Hip-hop is turning 50. Minneapolis organization TruArtSpeaks is celebrating the 50th anniversary of hip-hop with a three-part event on Friday, August 11 at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. 

Part one of the event will start off with some tunes by DJ JUST NINE, followed by a  panel discussion. Each have all made a name for themselves in Minnesota’s hip-hop culture and represents one of the four core elements of hip-hop: DJing, MCing, B-boy or breakdancing, and graffiti. 

Panelists include DJ Kool Akiem, David Staller, Jr., BDotCroc, Timothy Wilson, and St. Paul Slim. DJ Kool Akiem is a DJ and music producer in the Twin Cities who has shared stages with Atmosphere and Public Enemy. David Stalter Jr. is a dancer from Minneapolis, who specializes in hip-pop, animation, popping and more. In 2022, Stalter was awarded the champion of the Red Bull Dance Your Style World Finals. BdotCroc is a lyrical musician who uses her music to help mentor at-risk youth in the Twin Cities. Timothy Wilson is the owner of the only Black-owned record store in Minnesota, Urban Lights Music. St. Paul Slim is an artist that has shared stages with MC Lyte, Wiz Khalifa and Cee-Lo Green. Slim is now focused painting and has completed several projects in the Twin Cities and hosted three successful art shows.

Hip-hop culture and storytelling influences many across the world today, TruArtSpeaks co-founder Tish Jones says Friday's discussion will explore Minnesota's hip-hip history and what the future could look like.

“We have such a great opportunity for narrative shift, narrative change and social impact through Hip-Hop culture. So, the questions that these artists are going to be grappling with have to do with that; really thinking about ourselves as responsible stewards of the culture and to the future into the next 50 years in Minnesota,” said Jones.

Part two will be a space for networking and community discussion over a shared meal catered by K’s Revolutionary Catering. Some prompt questions include, “What does queer representation in hip-hop look like?” And, “How is hip-hop pedagogy related to cultural relevance?” Jones says hip-hop education will close the achievement gap.

“How do we stop smothering our students that have hip-hip perspectives who are fully immersed in hip-hop culture? How do we see them as full human beings? How do we honor their cannon, their lexicon, their vernacular, their presentation in their space and give them space to tell stories in their first language and arguably that language is hip-hop,” said Jones.

Jones believes that hip-hop is one of the most powerful genres of music.

“Hip-hop has the power to shift perspective to rally a community to action and to really emphasize a moment in time. Whether that's eulogizing something, or commemorating something, or celebrating something.”

The night will conclude with a dance party with DJ NeekaSoDope and performances by Yoni Light, a multidisciplinary artist, and dancer Cecil “Virgo” Neal. Myc Daz, a Twin Cities-based artist, will be completing a mural throughout the event.  

Jones says she’s looking forward to seeing several hip-hop practitioners all together in one space.

“I’m so excited for the positive energy conversations, ideas, and possibilities that are gonna come from this experience.”

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Aaliyah Demry

The prolific Minneapolis organization will celebrate hip-hop’s 50th with a three-part event.


Tru Art Speaks

TruArtSpeaks celebrates 50 years of Hip-Hop

Joshua Ezeagwula

Click to view Joshua Ezeagwula’s photos from the event.


Joshua Ezeagwula for MPR

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Zoe Challenger

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Zoe Challenger for MPR

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Each week, we add new music, older tracks, which are known as “Gold adds”, and tracks that might not fit our general format, but still deserve a place in rotation because they serve our mission of showing the depth, breadth, and influence of Black musical expression - These are known as “Variety adds.”

. If you make music and want it considered for rotation, 

 If you want to give feedback directly, reach out to me at jgreen@mpr.org.

Tune in to hear our host Sanni B. live on The Message from 10 AM to 1 PM Monday through Thursday!

Keep all these tracks in one place with the 

 Spotify playlist. This playlist is updated weekly with all the new adds. When that playlist is cycled with new tracks, the tracks live forever on the 

 playlist. That playlist contains all of the music that we've added since the week of July 11, 2022 in chronological order of when it was added. All of the tracks available on Spotify, at least.

Julian Green built and manages the music library for Carbon Sound and oversees content creation.  


Julian Green

All of the tracks added to rotation on Carbon Sound the week of July 31, 2023.


