Hip Hop Music

Don't talk to Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott about how bad things are supposed to be in the music business. The Portsmouth, Va., native's debut album, "Supa Dupa Fly," burst onto the nation's pop chart at No. 3 during its first week in the stores, selling an estimated 130,000 units. That's more albums sold in the last seven days than U2, Paul McCartney, Aerosmith and Jon Bon Jovi combined.

Regional theaters can often seem like feeder schools to the big New York houses, funneling their best and most promising shows eastward in pursuit of awards and box office glory. Strange then is the new play or musical that searches for its destiny by traveling westward. Will Power's "The Seven," a Greek-tragedy-meets-hip-hop musical, opened in 2006 at the prestigious New York Theatre Workshop, where it ran for nearly two months.

Infusing "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai" with the essence of hip-hop, writer-director Jim Jarmusch has freely reworked ideas and borrowed symbols from a wide range of movies. References from karate flicks to westerns and everything in between appear throughout the Artisan Entertainment film, which opens nationally today. Still, the project, which stars Forest Whitaker in the title role as a stoic hit man, is difficult to classify.

Music mogul Russell Simmons and the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network have been touring the U.S. registering voters, and they recently had their best rally, reportedly signing up more than 111,000 hip-hop fans in Missouri. That sounds impressive. But activation without proper education won't bring the long-term effects needed for the hip-hop generation to become a political force. Young black voters don't watch the news or read newspapers; they spend more time watching BET than CNN.

Just months after Pseudo.com garnered major media attention by securing a coveted skybox to cover the Republican National Convention, the site said it's ceasing operations and laying off all 175 employees, effective immediately. The 6-year-old company had been looking for a buyer or other investors for several weeks but ended that quest Monday.

A publishing venture aimed at fans of hip-hop music made its debut Tuesday and quickly became the object of criticism from some community activists. The Los Angeles-based Syndicate Media Group launched sales of a pulp-fiction book series that will include CDs of previously unreleased hip-hop music. The books will be available at Tower Records and some other retail outlets, said Marc Gerald, president of the publishing company.

The celebration of the fresh, rebellious culture and sound of urban, (mostly) African American youth known as "hip-hop" will be honored for the first time on network television with tonight's premiere of "The Source Hip-Hop Music Awards" on UPN. Even though hip-hop has emerged in the U.S.

Music mogul Russell Simmons and the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network have been touring the U.S. registering voters, and they recently had their best rally, reportedly signing up more than 111,000 hip-hop fans in Missouri. That sounds impressive. But activation without proper education won't bring the long-term effects needed for the hip-hop generation to become a political force. Young black voters don't watch the news or read newspapers; they spend more time watching BET than CNN.

Now that he's produced chart-topping, critically acclaimed rap music, DJ U-Neek is betting that he can sell it too--in his own independent record store. Recently, he opened a shop called Music Zone and is optimistically billing it "the Hottest Record Store in South-Central."

Before saying goodbye to the Grammys for another year, here's a final set of nominees to consider. The category: Who was Wednesday's biggest winner? The nominees: (a) Lauryn Hill, who won more Grammys than any other female artist ever in a single year--five, including best album for "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill." (b) Grammy credibility.

DJ Chi bobs his head to the hip-hop rhythm, one hand skipping over the vinyl record, the other on the mixer. Possum, Raydar, Moses and the other deejays in the room listen to his beat. This is a "turntable technique" class at Berklee College of Music, perhaps the first of its kind in the country. DJ Chi is Yoon J. Suh, 21, one of eight students at the prestigious institution who spend two hours every Thursday manipulating old-fashioned records to scratch out "scribbles" and "stabs."

Norah Jones' "Feels Like Home" is at the top of Billboard's album chart, where it lodged last month after selling more than a million copies in its first week of release, one of the best one-week sales records of all time. For the last few years, the music business has been dogged by sluggish CD sales and preoccupied with the threat of Internet file-sharing.

It was a press conference called by a high-profile congresswoman, the founder of a magazine once considered "the Bible of hip-hop" and a respected Los Angeles community activist. The goal: to tackle issues of racism in the music industry and to announce a plan "to reclaim ownership of hip-hop for the African American community." On the podium in Beverly Hills on Friday were Rep.

There was a time, not so long ago, when hip-hop mattered. Artists such as Public Enemy, KRS-One and Disposable Heroes of Hiphopricy created vital music of urban rebellion, brash and lewd but also pointedly insurrectionary. By the late '90s, politically charged hip-hop had receded into a cartoon version of social protest, and the music was co-opted by white suburban America as a soundtrack to nothing in particular.

While seniors at many other high schools are slumping into the apathy of "senioritis," Brandon Wicker at California High School in Whittier is tackling research about amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Watching his 64-year-old grandmother battle the neurological illness, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, inspired him to take on the topic for his required graduation project.

The new hit video has the all the familiar rap cliches: curvy women in bikinis, glowering homeboys in sports jerseys, guest artists throwing their hands in the air like they just don't care and ... Georgia farm boys wrestling with pigs? The video is for the track "Ugly," and it presents to the world a 24-year-old rap newcomer who goes by the name Bubba Sparxxx. His debut album, "Dark Days, Bright Nights," entered the U.S. sales chart at No.

It was a press conference called by a high-profile congresswoman, the founder of a magazine once considered "the Bible of hip-hop" and a respected Los Angeles community activist. The goal: to tackle issues of racism in the music industry and to announce a plan "to reclaim ownership of hip-hop for the African American community." On the podium in Beverly Hills on Friday were Rep.

Rap music and the hip-hop culture that spawned it are a $3 billion a year industry, but to most Americans, who hear only complaints about the violence and misogyny of selected lyrics, it's a world so unfamiliar it might as well be on the far side of the moon. Ideally, a documentary on this self-contained universe would serve as a guide to the perplexed, introducing a specific sensibility, as "Hype!" did with grunge rock, to a wider audience.

A publishing venture aimed at fans of hip-hop music made its debut Tuesday and quickly became the object of criticism from some community activists. The Los Angeles-based Syndicate Media Group launched sales of a pulp-fiction book series that will include CDs of previously unreleased hip-hop music. The books will be available at Tower Records and some other retail outlets, said Marc Gerald, president of the publishing company.

Just months after Pseudo.com garnered major media attention by securing a coveted skybox to cover the Republican National Convention, the site said it's ceasing operations and laying off all 175 employees, effective immediately. The 6-year-old company had been looking for a buyer or other investors for several weeks but ended that quest Monday.