Narduwuar interviews Pharrell, and Pharrell flips the script and interviews Narduwuar…

Today, Nas took to his twitter to announce that he will be linking up with Hennesy for it’s Wild Rabbit campaign.


In case you aren’t familiar, the Wild Rabbit campaign is one that was created by the top cognac brand to encourage people to continue to strive for success, no matter what level of mastery they have accomplished. The campaign in the past has featured the likes of Erykah Badu, Martin Scorsese, and Manny Pacquiao. Following this announcement, there is set to be a private concert on January 15th that will stream via Livestream, and will be downloadable on Facebook.

Nas goes on to say:

“This partnership with Hennessy has been almost two decades in the making. I am honored to be included in the group of previous partners Hennessy has selected over the years and hope this campaign will inspire others to ‘never stop, never settle.”

Congratulations to him on this awesome endeavor.

[source]

All My Babies Mamas FINAL 10.1.12 by dm_50db96d297d08

Rapper Shawty Lo stars in an upcoming reality series: All My Baby Mamas, starring of course, him, all 10 of his baby mamas, and all 11 of his kids.

Someone was definitely a rolling stone…

Check it out

We would like to congratulate our 44th president, Mr. Barack Obama on his 2nd term in office! We’re happy that he will be serving an additional four years in office, and just in case you missed it, you can watch President Obama’s victory speech below!

As if Pharrell wasn’t already one of the coolest beings in existence! Pharrell heads out to BOOK MARC [Marc Jacobs book store] LA to do a book signing for the release of his book, Places & Spaces I’ve Been.

Check it out!

Hoodie Vote is a non partisan, grassroots movement that encourages people from all over the country–no matter race, age, sex to get out, go vote, and make a positive change in the community, and help eliminate the stereotypes that are often associated with young voters. Hoodie Vote aims to get people in the community to get to the polls not only to help make a change on a nationwide level, but in their local communities as well.

Don’t be without yours whenever you head out to the polls on 11.6.12!

ORDER YOURS TODAY

During his stop in Houston, Rockie Fresh brought out the Southeast Beast himself! Check out a quick recap of what went down!

The Raw Republic recently got a chance to catch up with L.E.$. of the legendary Boss Hogg Outlawz clique. Watch our latest installment of Raw Talk, as J.J. talks with L.E.$. about everything from his musical influences, to cars!

Check it out!

Watch as A. Kaye talks with Mr. “Swagged Up I Be Killin Em” himself, Rai P! Check it out!

Trust me when I say to you that I am no idiot. I understand that hip hop is a genre of trends and style changes,  and has been for years. One trend is dope for so long, and dies out as quickly as it came in, only to be forgotten and remembered years or decades later for its silliness and what it contributed.

Trap music has been around for years upon years, and the rapper who really made a standout run doing it early on was Young Jeezy. When he hit the scene in the summer of 2005, all you heard in everyone’s deck anywhere around Houston was Trap or Die. Shit was crazy. It wasn’t that Jeezy was a gifted rapper with complex rhyme schemes and patterns. It was that he was straight from the hood spitting hood shit and didn’t give the basic 1.2. rap formula that we are used to. His beats were gritty, full of bass, and his adlibs were so dope they often overshadowed whatever the hell he would talk about in the song.
Fast forward oh, let’s say 7 years and here we have Young Jeezy not the “Trap Rapper” from Atlanta, but the Multi-Platinum Selling Artist, who has been on songs with R. Kelly, kanye west, Jay Z, Rhianna etc. Now saying that sounds crazy seeing as Jeezy’s beginnings were in Trap Music. This also can be said for T.I.: his first major label debut was named Trap Musik, and look at how far he has come over the years.
See, what makes these original trap music artist special is that they found that medium between the streets and the mainstream, and made it work. Eventually they moved on from the basic trap music, and started expanding musically, while still keeping the core values of their music in tact.

In all honesty, I do not see that same thing happening for the Trap/Swag rappers of today. I truly don’t. You can’t tell me that artist like Future, French Montana, A$ap Rocky and his crew, 2 Chainz, Chief Keef and countless others will have a career past maybe 2-3 years. I say that mainly because talent wise, almost all of the artist I named don’t have much of any talent. At least when Jeezy or TI hit the scene u caught recurring instances of their musicality, and their knack for creating more than just a Trap song or a “Swag Anthem”.

