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Somos Hip-Hop Radio Presents... Hip Hop REVOLUCION! Bay Area Sessions
E-Legal and the Guatemala Flag in the background / Photography by Sal Rojas
In the 90's Latin Hip-Hop culture started to move beyond the underground of the Los Angeles area and blow up in such a way that no border would be able to hold it down. Ground breaking acts such as Mellow Man Ace, Kid Frost, Cypress Hill and Delinquent Habits played a major role of bridging the Hip-Hop world to the Spanish speaking one. The Spanish Hip-Hop movement started gaining lots of ground by piggy back riding on the Rock en Español momentum. Major Rock en Español tours like the “Watcha Tour”, which became the main U.S. Latin Rock festival in the late 1990s. By hitting over 18 cities across the United States and giving Mexican Hip-Hop acts like Control Machete the opportunity to perform live in front of major multinational audiences among the with participating rockero bands like Mexico City’s Molotov. Spanish Hip-Hop grew to new audiences that appreciated their Mexican flavor of Hip-Hop music.
Now over ten years later Spanish Hip-Hop culture is still on the move and still fighting for its own place in the Latin entertainment world. Still to this day Spanish Rap music suffers from a lack of outlets and relying mainly on college radio stations and the Internet (BrownPride.com and myspace) to help spread the word of new artists and new CD releases. Slowing but surely that has been changing in the last few years. Television networks like Mun2 and MTV3 have helped create a new public awareness of the growing movement, yet it has been unable to keep up with the rapid growth of the world wide Spanish market.
The growing boom of high speed Internet access brought new life to the reality of being able to create new and alternative outlets to help promote new music thus in 2003 Somos Hip-Hop Radio was born. Somos Hip Hop Radio is a San Francisco Bay Area-based blog style website which for the most part features Spanish Rap music from Latin America. The play list of the website is designed to promote underground Latino artists from Mexico and Central America where countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua have their own respective artists that need to be heard.
Just recently on April 18th, 2008 Somos Hip Hop Radio organized an event held in the heart of San Francisco, California. We had already planned on being in the Bay Area that weekend for Cypress Hill's 420 Smokeout show held at the Fillmore. So we decided to head out there a few days early and catch Somos Hip Hop Radio live in effect. The truth is that the Latino Hip-Hop On-line radio station still needs more support from the large Latino community in the Bay Area to help promote and grew the Spanish Rap movement.
The event was still a great networking opportunity, even for some of the local artists who have not worked with each other before. The line up of the event included Rob West (Los Angeles, CA), Oogo (El Salvador), Genocidio (Guatemala), The Sickheadz (San Jose, CA), Trucho G (San Francisco), E-Legal (Guatemala and the Bay Area) and Mextape (from the 408) among others.
Overall Somos Hip Hop Radio (www.somoshiphop.com) is a much needed outlet for Latin American artists that get no love from the corporate owned airwaves in the states and a great way of creating visibility to the Spanish Hip-Hop movement in San Francisco and through out the greater Bay Area in Northern California.
Support Brown Hip-Hop in Your Area!
Words by Danny B and Photography by Sal Rojas
The Sickheadz (San Jose, CA)/ Photography by Sal Rojas
Somos Hip-Hop Bay Area Sessions Concert / Photography by Sal Rojas
E-Legal and the Guatemala Flag in the background / Photography by Sal Rojas
Big Willie on the Microphone / Photography by Sal Rojas
Rob West Yomando Records / Photography by Sal Rojas
The Sickheadz (San Jose, CA)/ Photography by Sal Rojas
Rob West Yomando Records / Photography by Sal Rojas
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