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hip hop

SwizZz

Born and raised in Southern California, SwizZz is not your stereotypical MC. Through his music, SwizZz reveals a wide range of experiences, much of which he credits to his biracial background. He is not, nor does he claim to be, a “thug” or a “gangsta”, but prides himself on being able to reach the masses by being honest about his confrontations with life’s challenges. It is not always glamorous or positive, but you can count on SwizZz being true to himself.

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Nas & Damian Marley

Nas & Damian Marley came together to record an album titled Distant Relatives (released May 18, 2010). Distant Relatives is a collaborative studio album by American rapper Nas and Jamaican reggae artist Damian Marley, released May 18, 2010, on Universal Republic and Def Jam Recordings. Production for the album took place during 2008 to 2010 and was handled primarily by Damian Marley and Stephen Marley. Fusing musical elements of hip hop and reggae, Distant Relatives features lyrical themes concerning ancestry, poverty, and the plight of Africa.

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Lil' Wayne

Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr. (born September 27, 1982 in New Orleans, Louisiana), better known by many as Lil Wayne, is an American rapper. Formerly a member of the rap group the Hot Boys, he joined the Cash Money Records collective as a teenager. Get It How U Live, released in 1997, was Lil Wayne’s first album with Hot Boys, and Tha Block is Hot, his solo debut, came out in 1999.
After gaining fame with two other albums in the early 2000s, Lil Wayne reached higher popularity with 2004’s Tha Carter and its two subsequent albums Tha Carter II (2005) and Tha Carter III (2008).

Fashawn

Born in 1988 in Fresno, California, Fashawn grew up in a virtually parentless home. His father was incarcerated, while his mom was focused on feeding her drug addiction - a combination that caused a boy to become a man quicker than most. Placed in a group home by child services at the age of 12, Fashawn found solace in music, and began writing rhymes to escape the less than desirable hand he had been dealt so early in life.

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Lyrics Born

Lyrics Born (a.k.a. Asia Born) is Tom Shimura (b. 1972), originally from Berkeley, California, though through his childhood he lived in Tokyo, Japan, and Salt Lake City, Utah. He began his hip hop career while at college at UC Davis, where he was a DJ at the college station KDVS. He is a founding member of the group of artists known as Quannum Projects. He is also one half of the group Latyrx with fellow MC Lateef The Truth Speaker.

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Flo Rida

Tramar Dillard (born September 17, 1979 in Miami, Florida), better known by his stage name Flo Rida, is an American rapper signed to Poe Boy Entertainment. He began his rap career touring with 2 Live Crew and was then featured on DJ Khaled's album We The Best in 2006. He released his debut album Mail on Sunday in 2008 and it's lead single, Low featuring T-Pain, held a run of 10 weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2009, his released his second album R.O.O.T.S, and it's first single, Right Round featuring Ke$ha, was #1 for six weeks.

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Emmanuel Jal

Emmanuel Jal (born c. 1980) is a Sudanese musician and former child soldier. Born in the village of Tonj in Southern Sudan, he was a little boy when the civil war broke out. Emmanuel’s father joined the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and when he was about seven years old his mother died. Emmanuel then decided to join the thousands of children travelling to Ethiopia who had been told that they could be educated there.

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Grandmaster Melle Mel

Lyrical leader of the original Furious Five and founder of a splinter version of the group during the mid-'80s, Melle Mel wrote many of the legendary raps featured on Grandmaster Flash tracks. Born Melvin Glover, he and his brother Nate (aka Kidd Creole) (not the Caribbean dance-popster of the same name) joined up with Cowboy (Keith Wiggins) in 1978 to form the Three MC's, with production handled by Grandmaster Flash (Joseph Saddler). After Scorpio (originally Mr.

MF DOOM

Daniel Dumile ("doom-uh-lay") is a British born American hip-hop artist who has taken on several stage names in his career, most famously MF DOOM (standing for metal fingers/metal face doom). He has also been known as Zev Love X, King Geedorah, Metal Fingers, Viktor Vaughn, DOOM, and has appeared in several collaborative projects such as DANGERDOOM (with Danger Mouse) and Madvillain (with Madlib). Little is known about his personal life though he did reveal in a 2006 interview on his MySpace page that he is married with two children, one of them teenage.

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