Better Than: Breaking up with a girl friend and writing a sappy song about it...leave that to the pros.
I didn't quite believe my eyes when I stumbled across The Grove's Oct. 16 concert listing a few weeks ago. As a perpetual sucker for hip hop bands, a chance to watch The Roots, Gym Class Heroes and Estelle all on one stage seemed too good to be true. Ok, so MOST of my excitement was for The Roots, but still I was curious to see if GCH and Estelle, two of Billboard's latest darlings, could pu
A 25-track disc comprised of beats made by the late J Dilla is "dropping" (that's hip-hop for "being released") June 2 on Nature Sounds. Dilla was a much-heralded producer who gained fame in the late '80s with the group Slum Village. Many credit him for helping to place Detroit on the hip-hop map, but it was role in the production team The Ummah (with Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Muhammed) that made him a hip-hop household name. Dilla's time with The Ummah saw him work on A Tribe Called Quest's two fin
For some reason, when ?uestlove announced in November that The Roots would cease touring and become the house band for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, there was minor outrage. "Black Thought opening for Jimmy Fallon every night is the cultural equivalent of Miles Davis playing his horn on the subway platform to back up a semi-trained dancing spider monkey," wrote Gawker, while the Huffington Post reported that saxophonist and former Tonight Show bandleader Branford Marsalis advised the gro