With these new guys I do not see that. It’s literally like every song that they drop sounds exactly the same, down to the lyrics and the beat: it’s like the same shit over and over and over. I’m not making a hasty judgment either. A lot of these cats are already like 3 or 4 mixtapes deep and have already dropped debut albums, most of whom albums/mixtapes floated off the radar after a week or two of being put out.
The music that they’re making doesn’t stick. Sure, if you are at a party or a club and it comes on you’re going to dance to it, shit I would too, but after that no one cares. Which is why I ask, what is the impact that these kind of artist have on hip hop as a culture? I’ve tried to answer this question many times but I can’t seem to find a answer, Because honestly I don’t think there is one. Granted, we won’t have another TI or another Jeezy I understand that. But at least they contributed something to hip hop as a culture they gave us their story from the bottom to the top and didn’t sugar coat it and didn’t make it all about the streets/struggle or just about balling and being in the club. They gave us a mixture of street intelligence right alongside balling intellect.

Sadly, a lot of the current stable of “Swag/Trap” rappers haven’t managed to do much but create lackluster albums, tapes full of similar songs, with little to no insight on anything outside of swag or street violence, and that shit irritates me. Now they have every random ass ninja from the hood that can make 8 bars rhyme trying to become a rapper. They see these lame, no talent fools making it happen, and that’s creating a shit storm of bad music, followed by bad trends, and ridiculous fans of these folks.
The fact that the gap between rappers with actual talent and rappers that barely can rap has become so close kind of scares me. Like is this what we gon have to put up with in my later years? A few dope ass rappers surrounded by a vast circle of wack niggaz? And yes I have given a lot of these “swag/trap” rappers a fair chance, downloaded their works and took a good and attentive listen. It always ends up the same. I finish listening to the whole thing, and still didn’t hear anything worth talking about or rewinding, so I drag it to the recycle bin. I don’t want to ramble on, but I do want to end with this:
hopefully we can find a good common ground between wack shit and dope shit. Because right now I just don’t know anymore. Even the rappers we thought were decent have succumbed to “Swag/Trap” music just to stay relevant, and that bothers me a lot. If top tier rappers don’t stop co-signing these lames, and stop making these swag/trap tracks to stay relevant we might be at a lost musically in hip hop. I mean besides a slew of old head rappers, and a couple current new school rappers, the scale of hip hop is heavily outweighed by the wack ninjas, and to me that has to change.

During her stop on the Love Story tour in Houston, A.Kaye [Aprille] got the opportunity to catch up with Miss Raven Sorvino and speak with her about her musical influences, what she’s bringing to the game, and more.

CHECK IT OUT!

This is the beginning of a beautiful thing!

We will now be featuring a section on the Raw Republic from hip-hop head and fellow lover of music, fashion, and just things that are just all around awesome, Slim Rogers! Read below as he gives us his views on the release of Hitboy’s HITstory!

Hitboy: HITstory

Chauncey Hollis or better known by his Stage/Producer name HitBoy is fresh on the scene well really not really….He’s been producing for years now but got his break from Polow Da Don simply sending him a myspace message saying “Lets get this Paper” since then HitBoy has produced for the likes of Kid Cudi, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, Eminem, 50 cent, Mary J. Blige, Chris Brown, Jennifer Lopez, Snoop Dogg, Justin Bieber, and several others.

HitBoy became most known for his work on The throne’s Niggaz in Paris, which probably was one of the biggest songs of 2011. Earlier this year in June he released his first rap single nicely titled, Jay-Z Interview, where he weaved in and out the addictive production by Bink, detailing his rise to fame, his ambitions, his admiration for JayZ and how it feels to be in the place he is in now.

Honestly the shit surprised me I had no idea the dude was a rapper for one but he wasn’t bad at all. He actually had some shit to say and it was dope. Now before I go on I will say this HItBoy isn’t an amazing rapper , no double entendres, and triple metaphors, but he does have great charisma and manages to convey what he is trying to get across in an original manner all of his own.

After the great reception of JayZ Interview Hitboy Later dropped Old School Caddy featuring none other than Mr. Rager Kid Cudi, which was more of the same of him describing his come up an where he wants to go, and a dope cudi verse where he was actually rapping and not just mumbling lol. Soon after this track was released HitBoy dropped the announcement of his mixtape HITstory which brings me to my next shit to say.

HITstory is a cool honest effort by a rookie rapper/producer in my opinion Hitboy has some of the best potential out of most of the new school artist out right now. Not to mention his connections to some of the biggest names in music will help further cement him in the hip hop world.

