LET’S GET BUSY: REMEMBERING THE ARSENIO HALL SHOW

30 YEARS AGO LAST WEEK, THE ARSENIO HALL SHOW DEBUTED AND CHANGED LATE-NIGHT TV FOREVER. MORE IMPORTANTLY, IT CHANGED URBAN MUSIC ON TV FOREVER. This was only about a year after YO! MTV Raps hit the scene, and a year before In Living Color and Fox’s hip-hop centric line-up, so there weren’t many spaces to seeContinue reading “LET’S GET BUSY: REMEMBERING THE ARSENIO HALL SHOW”

THE GOLDEN AGE OF HIP-HOP TRILOGY

#MusicSermon’s three central sermons from hip-hop’s Golden Age (late 80s — early 90s) ARTIST: Madina Design In preface to this Sermonic Trilogy I need to echo a point made it one of the sermons below, as it’s a through-line through not just all three of these conversations, but a key aspect to the growth of hip-hop overall: rap musicContinue reading “THE GOLDEN AGE OF HIP-HOP TRILOGY”

REMEMBERING HEAVY

Celebrating one of the most underrated artists in mainstream hip-hop In 2011 we lost an artist I consider criminally underrated and under-acknowledged in hip hop conversations. We’ve touched on him in previous #MusicSermons: looking at the book of Uptown and remembering how hard we danced in the 90s, but today we’re going to properly focusContinue reading “REMEMBERING HEAVY”

#MUSICSERMON’S TOP 11

Shortly before #MusicSermon’s anniversary, we put out a call for your Top sermons over the first year. For the rest of the month, we’re counting down down the Top 11 based on your responses. #11: THE GOLDEN ERA of R&B/HIP-HOP COLLABS When hip-hop and r&b collabs first hit their stride, each genre brought a distinctContinue reading “#MUSICSERMON’S TOP 11”

YO! MTV RAPS TURNS 30

HIP-HOP WOULDN’T HAVE MADE IT THIS FAR WITHOUT YO! INTRODUCING THE WORLD TO & EDUCATING THE WORLD ABOUT THE CULTURE 30 yeas ago, an ambitious, hip-hop-loving white boy named Ted Demme finally convinced MTV brass to let him shoot a pilot for a hip hop show. (The network was famously barely f*cking with black music atContinue reading “YO! MTV RAPS TURNS 30”