The Robert Glasper Experiment plays Casbah in Durham Friday and Saturday, March 30 and 31. Tickets for the 8 p.m. shows are $5–$22 (Friday is sold out). Glasper joins Mark Anthony Neal for a free talk at Duke’s John Hope Franklin Center Friday, March 30, at noon. See Duke Performances for details. In a recent […]
Eric Tullis
Bio: Eric Tullis lives in Chapel Hill, where he writes about music and basketball.Twitter: http://twitter.com/erictullis
Posted inMusic
Rapsody warms up on “Right Now” with 9th Wonder
The last time 9th Wonder played with an R. Kelly sample, he landed a song, “Threat,” on Jay-Z’s The Black Album. This time, over the R. Kelly and Public Announcement track “Honey Love,” we get the same chopped-up formula, but with Jamla Records queen-b-girl, Rapsody, doing the rhyming honors. “Right Now” doesn’t necessarily showcase Rapsody […]
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The boast and bluster of Rapper Big Pooh
Rapper Big Pooh joins King Mez and Drique London at Local 506 Saturday, Feb. 25. The 10 p.m. show costs $10. If you’re going to rap, you better know how to boast. In the earliest days, Chief Rocker Busy Bee talked about being “badder than bold, bolder than bad.” Now every rapper does it, whether […]
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Really, Kaze? New project, JETSETMAFIA, stumbles
The localized hype surrounding last year’s N.C. Hip-Hop Day might have made you believe that veteran Chapel Hill rapper Kaze would return, re-energized, to the scene’s forefront with ass-kicking zeal. Well, he’s returned, but something has just gone terribly wrong: JETSETMAFIA, Kaze’s new duo with Miami-based model and recording artist Liz Harlow, has just released […]
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Chuuwee & Sundown’s The Millennium Falcon
The Millennium Falcon is available for downloading and listening at DJ Booth. File-swapping culture ultimately makes music’s collaborative process much easier, to which innumerable albums built by trading bits over the Internet can attest. But doesn’t it run the risk of omitting something? Namely, a collection of artists in the same room, generating not only […]
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Jozeemo’s True Identity
Jozeemo releases True Identity Saturday, Jan. 28, at Southland Ballroom. Tickets for the 10:30 p.m. show cost $8–$10. East Durham rapper and longtime rabble-rouser Jozeemo claims that his latest LP, True Identity, is his last. Depending on who you ask, though, his once-budding career never really took off, anyway. A few years ago, he could […]
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The disappearance of black-girl R&B in 2011—except Heather Victoria
The mottos have long been established: Black girls rock, and black girls rule. Either way, both acknowledge the influence that black-girl spunk has exerted on popular R&B for decades. After all, it’s black girls singing about black girl things. The stuff used to be all over the charts. But not anymore. Sure, these days, and […]
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Five words with LiLa
LiLa releases III at Motorco Music Hall Monday, Dec. 26, at 9 p.m. Prypyat and Jolo, both side projects of Hammer No More the Fingers, open the $10–$12 show. The Triangle’s canon of live hip-hop bands isn’t extensiveSankofa, Inflowential, The Beast and arguably The Urban Sophisticates, but that’s about it. For the most part, these […]
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Kooley High’s David Thompson
Kooley High plays The Pour House Saturday, Dec. 10, at 10 p.m. Tickets are $8–$10, and King Mez, Actual Proof and Lazarus open. Charlie Smarts, one of the lead emcees in Raleigh expatriates Kooley High, has lately seemed most busy pampering his solo endeavors, pushing himself from a grassroots B-boy to a nouveau riche rap […]
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Drique London’s The Manual
In a pool of upcoming Tar Heel rappers more consumed by co-signs and sticking to tradition than becoming homegrown maestros and show throwers, Raleigh emcee Drique London was simply tired of putting out mixtape after mixtape to very little reception. Finally, he decided, it was time for a proper statementhis debut LP, The Manual. London […]