Product placements are nothing new, especially in hip-hop. Heads like myself often like to gripe about how commercial things have gotten, but we often overlook the overt, almost insulting product placements of the 90’s. This week we’ll chat about St.Ides – that’s right, malt liquor. 40’s were a staple in…
I’m a junky for original versions. It’s not often that you find a classic hip-hop record that didn’t have an alternate version – for a multitude of reasons. It could be that once they had money they could afford better production to spruce the track up. It could be a…
January 20th was a big day – and not just because it was my birthday. While a lot of heads were busy checking for the new Lupe and Joey Bada$$ albums, I was checking for my pre-order of that new Sadat X album. Was it worth the wait? In short,…
Sometimes we often forget about the dedication and time an artist and their team put into a project. Here at Above Average Hip Hop we applaud every musician that we cover. Today, Lupe Fiasco blessed the community with his fifth album Tetsuo & Youth – a piece of work that…
On his 20th birthday, Brooklynite Joey Bada$$ delivered a gift to the hip-hop world in the form of his highly anticipated debut album, B4.DA.$$ (pronounced “Before Da Money). Early on in the listening experience, the “Badman” claims to have “…been insane since Biggie smacked (him) at his Christening,” and with…
We were saddened to hear about the closure of the legendary D&D studios, which was the creative lair of the iconic producer DJ Premier. Countless (seminal) albums were recorded there. So on that train-of-thought, we though we’d start the week off right – with a dope mix of some DJ…
Hip-Hop Twitter was a buzz this weekend over a rant that Hot 97 DJ Funkmaster Flex unleashed upon Jay-Z and his Life + Times web team/writers. His beef arose when a rep from Life + Times, who flex alleges had previously stolen ideas from his mobile app after an interview,…
One thing that all Hip-Hop fans have in common is their love for a good battle. Everyone can rap over a good beat but not everyone can ‘spit’ off the top of their head. There are plenty of underground rappers – who are part of the elite battle rapping circle…
