The 59th Annual Grammy Awards had it’s many great moments. Chance the Rapper, Beyonce, Jay-Z were trending tbroughout the night. But Busta Rhymes takes the cake!

During his performance with A Tribe Called Quest, he spoke his mind about the Trump administration and their attempted travel ban of Muslim countries into the U.S.

Suggested Articles:

The Next Big Showcase’s Cliff Po & DJ Tarzan Making Dreams Reality in NYC & NJ

Scoop B Radio: Turner Sports’ Steve Smith Talks Career & More

The post [VIDEO]: Busta Rhymes Calls President Donald Trump ‘President Agent Orange’ At Grammy Awards appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

“No Half Steppin’ “, a new book by authors Claude “Paradise” Gray and Giuseppe “u.net” Pipitone, explains the role the Latin Quarter of NYC played in the creation of some of the best hip-hop to come out of the 1980’s and 1990’s  including some of the greatest hip-hop legends. Being one of the first books to provide an oral history about hip-hop, it breaks ground in bringing readers back to the genesis of some of the most celebrated hits. Beyond this, it investigates the specific past of the often overlooked Times Square club, where stars like A Tribe Called Quest, KRS-One, Eric B. & Rakin, Queen Latifah, and Public Enemy gained their fame. Featuring both pictures as well as written content, the book has been described as a, “great shot in the arm to hip-hop culture with an enjoyable reminder of what we had and our entertainment was also birthed from…inspiring smiles and memories like our family photo books,” by Christopher “Play” Martin  (Kid & Play).

The book is available now for purchase via Wax Poetic’s website.

Suggested Articles:

Pharrell & DIPLO Star in Music Doc “808” [WATCH TRAILER]

A Tribe Called Quest & Friends Talk Phife Dawg, New Album & More

The post New Book “No Half Steppin’ ” Delves Into the Golden Era of Hip-Hop appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

It’s a sad day in Hip-Hop. This morning, we lost the legend and founding member of A Tribe Called Quest, Phife Dawg. The legendary trio met in high school in 1985, went on to become one of the pioneers of “backpack rap”, and one of the most influential rap groups of all time.

To pay homage to the late MC, Mac Miller dropped ‘5ft Assassin’ to his soundcloud. On the track, Mac paired Phife’s bars from ‘1nce Again‘ and a vintage freestyle over a somber beat.

The death of the 5ft Assassin came as a shock to the entire hip-hop community. Malik Issac Taylor will truly be missed.

RIP PHIFE. DRINKING A DR PEPPER FOR U RIGHT NOW. pic.twitter.com/ClSNcuLR9P

— Mac (@MacMiller) March 23, 2016

The post In Honor of Phife Dawg Mac Miller Drops ‘5ft Assassin’ appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

Q-Tip’s anxiety was obvious.  More than once, he would freeze at the end of a song, his face turned away from the crowd, his fingers wiggling in vain for more applause.  He was overly earnest in his effort to be a rockstar, screaming a few times at the end of “Electric Relaxation,” even holding the microphone upside down at one point (who’s got a picture of that?).  “What’s the problem, y’all good?” he would ask, “You paid your money to come in here, not to stand, but to move….  This is the Brooklyn Hip-hop Festival, right?”

It’s true that the crowd was uninspired.  Maybe it was the reshuffle of the line-up, explained unsurely by host Ralph McDaniels.  The show was running way over time; Kendrick Lamar did only three songs before heading off the stage not too long before.  It was a motley audience — there were little kids, but mostly old heads, multicolored and stubborn.  Maybe it was the fact that few of them were actually born and raised in Brooklyn, according to McDaniels’s live survey.  That’s what Q-Tip seemed to think: “It’s a lot of implants, that’s what it is,” he posited, “Gentrification’s a motherfucker.”

In retrospect, Q-Tip’s nervousness was warranted — how would the audience respond to the all-star cast waiting backstage?  Monie Love got the crowd hyped when she joined him on stage for “Buddy (Remix)” and “Monie in the Middle,” joking “Still in the middle.  Just had a baby, what’s goin’ on?” as she exited.  The first big-name guest was Black Thought, who relieved Tip of crowd control duties with his surefooted presence.  But the crowd really went wild for Busta Rhymes, who knocked out “Scenario,” “Oh My God,” and his own current hit, “Look at Me Now” with his trademark confidence.

