhaps the producer of the Metro Times Blowout realized this when Sista Otis was booked to perfor...[MORE]
Published: 3/24/2010
Types: Arts, Performing arts, Theater
The noted multimedia engineer, choreographer and director Lumumba Reynolds had a considerable revelation last August. It struck when he noticed a noticeably dissatisfied-looking woman who'd come to see a production of Passing, the acclaimed play from Detroit-born playwright Dara Frazier-Harper. Insi...[MORE]
Published: 8/12/2009
Types: Music, Hip-Hop/R&B
Editor's note: The Detroit and international hip-hop family suffered a huge loss on Saturday, Aug. 1, with the passing of Titus "Baatin" Glover, co-founder of the legendary Slum Village rap supergroup, who was found dead on the 14000 block of Anglin Street in Detroit. The cause of his deat...[MORE]
Published: 9/10/2008
Types: Arts, Performing arts, Theater
Hip-hop culture : It's both phenomenal and homogenized, and its fans are jaded. But it may be that way because too few of us push hard enough to locate people like Will Power. The San Francisco-bred hip-hop head was raised in a gumbo of activism, art and education. And his performance style c...[MORE]
Published: 9/10/2008
Types: Music, Hip-Hop/R&B
"Working at Excellence" once defined the initials in Khary "WAE" Frazier's name. He used to tell folks this meaning more often back when he simply called himself "WAE." And even though this worldview could be called "inspirational," he admits that, in the world of hip-hop, it can get corny.Now...[MORE]
Published: 3/8/2000
Types: Music
Positivity is relative. We’ve gotten so loose with that term that calling a group positive is like describing an artist’s album as "the next level." Right. Whatever. So when you come across a group th...[MORE]
Published: 3/8/2000
Types: Music
1998 - Drove out to Nation Studios in Southfield one night to sit in on one of Royce the 5’9"’s fledgling recording sessions. A few members of his crew, Wall Street, were seated in the waiting area, talking among themselves about nothing g...[MORE]
Published: 3/5/2008
Types: Music, Hip-Hop/R&B
They're a hip-hop group that laughs publicly, though their music is decidedly underground and rugged. They actually believe in having fun. Go figure. What's more, they're a pack of closet music geeks who get excited about being able to hear the sound of Max Roach's kick drum moving around on t...[MORE]
By Khary Kimani Turner, Rebecca Mazzei
Published: 2/20/2008
Types: Arts, Visual arts
Make no mistake, Alex Melamid’s a Russian rabble-rouser. Here he is on the evening of his own opening, and instead of schmoozing the art elite, he's out near the stage, drink in hand. This Albert Einstein look-alike is rocking, out-of-rhythm, to the sounds of Detroit hip-hopper Mike-E. No, the i...[MORE]
Published: 1/16/2008
Types: Music, Hip-Hop/R&B
The late James "J Dilla" Yancey has been compared to icons whose names normally wouldn't be mentioned in the same paragraph as hip-hop artists. Legends like Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk. It's both intriguing and fitting, then, that Mos Def is coming to Ann Arbor on Martin Luther King Day...[MORE]
Published: 11/7/2007
Types: Music, Hip-Hop/R&B
Detroit has long had a penchant for producing talents who go largely unnoticed ... until you suddenly look up one day and see they've taken off somewhere else. Think of Amp Fiddler, posters plastered on subway walls in Europe but barely turning an eye at the local dollar store. This could well ...[MORE]
Published: 9/8/1999
No bones about it – Bonz Malone is the real thing. His "Tuph Street" column is one of Vibe magazine’s most popular. He co-wrote Slam, played a bit part in Life and now appears in Marc Levin’s Whiteboys. His life has tak...[MORE]
Published: 8/18/1999
Because music is a cauldron, because it’s that boundless arena where vibrations meet, clash, combine and form new sounds, we should be thankful. Music refuses to conform to society’s rules, and instead offers a voice to anyone willing to speak ...[MORE]
Published: 8/15/2007
King Sundiata Keita, the beloved forerunner of Detroit's African drum and dance community, must have decided to leave some of his spirit behind when he passed away two years ago. The reasoning behind this theory is that his son, Prince Sewande Keita, has emerged as a wicked percussionist on hi...[MORE]
Published: 3/10/1999
Types: Music, Hip-Hop/R&B
Remember that old DJ sample, where the artist says to the crowd, "Can the drummer get some? ’Cause the drummer ain’t had none in a long time!" DJ Marquis is that drummer, and the "some" he hasn’t had are the props he tr...[MORE]
Published: 3/10/1999
Types: Music, Hip-Hop/R&B
Many local soul music aficionados will argue that, despite public perception, the sound still lives in Detroit. They may, in fact, wager that it’s taken residence in the body of one Kem L. Owens. Kem is one of those rare musicians whose music...[MORE]
Published: 3/10/1999
Types: Music, Hip-Hop/R&B
"I’m one of them pretty rappers/ Buck if I really have ta/ I’ll really slap ya/ King of Detroit/ who they namin’ the city after./ Scantless partners whose grammar hammers the hard shit/ Enter your heart with content you don’t wan...[MORE]
Published: 6/27/2007
Types: Music, Hip-Hop/R&B
It's at least fascinating, life's cyclical nature. You grow up in a harsh environment and overcome shitty, life-altering situations over the years. You manage to achieve something. And then, in the midst of success come the sucker punches, trying to knock you down. Jesse "Crane Novacane" Wilson...[MORE]
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