Yasiin Bey talks all things UGK in an interview with director Sama’an Ashrawi. He cites his first formal meeting with Bun B. – one half of the legendary duo from Port Arthur, Texas – during a rally in Jena, Louisiana as a slightly surprising but defining moment in the development of his already established respect for his fellow MC; Bun’s presence proved a comfort during a tenuous time in the Louisiana town where the Jena Six were being tried for the beating of a white student. The potential for unrest or clashes with law enforcement in the area was likely amplified as people flooded the area to protest in support of the defendants in the racially driven case. The talk is the 10th and final installment of an All-Star Tribute To UGK – a series of in-depth interviews Ashrawi conducted with industry friends and peers of the legendary Underground Kingz, formed in 1987 by Bun and the late Pimp C. Check the footage below. Stay trill.

The post Yasiin Bey Talks Love For UGK + Bun B. appeared first on Okayplayer.

As the behemoth music/industry festival known as South by Southwest sets its sights on the city of Austin, Texas for the next two weeks, prepare for your favorite music sites and social media timelines to be flooded with news of the takeover. Not ones to stay home from the online party, we here at Okayplayer are throwing our proverbial hat in the ring just like last year to bring you our Top 13 SXSW Showcases & Events for 2013 (get it?) to check out if you’re lucky enough to face the monster in real life – sort of like a baker’s dozen of awesomeness. Things officially got into full swing a few days ago, but the music portion of the festival doesn’t begin until tomorrow, meaning you still have a few days to get your ish together and make a plan of action to conquer this beast. Posted in rough chronological order, consider this guide as one of your necessary survival tools over the next week of shenanigans. Let’s get started, and may the force be with you, friends.

The post Okayplayer’s Top 13 SXSW 2013 Showcases + Events appeared first on Okayplayer.

With this being at least the third time they’ve hooked up, I guess we can call Big K.R.I.T. and Bun B frequent collaborators at this point. And this may be their hardest joint together yet (saying a lot as the “Country Shit” remix and “Pull Up” are both tough). Krizzle’s self-produced “Shine On” serves as the first official single off his upcoming project, King Remembered In Time. From one generation to the next, listen to K.R.I.T. and Bun B get their shine on, below.

The post Big K.R.I.T. “Shine On” feat. Bun B appeared first on Okayplayer.

dead prez‘s Information Age received some mixed reviews when it dropped last October. Comparisons to Enya were made. And while the beats have undeniably strayed from classic dead prez style, M1 and stic.man do what they always do; lyrically motivate, organize, and rally their listeners.  ”Time Travel”–with its positively Weezy-ish, sizzurp drenched hook–is a case in point, an update of their approach on “Bigger Than Hip-Hop” formula in the sense that they prefer to spit their revolutionary but gangsta-isms over the latest street sounds (it’s worth remembering that the dirty-south bass groove of what is now acknowledged as among their most classic tracks definitely threw off some of dead prez’s Rawkus-reared listeners at the time). Now, they’ve dropped a posse-cut remix for the track featuring Bun B of UGK and Brooklyn newcomer Reek Da Villain, who is currently under the tutelage of Busta Rhymes. Bun B takes point, before the others jump in and talk about everything they want to see and do in the past, present, and future. This version of “Time Travel” can be found on the deluxe edition of Information Age which you can cop here. Listen below and judge for yourself.

The post Dead Prez x Bun B x Reek Da Villain – “Time Travel” (Remix) appeared first on Okayplayer.

Shopping for Holiday gifts, or just need to refresh your fresh? We’ve created promotional code: OKAYPLAYER for 20% OFF all orders over $75 (certain restrictions may apply)

Friends Pharaohe Monch, Bun B, and Big K.R.I.T. have also curated their own personal gift guides on Karmaloop. Check out their selections at those links.

The 2012 Karmaloop Gift Guide can be found here http://www.karmaloop.com/m/holiday-gift-guide-2012

Hurry up and get your save on in time for the holidays. It’s not too late!

