Tupac Shakur

Top 10 Rap-Related Items On Etsy

Rap music is forever turning out to be a fun influence on things we'd least expect. When your grandmother starts using terms like "turn up," you realize that there is no getting away from it. Even the creative and artsy folk over at Etsy.com combine their passion for crafts with their admiration of ... More >>

Five Great Violent Hip-Hop Songs (for Lupe Fiasco)

Lupe Fiasco used to be a talented, socially conscious rapper known for putting out really good hip-hop albums. Since he hasn't done one of those in a while, he's more well known these days for criticizing President Obama and espousing conspiracy theories about 9/11. Recently he was back in the news ... More >>

Who Should Play RodeoHouston In 2013?

On October 30, just a few days from now, RodeoHouston will announce its first round of performers for the 2013 edition of the star-studded, yeehawin', nearly three-week event at Reliant Park. The booking the last few years has been getting more adventurous, with the likes of Kid Rock, KISS, Mary J. ... More >>

C.I.T.Y.'s Top 6 Geographically-Based 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. Something you always wanted to ask a rapper? E-mail sheaserrano@gmail.com. ... More >>

Greg Ginn & the Royal We

Friday Night: Meek Mill at House of Blues

Meek Mill House of Blues August 10, 2012 The aesthetic behind Meek Mill and a large gathering is easy to define, even for someone who has only taken in one Meek song courtesy of the radio or being fed by Rick Ross -- high-energy, an unmistakable high-pitched yelp that churns out one-liners and some ... More >>

Fist-Fighting With Hip-Hop Headlines: Drake, Iggy Azalea, Etc.

You are a human and you have eyeballs and you also have the Internet, so you've likely read some things. That's sort of what this is, except sort of not too. We went through a ton of headlines of hip-hop "stories" from the past week, picked out the most egregious one, pasted them below, then added ... More >>

It Is What It Is. Or Is It?

This CAMH show features plenty of good work, but it's not all worth the effort.

''Carlos Hernandez: Day of the Dead Rock Stars''

10 Things That Have Happened To Rock Stars' Ashes

Recently, I explored some of the strange things that musicians have been buried with. In the course of researching that article, I came across a lot of tales about the cremated remains of rock stars. Some very odd things have occurred with famous ashes, so being the resident morbid person on staff, ... More >>

Walking Through The Five Stages Of Grief With Ghostface Killah

This weekend, my father and I had a falling-out. The specifics of the exchange will not advance the narrative in any meaningful way. You just need to know that he felt one way about something and I felt another way about that same thing, and we let each other know that neither agreed with the othe ... More >>

A Texican In New Orleans: Lessons Learned From Jazz Fest

This past weekend was the last for this year's edition of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, which started way back on April 27. The festival runs over two weekends, usually Thursday through Sunday. Obviously since it is a uniquely Nawlins institution going back to 1970, it's not a festival t ... More >>

Michael Artis: Director Would Shoot Video For Hologram Tupac

Each week, 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 sheaserrano@gmail.com. A little horn-tooting: Last year, th ... More >>

The Best & Worst-Case Scenarios For The Future Of Musical Holograms

Like most night owls, I spent early Monday morning watching YouTube clips of a holographic Tupac Shakur playing Coachella with his friends Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg nearly 16 years after his death. It was at once creepy and crass, but altogether interesting no matter how you sliced it, and not just bec ... More >>

Ask A Rapper: Killa Cal-Wayne's Dissertation On Gangster Rap

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. Something you always wanted to ask a rapper? Email sheaserrano@gmail.com. T ... More >>

Summoning The Dead: Which Six Artists Would You Bring Back To Life?

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. Something you always wanted to ask a rapper? Email sheaserrano@gmail.com.  ... More >>

20 Albums To Leave Your Children Plus Five To Grow On...

It started as a simple question: What albums would you leave your unborn children, if you knew you were on borrowed time and may not be around to show them the way. At first I asked for albums for sons, but then it grew broader, not out of needing to pacify the PC-thug in me, but to make sure everyo ... More >>

St. Ides & Hip-Hop: Would Today's Rappers Endorse Malt Liquor?

​The early '90s was a time when some of the best hip-hop music ever was being made, and the beverage of choice was malt liquor. Before rappers glorified Cristal, Ciroc and even their own branded alcohol, there were many hip-hop-inspired malt liquor ads. St. Ides in particular enlisted several ... More >>

All Eyez On Me: Rating The Best/Worst Rock & Rap Sex Tapes (NSFW)

This week, we found out that a sex tape featuring Tupac Shakur exists, made in 1991 just five years before his fatal shooting in Las Vegas. Shakur's estate is the only entity that can release an item with the late rapper's likeness involved, and his mother Afeni Shakur is unlikely to allow a video o ... 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 >>

The 10 Most Horrible Music-Biz Bosses

​The movie Horrible Bosses comes out today, and while the heinous supervisors in question all work in areas unrelated to entertainment, this shouldn't be taken to mean the music industry is free of bad managers and executives. Rocks Off knows if anything, the music biz has had more than its fa ... More >>

