Mos Def

Bizarre Acting Roles by 20 Famous Musicians

It's a toss-up whether actors or musicians will go to greater lengths to make rent, but some musicians have even found themselves so hard up they've been forced to take an acting gig. Such is the case with the haystack-sized Sleepy LaBeef, who in 1968's The Exotic Ones appeared as the "Swamp Monster ... More >>

5 Kanye Songs No Kid Should Hear, Least of All Kanye's

The big music news of the new year so far is that Kanye West and Kim Kardashian are expecting their first child. Everybody seems to have an opinion on that, and I won't go into how I feel about it because it's irrelevant. As long as Yeezy is still making music we all love, what business is it of our ... More >>

Top 6 Rap Songs That Criticize the USA

Word to your mamas, sucka emcees. It's the Fourth of July (or, as the Native American guy that I went to college with used to half-jokingly refer to it, "The Most Fucked Up Holiday I Can Think Of... Why Don't We Just Go Ahead And Start Celebrating 9/11, Because That's Basically What This Is For Me") ... More >>

Bobby Womack

Robert Glasper Experiment

5 Musicians Who Changed Their Names to Inspire Jim Crane and the Astros

​This week, the new owner of the Houston Astros Jim Crane opened Pandora's Box of Hearty Suggestions For A Struggling Franchise and discussed changes to the team. Cheap beer (yay!), cheaper seats (double yay!) should be one of the first things but Crane suggested that the Astros do the unthink ... More >>

Jon Black Dreams Up Five Collaborations The World Needs

The hip-hop world is a less than sensible place -lots of times, you're even required to clarify when bad means bad and when bad means good- so once a week we're going to get with a rapper and ask them to explain things. Have something you always wanted to ask a rapper? Email it to sheaserrano@gmail. ... More >>

Eight Shows MTV, VH1 & BET Should Bring Back

We live in a time where crappy reality television has taken over three of the networks that were once originally dedicated to music videos, artist interviews and delivering current events from the younger generation's perspective. With all the flack that MTV (Music Television) gets about not really ... More >>

Last Night: Black Star At House Of Blues

Photos by Marco Torres​Black Star feat. Mos Def & Talib Kweli House of Blues September 8, 2011 Mos Def knows how to make an exit. With the lights dimmed and the curtains dancing toward the middle, Mos Def stayed on stage and shimmied to the beat of Archie Bell & The Drells' "Tighten Up." The ... More >>

Black Star

The Six Best Movie Samples In Rap Songs

The hip-hop world is a less than sensible place - lots of times, you're even required to clarify when bad means bad and when bad means good- so once a week we're going to get with a rapper and ask them to explain things. Have something you always wanted to ask a rapper? Email sheaserrano@gmail.com. ... More >>

The Five Best - And Two Worst - Rapper Actors

The hip-hop world is a less than sensible place - lots of times, you're even required to clarify when bad means bad and when bad means good - so once a week we're going to get with a rapper and ask them to explain things. Have something you always wanted to ask a rapper? Email introducingliston@gmai ... More >>

Remember Thurogood Wordsmith's The Appetizer EP?

Houston's history is dotted with albums that, fairly or not, have been swept aside. We'll examine them here. Have an album that you think nobody knows about but should? Email sheaserrano@gmail.com. Thurogood Wordsmith The Appetizer EP (Self-released, 2010) ​The noodle-voiced Thurogood Words ... More >>

Top Five Rap Duos That Will Probably Never Happen

The hip-hop world is a less than sensible place - lots of times, you're even required to clarify when bad means bad and when bad means good - so once a week we're going to get with a rapper and ask them to explain things. Have something you always wanted to ask a rapper? Email it to sheaserrano@gmai ... More >>

I Hate My Album: Five Artists Who Dissed Their Own Work

​Albums are to artists what children are to parents: You never want your favorite kids to move out, but you can't wait to send the other ones off to college. (Rocks Off should know; we were one of those favorites.) Here, we salute five artists who were brave enough to distance themselves from ... More >>

Saturday Night: Talib Kweli At House Of Blues

Photos by Marco Torres​Talib Kweli House of Blues September 4, 2010 Once upon a time, Talib Kweli was poised to become a mainstream hip-hop success. His blend of conscious rhymes with accessible beats made him a force in rap. Peers, from Jay-Z to Kanye West, constantly showered him with adula ... More >>

Talib Kweli

The Top Five Hurricane Katrina-Related Rap Songs

​New Orleans is home to many rappers, including Lil Wayne and Juvenile. So, when Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast five years ago this weekend, it only felt natural for hip-hop to step up and capture the debacle on wax. It's been five years since the disaster and this Katrina-inspired playlist ... More >>

Top 10 Rap Covers By Non-Rap Artists

​Artists have many ways of expressing admiration for their peers. Name-dropping those who inspire them in liner notes and offering them groupies on the tour bus are just a couple of ways of showing respect. Covering one of their popular songs? Now that's the ultimate tip of the hat. That's an ... More >>

Hit the Road, Jack: 10 More Notable Musical Deaths From the Past Decade

​ Looking back, this past decade wasn't too kind to rock and roll as a whole. We lost plenty of people who weren't exactly disgustingly huge as Michael Jackson or as monolithic as Johnny Cash. This decade took its share of people who were massively influential and iconic, but not on the grand worl ... More >>

Somewhere Trouble Don't Go

The best Texas albums of 2009...or what we could squeeze in.