The post Save at Karmaloop with Code OKAYPLAYER appeared first on Okayplayer.

The newest episode of The Combat Jack Show brings you Freddie Gibbs, Bun B, and Despot talking about race issues in NY vs. the South, Thanksgiving, Bieber, and even beef with Shyne. Freddie speaks on his ESGN label and his current relationship with Young Jeezy and CTE, Despot talks owning an NYC club, and professor Bun B sheds some professorial wisdom – all of which leads to a roundtable discussion of some sorts on race, Shyne, and even an ignorant argument on what an “Indian giver” is (let it be known that an Indian is not a “pakistan” and the “Indian” in “Indian giver” is not even referring to South Asians). You can’t help but chuckle at it though, especially when you hear: “Why do we say Indian Giver, did the Indians give some people some shit?”

But anyway, listen below and enjoy the full episode featuring the very intriguing thoughts of Gibbs, B, and Despot.

The post Audio: Freddie Gibbs x Bun B Speak On Race In NY vs. The South & More appeared first on Okayplayer.

Rapper turnt documentarian Ice T waded into the gun control debate–or perhaps lack of debate–with his comments to the UK press yesterday. Speaking to Channel 4 London’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy Ice essentially joined ranks with Mike Huckabee, the NRA and others on the right who have resisted any attempt to make a linkage between lax gun control laws and tragedies like the one which occurred in an Aurora, Colorado movie theatre on the opening night of new Batman epic The Dark Knight Rises. As excerpted on the Meditate blog, Ice energetically denied any link between gun rights and the Colorado shooting:

“It’s legal in the United States,” the rapper said. “The right to bear arms is because that’s the last form of defense against tyranny. Not to hunt. It’s to protect yourself from the police.”

“And do you see any link between that and this sort of instance?” Guru-Murthy challenged.

“No. Not really,” Ice-T responded. “If somebody wants to kill people, they don’t need a gun to do it.”

“Makes it easier though, doesn’t it?” the host pushed back.

“Not really. You can strap explosives on your body. They do that all the time.”

As Meditate correctly points out, that argument (as far as it goes) strongly echoes the comments of Alan Gura, the lawyer who argued for the gun-owners in the Supreme Court’s McDonald v. Chicago case:

“No criminal is going to say, I was gonna hold up that liquor store, I was gonna hold up that couple in the park, but I couldn’t get the permit to get the gun, so I’ll give up.”

However, since the essence of Ice’s argument seems to be that we need guns to shoot back at the police (he went on to quote from the “you’re never going to have justice on stolen land” portion of KRS-One‘s “Sound of Da Police“–perhaps a more moderate choice than his own “Cop Killer” anthem with Body Count!) it seems unlikely that he’ll receive much in the way of reciprocation from his fellow gun-rights advocates on the right.

Ice’s position–tied as it is to the tradition of self-defense in the black nationalist mode championed by Malcolm X–seems to complicate the problem, at least as it fits into the usual red-state/blue-state talking points. But I’m going to go ahead and speak for myself and call bullsh*t on him. To say that gun control will deter gun purchases by law-abiding citizens but not the illegal gun trade ignores the reality that lax gun laws make it easy to purchase weapons in some states and transport them to other locales which apparently have a higher supply of people that need to get shot–notably New York and my hometown of Detroit. I’m sure somebody on here will take up the Malcolm/KRS side of the debate so I will let this conversation move to its natural habitat in the comments section, and just add a few choice quotes from other rap-dudes (after the jump) weighing in on the Colorado shootings, for use as you know what.

“Rappers: Please don’t reference the tragedy in Aurora in ya fake gangster songs. That’s considered hoe shit. The OG has spoken. Carry on.” -Bun B via twitter 

“It’s getting a lot of attention. But, I also hope that, as much attention that the media is giving that tragedy, they’re doing the same in New Orleans, and they’re doing the same in New York, and they’re doing the same in Chicago. That’s happening every weekend. Not at the movies; just every weekend. Twenty people are getting killed here. Fifteen people are getting killed here. It’s happening weekly—and you don’t hear about that at all.” - Lupe Fiasco, speaking to JAM’N 94.5.

