Articles by Tara Henley.

Pop Eye

Usher turns in his pimp cup

By Tara Henley
Urban music has long been invested in a view of sexuality similar to that of a teenage boy, but now as rappers and R & B crooners start pushing 30, the whole hit-and-run shtick gets more than a little tired.
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Recordings

Mariah Carey

By Tara Henley
E=MC2 (Island/Def Jam)
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Pop Eye

Jay-Z wants a B, not a bitch

By Tara Henley
If the tabloid press is to be believed—and it almost always is in these celebrity-obsessed times—hip-hop’s reigning power couple, Jay-Z and Beyoncé, tied the knot on April 4 in a top-secret ceremony at his Tribeca penthouse. Orchids were flown in from Thailand, the pair’s families turned up (along with Gwyneth Paltrow), and B serenaded Hov with some Natasha Bedingfield–inspired messages of affection (“I love you/I love you”).
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Music Features

Ne-Yo: Ready for love

By Tara Henley
R&B singer-songwriter Ne-Yo isn’t too tough to admit that he’s had his heart crushed.
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Recordings

Chrisette Michele

By Tara Henley
I Am (Def Jam)
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Book Reviews

Planet of Slums

By Tara Henley
By Mike Davis. Verso Books, 256 pp, $34, hardcover
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Music Features

Konvict at large

By Tara Henley
Akon’s blend of R&B and hip-hop with his African roots has made the former jailbird a global superstar.
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Pop Eye

Hip-hop homophobia grows

By Tara Henley
Back in February, CNN aired a documentary titled "Hip-hop: Art or Poison?" that explored a number of rap-related issues, including the homophobia that's rampant in the culture. Though the special provided some interesting discussion, it failed to address one of the most pressing elements of hip-hop homophobia–the Internet, which tends to fuel underlying prejudices.
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Pop Eye

Thick is the new thin, baby

By Tara Henley
When Jennifer Hudson took the stage at the Oscars to tearfully accept her best-supporting-actress award, it wasn't about an American Idol reject's rise to glory. Nor was it about a humble church girl from the south side of Chicago taking Hollywood by storm. It wasn't even about the power of a song, and how J-Hud captured the world's attention with her soul-stirring Dreamgirls solo "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going".
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Remedial Reading

Ruthless: A Memoir

By Tara Henley
By Jerry Heller with Gil Reavill. Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2006, $34.50
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Music Features

Ice Cube: Quality control

By Tara Henley
Ice Cube takes his role as one of hip-hop's elder statesmen seriously, and he clearly has no plans to soften his attack
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Music Features | Feature Articles

Snoop Dogg: Back to the roots

By Tara Henley
Snoop Dogg won't apologize for his gangsta ways.
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Music Features | Feature Articles

Snoop Dogg: Back to the roots

By Tara Henley
Snoop Dogg won't apologize for his gangsta ways.
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Recordings

Kelis

By Tara Henley
Kelis Was Here (Jive)
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Recordings

The Game

By Tara Henley
Doctor’s Advocate (Geffen)
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Music Features

K-OS fires back at critics

By Tara Henley
Toronto’s K-OS is to Canada what Kanye West is to America: eccentric, outspoken, and famously critical of the press. The Juno award–winning rapper is known for phoning up music critics after a poor review, penning passionate letters to editors, and taking his complaints to TV platforms such as MuchMusic.
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Pop Eye

This one’s for all the ladies out there

By Tara Henley
R&B singer Akon broke records recently when his hot and heavy single “Smack That” jumped from No. 95 to No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100, achieving the biggest climb in the history of the chart. The track, which features Eminem, is an infectious bump-and-grind banger that pays homage to big-bootied bar stars. It’s also the latest incarnation of a trend that’s sweeping urban music: the girl record that isn’t.
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Music

Searching for the spot light

By Tara Henley
Hip-hop survivor Obie Trice is ready for his close-up
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Recordings

Daddy Yankee

By Tara Henley
Barrio Fino En Directo (El Cartel/Universal)
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Club Kid

Mondays at the Urban Well in Kitsilano

By Tara Henley
Van City can be a depressing place in the winter. Daylight retreats in the late afternoon, heavy sheets of rain flood the streets day after day, and our spectacular mountain vistas are lost in a heavy blanket of fog. Given the foul weather, it's often difficult to decide what to do with one's evenings. Do you go to the trouble of getting all tarted up and heading out to a nightclub only to get drenched and miserable? Or do you throw on your PJs and make it a movie night-again?
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Recordings

