Hip Hop Blogs

The Digital Divide 2.0

At this year's State of the Black Union, Trish Millines Dziko summed up in a few sentences a concern I've been thinking about for a few years, and have been trying to write about for a few months now:

"The Digital Divide is not as we defined it before. It's not about access. We all have access. No matter how poor you are you can go to your local library.

But [now] it's about are we able to become inventors of technology and creators of content?"

Much more on this later.

Podcasting Basics for Clueless Executives Who Are New To The Web

With traditional media's rush to the web this year, many executives who were successful in television broadcasting or magazine publishing are now stumbling in ignorance when it comes to understanding how the Internet works.

Let me help out the problem with a few easy tips about an especially confusing concept, podcasting.

Podcasting is a simple way to allow users to subscribe to the audio content you make available on the web, and download it automatically to their iPods. Hence the word "pod" in podcasting.

If you are using a blog CMS like Wordpress, and uploading audio through it, you may be podcasting, and not even know it. Many feedreaders like Bloglines will detect the audio enclosure in the feed and provide their own flash based audio player for users to click on.

Yahoo!'s Grown and Sexy Radio Station

I've been using Yahoo Music Unlimited for over a year now, and the service keeps getting better. This week, the internet radio part of the service, called LaunchCast added a new station - "Adult R&B". It's a combo of old school and current R&B, strictly for the grown and sexy set.

Featured artists include Luther Vandross, Anthony Hamilton, Heather Headley, and Donnell Jones. They also include a guy named Urban Mystic, who I'm not familiar with. And that's the part that makes it cool - I get to discover new artists, as well as gems from familiar artists.

LaunchCast features a bunch of other niche stations that slide down the long tail of music, ranging from Neo Soul and Quiet Storm, to Hardcore Rap and 90's Hip-Hop. A powerful feature of the service is the ability to mash stations together to create your own "mood". For instance, I have a mood named Sleepytime, that helps rock me to sleep. It consists of Smooth Jazz and Quiet Storm R&B, and only plays songs that I like from both of those sub genres.

Who needs regular radio anymore, satellite or otherwise?

Don't ever steal a TMobile Sidekick...

Do yourself a favor.  Next time you see an unattended Sidekick lying around, don't touch it.  And don't even think about stealing it.

Seriously, or you'll end up being assed out and ethered all over the internets. [via eskay]

You're better off stealing an Escalade with LoJack in it.

Pictures from the Hip Hop Gaming League World Championship

Method Man and Eric V (of the Baka Boyz) battle for NBA 2K6 supremacy. The Hip Hop Gaming League World Championships were held in LA on May 13, 2006.  More after the jump.

How To Spread Your Music Video on The Web

If YouTube is the new crack on the web, then Google Video is that pure white cocaine.

Indie label Def Jux threw up a bunch of their flicks on Google Video 6 months ago, and for good reason. Peep Google's feature set:

• Videos are streamed as flash - no browser choking plugins needed
• Videos are shown in a wide letter box format, the way they were meant to be seen
• Users can download videos in three formats, suitable for computer, iPod, or PSP playback
• Users can display the video on their own blogs or MySpace pages using simple cut-and-paste javascript
• Videos can be put up for sale

If you're an underground artist with video to share, you need to hit up Google, immediately. Def Jux shouldn't be having all the fun.

How To Open A CD Case

If you still buy CD's like I do, then you know the frustration of trying to get the disk out of the shrink wrapped case.

Allow me to ease your pain and enlighten your mind as I share with you a CD case opening trick that a worker at Fat Beats taught me. Follow these instructions:

The New iPod Nano

Ready. Set.

Drool.

Foxytunes- Listen to Music While You Browse the Web

My new toy is called Foxytunes. This Firefox extension places small buttons in my web browser's status bar that controls my media player. Which media player? Just about all of them, including Real, Windows, iTunes, Winamp and others.

The uselful thing about Foxytunes is that it makes listening to music while online much more seamless. But ya'll won't believe until you try it. So try it!

iPod DJ Mixer

Will this finally kill the hip-hop DJ's reliance on vinyl at parties? Peep:

Of course not. DJ's are nostalgic by nature. But one iPod could replace ten crates of records. That's powerful if a DJ knows how handle their music correctly.