“He think he in a movie. As I watch him sit in the courtroom…now he dazed. With all the pictures that was leading up to the event he was smiling and doing this and that and now you dazed. Yeah, don’t be dazed now. We need you to be focused when this come down on you.” – Rick Ross, speaking to KMEL.

The post Video: Ice T Speaks On Colorado Shooting, Defends Gun Rights appeared first on Okayplayer.

The Art Of Rap is no misnomer. With a hip-hop veteran like Ice-T overseeing the film, his first as director, it deftly avoids the pitfalls that a traditional documentarian might have fallen victim to.  Aside from seeing where Dr. Dre lives and finding out when Rev Run realized his life was spiraling out of control, there’s no discussion about wealth and fame. The film’s focus is simply on words. It’s about the thought process that leads one to write sixteen bars. It’s about how those sixteen bars wind up on a piece of paper. It’s about how those words and their delivery are agonized over before they even make it to the ears of the general public. 

The Art Of Rap manages to capture the attention of its viewers like no other hip-hop documentary before. The respect that our favorite rappers have for each other’s talent has never been captured quite like this. Redman emphatically sings the praises of Eminem.  Eminem recalls how hearing Treach from Naughty By Nature made him stop writing rhymes for an entire summer. Doug E. Fresh recites Melle Mel lyrics with the kind of deference usually reserved for a poet like Robert Frost.  Ice-T also uses plenty of humor to keep viewers fixated on the silver screen, notably in a sequence where KRS-ONE reveals why he started rapping (SPOILER: He got dissed during a battle between two other rappers and refused to let it slide) or Ice-T trying to conduct an interview with Q-Tip on a New York City street corner while passersby begin to congregate around them snapping photos.

Few faults are to be found within The Art of Rap. Female rappers aren’t heavily represented. Very little time is paid to southern hip-hop, with Bun B serving as the sole spokesperson for that movement. Several interviews seemed criminally short. Prior to the screening, Ice-T revealed that his initial edit of the film was six hours long. Hopefully a nice chunk of the deleted sequences will end up on a DVD release of the film.

The Art Of Rap: Something From Nothing, just may be Ice-T’s most important contribution to hip-hop.  The film is a beautiful love letter to emcees and their craft and should be watched by anyone with any shred of interest in hip-hop culture and is sure to be an inspiration for a new generation of emcees.

The Art Of Rap: Something From Nothing hits theaters on June 15th.

Click here to watch the film’s trailer!

The post Pass The Popcorn: Ice-T’s “The Art Of Rap: Something From Nothing” appeared first on Okayplayer.

Yessir. This is what you call a posse cut. The south’s original undergound king teams with Royce Da 5’9″ and Funk Doc  for this ill collabo and the result is not something for Houstalantavegas. This is something for HoustaDallaNewTroit. Please bang responsibly.

The post Audio: Bun B x Royce Da 5’9 x Redman “Stop Playin’” appeared first on Okayplayer.

I applauded H-Town emcee Trae The Truth for somehow getting Lupe Fiasco, Big Boi, Wale, and Wiz Khalifa all on the same track (and in the video as well, for that matter), for what culminated into a very strong posse cut. Today, Trae comes right back with version 2.0 with a handful of emcees that I mostly fux with (mostly). Take 5 minutes out of your day and listen to “I’m On 2.0″ featuring Big K.R.I.T., Jadakiss, J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar, B.o.B, Tyga, Gudda Gudda, Bun B, and Mark Morrison (Cyfyre on the beat).

>>>Download

Spotted at OS

The post Audio: Trae Tha Truth “I’m On 2.0″ feat. VA appeared first on Okayplayer.