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One noticeable thing missing in most contemporary hip-hop is attention to the lyrical details. It's as if words have lost their meaning and been replaced by cheap antics, braggadocio bars and hollow threats. On the other hand, HBO Def Jam poet, professor, author, award-winning playwright, and emcee Idris Goodwin is a connoisseur of words. He's planted, cultivated and spread words with deep meaning that require repeated listens to dissect everything Goodwin is sharing. His most recent album, 2015's Rhyming While Black, is more evidence of his acute attention to every syllable he carefully puts together. Album highlights include "Song Speak For Itself," "Down" and "Still Got It," which Goodwin sews together like a pro. Paired with flavorful neo boom-bap production, Rhym

Bryan "Birdman" Williams' Cash Money Records is suing Tidal, which is Jay Z's streaming company, for $50 million claiming that the artist-owned music service has no legal right to host Lil Wayne's Free Weezy Album, which arrived exclusively on Tidal on July 4th. According to the lawsuit, Cash Money owns exclusive rights to all of Lil Wayne's music and his contract strictly says he cannot license his music to anyone else. Tidal has responded by saying that Wayne offered the album exclusively for a stake in the company. In June, with the release of his single "Glory", a Tidal representative confirmed to Rolling Stone that Lil Wayne had joined other musicians as a part owner of the music service. The Cash Money lawsuit calls Tidal's partnership with Weezy "a desperate and i

The Untold Festival takes place in the city of Cluj-Napoca from July 30th to August 2nd this year and the organizers have announced that they will exchange tickets for blood donations at certain centers in Bucharest and Cluj. Festival-goers who sign up online as blood donors are set to receive a 30% discount off of the standard fee. The deal comes as encouragement for people in the area to donate blood due to Romania ranking as the second to last country in Europe when it comes to active blood donors. According to the National Institute of Blood Transfusion, only 1.7% of the population donate blood. Inspired by Bram Stoker's novel 'Dracula', which was based in the region that Untold Festival takes place, the festival's PR manager, Stefana Giurgiu said, "We were talking about how

On July 16th, 1862 Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was born, better known as Ida B. Wells was an African-American journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist, and an early civil rights activist. Wells led an anti-lynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s and eventually went on to create and become an integral part of groups striving for African-American justice. Wells was also active in women's rights and the women's suffrage movement, establishing several notable women's organizations. She became well known through her pamphlets exposing the culture of lynching and the real reasons that lynching became the epidemic it was. In 1941 the Public Works Administration built a Chicago Housing Authority public housing project in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the south side of Ch

On June 17th, a white man shot and killed nine people at a bible study at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina. It also happened to be the first day of Ramadan, and that tragedy struck a chord with many in the black Muslim community. Following the tragedy there were fires at predominantly black churches, which prompted several Muslim American organizations to join together and raise funds to help rebuild those churches. Donna Auston, a Rutgers University Ph.D. student and black Muslim activist initiated the #BlackMuslimRamadan Twitter campaign on Wednesday, July 15 to illuminate the issues of racism among Muslims and celebrate the heritage of African-American Muslims. In speaking to the Huffington Post, Donna Auston said, "Thinking about the value of black sacred life

On Tuesday, a Reddit user uploaded an audio file on the subreddit Hip Hop Heads, which was supposedly a rough recording of West's newest album "Swish". The Reddit user said that it was recorded outside of a listening party for the new album saying, "these are a bunch of recordings stitched together." The audio file has since been removed from Reddit, it is reportedly still available to download and stream on Sharebeast. It's a nearly one-hour long recording of such bad quality that very little can be understood aside from West's song "All Day" and other random bits and pieces of potential songs. A rumored track list for "Swish" was also shared on the internet, and if that track list is real we can expect to hear the rumored song "Piss On Your Grave" from West and Sir Paul McCartne