Tag: freestyle music

  • 10 Songs Leading the Latin-Freestyle Resurgence

    10 Songs Leading the Latin-Freestyle Resurgence

    freestyle music has direct ties to the early rise of hip-hop. like hip-hop, the freestyle genre was led by creative teens from the hood. when afrika bambaataa & the soul sonic force released “planet rock” in 1982, it laid the groundwork for freestyle music. a year later, shannon’s “let the…

  • Giving Them Their Roses: A’LISA B

    Giving Them Their Roses: A’LISA B

    In 1983, Black pop/dance artist Shannon released the iconic “Let The Music Play.” It was a watershed moment in popular music. Written by a Puerto Rican producer Chris Barbosa, together he and Shannon introduced a sound that not only changed the sound of pop music but laid the groundwork for…

  • JOCELYN ENRIQUEZ

    JOCELYN ENRIQUEZ

    my love for jocelyn began on a hot summer night in 1994. my friend oscar and i were on our way to check out the then just released disney movie “the lion king.” as we drove down hunting park avenue, we chatted as we listened to FM radio. remember terrestrial…

  • The Black History of Freestyle Music

    The Black History of Freestyle Music

    the late great and house music pioneer, dj frankie knuckles, once said that house was disco’s revenge. and he wasn’t lying. but in the years between the racists- and homophobic-driven disco backlash in 1979 and the rise of house music in the late 1980’s, black, latinx and lgbtq club goers…

  • NAYOBE

    NAYOBE

    if you ask the causal freestyle music listener who the “queen of freestyle” is, you may get a few different answers. some will say lisa lisa, or judy torres or maybe even lisette melendez. while those answers are not necessarily wrong, as each of those three women contributed to the genre…

  • SHANNON

    SHANNON

    as a kid in the early half of the the 1980′s, i’d watch as my mother and her gay friends shuffle through a crate of vinyl records to choose a song to dance to. one of those songs was “let the music play” by shannon. my mother’s friend, josie, a Black…