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Tune up on your hip-hop

By Times staff

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 11, 2002


Some theatergoers like to brush up on their Shakespeare before going to a play like A Comedyof Errors. Should they review Grandmaster Flash for A Bomb-itty of Errors?

Some theatergoers like to brush up on their Shakespeare before going to a play like A Comedyof Errors. Should they review Grandmaster Flash for A Bomb-itty of Errors?

If you're more familiar with Elizabethan verse than rap, Bomb-itty cast members have recommendations for required listening. Here are their choices of a "desert-island disc," the one hip-hop record each could not live without.

Kevin Shand: "I'd have to go with the first Eric B and Rakim album, Paid in Full. A pure hip-hop album and utterly seminal in terms of the evolution of the music, of the language and of the rhymed delivery and style."

Charles Anthony Burks: "Slum Village, Fantastic, Vol. 2. The music and rhyme schemes on it go the whole gamut, from mellow and chilled-out to energetic and partying."

Chris Edwards: "I'd go with some West Coast stuff, say, The Chronic with Dr. Dre."

Joe Hernandez-Kolski: "Me'Shell Ndegeocello, Plantation Lullabies. She's come out with three albums and has a fourth coming out in June that I'm really waiting for. A very inspired lyricist and her music is soul and funk and hip-hop."

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