Category: Columns

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NONSTOPHIPHOP – What ever happened to the hip hop duo?

Gang Starr

by Harrison Samphir

 

“It takes two to make a thing go right / It takes two to make it out of sight / Hit it!”

-Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock

If we take literally the adage “Hip Hop Is Dead,” what might rap’s epitaph look like? (I tend to imagine a large crypt sitting atop a hill somewhere in Queens.) Would it bemoan the cheapening of production methods in the late-1990s? Might it lament the decline of “conscious” lyricism and Afrocentricity through waves of commercialization after the new millennium? Should it outline, at least in partial detail, the changing image of the rap artist, now relegated to either solo or supergroup status? Continue reading “NONSTOPHIPHOP – What ever happened to the hip hop duo?”

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Celebrating Winnipeg’s diverse scene

photo by Andrew Mazurak
photo by Andrew Mazurak

by Jenna Priestner

Imagine you are from anywhere in Canada but here. What comes to mind when you think of Winnipeg? Would you want to live here? Chances are your answers would be “It’s cold” and “No.” It is sad but true; I can vouch for it. That was me two years ago while residing in BC. I never for a second imagined myself living here, but ask me today how it has been and I will tell you I have never been happier. Continue reading “Celebrating Winnipeg’s diverse scene”

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Fear of Music – Highway 61 Left Alone

wayne03

Desperately Clinging on to What is Left of the Past, Or Not

by Devin King

I used to live by the airport, and I would lay out in the field and watch the airplanes take off. It wasn’t symbolism or some sort of literary wankery, it was just a thing.

I remember listening to Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? and watching the airplanes overhead, though that probably never happened. Memory is parallax; sometimes those things that you fondly recall weren’t really that fond, or didn’t even happen that way. So watching the planes and listening to indie music are two things that I used to do, and whether it was this album or another under the planes is irrelevant I guess. It was an indie boom around that time, so it was all kind of the same in the end.  Continue reading “Fear of Music – Highway 61 Left Alone”