Various Artists: XXL Raps Volume 1

By Tara Henley
XXL Raps Volume 1 (Razor & Tie)
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Remedial Reading

Bliss / by Danyel Smith

By Tara Henley
Bliss By Danyel Smith. Crown, 304 pp., $33.95, hardcover.
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Music Notes

Head of the heads

By Tara Henley
For all those budding basement beatmakers out there, Futility Records and Spectrum Events have launched the first-ever Van City beat battle. The contest-open to all Vancouver-area producers-is being hosted on-line by the Futility Records message board (www.futilityrecords.com/). The deadline for entry is Monday (December 19). After the contest closes, each producer will be provided with a sample kit to work with to create a two-to-three minute submission.
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Music

The drama king

By Tara Henley
It's no secret that Kanye West talks a lot of shit. The well-dressed rapper-producer is as famous for headline-grabbing rants as he is for his gorgeous, soul-drenched beats and gutsy, drawling rhymes.
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Recordings

Various Artists: This Is Hip-Hop

By Tara Henley
Various Artists
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Concert Reviews

50 Cent

By Tara Henley
At the Pacific Coliseum on Saturday, December 3
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Music Features

Kardinal Offishall represents T-Dot hip-hop

By Tara Henley
Whether in Tokyo or London, Johannesburg, or New York, if you tell a hip-hop head that you're from Canada, they'll invariably ask: "Do you know Kardinal Offishall?" Kardi is one of the few Canadian rappers who can boast an international profile, A-list collaborations (including Busta Rhymes, Method Man, and the Neptunes), and a distinct sound that's all his own.
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Movie Reviews

RENT

By Tara Henley
Directed by Chris Columbus. Starring Taye Diggs, Rosario Dawson, and Jessie L. Martin. Rated PG. Now playing at the Cinemark Tinseltown, the SilverCity Coquitlam, the Granville 7, and others
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Movie Notes

Local filmmakers are 4REAL about global hip-hop

By Tara Henley
When artist manager Sol Guy accompanied Vancouver rap group the Rascalz to Sierra Leone for a War Child/MuchMusic documentary in 2000, he had no idea what an impact it would have on his life. "That trip radically changed the way I look at the world and the course of my life and career," Guy told the Straight. "I saw both the brutal realities of war and the beauty and power of Africa."
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Concert Reviews

Destiny's Child

By Tara Henley
At GM Place on Saturday, September 10
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Local Motion

Multifaceted mover is shaking up Van City

By Tara Henley
"Organization is not only a science, but it is an art that must be perfected," dead prez's M1 said in a recent interview with the Straight, stressing the importance of the unglamorous, behind-the-scenes work that it takes to build community. No one understands this better than Vancouver's own Sean Lalla, who has been busy expanding the hip-hop scene for the past decade.
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Music

It's bigger than hip-hop

By Tara Henley
A rusted yellow bus is creeping up a mountain road just outside Caracas, Venezuela, cutting a deep swath through lush, tropical jungle. The night air that rushes in through broken windows smells smoky and sweet, the darkness illuminated by thousands of twinkling lights from the hillside barrios. Salsa music blasts from the stereo. Young people from Canada, Germany, and Russia huddle together in cramped configurations, desperate for sleep.
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Recordings

Missy Elliott

By Tara Henley
The Cookbook (Atlantic)
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Payback Time

Sarah Hewson vs. Tara Henley

By Tara Henley
You send the music section on a Depends run for Fergie, and we reward you with a Payback Time T-shirt and two CDs off the Straight's Top 50. Here's this week's winning whinge.
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Concert Reviews

Black Eyed Peas

By Tara Henley
At Deer Lake Park on Friday, July 22
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Music Features

Brown understood she had to strip herself naked

By Tara Henley
It's a rainy evening in early June and Ginger Sixty-Two is packed with a motley crew of R&B fans: fresh-faced mall rats in baby-doll tops milling around self- consciously; slick young hip-hop cats in tracksuits working the room; grown folk in button-downs lazily lounging at the bar. After an hour-long wait, Toronto singer Divine Brown takes the stage. She shoots the audience a glance-instantly owning the space-and then launches into a riveting acoustic set.
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Local Motion