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Natalia Toledo

New on Carbon Sound

Old on Carbon Sound

New Music on Carbon Sound - Week of July 31, 2023

National Book Award winner and New York Times bestselling author Hanif Abdurraqib has a lot going on. Aside from winning a MacArthur Genius Grant and writing some of this century’s most vital 

 at the Walker Art Center. Dubbed the “Black VHS Experience,” these five films explore the interplay between music and the moving image, particularly Black music in 90s films. 

At the series’ first screening last Friday, Abdurraqib came to introduce the seminal film, “The Five Heartbeats” (1991). Upon taking to the mic, Abdurraqib reflected on his ties to the city: “I published my first book here, through Button Poetry. I’m also a lifelong Timberwolves fan, for better or for worse.”

Before the first screening, Abdurraqib took some time to chat with Carbon Sound about his connection to Minneapolis and what music means to him.

First and foremost, how are you liking Minneapolis?

I like it a lot. I’ve been [to Minneapolis] a lot and I’ve spent a lot of time here… I’m on my way now to one of my favorite sneaker shops in the city. So it's good to return to these corners of the city that mean a great deal to me. This is one of my favorite Midwestern places. It’s good to be back.

Speaking of the Midwest — In your work, particularly your essay collection “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us,” you touch a lot on the Midwest and its influence in American music. For instance, J Dilla, Michael Jackson, and Aaliyah all grew up in this region. What are your thoughts on what Minnesota in particular has to offer? We have Prince, for starters.

Speaking of the Midwest — In your work, particularly your essay collection “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us,” you touch a lot on the Midwest and its influence in American music. For instance, J Dilla, Michael Jackson, and Aaliyah all grew up in this region. What are your thoughts on what Minnesota in particular has to offer? 

Of course. There’s Prince and the Minneapolis sound. There’s also a massively important punk scene that came out. I love The Replacements. I’ve always loved punk and rock in general. Hüsker Dü… Semisonic. To some degree, The Jets are from here. They’re a band I adore. Something massively overlooked, at least in my mind, is how there’s a deep hip-hop scene in the Twin Cities.

Last night, [local performer and organizer] Tish Jones hosted 

 at the Walker. I went, and it was great. It was an ode to hip-hop and all the local artists in the scene. The Twin Cities’ contributions to music are vital. Prince and [Bob] Dylan headline that conversation, but there’s a lot of glossed over things that make this place so great.

For your Walker film screening series, you mentioned that you’re trying to create a sort of logical arc in the way you’ve picked and sequenced these five films. Tell me more about that. 

For your Walker film screening series, you 

 that you’re trying to create a sort of logical arc in the way you’ve picked and sequenced these five films. Tell me more about that. 

 of their soundtracks. Music plays a role in how these movies come across. So, it was easy for me to sequence these films as if I was sequencing a playlist, just basing it off of the music of the films. 

I really wanted to start with the more upbeat sonic templates. So start out with a “Five Heartbeats”

or “Sister Act” kind of thing, and then get into sounds that were a bit heavier or a bit weightier. 

We're watching these films, but they require close listening as well. So I really wanted to treat it as though it was also a listening practice. And the order of the films have a sonic arc to them. Narrative arcs too, but the sonic arc is really palpable.

In reference to this being a listening practice, what do you want the viewers/listeners to get out of it?

The soundtrack of the film allows us to step inside the way a song enhances a moment, and then exiting that film experience as a witness. I think we can apply some of those enhancements to our own curation of sound to get us through the day. 

This is why I'm so particular about the soundtracking of my own life. I'm so particular about placements in playlists, or what purposes a playlist can service. 

 That's because I go about it like I'm scoring a film. Which is not to add importance to my life, I don't think my life is a film, but I'm saying treat it that way, give [your life] that opportunity. It allows me to put the focus and put some rigor into the sound that accompanies it.

Let’s talk about these soundtracks. They’re all pretty influential, especially “Set It Off” and “Sister Act.” What’s your emotional connection to them?

We had “Sister Act” on VHS because my grandmother was living with us for a while. She was very Christian, and also loved Whoopi Goldberg a great deal. She would watch “Sister Act" religiously. I remember she lived in a room upstairs and I would sneak up the stairs and sit in the doorway and watch with her. 

