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Champtown
Brian Harmon (born January 20, 1973), better known by his stage name Champtown, is an American rapper, disc jockey, film director and teacher from Detroit, Michigan. Founder of the Straight Jacket independent record label, Champtown is known for helping establish the careers of a number of Detroit hip hop artists, including Kid Rock. He has also worked with Ice-T, Rev Run, Public Enemy and Uncle Kracker. He produced a documentary film, ''The Untold Story of Detroit Hip Hop'', which featured interviews with notable Detroit rappers. Biography Harmon grew up on Fairport Street in the East Side neighborhood of Detroit, and attended Detroit Boys and Girls Club with the drug dealers Best Friends. Attending the Boys and Girls Club, Harmon was the subject of much racism. Harmon's older half brother, John, took him to his first hip hop music concert, the Fresh Fest, at the age of 8, leading Harmon to become enamored with the genre. In the second grade, Harmon met future rapper Esham, a ...
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Esham
Esham is an American rapper from Detroit, Michigan. Esham released his debut studio album, '' Boomin' Words from Hell'', in 1989. Since then, he has gone on to release 15 studio albums in total and is best known as a representative of the hip hop subgenres horrorcore and rap rock. In 1992, he co-founded the horrorcore group Natas. He and his brother James Smith founded and ran the Detroit hip hop label Reel Life Productions. As one of the first rappers to receive attention in the city, Esham was often cited as a major influence on another Detroit horrorcore act, Insane Clown Posse. Esham is known for incorporating elements of rock music in his beats, and his lyrics cover a number of subjects, including death, drug use, evil, paranoia and sex. Esham refers to his style of music as "acid rap". Biography Early career Esham grew up splitting time between the Seven Mile neighborhood on the East side of Detroit, Michigan, where he lived with his mother. He attended Osborn High Scho ...
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Detroit Hip Hop
Detroit, Michigan, is a major center in the United States for the creation and performance of music, and is best known for three developments: Motown, early punk rock (or proto-punk), and techno. The Metro Detroit area has a rich musical history spanning the past century, beginning with the revival of the world-renowned Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 1918. The major genres represented in Detroit music include classical, blues, jazz, gospel, R&B, rock and roll, pop, punk, soul, electronica and hip-hop. The greater Detroit area has been the birthplace and/or primary venue for numerous platinum-selling artists, whose total album sales, according to one estimate, had surpassed 40 million units by 2000. The success of Detroit-based hip-hop artists quadrupled that figure in the first decade of the 2000s. Historical background The Detroit area's diverse population includes residents of European, Middle Eastern, Latino, Asian and African descent, with each group adding its rich mu ...
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Distortion (Joseph Simmons Album)
''Distortion'' is the first solo studio album by American musician Joseph "Rev. Run" Simmons from hip hop group Run–D.M.C. It was originally scheduled to be released in 2003, but was delayed until its release date of October 18, 2005. Production was handled entirely by Whiteboy and Rev Run, who also served as executive producer together with his brother Russell Simmons. The album debuted at 78 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart in the United States. Its lead single "Mind on the Road" peaked at 98 on the Pop 100. Critical reception ''Distortion'' was met with generally favorable reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, this release received an average score of 61, based on eight reviews. ''Mojo'' reviewer wrote that Rev Run's "bellowed cadences are as timeless and elemental as the blues". AllMusic's David Jeffries wrote: "The skimpy run time is noticeable and downright perplexing coming from ...
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Kid Rock
Robert James Ritchie (born January 17, 1971), known professionally as Kid Rock (also known as Bobby Shazam), is an American singer, songwriter and rapper. His style alternates between rock, hip hop, country, and metal. A self-taught musician, he has said that he can play every instrument in his backing band and has overseen production on all but two of his albums. Kid Rock started his music career as a rapper and DJ, releasing his debut album ''Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast'' (1990) on Jive Records. His subsequent independent releases ''The Polyfuze Method'' (1993) and ''Early Mornin' Stoned Pimp'' (1996) saw him developing a more distinctive style, which was fully realized on his breakthrough album ''Devil Without a Cause'' (1998), which sold 14 million copies. This album and its follow-up, '' Cocky'' (2001), were noted for blending elements of hip hop, country and rock. His most successful single from that period, "Cowboy" (1999), is considered a pioneering song in the cou ...
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Eminem
Marshall Bruce Mathers III (born October 17, 1972), known professionally as Eminem (; often stylized as EMINƎM), is an American rapper and record producer. He is credited with popularizing hip hop in middle America and is critically acclaimed as one of the greatest rappers of all time. Eminem's global success and acclaimed works are widely regarded as having broken racial barriers for the acceptance of white rappers in popular music. While much of his transgressive work during the late 1990s and early 2000s made him widely controversial, he came to be a representation of popular angst of the American underclass and has been cited as an influence for many artists of various genres. After the release of his debut album ''Infinite'' (1996) and the extended play ''Slim Shady EP'' (1997), Eminem signed with Dr. Dre's Aftermath Entertainment and subsequently achieved mainstream popularity in 1999 with ''The Slim Shady LP''. His next two releases, ''The Marshall Mathers LP'' (200 ...
