Tag: hip-hop

  • 5 Lessons All Indie Artists Can Learn from Chance the Rapper

    5 Lessons All Indie Artists Can Learn from Chance the Rapper

    If you follow hip-hop, you’re likely to at least know the name Chance the Rapper and recall how he’s become an indie darling of the rap world. Armed with a unique voice and a passionate fanbase cultivated over the past few years, Chance has achieved similar feats as hip-hop’s top heavyweights — and he’s done so…

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  • Music Theory Breakdown: Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam”

    Music Theory Breakdown: Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam”

    The first song on Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo album, and my favorite so far, is the beautiful, gospel-saturated “Ultralight Beam.” The song uses only four chords, but they’re an interesting four: C minor, E♭ major, A♭ major, and G7. To find out why they sound so good together, let’s do a little music theory. “Ultralight Beam” is…

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  • Sampling as Instrumentation: How Recorded Noise Found Its Way Into Music

    Sampling as Instrumentation: How Recorded Noise Found Its Way Into Music

    + Learn to create and arrange original, instrumental hip-hop music from sampling pioneer RJD2 himself in his new course on Soundfly, RJD2: From Samples to Songs. When we turn on the radio to any pop station, we hear sampling. When we utilize any MIDI instrument technology within our DAWs and hardware, we hear sampling. It’s everywhere, and it’s due…

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  • 8 Hip-Hop Songs to Help Your Hanukkah Hangover

    8 Hip-Hop Songs to Help Your Hanukkah Hangover

    Hanukkah occurs over eight nights in December, and sadly, this year’s Festival of Lights has just ended. But do not fret, for you can let the party continue on forever with these eight amazing hip-hop tracks, bound to get your tukhus grooving! So pour some Manischewitz out, light up a fat menorah, and pump these…

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  • Chesney Snow on the Life of an Artist

    Chesney Snow on the Life of an Artist

    Chesney Snow is a poet, a songwriter, a beatboxer, an actor, but most of all, he’s an artist through and through. Talking to him can feel a little like receiving a sermon from a beatboxing prophet of some sort, as he waxes lyrical about life as an artist today and the power of art to…

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