“The Five Heartbeats” soundtrack was on a cassette tape that my dad played in the car. We played it all the time in the house when I was younger too. I came to love these songs independently of the films they were attached to. That to me is the mark of a good soundtrack. With “The Five Heartbeats,” those songs were made specifically for the film, those songs were made to kind of sink into the film. They were required to. But these are also standalone great songs. 

There are two kinds of soundtracks. Soundtracks like “The Five Heartbeats” where the songs are engineered to stitch the film together. The other soundtrack is where you just get a bunch of good artists to make new songs. In “Set It Off,” there’s an incredible 

 that you can only hear on that soundtrack. They didn’t put it on any albums.

Both of those modes entice me. I like the new Spider-Verse soundtrack because they just let Metro Boomin work. They gave him space and told him to get some artists to do some songs. That felt like a kind of a call back to an era that I really loved.

What's your favorite song in movie usage? Now that you bring it up.

Oh, gosh. I have a few. I don't really love the movie “City of Angels,” but the use of “Iris” [by Goo Goo Dolls] is fantastic. And I don't even know how much I like “Iris” at its face-value. That's one of those situations where the song maybe surpasses the film for me. 

Another one would have to be in the first “Creed” movie. There’s a scene where the villain boxer comes out and they play Krept & Konan’s “Don’t Waste My Time.” That’s such a perfect encapsulation of that song. This works on TV too. In the opening scene of “The Americans,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk” is playing. Yo, that shit is perfect. 

I'd love to hear more. It sounds like what you're saying is that it's kind of a symbiotic thing. Both the song and the scene are amplified by each other.

Yeah, the song is redefining or expanding our ideas of what a scene can be. I think this is in part because I grew up in the music video era. So I believe songs should be a visual experience. I'm still a music video watcher, but I think it is safe and fair to say that the music video as a form and the attention paid to it has begun to dwindle. 

So what do we do then? I still have an interest in seeing songs spring to life in any kind of way that is useful visually. That’s why I turn to film and television.

You mentioned that music video viewership has been dwindling. Given the rise of Spotify and TikTok, I’m curious, what are your thoughts on this?

I mean, I was a big music video person. I still am. I remember when Rihanna released the music video for “Work.” I remember it vividly because it was one of the last times I felt like there was real excitement in a music video premiere. We knew what time it was premiering on YouTube. People were watching it in real time together, people were responding to it in real time together. And that was really cool to me. I kind of miss the communal witnessing of a single thing that we could share together. 

This did not happen, obviously, in the original music video era that I grew up in. We were watching them on MTV. But I think the music video is an opportunity to be a kind of short film, or a film that is not fully realized, but is still rich and textured. So I look at a director like Hype Williams. Have you seen his film “Belly”? It came out in ‘98.

I don't think so. I definitely will after this conversation.

To be clear, “Belly” is not a good movie. [laughs] But it’s an aesthetically beautiful movie. Hype Williams is primarily a music video director. So essentially, he just directed a film that maybe should have been a music video. His training, his brain is wired towards music video-making and colors and lighting. There's a real generosity in how he sees Black people — he understands how to light them well. 

The music video is an opportunity for risk taking. There has to be a place for that. There has to be a place for that kind of imagination to flourish.

This film series also solely focuses on 90s films, given this was a vibrant time in terms of representation of Black music in film. How would you say this representation has changed since? Have you noticed any trends?

I think that so much of Black music in film falls on the biopic now. I guess that’s kind of always been the case. But I think the thing about “The Five Heartbeats” is that it was kind of a reimagining of the Black biopic, right. And that was cool to me. 

There are so many ways that music can be used and shaped, Black music specifically, where it doesn't need to be at the forefront of the film. It can be in the backdrop, a generous backdrop.

I'm not anti biopic. I'm not opposed to them, but I think there's so many of them that try to capture a full life. I think they're most useful when they’re attempting to capture a moment. I think there was a broader imagination for how Black music could live in film back then.

Last question: Aside from your upcoming book, There’s Always This Year,and your event series at the Walker, what else can we look forward to seeing from you in the coming weeks and months?

Last question: Aside from your upcoming book,

and your event series at the Walker, what else can we look forward to seeing from you in the coming weeks and months?

