This month we present enough new content to fill your holiday stockings. We get up with Black Sheep for what was likely their last interview together (they recently broke up) to talk about their come up and new projects. We threw on our detective hats and followed the trails to Nine who's featured in the Lost & Found Section discussing his disappearance from the rap game and pending lawsuit with Jeep. In addition we chat with artist extraordinaire Justin Bua, mixtape DJ of the year J-Period, check in with another unsigned hype in 'Hush The Crowd' and mad reviews including Nas, AZ, AG, Sadat X, Nas' baby mother's tell all and more. We also get serious with an Australian hip hop blowout with an overview of the scene down under, an interview with Australian artist Muph (Muph & Plutonic), reviews from Def Wish Cast, Art of War and The Tongue, and a DVD review from our peoples at the Rap Cella. It's Halftime kid so take a break from shopping for presents and check out the Dec/Jan update.

Hip Hop Icons Series

Black Sheep:

"Mr: Lawnge: I was in a small town with turntables and that’s pretty much what I focused on. Anybody who put scratching on a record that’s where my whole style came from. I was stepping my skills up to whoever was putting scratches on wax since I wasn’t in the mix at the time being in Carolina. I wasn’t around the nicest DJs in Philly or NY so I had to work with what was distributed by those dudes."Click here for more

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Slick Talkin'


Justin Bua:

"My work is more influenced by the rhythms of breaking than by graffiti. Graffiti is very flat and graphic and some of my pieces like ‘El Guitarrista,’ ‘Blues Man’ and ‘Piano Man 1 & 2’ are very painterly and the way that the compositions flow are more influenced by breaking and popping. There is a certain kind of rhythm to the way that I paint. A lot of characters look like they are in mid dance. It’s a snapshot of a certain dance in a frozen moment of time and they happen to be in this popping posture. It’s one of those things that is very hard to articulate because it’s dance. It’s abstract. With graffiti the bold outlines and the very flat structure influence my work but dance influences my work first." Click here for more

J-Period:

"My allegiance is to the artist. Every artist knew about what I was doing, endorsed what I was doing, said I could do what I was doing and in some cases out of thank you I would send them the tape. Here is a perfect example we’re out here on tour with Kane and at the shows of course we’re gonna sell the mixtapes but out of respect to Kane we’ll split the profits with him. It’s a partnership with the artist. They know about it and it serves a purpose for them. Three years ago before I did the best of Kane he had fallen out of the limelight. I put the best of Kane out and it starts popping up places and then it’s not just about me you see Kane on Hip Hop Honors and he tore it down." Click Here for More

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Lost & Found

Nine (9MM):

"What happened was Profile wouldn’t let me go. Then they got sold to Arista and it took four years for the deal to go through. Then the guy who was interested in all of the acts from Profile got fired in the interim. I think Profile was trying to keep the RUN DMC catalog and sell everything else but Arista wasn’t going for it. So they were negotiating. Then Arista wouldn’t let me go right away. They wanted to hear something first so I gave them some bullshit little demo. If it was the days like today where you just go up in the label and kick in the door I might have done that. I was tempted to do that but I felt I could just wait it out because I knew the skill wasn’t going to leave me." Click here for more

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Sickwidit

Albums: Nas, AG, AZ, Dan the Automator, Jake Lefco, Slept on Fam, & Sadat X

Books: It's No Secret by Carmen Bryan (Nas' Baby mother)

Shows: Big Daddy Kane & DJ J-Period @ Club Sonar

DVDs: Preserving Efforts VOL. 1 (AUS)

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Hip Hop International

Country Profiles:

Australia:

"The Australian hip hop scene’s inception can be traced back to the late ‘80s when several groups began dropping vinyl singles. In 1988, Just Us, a group from Sydney (NSW), dropped the 1st 12” called "Combined Talent." They were soon followed by the AKA Brothers who dropped a 12" the same year. The biggest achievement of the early Australian hip hop scene was the 1st official album release from Def Wish Cast, a 4 man group out of Sydney (NSW). When the "Knights of the Underground Table" hit stores in 1993 it had great success domestically and in Europe. Def Wish Cast became legends as the album went on to sell over 5,000 copies and the crew became the first hip-hop group ever to tour Australia. " Click here for more.

"I suppose with this album there was a lot more back and forth with the actual process of creating each song. Instead of me just taking a beat and writing a song to it, then recording it, we did demo versions of almost all the songs. We would then critique the demos and re-write, re-edit and so forth. We put a lot more pressure on ourselves and each other. Overall, there was a lot more attention paid to detail than with ‘Hunger Pains’." Click here for more.

Reviews: Def Wish Cast, The Tongue and Art of War

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