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Soul Intent (group)
Marshall Bruce Mathers III (born October 17, 1972), known professionally as Eminem (; often stylized as EMINƎM), is an American rapper and record producer. He is credited with popularizing hip hop in middle America and is critically acclaimed as one of the greatest rappers of all time. Eminem's global success and acclaimed works are widely regarded as having broken racial barriers for the acceptance of white rappers in popular music. While much of his transgressive work during the late 1990s and early 2000s made him widely controversial, he came to be a representation of popular angst of the American underclass and has been cited as an influence for many artists of various genres. After the release of his debut album ''Infinite'' (1996) and the extended play ''Slim Shady EP'' (1997), Eminem signed with Dr. Dre's Aftermath Entertainment and subsequently achieved mainstream popularity in 1999 with ''The Slim Shady LP''. His next two releases, ''The Marshall Mathers LP'' (20 ...
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Jive Records
Jive Records was an American independent record label founded by Clive Calder in 1981 as a subsidiary to the Zomba Group. In the US, the label had offices in New York City and Chicago. Jive was best known for its successes with hip hop, R&B, and dance acts in the 1980s and 1990s, along with teen pop and boy bands during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Jive was acquired by Bertelsmann Music Group in 2002. In 2008, BMG itself was bought out by Sony Music Entertainment. Jive Records thereupon remained a unit wholly owned by Sony up until the label’s dissolution in 2011, when Jive was absorbed into RCA Records. History 1970s: Beginnings In 1971, South African businessmen Clive Calder and Ralph Simon began a publishing and management company. It was named Zomba Records and relocated to London, England, four years later; their first client was a young Robert "Mutt" Lange. Zomba originally wanted to avoid record labels to instead focus on their songwriters and producers while allow ...
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DIY Ethic
"Do it yourself" ("DIY") is the method of building, modifying, or repairing things by oneself without the direct aid of professionals or certified experts. Academic research has described DIY as behaviors where "individuals use raw and semi-raw materials and parts to produce, transform, or reconstruct material possessions, including those drawn from the natural environment (e.g., landscaping)". DIY behavior can be triggered by various motivations previously categorized as marketplace motivations (economic benefits, lack of product availability, lack of product quality, need for customization), and identity enhancement (craftsmanship, empowerment, community seeking, uniqueness). The term "do-it-yourself" has been associated with consumers since at least 1912 primarily in the domain of home improvement and maintenance activities. The phrase "do it yourself" had come into common usage (in standard English) by the 1950s, in reference to the emergence of a trend of people underta ...
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Music Video
A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing device intended to promote the sale of Music Recording, music recordings. Although the origins of music videos date back to musical short, musical short films that first appeared, they again came into prominence when Paramount Global's MTV based its format around the medium. These kinds of videos were described by various terms including "illustrated song", "filmed insert", "promotional (promo) film", "promotional clip", "promotional video", "song video", "song clip", "film clip" or simply "video". Music videos use a wide range of styles and contemporary video-making techniques, including animation, live action, live-action, documentary film, documentary, and non-narrative approaches such as Non-narrative film, abstract fi ...
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Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 census, making it the 27th-most populous city in the United States. The metropolitan area, known as Metro Detroit, is home to 4.3 million people, making it the second-largest in the Midwest after the Chicago metropolitan area, and the 14th-largest in the United States. Regarded as a major cultural center, Detroit is known for its contributions to music, art, architecture and design, in addition to its historical automotive background. ''Time'' named Detroit as one of the fifty World's Greatest Places of 2022 to explore. Detroit is a major port on the Detroit River, one of the four major straits that connect the Great Lakes system to the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The City of Detroit anchors the second-largest regional economy in t ...
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Chuck D
Carlton Douglas Ridenhour (born August 1, 1960), known professionally as Chuck D, is an American rapper, best known as the leader and frontman of the hip hop group Public Enemy, which he co-founded in 1985 with Flavor Flav. Chuck D helped create politically and socially conscious hip hop music in the mid-1980s. ''The Source'' ranked him at No. 12 on its list of the Top 50 Hip-Hop Lyricists of All Time. Early life Ridenhour was born on August 1, 1960 on Long Island, New York. When he was a child, his mother played Motown and showtunes in the home and his father belonged to the Columbia Record Club. He began writing lyrics after the New York City blackout of 1977. He attended W. Tresper Clarke High School, where he was offered no formal education in music. He then went to Adelphi University on Long Island to study graphic design, where he met William Drayton (Flavor Flav). He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Adelphi in 1984 and later received an honorary doctorate from Adelph ...
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Flavor Flav
William Jonathan Drayton Jr. (born March 16, 1959), known by his stage name Flavor Flav (), is an American rapper and hype man. Known for his yells of "''Yeah, boyeeeeee!''" when performing, he rose to prominence as a founding member of the rap group Public Enemy alongside Chuck D; with them he has earned six Grammy Award nominations, and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. After spending several years out of the limelight, he starred in multiple VH1 reality series, including ''The Surreal Life'', '' Strange Love'', and ''Flavor of Love''. Early life and education Drayton was born in Roosevelt, New York and grew up in nearby Freeport, two communities within the Town of Hempstead. Drayton is the cousin of former Penn State basketball player Shep Garner, and of Brooklyn MC Timbo King of Royal Fam. He is also a cousin of rappers Ol' Dirty Bastard, RZA, and GZA of the Wu-Tang Clan. He taught himself piano and began playing at the age of five. He sang in the ...
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