hip hop

Wu-Tang Clan is a New York City rap group with individuals hailing from Staten Island, Brooklyn and Bronx. They have gone on to become multi-platinum record producers, Grammy winners, TV and film stars, screenwriters, product spokespersons, business owners and, most recently, major motion picture composers. They also called themselves Killa Beez which could interpreted to be a reference to Queens. The Clan featured nine MCs until the death of Ol' Dirty Bastard in 2004.

One of the original turntablists, J Rocc founded the Beat Junkies in 1992 with Melo-D and Rhettmatic, but has done just as much on his own as in a group setting. He began DJing in the mid-'80s with a California group named PSK. Soon after forming, the Beat Junkies became a seminal force in the rise of instrumental hip-hop, including core member Babu plus future stars Shortkut and D-Styles. In addition to numerous mixtapes and his own production for Stones Throw releases, J Rocc has been the DJ for Madlib's live shows since the early 2000's...

Das Racist is a hip hop group, formed in 2008 and based in Brooklyn, New York, comprised of Queens-born Himanshu Suri and San Francisco-born Victor Vazquez. Suri and Vazquez met in 2003 at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut where Victor was Himanshu's resident advisor in a "Students of Color for Social Justice" theme dormitory. Suri was a member of the Eclectic Society and is also an alumnus of School of Oriental and African Studies.

Cut Chemist is the performing name of Lucas MacFadden, a solo turntablist. He is a former member of the funk Latin band Ozomatli, and of the underground rap group Jurassic 5. He became known through the Los Angeles-based rap group Unity Committee, and debuted on vinyl on the B-Side of Unity Committee's 1993 single, Unified Rebelution. The track, "Lesson 4: The Radio" was an ovation of Double Dee and Steinski's seminal hip-hop masterpieces, "Lessons 1-3."