Hip-Hop

Rihanna’s first headlining show dark and steamy

Rihanna’s first headlining show dark and steamy | Toronto Star Welcome to her nightmares. Nick Krewen Special to the Star Published on Fri Aug 06 2010   Welcome to her nightmares. Psychiatrists would have a field day trying to figure out the meaning and the metaphors for what is going inside Rihanna’s head after what she unloaded on the Molson Amphitheatre audience Thursday night. For her first headlining show, The…


Jay-Z: King of the No. 1 album

Judged solely on his string of No. 1 albums, Jay-Z has accomplished the unexpected: he’s become bigger than Elvis.        Nick Krewen Special to the Star, Published on Fri Oct 30 2009 Judged solely on his string of No. 1 albums, Jay-Z has accomplished the unexpected: he’s become bigger than Elvis. With the Sept. 11 arrival of The Blueprint 3, Brooklyn-born rapper Shawn Carter scored his 11th straight chart-topper…


A Softer Kind of Hip Hop Gathers Steam

  Nick Krewen Special To The Star Saturday, April 10, 1999     Money, guns and “hoes.” If you’re aware of any semblance of hip-hop culture, you’ve heard it all before: the tired rap clichés where men brag about the numbers of dollars in their bank accounts, the inexhaustible supply of women wilting at their sexual prowess, the impressive numbers of corpses they’ve plowed through during gang shoot-outs. Yada yada…


RUN D.M.C

PUBLISHED IN THE KITCHENER-WATERLOO RECORD Friday, Oct 23, 1997   By Nick Krewen For The Record   Beats, rhyming and scratching. Run-D.M.C., the rap pioneers from Hollis, Queens in New York, promise to keep it pure and simple Saturday night when they make a rare appearance at the University Of Waterloo’s Federation Hall. “We’re not using any fancy costumes or big choreography or anything like that,” declares Darryl “D.M.C.” McDaniels…


A little TLC is going a long way

PUBLISHED IN THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR     BY NICK KREWEN   If you want a record deal, try your local hairdresser. It worked for TLC, the hot Atlanta baby faced pop trio whose month-long reign at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 with the song “Creep” ended last week. Four years ago, Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins was a struggling singer looking for the right connection. When she met Lisa “Left-Eye” Lopes during…