In terms of stuff that the public can touch, I'm still 

 pretty regularly. I’ve been doing some smaller, more intimate readings, spending a couple nights at a time in one place. I do hope to come back [to the Twin Cities] in the next couple of months and do one here. It's been good to get back to my roots of more small-scale, quieter reading spaces. 

Hanif Abdurraqib’s Black VHS Experience film screening series will continue through the rest of the summer at the Walker Art Center. The next screening is “Sister Act.” 

Find more info on Walker Art Center’s website.

Fatima Rahman

The MacArthur Genius Grant awardee chatted with Carbon Sound about the intentions behind his new series at Walker Art Center.


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Photo by Maddie McGarvey, courtesy Hanif Abdurraqib

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“How I’m supposed to have a good time/When death and destruction’s all I see?” Vince Staples wonders on sophomore LP 

, before launching into a dance-ready chorus: “Party people, yeah! Party people I like to see you dance!”

(2017), a nihilist meditation on the rapper’s then-newfound fame. A foray into the avant garde, the record has aged almost too well, warping and stretching the sounds of the now au courant sounds of Detroit techno and UK garage. 

Above all else, it's a summer record through and through, the songs drenched in the lurid oranges and blues of its cover: “Slide 'round with my drop top up or down, you down to ride?”

Staples’ public persona correlates very little with the noisy strangeness of 

. Reliably mum when it comes to talking music, eking information from the rapper is like pulling teeth. In both Vulture and New York Times interviews, when asked about 

’s sound, Staples replied glibly, “I don’t know.” A 

, though hilarious, revealed little besides the name of the album’s eponymous fish (“Karl”) and Staples’ thoughts on singer-songwriter SZA (“I love her that’s my son”).

 the phrase “big fish theory”: “[The meaning] is a secret. But what I can promise you is that it has nothing to do with actual living, breathing fish. It has nothing to do with the ‘big fish, small pond’... and it has nothing to do with the term ‘there are more fish in the sea.’”

Bolstered by a murderer’s row of talent, 

 also boasts an almost obscene lineup — The best in electronica (Flume, the late SOPHIE), rap mainstays (A$AP Rocky, Juicy J, Ty Dolla $ign), and literally anyone else (Kilo Kish, Bon Iver, Damon Albarn) make an uncredited cameo or two. In album highlight “Yeah Right,” Kendrick Lamar swoops in and annihilates a jagged SOPHIE beat.

Amid the glimmering production credits, Staples stands at the album’s swirling epicenter, cycling through anger, indifference, and wry humor. “Clap your hands if the police ever profiled… Ain’t no gentrifying us, we finna buy the whole town,” the rapper proclaims in brutal cut “SAMO.” “Tell the one percent to suck a dick because we on now.”

 found me at age 17, shy and secretive about my interests. Upon first listen, it felt 

, something my disdainful teenage self could hardly believe. A then-newfound acolyte of both Staples and SOPHIE, the seamless alchemy of techno and rap scratched an itch in my brain, transporting me somewhere far beyond my listless, suburban upbringing. In a rare stroke of great taste, my 17 year old self had discovered the best album of the 2010s and claimed it as my own.

’s dystopian, experimental soundscapes were my eventual gateway to legions of great work: The musical stylings of Staples’ friend and collaborator Earl Sweatshirt, SOPHIE’s PC Music label and her subsequent hyperpop revolution, and (inevitably) Odd Future. Though I’ve caught plenty of flack for queueing 

 up on aux (one time, notably, “This song sounds like my dishwasher”), I feel a strange protectiveness over this LP: This is 

Many would disagree — A stark remove from Staples’ normal, 90s-tinged flow, 

 as a less digestible record. Years later, Staples himself revealed, “A lot of people hated 

 more than anything else I’ve ever done, and that’s my most successful album to date. A lot of people didn’t like it at all.” 

Perhaps as a result, Staples has yet to touch this sound since. His most recent release, 

t (2022), grapples with his upbringing on the north side of Long Beach, equal parts an ode to California as well as a eulogy to friends loved and lost. 

, the former a story-driven, traditional LP that merely alludes to Staples’ stardom.

 was likely a one-time phenomenon, its legacy lives on. I certainly will never forget it.

Six years after its release, the rapper’s foray into experimentalism leaves a lasting impact.


Stories

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