Hip hop honeys – featuring Ciara

This young girl was born on October 25, in 1985. Swooping around to find her bio everything starts with "Her father was in military, so she traveled a lot" well... Uhm nice... Military MAN! So from her early years she wanted to be a professional singer. So guess what? - She joined a girl group (wow...) called Hearsay, worked on her songwriting, eventually left the group, and of course as the story goes - she got herself a publishing deal. So Ciara (BTW when you read it correctly it sounds like Sierra) - have you heard of her before? Her single - "Goodies" was a hit. It was a hit world wide (including the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Sweden and... A yeah - New Zealand). Her first album was called Goodies (guess by her first song). On this album you can find ppl like Pha, Garrett, and Lil Jon and this one sold over 2mil copies just in the US. Her next song - "1, 2 step" was done with Missy Elliott and - it was a hit (again). Next single she did was with Ludacris called "Oh", and you can find her DVD with stuff from that time called "Goodies: The Videos & More" (here are some behind the scenes stuff, comments and you know, stuff...). And then blah blah single with Bow Wow ("like you") and blah blah Gwen Stefani blah blah, Oh - her forth single was poorly rated (for a change ;) ) In the end of 2005 Ciara went on a tour with Bow Wow (wow...) and Chris Brown at some jam. This was her biggest live performance. Oh BTW she ended up in Michael Jackson's charity single - "I have a dream" (not sure what kind of dreams he has, but he's not the point of this article) which will be released somewhere in 2006. On February 8, 2006 Ciara got her first Grammy with Missy Elliott for Best Short Form Music Video. She did a duo with that dude from Maroon 5 - a tribute to legendary R&B musician Sly Stone. She is working on her next album that will be "much deeper and more personal" and from stuff read between the lines she says it will be a good one (let's hope so). Oh and to you fans out there - she broke up with Bow Wow :)

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Music man...

If you listen to rap... And you just don't know what music to get? Read on... So you actually don't know what to listen to? Have serious problems choosing music to listen to? Seek no more -> former audioscrobbler now last.fm is a choice for you! It analyzes your music style through a winamp plugin and recommends you fresh new artists and songs... Grab you audioscrobbler now...

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Hip hop jewelry? WTF?

So hip hop jewelry… What’s that? Actually it’s quite strange to be considered jewelry but if it’s fine with you I don’t care… Let’s get to the point – What’s hip hop jewelry? Do you consider stuff on the pictures in this post to be "hip hop jewelry" - well maybe those chains are, but most of them are not - most of them are just simple ornaments that can NOT be considered as any part of hip hop style... I mean COME ON people - steering-wheel is just too much... If you're a hopper you not a sailor... You can consider hip hop "jewelry" to be stuff that you wear hip hop style. As simple as that. Not anything fancy, not anything that makes you feel that you look stupid, not something that you wear because some salesman said that it is “hip hop jewelry”… I mean come on, they would sell their soul just to make sales, so writing “hip hop jewelry” on anything doesn’t look so bad, does it? Somthing that is Bling Bling (like Ali G's 'movie') doesn't have to be cool... And it's the same stuff that can be found anywhere else, just cheeper. So remember - Bling Bling is not a way to go. Get it? So what can be considered as a part of your style (not just jewelry)? Well practically anything that you see fit. Get it? Try getting lost in those skate shops, they have nice stuff, I mean be creative and don’t be naïve. Don’t over-pay stuff and improvise… Oh and don't let them sell you ideas that something that is obviously fancy... That’s my piece of advice…

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Hip hop honeys – featuring Faith Evans

Have you seen the Coach Carter movie? If you have than you definitely know the song by Twista and Faith Evans called Hope. So here are few things about this lady. Born in Florida, her parents were a kind of mix - Italian-American father and African-American mother. She was raised by her mother and aunt in Newark in New Jersey. She always loved singing and sang in church. She dropped out of college to star a singing career. She started with the Bad Boy records and she stayed with them till 2003. Then she moved to Capitol records in 2005 and is still there. She met her husband to be Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie at Bad Boy's photo shoot and they got married only 10 days later after they met. Nice... Her first album called Faith was released 1995. The hit songs were "Soon as I Get Home", "You used to love me" and "Ain't nobody". This album has gone platinum with 903000 sold copies. It's notable to mention that 2pac said that he slept with her but they just were recording a song together (yeah right :) ). 2pac was gunned down in September 1996 and there were speculations that Biggie was involved. Well, Biggie was gunned down in march 1997. To get over her husband's death Puff Daddy did a song with her - I'll be missing you. Second album "Keep the Faith & Faithfully" is a change - to a nicer optimistic attitude. The famous songs from this album are “Love like this", "All night long" with P. Diddy, and "Never gonna let you go". This album went platinum also (with 925000 copies sold), nice... For her third album Faith lost over fifty pounds, way to go baby... The album was called Faithfully, and in videos for this album you can see Faith in much sexier appearance. Again turned platinum... With 'just' 837000 copies... Her forth album called "The first lady" came after the Hope duo with Twista. Song "Again" was the hit from her album... (oh it's biographical stuff) ... Not platinum, but gold :) Songs to hear: (except those above mentioned) DMX ft. Faith Evans - I Miss You DMX ft. Faith Evans - How's It Going Down There Eve ft. Faith Evans - Love is Blind G. Dep ft. Faith Evans - You Get No Love (Remix) FatMan Scoop ft. Faith Evans - Be Faithful Jay Z ft. Faith Evans - It Was All A dream (this one you have to hear :) ) Scarface ft. Faith Evans - Someday

