Lonnie Rashid Lynn, known by his stage name Common, is an American rapper, actor, and activist. He has received three Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Golden Globe Award. He debuted in 1992 with the album Can I Borrow a Dollar?, and gained critical acclaim with his 1994 album Resurrection. He maintained an underground following into the late 1990s. He achieved mainstream success through his work with the Soulquarians.
The New York University Tisch School of the Arts is the performing, cinematic and media arts school of New York University.
Ahmir K. Thompson, known professionally as Questlove, is an American musician, record producer, disc jockey, filmmaker, music journalist, and actor. He is the drummer and joint frontman for the hip hop band the Roots. The Roots have been serving as the in-house band for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon since 2014, after having fulfilled the same role on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Questlove is also one of the producers of the cast album of the Broadway musical Hamilton. He is the co-founder of the websites Okayplayer and OkayAfrica. Additionally, he is an adjunct professor at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University.
Gil Green is an American music video, commercial, and film director raised in Miami, Florida.
Gregory James Qaiyum, better known by his initials GQ, is an American actor, writer and rapper.
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by Albert Gallatin.
Hip hop or hip-hop, also known as rap and formerly known as disco rap, is a genre of popular music that originated in the Bronx borough of New York City in the early 1970s by African Americans, having existed for several years prior to mainstream discovery. Hip hop originated as an anti-drug and anti-violence genre, while consisting of stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted. According to the professor Asante of African American studies at Temple University, "hip hop is something that blacks can unequivocally claim as their own". It was developed as part of hip hop culture, a subculture defined by four key stylistic elements: MCing/rapping, DJing/scratching with turntables, break dancing, and graffiti art. Other elements include sampling beats or bass lines from records, and rhythmic beatboxing. While often used to refer solely to rapping, "hip hop" more properly denotes the practice of the entire subculture. The term hip hop music is sometimes used synonymously with the term rap music, though rapping is not a required component of hip hop music; the genre may also incorporate other elements of hip hop culture, including DJing, turntablism, scratching, beatboxing, and instrumental tracks.
Martha Diaz is a Colombian-American community organizer, media producer, archivist, curator, and social entrepreneur.
Charles Alexander, known professionally as Prince Charles Alexander, is an American record producer and audio engineer. He received a Grammy for Best Contemporary Soul Gospel Album in 2003.
I Told You So is the second studio album by American rapper Chino XL. Originally it was slated to be released via Warner Bros. Records, and the catalogue number 47710 was assigned to the release, but Chino XL was dropped by the label shortly after the promotional single "Let 'Em Live" was released. It was released on August 21, 2001 through Metro Records.
Daniel Faraldo, known professionally as Dan-e-o, is a Canadian hip hop artist and actor of Jamaican and Spanish descent. In June 2015, Dan-e-o received the award for Best Hip Hop Artist at the Black Canadian Awards. He is a member of the groups Monolith and Perfeck Strangers, both based in Scarborough, Ontario.
Rob Stone is an American music, media and branding executive based in New York City. Stone is the founder of the full-service marketing agency Cornerstone, and co-founder of music and style publication The Fader.
James Dewitt Yancey, better known by the stage names J Dilla and Jay Dee, was an American record producer, drummer, rapper and songwriter. He emerged in the mid-1990s underground hip hop scene in Detroit, Michigan, as a member of the group Slum Village. He was also a member of the Soulquarians, a musical collective active during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
William Jelani Cobb is an American writer, author, educator, and dean of the Columbia Journalism School.
Keith Phillip Naftaly is an American music industry executive. He is the president of A&R at RCA Records. Naftaly previously held senior A&R positions at record companies including Arista, DreamWorks Records, and Sony Music. He has worked with artists including Pentatonix, Kesha, Whitney Houston, Kelly Clarkson, Luther Vandross, Sia and Christina Aguilera.
Bill Adler is an American music journalist and critic who specializes in hip-hop. Since the early 1980s he has promoted hip-hop in a variety of capacities, including as a publicist, biographer, record label executive, documentary filmmaker, museum consultant, art gallerist, curator, and archivist. He is known best for his tenure as director of publicity at Def Jam Recordings (1984–1990), the period of his career to which the critic Robert Christgau was referring when he described Adler as a "legendary publicist".
Kristoffer Díaz is an American playwright, screenwriter, and educator. As a playwright, he has five full-length titles amongst other works which have been widely produced and developed. In 2010, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. In 2011, The New York Times awarded Díaz with the Outstanding Playwright Award. He has worked with television networks like HBO, FX, Fox, ESPN, and Netflix. Díaz currently teaches at New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Díaz is the Head of Admissions and an associate professor at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. Diaz teaches dramatic writing and contemporary US theater. Diaz's primary focus is American plays and musicals.
Brian Cross, better known as B+, is an Irish photographer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles, California. He is a co-founder of Mochilla, a film and music production company. He predominantly photographed the Los Angeles' hip hop scene in the 1990s as well as helped create album art for a number of artists including Q-Tip, Eazy-E, Damian Marley, DJ Shadow, and J Dilla.
Once Upon a Rhyme is a musical with book and lyrics by Ronvé O’Daniel, and music by O’Daniel and Jevares C. Myrick. After a developmental reading at the 2015 New York Musical Theatre Festival where it won the “Award for Excellence,” the show has been presented at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center National Music Theater Conference, the Johnny Mercer Writers Colony at Goodspeed Musicals, and the New Works Festival at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley. The musical was formerly titled iLLA! A Hip Hop Musical.
Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm is a 2022 biography of hip hop producer J Dilla written by Dan Charnas. It chronicles the life of J Dilla until his death in 2006, as well as his posthumous influence on the music industry. Described as "equal parts biography, musicology, and cultural history," the book emphasizes J Dilla's signature rhythmic time-feel, which Charnas termed "Dilla time," and its wide-reaching impact on modern music.
