Farewell to Guru

The hip hop world lost an innovator this week when Guru passed away.

Makes me reminiscence. Can't believe that it was '93 when Jazzmatazz, Vol. 1 came out. That was a nice time to twist rap on its head.

Check out these links for more about Guru:

• Tribute to Guru from MTV UK
• MTV's Sway interviews Solar, Guru's manager
• Guru's MySpace Page
• Guru's Twitter Page

Let's pay some respect hip hoppers. kfox.

Okayplayer Music Awards - vote now!

Ooooh, this is soo cool! Okayplayer is the joint. If you are not down, then you are soo out of the loop. Check out the Okayplayer Music Awards. The deadline to vote is fast approaching - Tuesday, December 18.

It's a good thing there are these here awards -- to set you straight or at least trying to get you there. You see, if you scroll through too many names w/o recognizing any of them, you can use the list as a cheat sheet and do your research ... and then one day, you too will be bout it! Believe that.

So, some of my fav awards categories are:

• The Most Slept on Album


• The Most Slept on Artist


• Mixtape of the Year (all votes for Mick Boogie, right?)


• Sang the Hook Award


• And there is one more: Crazier Than a Fish with _____ Award

Such fun, these awards thingys.

You know, there's a really big election next year where your vote will count, but at the Okayplayer site, you will notice how your vote directly made an impact.

Power to the people ... kfox

Say It Ain't So ...

... but it is true. I hosted my last hip hop show on WMCO last Saturday. How sad was that ... ? The show was not actually sad, but I don't know if the station will continue to play hip hop the way that it has in the past four years that I was there.

Now, I am not the hip hop maven ... well, maybe I am. But I don't think that they will continue to chart hip hop for WMCO. That is so crazy in my opinion. Their reasoning is that they don't know (hidden meaning: don't like) hip hop. Not liking hip hop is one thing, but when you work college radio, it is all about exploration and being open-minded. Not to mention that right now, hip hop is the fastest growing genre! And the hip hop that comes through WMCO is not the watered-down brand found in conglomerized radio; it's good music often w/a message.

About two years back, when WMCO went through music directors like athletes go through sneakers, what did I do? I manned up and got the alternative charts done. And what did that mean? It meant that I had to listen to a lot of music that I would not otherwise listen to. And that ended up being a good thing; again exposure to new and different things.

Does this seem like a vent? Well, it is. It is all too often that people associate that fact that since I am black, of course I would like hip hop. However, that is not always the case. I have way too many black friends who cringe at a mere uptempo beat on a song. Point is, it seems that since the resident black person has left the building, WMCO will revert to something that it should be embarassed about: strictly playing alternative music sans rap/hip hop and running the risk of sounding too commercial and lacking identity.