Rocks Off's Picks for This Weekend's Fun Fun Fun Festival

You can think of this weekend's Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin as the indie, metal, and hip-hop little brother of the more staid Austin City Limits Music Festival. The fourth edition of the two-day event held in Waterloo Park in Austin starts tomorrow afternoon. Per our stated life path, Rocks Off will ... More >>

Inside the Rappers Studio

Are you an aging hip-hop performer? Then the Rap Institute of Acting is for you!

Double Vision

Equally gifted in jazz and R&B, area native Robert Glasper moonlights in Maxwell's touring band.

ACL 2009 Day Two: Aftermath

Photo by Mark C. Austin​Was it something we said or did? Aftermath openly gushed about how great the weather was on Friday and how it seemed that maybe, just maybe, we were going to finally attend an Austin City Limits (ACL) that didn't consist of heat and dust. Well, it seems that the powers ... More >>

ACL 2009: Best Tweets Of The Weekend

Armed with our sort-of handy cellphone we were able to Tweet from ground level at the festival, with sometimes hilarious and vulgar results. Mostly the latter, because we are foul people. Over time, our Twitter updates devolved into angry rants, as you will see below.@hprocksoff sez:Oh god they real ... More >>

Aftermath: Mos Def at House of Blues

Larami Culbertson​ 9:30 p.m.: Just walked in to see the place pretty well filled. Snoop is playing through the speaker system. If you walk into a venue and "Gin and Juice" is playing, you can take that as a sign that you're going to have a good time. Well, that or that a riot is going to break out ... More >>

Mos Def

Summer Stock

The Last Roundup: Broken-NCYDE, Jenny Lewis, H.A.W.K. & Z-Ro, Something Fierce and More

29-95's Joe Mathlete introduces the world to "crunkcore" artist Broken-NCYDE. Prima Donna meltdown or not, Jenny Lewis still has talent. If only she had manners. We Wore Masks screens her "See Fernando" video. Southern rap is still alive. Thankfully, Cocaine Blunts knows this, giving us H.A.W.K. an ... More >>

Talib Kweli

Hello, Houston!

Noise breaks down the months of live music ahead

Artist of the Week: Caretta Bell

Each Wednesday, Rocks Off arbitrarily appoints one lucky local performer or group "Artist of the Week," bestowing upon them all the fame and grandeur such a lofty title implies. Know a band or artist that isn't awful? Email their particulars to introducingliston@gmail.com. Photos courtesy of ... More >>

Turning the Screw: Promise Pseudo, Soulja Boy, Scarface, Rick Rubin, Akon, T.I., Doug E. Fresh, the Bee Gees and More

Welcome back to Turning the Screw, Rocks Off's weekly rap post. It probably won't rhyme, at least most of the time. E-mail tips to introducingliston@gmail.com. Thanks, homies. Single of the Week: "Sunny," Promise Pseudo Wire To Wire We disliked Soulja Boy, and then we read this Scarface inte ... More >>

Turning the Screw: DZA, Trae, Al Sharpton, Common, Beyonce, Akon, Mos Def, Vanilla Ice and a Whole Lotta Obama

Be Kind Rewind Is a Muddle

Michel Gondry attempts to celebrate DIY filmmaking, but comes up short, stale and flat

2007 Music Year in Review

To Do: Listen to S.O.S. Radio, Hang Out with Wyclef

Little Brother

Little Brother performs Friday, June 29, at Warehouse Live, 813 St. Emanuel, 713-225-5483. Orgone and DJ Haul also perform.

Snap to It

Comeback kids, rhymin' Limeys and songs about partying defined Hip-Hop Nation in 2006

Hard Ride

Stuck with Bruce Willis in rush-hour traffic? You could always walk

Get Down with Dave

Chappelle returns with a raucous Block Party

The Roots, with Floetry

Wednesday, June 8, at HUSH, 15625 Katy Freeway, 713-330-HUSH.

Steal These Albums

The ten most dangerous and radical hip-hop records of all time

Feelings, Nothing But Feelings

The New York Times misses the point in its attack on "rockism"

This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

Kanye West

College Dropout (Def Jam/Roc-A-Fella)

Best Hip-hop Radio Show

Vinyl Frontier

Mark Ronson

Here Comes the Fuzz (Elektra)

X-ecutioners' Song

Four New York turntablists redefine the art of deejaying