Most of the tape is pretty much just Hitboy explaining how he got into his position an reflecting on the times where he didn’t think he would make it this far. Also you can expect a lot of fly/swag talk, and a steep variation of girl references too but all in all it’s a good balance between substantial material that let u get to know and understand who Hitboy is and fun fly tracks. His production is really good the drum patterns an live instruments in the song make em really enjoyable. One thing I hate about some of the production is that you can still hear a lot of the glitter from Niggaz in Paris in a slew of beats on here. That nigga gon have to let that shit die lol an stop taking lil pieces from it an putting it on every beat.

Some of the standout tracks are East Vs. West where he tells a story about the What Ifs of certain artist from each coast if they wouldn’t have died. Busta Ass Niggaz is also great with features from both Bun B an Chip Tha ripper it’s a straight banger in every sense of the word. She belongs to the city, and Running in place are also very good both musically and lyrically.

Still the dopest track on the whole tape really was JayZ Interview, if u ask me that’s HitBoy at his best rapping so far. All in all he can only get better this is his first go round but it won’t be his last. I’m pretty positive he will keep growing an learning an perfect his craft of both rapping an producing an deliver us a great album soon.

So my verdict on this tape is yep Its DOPENESS.

FYI The rating system goes..

TURRRRIBLE………SHITS AIGHT…………..DOPENESS ……………MAYNE THAT SHIT THROWED……….

*Random Fact about HitBoy: His uncle was in the R&B group TROOP

Watch as Sway sits down and has a very heartfelt interview with Lupe Fiasco after watching a previous interview that they had from the 2006 ‘My Block’ series.

PART ONE



PART TWO

You have heard his vocals on the projects of several artists, including the likes of Pac Div, Fly Union, Dom Kennedy, Kendrick Lamar, and more. With an album of his own now available, we have come to know BJ the Chicago Kid more intimately through his music, and now we get to know him better, thanks to the in depth interview from the RLES camp! [Artist to Artist interview with Young Scolla!]

s/o to SC Knows! Check it out!

Narduwar takes on MGK!

As you may or may not know, we love Narduwar interviews, and this one was pretty entertaining..watch as Narduwar takes on the A$AP Mob.

Don Cornelius, producer of Soul Train, has passed due to a self inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Mr. Cornelius was 75 years old.

As the producer of Soul Train, Don Cornelius created something epic during a very pivotal moment in time that would change the African American community forever. We witnessed countless legendary acts on Soul Train, and who can forget the Soul Train dancers? Soul Train was on the air from 1971-2006, and Don himself served as the host up until 1993.

We thank Mr. Cornelius for being apart of our Saturday mornings growing up, and creating something that will live on forever.

Love, Peace, & Soul.


[QuestLove on Soul Train]


[The Hippest Trip In America RockDoc]

The Holidays: we like to think of this as a time of the year as a period to reflect on all of the ups & down of the past year, celebrate good company, let go of all of your inhibitions [well ALMOST all!] and celebrate life and making it through another year. This year, Trey Poindexter made that possible with The Expose: an event that was held at the swanky Drake Nightclub of Houston. The event was nothing short of astonishing! Upon arriving, guests were able to take their pictures on a red carpet, truly arriving in style. The room was filled with beautiful people, amazing art, and positive vibes. DJ YoungStreetz [yes, The Raw Republic's own!] was providing the sounds throughout the evening, giving us music from hip hop to reggae to even “old skool” hip hop and r&b…we can honestly say that we did not see one person sitting still. Being at the Expose gave us the feeling of more of a “house party” vibe, rather than being in a club. It felt good to be able to go out, and see everyone genuinely enjoy themselves. Needless to say, we will definitely be in attendance of more of Mr. Poindexter’s events, and we advise that if you are able, that you do the same!

THANK YOU Mr. Poindexter!

When Kanye speaks, the world listens! Late last night/early this morning, Kanye West took to his twitter account to let the world know more of his journey. In the classic Kanye style, he tweeted several tweets explaining his journey in the fashion world [from secretly working at Fendi, working at Louis Vuitton, internship offers, and more] to the announcement of his new company that he is establishing, respectively named after his late mother: DONDA. West goes on to explain that the company will serve as “a design company which will galvanize amazing thinkers and put them in a creative space to bounce there dreams and ideas…”, and that company will be made up of 22 divisions that will offer affordable services and products for the people. Kanye West also encouraged people to start “reaching out” to him: you can contact DONDA at contactDONDA@gmail.com if you would like to become a part of the experience!

True innovator and entrepreneur: we love it! To catch the rest of what Mr. West had to say, visit Kanye’s TWITTER!