Kabin Crew’s Rhyme Island initiative has worked with refugees to create many catchy tracks
Albert Johnson, aka Prodigy, (left) and Kejuan Muchita, aka Havock, of the hip hop duo Mobb Deep in New York in 2006. Johnson died on June 20, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nev.
(AP Photo/Jim Cooper)
Eminem has routinely used the lead singles from his studio albums to reintroduce himself. And Houdini is no different.
Canadian rapper Drake at the Billboard Music Awards in May 2019. Drake’s recent beef with American rapper Kendrick Lamar highlights how Canadian rap is often seen as distant from American hip hop culture.
(Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
Beefs often target Drake’s race, constructing him as a Canadian who is not Black enough to claim an authentic connection to African-American hip hop culture.
Rappers Kendrick Lamar (left) and Drake have released a series of diss tracks attacking each other recently as part of a growing feud.
(AP Photo)
The diss tracks released by rappers Drake and Kendrick Lamar raise interesting questions about defamation in music lyrics.
Canadian police and television reporters gather outside the rapper Drake’s Toronto mansion after a shooting there in May 2024.
(Andrew Francis Wallace/Toronto Star via Getty Images
Since rap’s emergence, artists have boasted about themselves in ways that were funny and sometimes violent, vulgar and sexist. The popularity of the music and its exploitation can be dangerous.
Looking back at the history of the diss track, it is the strength of female emcees that stands out.
Andrey Vladimirovich Menshikov, mostly known by his stage name ‘Legalize’, but also for his membership in D.O.B and Bad Balance, is used to grating the Kremlin.
KabanDanish/Wikimedia
Vladimir Putin and his KGB men have steadily extinguished the artistic freedom the genre enjoyed in the 1990s, with Ukraine’s invasion adding yet another nail in the coffin.
Members of the Wu-Tang Clan perform at the Glastonbury Music Festival, Glastonbury, England, in June 2011.
(AP Photo/Joel Ryan)
Asian martial arts and films functioned as mythic models which inspired Black and brown youth in the making of ‘urban warriors,’ and later the Wu-Tang Clan.
Tsonga-inspired musician and writer Maya Wegerif AKA Sho Madjozi in Johannesburg.
Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Global Citizen Festival: Mandela 100
Costume, hair and dance allow her to modernise Tsonga culture – and help shape youth identity.
Snotty Nose Rez Kids, the rap duo from the Haisla Nation, perform at the Polaris Music Prize Awards in Toronto, in September 2022.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
Created as an art of resistance by Black artists in the U.S., hip-hop culture has inspired global struggles and youth culture across the world, including in Canada.
Brooklyn rapper 6ix9ine’s lyrics were used against him during his criminal trial in 2019.
John Parra/Getty Images
A critical race theory scholar explains why it’s problematic to use rap lyrics as evidence of a crime, and what some lawmakers are doing to protect artistic expression.
Music education has evolved and now includes more popular music genres, such as hip-hop.
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