Rockie has been hard at work molding and shaping the concepts for his album, Rockie’s Road, at Side 3 Studios, where he’s recorded more than eighteen tracks. We stopped by while he was choosing songs and perfecting the mix for a personal listening session…
Spoke in Wordz is putting on a show for the books tonight at Casselman’s. The release party for his compilation CD, Power of Wordz is slated to feature performances from several movers and shakers in the hip-hop scene here in Denver. Already fashioned as an album that will bridge the…
You’ve seen them, separate or together, rocking parties or posted up, head-nodding to the music in packed clubs. DJ Ktone, DJ Top Shelf and KDJ Above, the trio of DJs who have joined ranks and formed a music contingent known as the Moolah Boyz, a crew that’s out for the…
Last night at the beat battle competition in Aurora, things got off to a pretty lively start. The place was crawling with DJs, hip-hop heads and, of course, the producers who were to enter the battle. It was all beats and rhymes, until somebody got chased out of the bar…
Looks like we have another producer battle on our hands. Colorado Beat Box is going down tonight at the Spillway (3740 East Quincy Avenue) in Aurora. According to Yak of PMG Solutions, the company presenting the battle, the competition is designed to show the skills and production chops of the…
Spoke in Wordz, a master of wordplay, has returned with a new compilation and collaborative album, Power of Wordz. Essentially, the record is a gathering of his favorite MCs and a showcase of their individual talents — a collection of dope verses from veterans and more than one new kid…
With Son of the Crack Era, Mr. Midas, with his gravelly flow and bouncy cadence, has created an album from the perspective of a hustler that would make Jay-Z proud. The second track, “Talking Bout Me,” immediately draws on the paranoia and insatiable appetite for survival found in Jay’s “Can…
Molina is an MC, lecturer and artist who is rooted and steeped in hip-hop from a purist and cultural point of view. Having spent most of the year touring and building his brand from his many multi-faceted projects, including a poetry/hip-hop fusion project with female voice and artistic phenom, Aju,…
The hip-hop scene has been incredibly busy these past few weeks churning out visual components to coincide with their individual projects. Don’t miss Mr. Midas and his chartered plane on “Run My Town,” a shirtless Pries in the snow on “I Don’t Care,” a pair of sparse cityscape clips from…
Mr. Midas has finally put his stamp of approval on his debut, Son of the Crack Era, which details the ills and spills of the crack epidemic on society from a hip-hop perspective. Not only is Midas using his laid-back, honeyed voice to create a line of storytelling that will…
Bigwheel Electrosoul’s The Guac Vol 1. features the intricate live instrumentation you expect from Bigwheel, boosted by the turntable skills of DJ Vajra, who chops things up and keeps them fresh and full. The ambience of the set, recorded live at Lola, is perfect for a progressive brunch crowd. Not…
Misogyny, as a concept and as a behavior, is a major issue in hip-hop. Women are frequently marginalized and suffer extreme sexist treatment. As I began to examine the pronounced gender bias in the hip-hop community for this week’s feature, I interviewed a wide range of ladies to get their…
BLKHRTS, the vowel-less brainchild of The Pirate Signal frontman Yonnas Abraham, brings together three MCs of beautifully dark proportions. The concept of the group ebbs and flows between the havoc in the world of goth and the grit found most typically in hip-hop…
The members of BLKHRTS — FOE, Karma and Yonnas Abraham of The Pirate Signal — are blazing into the new year with the same fervor and furor that drives their individual careers. The project has great cohesion, which isn’t too surprising, considering the three MCs have frequently featured on each…
You know,” confides Sherie Cole, “it’s not the biggest part of it, but I definitely had a breast reduction because of the names I used to get called — they would call me ‘Big Titty Rie Rie.'” While music in general has always been a male-dominated field, hip-hop, in particular,…
Y’all can cancel the Amber Alert. Kevin Kain is alive and well. Very much so. Last night, the local Twitterverse was buzzing with word that promoter Kevin Kain had allegedly been killed in a car accident at the Southlands Mall. Turns out the erroneous rumor was just that. Talk about…
KDJ Above, a resident in the club rocking scene, is joining the KS-1075 team in a move that has set Denver’s hip-hop world ablaze. This past year, KDJ has been a regular at Gallery 22, as well as the prominent DJ causing a ruckus at Club Sutra’s wild weekly Friday…
YTCracker rolls with a crew and movement known as “nerdcore,” the epicenter of all things sophisticated and geeky. The rapper — aka Bryce Case, who pronounces his name as “whitey cracker” — and his contemporaries, guys like MC Lars, MC Frontalot, MC Chris and Dual Core, aren’t your average pocket-protector…
In the world of rap and circumstance, there is room for pretty much everyone. Unreleased Tension, Jagwire’s latest, carves out the MC’s lane among the mediocre, if not the motivated. He raps over production that is more advanced than his flow, as is the case with “Shangri-La,” a track about…
The Red Lion Hotel on I-225 and Parker, the venue that hosted last night’s 5280 Urban Music Awards, is just west of nowhere. Really, it’s in southeast Aurora, but to an inner city gal like me, it might as well have been in Kansas. Having beat around the bush long…
Silent Disco is precisely what it sounds like: a silent dance party of revolutionary proportions. All music will be provided through wireless headphones only. Thus, the Silent part of the Disco. DJ Uplifter, and DJ Thunder along with DJ J Boogie, Motion Potion, DJ Segue and our own DJ Big…
Last year’s 5280 Awards, a ceremony dedicated to honoring the Mile High City’s hip-hop and R&B artists, caused a bit of stir in the scene, mainly due to the process by which the nominees were chosen. At issue: Last year’s nominees were chosen based off word of mouth. This year,…