When Teyana Taylor’s indelible “Can we get much higher?” blasted through the speakers shortly after, the thought of a Kanye appearance seemed pretty unlikely to me, though Tip has produced a rack of recent Yeezy joints.  And yet in he bounded, in a tank top and backwards hat.  He waded through the plebeians for the first verse of “Dark Fantasy” and had the stagnant crowd sprinting in his direction, and then retook the stage for “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” and “All of the Lights” before Tip urged him to stay for “Award Tour.”  He took off in his Maybach before the show was finished.

After each guest, Q-Tip would rant about how much he loved him or her: he told us that Busta was this close to being in Tribe, and Busta responded that “Scenario” “definitely changed a nigga’s tax bracket”; he told us that when he met Kanye, “I only felt like this when I met Dilla.”  Kanye was mostly quiet during his bit, and Q-Tip’s effusiveness sometimes felt a little awkward and untimely — especially when he had J. Period spin back “Scenario” and “World Tour” after the first few bars.  Though it took a bit of goading at first, everybody was going nuts by the end of his set.

Q-Tip definitely wants to prove that he can handle his own amidst the controversy of Michael Rapaport‘s documentary Beats, Rhymes & Life.  (Sidebar: Rapaport was reportedly backstage.)  Many speculated that Phife would be one of his special guests, but of course, that wasn’t the case.  When he spoke about the film at the end of the show, he only encouraged people to go see it, calling it “a true hip-hop artifact” that he was “humble to be a part of.”  As the crowd made its way for the exit after a Ralph McDaniels-induced encore, the buzz was palpable; for all his eagerness, Q-Tip had put on a legendary show.  But could he have pulled it off without a little help from his friends?

After the jump, check out more pictures courtesy of the super talented Shamel Washington.

The post Review & Photos: Q-Tip and Friends at the Brooklyn Hip-hop Festival appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

Michael Lavine gravitated to the art and science of the portrait by choice, definition and temperament. “Portrait photography requires that you have a natural affinity to relate to other people,” he says. “I’m lucky, I’m a nice person—that’s part of it. The other part is to have a graphic sensibility and have a good vision. If you put those things together, you have a good portrait photographer.”

For over a quarter century, Lavine’s work—whether creating classic album images for Nirvana’s Nevermind or Lil’ Kim’s Hardcore, crafting promo shots for hit shows like 24 and Prison Break, minting everyone from Disney starlets to Jay-Z in everything from rap mags to high-end glossies, catching on-the-street reportage or even architectural centerpieces—has largely been about framing a subject at rest in a way that defines the subtle essentiality of his target while making the connection between viewed and viewer paramount. But it’s not all straightforward. His books, 1996’s Noise from the Underground and the recently released Grunge, chronicle his genre-defining work in the ’80s and early ’90s alternative-rock scene before his transition into hip-hop, where confidence and invention led him to experiment with angling, distortion, color-gel backgrounds and more. His ’90s-era hip-hop work is vibrant and extreme, pushing envelopes with technical precision, the result of a hippie-raised lensman who got his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from New York’s Parsons School of Design and moved between polar-opposite musical worlds.

“The indie-rock scene was all about bucking the establishment, where you have a style of music where the whole idea is antisuccess, really,” says Lavine. “Kurt Cobain was essentially against the idea of being popular; he hated his fans, it was really a low-key thing. To join the hip-hop scene was the opposite: Everybody wanted as much glitz and glam as you could get. It was a whole different mentality. I wasn’t involved with either [scene] personally. What I was involved with was helping them achieve their look and defining the look of their particular styles. One of the reasons I did well with the hip-hop community was that I have a very strong graphic sensibility, and I have a really clean and clear vision. I make people look great, and it’s a very powerful, straightforward but iconic image. I’m able to translate the chaos of a situation and turn it into something that looks better than it actually does. That’s my job, really.”

The post Michael Lavine appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.