Rhyming is an art form. Just like painting, dancing and hustling. If you don't know the techniques of the genre you can easily be swept off your feet. Enter Hip Hop staple, Poison Pen, a battle MC turned street prophet. The Brooklynite started in 1996 at the first online radio station 88HipHop.com, before tearing through the streets as the undefeated champ of the NYC MC battle circuit. After participating in the Blaze Battle...
Toshi Reagon (born in 1964) is an American folk/blues musician. She is the daughter of Sweet Honey In The Rock co-founder Bernice Johnson Reagon, with whom she has sometimes collaborated on musical projects.
Bumpy Knuckles, also known as Freddie Foxxx, (born James Campbell in 1969) is an American rapper from New York. He has a trademark rough and tough approach in his lyrics (as well as his lifestyle) which has endeared him to Hardcore hip hop lovers and yet made him infamous within the record industry. Foxxx released his first LP, Freddie Foxxx Is Here in (1989) through MCA Records. He soon parted ways with the label and became a member of Queen Latifah's Flavor Unit establishment.
The Brooklyn-based orchestral pop band THE SILENT LEAGUE originated as the solo identity of singer Justin Russo in the late nineties. While a keyboardist with Mercury Rev in support of the critically acclaimed albums "Deserter's Songs" (V2) and "All Is Dream" (V2), Russo secretly stole each available moment in a busy tour schedule to write and record his own fragile and epic LP, "The Orchestra, Sadly, Has Refused".
Cuddle Magic is a large ensemble and songwriting collective based in Brooklyn and Philadelphia. With nary an electric guitar in sight, Cuddle Magic uses a quiet 20th century palette – vibraphone, clarinet, muted trumpet, banjo, ukulele, violin, vocal counterpoint, etc… – to create a rhythmically sophisticated folk music from an imaginary folk.
Aesop Rock (born Ian Bavitz on June 5, 1976) is an alternative hip hop artist/producer from Northport, New York, United States. He has released six albums: "Music for Earthworms" (1997), "Float" (1999), "Labor Days" (2001), "Bazooka Tooth" (2003), "None Shall Pass" (2007 ) and "Skelethon" (2012). He is also a member of the groups Hail Mary Mallon, The Weathermen and Two of Every Animal.
Rakim Mayers (born October 3, 1987 in Harlem, New York NY, United States), better known by his stage name ASAP Rocky (often stylized A$AP Rocky), is an American rapper and director. ASAP Rocky gained recognition among the hip hop community in 2011 after the release of his 2010 mixtape Deep Purple. In 2011 he followed up with the release of LiveLoveA$AP
Takka Takka is a foursome indie rock band from Brooklyn and Queens. Singer-guitarist-keyboardist Gabe Levine says their name comes from "writing songs about war, and it's a painting about war, with machine guns going, 'TAKKA TAKKA.'" Other band members are Conrad Doucette, Damion Jurrens, and JP Jones. They cite their influences as: the Kinks, Orange Juice (sometimes Orange Julius), Pavement, Lou Reed, Zombies, Johnny Cash, Echo and the Bunnymen, the Magnetic Fields, Brian Eno, REM, Bob Dylan, and OMD.
Glenn Branca (born October 6, 1948 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) is an avant-garde composer and guitarist. Branca studied theater at Emerson College in Boston in the early 1970s. While there, he began experimenting with sound as the founder of an experimental theater group called Bastard Theater. He moved to New York in 1976. His first encounter with the NYC music scene was with the N.DoDo Band whom he observed many times at their rehearsal space- Phil Demise's Gegenschein Vaudeville Placenter. This is where he first met jeffrey lohn who was playing electric violin with the N.
Jazzy Jay (b. John Byas in Beaufort, South Carolina, November 18, 1961), also known as The Original Jazzy Jay or DJ Jazzy Jay, is a pioneering American hip hop DJ and producer. Jazzy Jay was born into a Gullah family in coastal South Carolina. He moved with his family to New York City at a young age and took up the drums, his first instrument. He began his career in hip hop in the 1970s in The Bronx, New York, the epicenter of hip hop culture during the first decade of its development, at the age of 13.