Smoxz abandons thug life

By Tara Henley
If there is one line that epitomizes local rapper Smoxz's approach to writing lyrics, it's the declaration that he makes on his street anthem "1, 2, 3", off his recently released sophomore album Holy Smoxz: "If you ever met a thug, then it's nothin' you want to be." With hip-hop currently awash in studio gangstas, Smoxz uses his own experiences to shed light on what the thug life actually feels like-and why emulating that life is so utterly futile.
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Recordings

Common

By Tara Henley
Be (Geffen/Universal)
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Features

New Game

By Tara Henley
It's close to midnight on April 3, 2005, and a caravan of tinted-out SUVs is headed down the desolate stretch of highway that connects Richmond to Delta. As the landscape speeds past, the mood in the truck that carries Cali rapper the Game to a Greater Vancouver club show is surprisingly subdued.
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Music Features

K'naan reps African hip-hop

By Tara Henley
With much of the North American urban-music market enthralled with gangsters, it's easy to forget that in other places in the world, hip-hop culture stands for something very different. On the track "What's Hardcore" off his debut album The Dusty Foot Philosopher, Somali-Canadian emcee K'naan puts forward a chilling reminder. "If I rhymed about home and got descriptive," he raps, "I'd make 50 Cent look like Limp Bizkit."
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Streetwise

Hipsters' secondhand ironies start to grate

By Tara Henley
Last fall, my girlfriends and I set out on a citywide gallery crawl for SWARM 5, a festival that celebrates local artist-run culture. We ended up in an alley off Main Street, surrounded by an enormous crowd of hipsters. When we finally waded through the too-cool-for-school mob and into the packed space, we couldn't get anywhere near the artwork. So we resorted to people-watching.
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Georgia Straight Style

New gangster chic gets guys mobbed up

By Tara Henley
Following hip-hop's lead, the Al Capone look resurfaces with cuff links blazing
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Georgia Straight Style

BBC blings out inner wealth

By Tara Henley
The new streetwear line feels rich and famous, but it's not about the money
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Recordings

The Foundation, Screwed

By Tara Henley
(Rap-A-Lot/Asylum) After a seven-year hiatus, Houston O.G.s Willie D., Bushwick Bill, and Scarface are back to stir shit up with their grimy rhymes. The album manages to recapture the crew's legendary chemistry; the haunting cut G Code proves an early contender for street anthem of the year.
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Recordings

Jennifer Lopez, Rebirth

By Tara Henley
Rebirth (Sony BMG)
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Music Notes

Hip-Hop Helps Darfur

By Tara Henley
A local music student has had enough of reading about the horrific situation in Darfur, Sudan, and has decided to organize a benefit concert to raise public awareness and generate funds for the victims. Eli Kline-who is enrolled in the independent-production program at New Westminster's Stylus Music School-told the Straight that he felt compelled to take action.
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Music Notes

The Game Gives No Play to Van City

By Tara Henley
It looks like California rapper The Game-who recently got kicked out of G-Unit by 50 Cent-is not handling his business very well. After cancelling and rescheduling his Vancouver concert date four separate times, urban-music promoters Spectrum Entertainment, Gman & Rizk, and Tigerstone Entertainment were forced to pull the plug on the show.
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Recordings

50 Cent - The Massacre (Shady/Aftermath/Interscope)

By Tara Henley
50 Cent is officially out of control. After months of escalating outbursts-including the continual baiting of Irv Gotti and Ja Rule, a spat with R. Kelly at New York's Summer Jam, and a record that calls out Nas, Fat Joe, Jadakiss, and Shyne-the buffed rapper has finally pushed himself over the edge. Last week during a radio appearance at Hot 97 in Manhattan, Fitty announced on air that Cali rapper the Game had been kicked out of his G-Unit crew.
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Recordings

Akon - Trouble (Up Front/Universal)

By Tara Henley
In the past couple of years, urban music has seen a long line of thugged-out crooners attempt to snatch the spotlight with a corny combo of mean mug shots and lovesick lyrics. Few have succeeded in gaining any notoriety; none has rivalled R&B's reigning king of "thugs need hugs", R. Kelly. But now it looks as if a Senegal-born, New Jersey-raised singer is set to change all that.
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Recordings

Xzibit - Weapons of Mass Destruction (Sony BMG)

By Tara Henley
Ever since Jay-Z switched from throwback jerseys to button-down dress shirts, rappers have been making the transition from boys to men. Kanye is busy dropping rhymes about his credit rating; Nas is all about settling down with the wifey; Jadakiss wants to know where his tax dollars are going; Snoop is coaching his son's football league; and Eminem is tired of all the beef in the hip-hop world.
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