The 25 Most Influential Music Videos Of All Time

​It's hard to fathom a time before music videos, and it's even sadder to remember when channels like MTV and VH1 were wall-to-wall music videos. In between there was a golden age, when with every clip that you watched could spark a revolution in you, or at least change your fashion sense. It's ... More >>

New UGK/Big K.R.I.T. Song Holds Fast To That Wood

smokingsection.uproxx.com​It's not quite up to Tupac-level proportions yet, but UGK keeps pouring out that prime Southern rap unencumbered by Pimp C's untimely December 2007 demise. The latest track, leaked by the Smoking Section this morning, is the expertly sculpted ode to steering wheels " ... More >>

10 Great Instances Of Rappers Honoring Other Rappers

​People often forget that hip-hoppers are humans, too. They breathe, sleep, eat, and salivate at the sight of buttermilk donuts just like us. And, every now and then, they'll geek over other rappers, just like us. It would have been so much easier to compile a list of rappers dissing other ra ... More >>

Friday Night: Snoop Dogg At House Of Blues

Larami Culbertson​Snoop Dogg House of Blues March 18, 2011 11:08 p.m.: Just walked in. Snoop just stepped onstage a second ago. This place is packed. The ticket lady said that there were already over 1,400 people inside, likely with a couple hundred more to follow soon. Should be fun. 11:10 ... More >>

Lindsay Lohan: Five Celebrity Courtroom Meltdowns Better Than Hers

​Turns out the Mean Girl wasn't so mean after all. Former child star and current cautionary tale Lindsay Lohan broke down in court after receiving a 90-day jail sentence for probation violation: "Are you serious?" she sobbed to her attorney as she furiously plucked Kleenex out of a tissue bo ... More >>

Busted! 20 Musician Mugshots

​ Getting arrested and booked isn't the end of the world, by any means. Well unless you just killed a shit-ton of people at a bowling alley or something, it really is. But if you are a rocker or a celebrity who committed a minor offense, it's just a funny footnote in your public life you can look ... More >>

Swagger Like Us

This tiny strip-center lounge can be whatever you want it to be.

Y'all Musta Forgot: Big Mello's Bone Hard Zaggin'

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. Big Mello Bone Hard Zaggin' (Rap-A-Lot/Priority, 1992) Big Mello, "Love Don't Love Nobody"​Big Mell ... More >>

The Incredible Truth: The Best Southern Rap Albums (and Mixtapes) of 2009, Part 1

​Yeah, it stirred the Yankees to the World Series championship, but was there a more boring album this year than Jay-Z's The Blueprint 3? Perhaps it was a geographic thing; with a few exceptions like Raekwon and Kid Cudi, most of 2009's exciting, innovative rap records came from Southern artists. ... More >>

The Kids Are All Right: Hip-Hop Finally Comes of Age, Part 1

​While year-end, catch-all wrap-ups are common to every musical genre, in no other style of music do they turn into the hand-wringing, "state of the game" examinations that hip-hop seems to provoke. We worry because we care, of course. But at some point, like a thirty-something parent, those of us ... More >>

Six More Mysterious Musical Deaths We'd Like to See Reopened

That's Brian Jones, who is still dead, in the lower right corner.​Original Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones was found dead at the bottom of his swimming pool 40 years ago. It was declared "death by misadventure," a cause of death that probably didn't come as a shock to those who had been aware ... More >>

A Third Ward Pawnshop iPod and the Mysterious Fate of Previous Owner "Scooby"

Whoever he is (was?), Scooby's iPod wasn't short on R. Kelly.​So a couple of weeks ago, after three or four years of increasingly faltering service, Rocks Off's 30 GB iPod finally died. Completely. Out of sheer broke-assedness, we had held on to it for longer than most. By the end, its quirks and ... More >>

Five Spot: Scarface Is Dead, But Not Really

Welcome back to Five Spot. Every Friday, we'll examine a recent bit of music news and list five reasons why it's either brilliant or dumb-assed. Send tips to introducingliston@gmail.com. The rumblings of an Internet rumor are beginning to be heard and, as much we are all about perpetuating untr ... More >>

Huntzville's School-Shooting Song Raises an Even More Disturbing Issue

What History Tells Us: Five Black Presidents

Houston's Nigerian-Born Battle-Rapper Godwon

Balls and His Word

Drenched In Blog: The Humpty Blog

Rock and Roll Autobiographies

Stars' tell-all stories

The Music Critics Dictionary

Translating critic-speak

Phat Promises for 2007

New Year's resolutions of the stars

Our top DVD picks for the week of October 12:

Scenes from a Picnic

Willie, Dylan, Kinky and the Ghost of Bob Willis descends on Fort Worth. Wack is there too.

Die, Jeff Buckley, Die!

It's time to put a bullet through the head of this zombie

The Class of '03

Grab your gift certificates and trade in your white elephants -- here's what you really wanted for Christmas

Ugly Kid Slug

Atmosphere MC Sean Daley saves the world by saving his circle of friends

Ballads Nuevo

Corridos get updated with drugs and guns

Rotation

Rotation

Rapumentary