Email Author Sam Chennault

2005 Stories by Sam Chennault

• Unfair Use

  published December 21, 2005

  Last month it was revealed that Sony Music BMG had been covertly installing spyware on its new CDs in order to combat music piracy. Sony used a... More >>

• Country Fried Soul: Adventures in Dirty South Hip Hop

  published June 29, 2005

  By Tamara Palmer Back Beat Books (2005), $19.95 With a penchant for bombastic beats, chanted lyrics, and the kind of... More >>

• BeatBox

  published May 11, 2005

  Next Tuesday, May 17, marks the end of an era. After a 15-year residency, Cheb i Sabbah bids a fond farewell to Nickie's BBQ, the... More >>

• A New Dawn, a New Bay

  published May 4, 2005

  Stepping off BART at the Rockridge Station on a sunny Saturday afternoon, I realized that I'd made a big mistake. I had scheduled an interview... More >>

• The Game

  published May 4, 2005

  If you're in the Army, hustle for the Mafia, or rap in G-Unit (which is like some strange collision of the two), you always follow orders and... More >>

• Louder Than Bombs

  published April 27, 2005

  Still frustrated from the last election? Feeling that the left consists of a bunch of ineffectual weaklings who don't have the heart, much less... More >>

• Zion I

  published April 20, 2005

  Potential can be a bitch. Proclaiming that a group has potential is a backhanded compliment at best, implying that that group may be decent or... More >>

• Emanon

  published April 20, 2005

  Summer may be a couple of months away, but if you're like me you're already mapping out the soundtrack for this season's procession of barbecues,... More >>

• BeatBox

  published April 20, 2005

  In the rest of America, it may be no more than a holiday for dazed deviants, but in the Republic of the Bay, where there are more bongs than... More >>

• The Perceptionists

  published April 13, 2005

  The bicoastal Boston/Berkeley MC Mr. Lif makes the sort of politically charged Bolshevik boom-bap that warms the coffee of both old-school hip hop... More >>

• MF Doom

  published April 13, 2005

  Spitting a slipstream of rearranged clichés, comic-culture allusions, and schizoid sci-fi references, MF Doom has spent the past two years... More >>

• Messy Marv

  published April 6, 2005

  As hip hop continues to think globally, absorbing the sounds and cultures of everywhere from Sri Lanka to Cape Town to create a sort of... More >>

• 75 Degrees

  published April 6, 2005

  Hip hop conspiracy theory No. 4,081 posits that beneath the ridiculously smooth breakbeats of A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul are subliminal... More >>

• BeatBox

  published April 6, 2005

  Of all of hip hop's sonic tangents, from turntablism to crunk to Miami bass, beat-boxing is among the most endearing, if not exactly the most... More >>

• BeatBox

  published March 23, 2005

  While much of the city stands idly by as trite mash-ups and Burning Manish trance exercise Israeli-like occupation of Bay Area dance floors, nifty... More >>

• Quannum Mechanics

  published March 16, 2005

  The bass line thunders out of the DNA Lounge's colossal speakers as the sold-out crowd pushes toward the stage. With this many arms and bodies... More >>

• Aesop Rock

  published March 16, 2005

  Aesop Rock is that weird drunk lunatic street-corner apocalyptic rambler with a record deal -- and we love him for it. Awash in assonance and... More >>

• Opio

  published February 16, 2005

  For Bay Area hip hop fans, a new album from Opio is akin to receiving a call from a long-lost friend: surprising yet satisfying. In addition to... More >>

• Federation

  published February 16, 2005

  With the breakout hit "Hyphy," Fairfield act Federation is at the forefront of a Bay Area hip hop renaissance that some are calling the "New... More >>

• BeatBox

  published February 16, 2005

  When it comes to DJing, context is everything. And whether they're manning Stones Throw Records (one of the nation's most successful indie labels)... More >>

• John Legend

  published February 9, 2005

  With neo-soul backdrops and a voice that exudes a sexy sort of sadness, John Legend clearly resides in the house that Stevie built. And like... More >>

• Ol' Dirty Bastard

  published February 9, 2005

  The great thing about the Wu-Tang Clan's ODB wasn't that he smoked crack, fathered a dozen children, or had an arrest record thicker than a... More >>

• BeatBox

  published February 9, 2005

  Hailing from a country of "undisclosed origin" and issuing scathing critiques of American international policy in the name of "foreign rap," the... More >>

• Hear This

  published February 2, 2005

  In this time of great political peril, the music industry is simply not doing its part. Consider the slew of politically minded documentaries that... More >>

• Revolutions

  published January 26, 2005

  In the hyperkinetic world of hip hop, fortunes are won and lost, trends rise and fall, and careers wax and wane in what seems like the blink of an... More >>