Northwest hip-hop might be thriving, but it’s still often overlooked by the mainstream media. There’s no shortage of places to see and hear it. And at the front lines: young men and women who connect with their communities, their elders and the ones coming up behind them.

“The world is ready for a breath of fresh air. It’s ready for authenticity and smart hip-hop,” said Jace, a Seattle educator who is also an emcee with the Silent Lambs Project, a hip-hop group. “We are the last frontier, the Northwest.”

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Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., found himself criticized Monday by one of rap and hip-hop’s leading producers, Def Jam Records co-founder Russell Simmons, who challenged the presidential candidate to stop criticizing rappers’ lyrics and start working to improve the urban-American world that inspires them.

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Russell Simmons will be holding a ‘closed door’ meeting with artists and executives from the Hip-Hop/urban community for a discussion on the future of Hip-Hop and how the genre can be moved forward in a positive direction.

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When Don Imus put his foot in his mouth on the air last week with a dirty and derogatory reference to young black women, he was articulating a message that had been clearly voiced by Michael Richards, Rush Limbaugh and countless others long before him.[…]

That message is this: The aesthetics of hip-hop culture - from the language and clothing to the style and sensibility - can be absorbed into American popular culture like any other disposable product without any effort or responsibility on the part of the consumer.

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Davey D: ‘I have a question for the masses. Don Imus and his supporters have been running around saying they learned about the phrase ‘Nappy Headed Hoes’ from rappers. They said it’s because of Hip Hop that they felt it was ok to joke around in the way that they did. Now I’ll be the first to confess I’m not up on everything So I gotta ask folks; What rapper referred to sistas as “Nappy Headed Hoes”?’

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Cuban hip hop music is past its peak, and is struggling to survive in a context where it lacks performance venues, receives only weak institutional support, and has to compete with more commercial music styles alien to the critical discourse that the movement has promoted since its origins.

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The Hip-Hop Association, a national organization dedicated to the movement of Hip-Hop as a culture, has announced the release of The Hip-Hop Education Guidebook: Volume One.

Conceived by the Hip-Hop Association’s Education Initiative, The Hip-Hop Education Guidebook: Volume One is a textbook that documents the history of Hip-Hop music and culture as a product of the African Diaspora.

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