For the last week at the Zion Centre in Hulme, regional & national b-boys, b-girls, poppers and young artists have come together with international talents Will Power, Baba Israel, Robert Hylton, Karena Johnson and pioneering actor, rapper and writer Ken Swift, as well as Reid himself, in a series of classes and workshops.[…]The whole event has taken Benji [Reid] more than a year to put together, he says. “Hip-hop theatre is a new genre that’s only about 10 years old, so not many people know about it,” he explains. “It’s a marriage between theatre practices and hip-hop practices, putting them both together to make versions of urban stories and myths using a tapestry of body-popping, breaking and MC’ing, allowing that to shape the story. It’s finding ways to take a popular art form and use it to tell a story.

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The hip-hop community is buzzing about the second annual Bay Area Rap Scene Awards, coming this fall.[…]
They came about because producers Booyowski and A-1 Sway of the popular ‘’Hipnotik Show'’ (broadcast on Comcast Ch. 29 in San Francisco) and Black Cornerstone Enterprises understood that if MTV and BET weren’t going to show the love for the Bay Area, we would need to do it ourselves. As preparations go forward for this year’s event, the awards continue to reflect the spirit of independent hustle epitomized by Bay Area rap artists.

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Award winning producer Swizz Beatz has been enlisted to produce a tribute song as part of a campaign to promote global peace.[…]”Swizz Beatz is a perfect example of the caliber of artists who will be participating in the International Peace Concert,” Garson announced via statement. “This is a global opportunity for celebrities, musicians and world leaders to reach out and communicate to the rest of world how we can all join together in the road towards peace.”

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Jerome Ellis says he was a good student in school, but when it came to reading fiction for homework he “just couldn’t deal with it.” “I would zone right out,” said the 23-year-old Morristown, N.J., resident. “You know when you start reading a page and find yourself staring? That was me.” Ellis, who grew up in New York’s Harlem, said the books assigned in school were “always about some life or time that I wasn’t a part of things that had nothing to do with me. It just wasn’t interesting.” Now, a new genre in publishing is all about serving the appetites of a certain segment of young black urban America those, like Ellis, 18 to 35 and interested in rap music and street life.

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All Nick Accurso and his friends wanted to do when they launched the first Scribble Jam in 1996 was have a cool party to celebrate all the stuff they loved: hip-hop, graffiti and break dancing. But as they prepare for the 11th-annual Jam, the little gathering of friends in the parking lot of Annie’s has grown from 50 or 60 people huddled around some pieces of cardboard on the ground to an expected crowd of 10,000 who will be taking part in what is now one of the largest and most influential hip-hop events in the world. Thanks to some savvy marketing, a successful 10th anniversary tour in 2005 that raised the event’s profile even further and this year’s first overseas rap battles, Scribble Jam has become a national, and international, phenomenon that is practically a full-time job for Accurso.

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With the myopic media focus fuelling the industry in Jozi and Cape Town, few Durban bands go beyond tired imitations of the mainstream. Yet, the seven-piece hip-hop jazz-fusion outfit, Big Idea, due to perform at Oppikoppi this weekend, are poised to change all that. Comprising MCs Q (Quincy Fynn) and Jet (Lee Wynn), vocalist/ sampler King Babar (Nathan Redpath), drummer Gareth “2Gs” Gale, keyboardist Burton “Buttons” Naidoo, DJ LV (Leighsley van Wyk) and with founding member Duane Nichols’s welcome return for a stint on bass guitar, the band believe that with the recent release of their debut album, Hot Box and their set at Oppikoppi, they are ready for the glare of national exposure.

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Cash Money Records CEO Bryan “Birdman” Williams, along with his brother and co-CEO Ronald “Slim” Williams, opened his wallet Monday (Aug. 7) and donated $3,000 to the Morningside Park Soccer Program in New York City[…]”It’s important for young kids to be able to play safe and have fun,” Birdman said of his foundation’s donation. “Hopefully this will help the children of Morningside Park enjoy their day a little more.”

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