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Hip hop clothing

A.K.A. your style... Do you wear those fancy tight shirts? Or jeans that match you number? Or hood-less jackets? If at least one answer is yes then another question - do you consider yourself a hopper? If the answer is yes (again), I have another question - WHY THE HECK DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF A HOPPER? Clothing is a part of your style. If you wear anything that jumps out of the style - you don't have one. Get it? So what to wear? Well... You have a few types of hip hop clothing, but basically I divide them to fancy, underground, self-made. So what the heck does those names mean? Fancy: anything that is commercialized, starting with eminem and his clothing wear to 50 cents wear. Don't get me wrong - I don't have anything against these people, but to be honest people that wear this stuff often listen only to commercial rap and never heard for any artist that doesn't appear on MTV (or some music TV). I mean, yeah, this stuff looks nice, BUT it doesn't reflect you, it reflects you money - basically telling "I have enough cash to buy these stuff". These 'hoppers' are mostly beginners, and later they or evolve a bit (or to underground, or to self-made) or stop dressing hip hop style. So don't worry - it's just a phase. (don't get me wrong, I respect people wearing this kind of clothing BUT not as much as undergrounders or self-mades)... Underground: wearing brands you probably have never heard of, mostly un-related to any rap artist. Why is this good? Well, the choice is much wider, so you can have your own 'style in style', the clothing is not that expensive (it's rather cheap) and guess what - it look better than those commercial type wears. Self-made: I bet you never heard of them, have you? :) well why? These people buy regular clothing only a few time larger of their size. It makes a cool effect and (by my opinion) the cheapest way to dress. Don't get me wrong, but mostly these guys know what they are listening to (There are exceptions, when a newbie doesn't have enough money to get some fancy stuff so he buy stuff like this). I like people dressing this style because it is VERY close to underground style and I like these styles... Undergrounders and self-made have very specific style, combining stuff and creating their own style, unrelated to anything that those famous people recommend. It show style, with style... Remember: no hopper wears tight stuff, no hopper wears DIESEL, no hopper gives a damn what other people think about him - be yourself! Of course there are always exceptions, so don't be very strict about this dressing rules :) take them as info...

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History of hip hop

Hip hop is often considered as consisting only of music and rapping. Well, that's not true. Hip hop is a modern cultural movement and it consists of DJing, rapping, breakdancing and graffiti making... Hip hop and rap as a part of it carry roots from Americans of Caribbean ancestry. The most important people from the early beginnings are Herc, D.J. Hollywood, and Afrika Bambaataa. Herc was the first to introduce scratching as a part of this music, and is considered to be the first to introduce the turntables as a musical instrument. The second more important artist from that period was inspired by tape recordings of Herc's parties - Afrika Bambaataa. These two artists often engaged in sound-system battles held in parks or local clubs. Afrika was the first to mix sounds from rock music and television shows into the style that Herc used. In the following years any type of music is considered to be usable in rap, and today you can hear music from various 80's pop artists in rap songs. Sampling of the various songs brought copyright issue questions to top. Some rap artists were considered challenging James Brown's (folk musicians') and other musicians' right to own, control, and be compensated for the use of their intellectual creations. Some of those artists that were sampled the most (such as funk musician George Clinton) released CD's with sound bites made specifically to facilitate sampling. The effect of rap to this music is that earlier artists such as Brown and Clinton were celebrated as cultural heroes and their older recordings were reissued and repopularized. As white musicians started embracing new style, in 1980s rap moved to the mainstream of the music industry. In those time "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)" by the Beastie Boys and "Walk This Way" by Run-DMC and Aerosmith were extremely popular. The first female rap group is considered to be Salt-N-Pepa and one of their song "Push It" was among the top 20 charts. In the late 80s the political motives has risen in rap, and groups like Public Enemy embraced this style. With the political right gangsta rap arouse. Gangsta rap attempted to depict the outlaw style of life of sex, drugs and violence. In 1988 the first more important album of gangsta rap was released: Straight Outta Compton by the rap group Niggaz With Attitude (NWA). There were some attempts to censor gangsta rap, but these attempts only helped this music to gain momentum, and helped solo artists like Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Eazy-E to get started. In 1990s many rap artists 'borrowed' music from jazz, and later this style evolved into trip-hop (main representatives of this style are Massive attack and Tricky). In these years gangsta rap gained even more momentum and pushed political rap outside. The most popular artist of gangsta rap are/were Geto Boys, Snoop Doggy Dogg and Tupac Shakur. Rap influenced culture in many ways, and till today it is a strong style, which is still growing.

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