An underground hero in Japan, Shin-Ski has made beats for some of your favorite U.S. MCs. Patrick, our resident Japanese head and translator, sat down with the man himself to discuss the Japanese Hip-Hop scene, the technicalities of working with foreign MCs, and of course his own influences and upcoming projects. Don’t forget to enjoy [...]

In the interest of bringing quality material, and somewhat constrained by the fact that I don’t know a word of Japanese, for this update we won’t dig as deep, and instead we’ll bring you some tracks and videos from one of Japan’s classic hip-hop groups, Buddha Brand. Hopefully, this is all new to you anyways [...]

Brace yourself, world. You are about to be bombarded by the stunning audio and visuals of Hip Hop’s latest incarnation, 4-ISH. Founded in 1999 by a 23 year-old named Marco Gerris and based out of the Netherlands, 4-ISH is a thirteen member crew pushing the boundaries of Hip Hop in a new direction that can [...]

In my last post about Mexico, I wrote about a group called Control Machete that most people in the US haven’t heard of, but because of a massive Levi’s advertising campaign many people are actually familiar with their music and don’t know it! In beginning my research on Spanish hip-hop, I realized that even though [...]

In 2005, I was introduced to the music of Dutch hip hop duo Pete Philly and Perquisite via DJ S-Dub (the DJ for Dutch hip hoppers Proov). You might be familiar with this vein of Dutch hip-hop through producer Nicolay: lyrically-English musically-jazz influenced snappy beats. Often I find myself describing them akin to Talib Kweli [...]