It took only two words for rapper Jerome Cosey to spark a musical evolution. The 26-year-old artist known as Fifth Ward Weebie specializes in a New Orleans style of hip-hop called bounce. He tweaked one of his songs on a hot Houston night last October to reflect the then-recent hurricane, punctuating it with a new two-word chorus: The second word was a boisterous “KATRINA!” The first was the F-bomb. The refrain, “Hurricane Katrina got me living off the FEMA,” struck a nerve with the Houston clubgoers — many of whom were evacuees worn down by displacement, homesickness and the red tape of insurance and Federal Emergency Management Agency claims.

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Yet my appearance at the Team’s condo concerns none of these matters. Instead, I’ve been summoned by Kaz Kyzah to discuss The Gofessional, his new mixtape with KMEL managing director DJ Big Von Johnson. Consisting of 19 tracks of mostly original material, The Gofessional is part of a growing trend in the Bay Area mix scene — like Husalah and Jacka’s Animal Planet and Beeda Weeda’s Homework — of blurring the distinction between the carefully crafted album and the “anything goes” approach of mixtapes.

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Brand shout-outs in hip-hop songs are nothing new — but most focus on luxury names.[…]Few songs, though, make a product or company their main focus. There was Run-DMC’s “My Adidas” in 1986. And now there is “Vans,” a song by Bay Area rappers the Pack that hit mainstream radio in California a couple of months ago and is shaking up the great footwear divide between the hip-hop and rock camps.

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With the recent success of the E-40 and Keak Da Sneak, the Bay Area is set to introduce its next superstars. Meet Dem Hoodstarz! Comprised of group-members Band-Aide & Scoot, they are prepared to drop their SMC recordings debut, Band-Aide and Scoot, on September 12, 2006.

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Rarely do you find the name Gidigidi Majimaji slotted in for local gigs in Kenya. This is due to the fact that the musicians-cum-UN Habitat Messengers Of Truth are busy elsewhere in the globe, rocking various world music stages. They have done so well for themselves that their name is mentioned in the same breath with Sean Paul and Salif Keita.

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A dancer starts out as a b-boy, forms his own post-hip-hop dance company at 26 and gets a commission from a classical ballet company at 30. Not a common progression in the dance world, but it is Victor Quijada’s story.[…]When he was 15, some rappers nicknamed him Rubberband for his unusually elastic dancing style. Then something transforming happened: He went to the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. “I discovered art with a capital A,” he said. He heard classical music, learned about other dance forms and found a mentor, Rudy Perez, the Judson Church pioneer.

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When we think of Arizona, we don’t often associate it with Hip Hop[…]blowing up the spot is a rapper named Grime. He comes to the table with swagger and a hardcore revolutionary spirit that’s so hard we began to wonder how such an oppressive state allows him to stay there. Grime is no joke with his lyrics and breakdown of political situations. He starts off each show by hanging the American flag upside down and then he lets lose with an audio arsenal that includes songs like ‘Let Freedom Ring w/ a Buckshot’, ‘Everywhere is War’,’Hell’ and the BB King inspired ‘The Thrill is Gone’.

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