While you were drinking egg nog and fighting with your family, WKYS spent the last few days of the year slowly announcing its "DMV's Hottest Rappers of 2010" list. Despite what seemingly everyone who sees it seems to think, it is a pretty solid top 10. Check the breakdown:
1. Wale 2. Phil Ade 3. [...]
As 2010 comes to a close, members and observers of the D.C. hip-hop scene are debating who's the hottest MC, and whether or not we have a great one. The year also saw a seemingly endless stream of mixtapes—from D.C. Don Juan and UCB, to Kingpen Slim and Raheem DeVaughn. In 2011, listeners should expect [...]
Last Friday morning, D.C. music veteran Kokayi seemed elated to break the news: "yo @oddisee @yuthe78er @uptownxo did y'all know your album is on the Grammy pre-nom list? for Best album..congrats!" he typed on Twitter. By that night, Oddisee, yU, and X.O.—collectively known as The Diamond District—all reacted differently on their respective accounts.
Oddisee, the group's [...]
Friday
Buddy Guy w/ Ann Rabson. The Birchmere. $69.50
The Shirks, the Ladies, Maybe Baby, Social Problems, Electrocutions, Young and High. The Velvet Lounge. $10. +21
Jason Aldean w/ David Nail. Merriweather Post Pavilion. $30-$45.
Altar of Plagues, Castevet, Velnias. Black Cat. $10. All ages.
Bomba Estereo w/ King Chango, Natalia Cavlier. Rock and Roll Hotel. $20. All ages.
Shankar Ehsaan [...]
D.C.-based politically and socially conscious hip-hop band The Cornel West Theory dropped its latest mixtape this morning. The group released its debut album, Second Rome, last year, and and its namesake, the public intellectual and Princeton African American Studies professor Cornel West, to appear on a few tracks.
In Her Hands: Embryo Capital Vol. 1 has a [...]
It's a stinky-hot Thursday, and you can't possibly have that much to do. And D.C. legend-in-the-making Oddisee probably has been working harder than you. AW YEAH: Synchronicity! He has made a free mixtape for you! Well, OK, it's not specifically for you. It's because he's got an album with L.A.-area rapper Trek Life—Everything Changed Nothing—that [...]
Nice profile on NPR of rapper and producer Oddisee, whom we've featured a few times. He's a member of Diamond District and in his solo songs sometimes rhymes about Prince George's County, where he grew up. According to NPR's Guy Raz, he's "part of a new crop of artists who are returning to the early [...]
I don't pretend to understand anything algorithmic, so I can't really vouch for Next Big Sound, whose M.O. is "Music Meets Math." According to its breakdown of South by Southwest, the fourth most buzzed-about artist during the festival was Oddisee, the D.C. beatmaker and member of hip-hop trio Diamond District.
Oddisee's not bragging yet: His blog's [...]
Good morning! Between Fan Death's haterade and our look at the practice of door polling at local venues, in recent weeks Arts Desk has generated a fairly surprising amount of discussion about the state of D.C.'s indie-rock scene—not all of it civil, but that's OK. Clearly people are frustrated, for a number of reasons. (And by the [...]
After a very promising (and very free) test release of the clean version several months ago, Diamond District's In Da Ruff is officially available in stores today, with cuss words restored and bonus tracks. Though it isn't getting the national acclaim that Wale is, the trio of emcees XO, yU and rapper/producer Oddisee have cut [...]
