hip hop

On this episode of The Specialist, we spend a day in the shoes of a sidewalk canvasser.

This Friday, filmmaker Jordan Peele’s highly anticipated new horror movie “Us” is being released in theatres. The film’s trailer has gotten a lot of attention, especially here in the Bay Area for featuring the song “I Got 5 on It,” which was a hit in the mid-90s for the Oakland rap group The Luniz.

Rooted in Mexican oral tradition, Chhoti Maa raps, sings, and writes about migration, queerness, and indigenous spirituality. The Oakland based artist talks about her latest album, "Caldo de Hueso," meaning bone broth.

Rapper, writer and educator Maddy "MADlines" Clifford got introduced to slam poetry as a teenager and has spent the last decade teaching hip hop lyricism, history, and performance in schools, museums, college campuses, and even as far away as Uganda.

A young musician in Oakland is making waves in the Muslim community: Alia Sharrief. She’s part of a new generation of Muslim hip hop artists following in the footsteps of people like Yasiin Bey, best known by his stagename, MosDef, Lupe Fiasco, Qtip, Ali Shaheed Mohamed, the list goes on.

This story originally aired in May of 2015. 

Islam has a rich artistic heritage of architecture, design, music, painting, and poetry. Muslim poets like Rumi and Hafez are famous for a depth and beauty that defies time. Today, that poetic tradition is still strong. It's kept alive in what many may perhaps consider an unlikely place—urban America, through the genre of hip hop.

On Sunday mornings in the Castro neighborhood, there’s a place where rhythm reigns. Dancers pull out their leg warmers, spandex, and fluorescent headbands for Sunday Skool — and with the right accessories and a lot of attitude, their dreams of being a backup dancer for a day come true. 

In order to fully understand the sound of beat makers today, it’s important to understand their influences.

You know what scratching sounds like, right? It’s the "ziggah ziggah" noise that happens when a DJ moves vinyl records back and forth under the needle.

Hip hop music originally captured the spirit of a generation that was young in the 1980s. That generation and others that came after it are no longer young, but many of the people making the music are not ready to call it quits.

Today's local music is by Zion I. This Oakland hip-hop crew says their new album is meant to be "looking inward at the shadow self, and seeking awareness in the darkness of one's own psyche.”

This year, the San Francisco International Hip Hop DanceFest celebrates its 18th anniversary of bringing hip hop dance to the Bay Area stage. Companies come from as far away as Vietnam, and as close as Oakland.

The dancer Spulu has made a name for himself both as an artist and an activist. Drawing from his Pacific Islander heritage and love of hip-hop, he communicates his passion for social justice through his choreography style. 

Every Wednesday afternoon, a science classroom in a West Oakland middle school fills up with kids that hang out there by choice. It's become a sanctuary for the neighborhood. Why?

It’s Friday morning at Lighthouse Charter School in East Oakland, and the kids in Ms. Baumert’s ninth grade class have a visitor. 

Classically trained composer and pianist JooWan Kim's new performance piece, The Town on Notice from Dimensions Dance Theater, is about Oakland’s gentrification. Together with his group Ensemble Mik Nawooj, Kim fuses hip-hop and classical elements together to make what he calls “hybrid music."

Fifteen-year-old Ari Liccardo's artist name is Fat Chops. The song "Rags to Riches" is one of the first songs he ever produced as a musician, and it addresses some of the struggles he's been through in his life.

The city of Richmond has long had a reputation for violence. But things are starting to change. Recently, the city announced its lowest rate of homicide in 33 years. Even so, Richmond continues to be one of the most dangerous cities in the country. For young people seeking refuge from the violence, there’s the RYSE Youth Center. The organization provides a safe space for students to develop their musical talent and express themselves creatively. From the series Generation Change, reporter Anne Hoffman has more. 

Jena McRae, a dancer with the Embodiment Project, first met David "Dublin" Schwirtz, a vocalist with the Shotgun Wedding Quintet, during a rehearsal at the Treat Street Social Club. They sat down with StoryCorps and shared a few highlights of how their relationship evolved over time, into love.

Geary Buchanan is one of several socially conscious Bay Area hip-hop artists taking part in “An evening of audio resistance” tomorrow, February 18th. That’s taking place at 50 Mason Social House in San Francisco. The event starts at 8pm.

The religion of Islam has been showing up in hip hop and rap music for decades.  Artists like Mos Def are open about their Muslim faith, and how it influences their music. And there are many others too -- Big Daddy Kane, Lupe Fiasco, and some members of the iconic 90s hi hop group A Tribe Called Quest. Similarly, hip hop artist Baraka Blue draws inspiration for his music from Sufi Islam. But unlike these artists who are African American -- he’s white.

Eighteen-year-old Tatyana Martinez turned to writing poetry as a young girl to cope with big changes in her life. Over time, her poetry evolved into music. She now works for the youth run recording studio Upstar Records, inside San Francisco’s Sunset Youth Services. The youth center supports young people and their families with things like parenting classes, food assistance, and job training at Upstar. When she’s not helping young musicians make music, Martinez writes and records her own songs with the goal of putting out her own album. She shares the story behind her songs in this installment of Bay Area Beats.

Micah Tron is a rapper born and raised in San Francisco. She’s a queer woman of color, but the hurdles she has faced go even beyond her race, sexual preference, and gender. She lived in a shelter after being displaced by Hurricane Katrina and a few years into her twenties, she was diagnosed with epilepsy. But she hasn’t let this stop her from pursuing her music career – she says it actually motivates her. After her nephew was born deaf, she learned sign language, and her latest dream is to make music for the deaf community. She spoke with reporter Lo Benichou about her story.

Sunset Youth Services is an organization that supports transitional age youth and their families with things like parenting classes, food assistance, and job training. And it's home to the youth-run recording studio, Upstar Records, where young people learn audio production skills. That's where you’ll usually find 16-year-old Adriel Diaz. 

TraVaughn Hicks has been making music since he was a young boy and his rapper uncle would record him singing on his songs.

Art movements come and go, but one particular dance style seems to be here to stay. "Bboying," or "breakdancing" (as most people would call it), began in the Bronx in the late '60s and has since expanded internationally. As it’s grown, it’s changed – and that change has led to some major cultural conflicts between the younger dancers and the older ones.