In honor of 2Pac&#39;s birthday yesterday, Open Road Films has released the first trailer for their upcoming 2Pac biopic, which will portray the legendary rapper&#39;s life all the way from his early childhood in Harlem to his murder in Las Vegas.

<a href="http://www.rapstation.com/videos/67/all-eyez-on-me-trailer-2016" target="_blank">Watch the trailer here.</a>

Named after Tupac&#39;s most famous album,&nbsp;All Eyez on Me&nbsp;is directed by Benny Boom, who previously directed music videos for hip hop artists like 50 Cent and Nicki Minaj, as well as the 2009 comedy&nbsp;Next Day Air.&nbsp;The movie will star Demetrius Shipp Jr., a relatively unknown actor who nonetheless manages to capture Pac&#39;s attitude and look, at least in the trailer. The Walking Dead&#39;s Danai Gurira will play Afeni Shakur, Tupac&#39;s mother and a well known political activist in her own right. Kat Graham will play Jada Pinkett (Smith,) who was a close friend of Tupac, while Stefon Washington will portray Puff Daddy.

All Eyez on Me&nbsp;hits theaters this November. 
 
By Michael Lacerna for RAPstation.com

In honor of 2Pac&#39;s birthday yesterday, Open Road Films has released the first trailer for their upcoming 2Pac biopic, which will portray the legendary rapper&#39;s life all the way from his early childhood in Harlem to his murder in Las Vegas.

Watch the trailer here.

Named after Tupac&#39;...

Watch the first trailer for the 2Pac biopic

Get a taste of hip hop flavor from across the pond with Critical Beatdown Radio, one of the UK&#39;s longest running hip hop shows, hosted by Manchester&#39;s finest, Mr&nbsp;CRF.

Drawn into hip hop by acts like The Ultramagnetic MCs, Public Enemy, Big Daddy Kane, EPMD, Caveman, and more, Mr&nbsp;CRF started Critical Beatdown Radio in 1996, when it first aired on a pirated radio broadcast in CRF&#39;s home town of &nbsp;Manchester. Critical Beatdown Radio has been broadcasting some of the best music to British listeners for two decades, but now that CBR is on RAPstation, the entire world can listen in for two hours of the freshest true skool hip hop.

Mr&nbsp;CRF is an accomplished artist in his own right, with multiple EPs under his belt, including 2014&#39;s &quot;Hiphop Mentality,&quot; as well as his work as one-third of The Pedigree Chumps crew. Mr&nbsp;CRF is currently working on a brand new collaborative project entitled the &quot;Critical Beatdown Posse,&quot; which features&nbsp;Mic Bless, Marc Live, Life Mc, D Strong ,Noz ,Junior Disprol ,Shaheed, The Lenzmen, AD One, Keith Science, Original One and many more. &quot;Critical Beatdown Posse&quot; is due out later this year, but until then, you can get a taste for Mr. CRF&#39;s unique style with&nbsp;<a href="http://www.rapstation.com/videos/56/mr-crf-feel-the-funk" target="_blank">the music video for &quot;Feel the Funk,&quot; his latest work produced by Rob Ellis.</a>

You can listen to Critical Beatdown Radio every&nbsp;Wednesday&nbsp;at&nbsp;8:00pm EST, here on RAPstation.com 
 
By Michael Lacerna for RAPstation.com

Get a taste of hip hop flavor from across the pond with Critical Beatdown Radio, one of the UK&#39;s longest running hip hop shows, hosted by Manchester&#39;s finest, Mr&nbsp;CRF.

Drawn into hip hop by acts like The Ultramagnetic MCs, Public Enemy, Big Daddy Kane, EPMD, Caveman, and more, Mr&nbsp...

Mr CRF: Critical Beatdown Radio

Today, June 16th, is the birthday of one of hip hop&#39;s most influential and talented rappers: 2Pac. Had Pac not been cut down in his prime, he would&#39;ve turned 45 today.

Tupac Shakur was born on June 16th in East Harlem, New York. The son of two Black Panther members and named after a Peruvian revolutionary, Shakur took to the arts at an early age, expressing himself - and the ideals of black empowerment he had inherited from his parents - through song, poetry and dance. He studied Shakespeare while he learned how to rap. He fought for his ideals and his community by joining the Young Communist League. Shakur and his family would eventually relocate to the West Coast when Tupac was 17. There, Shakur was taken under the wing of poetry teacher and author Leila Steinberg, who would eventually become his mentor and manager. Steinberg introduced Pac to the Digital Underground, a legendary Oakland hip hop group that would give Shakur his big break by featuring him on the track &quot;Same Song.&quot;

Shakur&#39;s solo debut,&nbsp;2Pacalypse Now, initially got noticed for the wrong reasons after a young Texas man claimed the album inspired him to go out and shoot a cop, but now, years after the manufactured controversy has been forgotten, the album is hailed as one of Pac&#39;s rawest, most authentic works, and many modern rappers, including Eminem, Talib Kweli, and Nas all list&nbsp;2Pacalypse Now&nbsp;as one of their biggest influences.

Shakur would rise above the controversy and become an icon of 90&#39;s rap. All of his subsequent albums would become critically acclaimed, chart topping, platinum-certified hits, but 1996&#39;s&nbsp;All Eyez on Me&nbsp;is widely considered to be Pac&#39;s best work. Featuring some of his most memorable hits, including &quot;All About U,&quot; &quot;How Do You Want It,&quot; &quot;California Love,&quot; and &quot;I Ain&#39;t Mad At Cha,&quot; the album perfectly epitomizes Tupac&#39;s ability to deftly mix harsh language, and even harsher observations of what it&#39;s like to be black and poor in America, with a poet laureate level mastery of rhyme and rhythm. The album is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential albums in hip hop history, and is often cited by critics as one of the best albums of all time.

Shakur was gunned down in Las Vegas just months after finishing work on&nbsp;All Eyez On Me.&nbsp;He was 25 years old. His murder is still unsolved. While Pac was one of the most outspoken members of the East-West Coast rivalry of the 90&#39;s, reports are now surfacing that at the time of his death, Pac was trying to mend the rift between the two sides of the violent conflict, and had reached out to several other artists from both sides of the feud to work together on new music. While he left a large body of unfinished work that would eventually be released posthumously, any fan of hip hop has to wonder what other amazing work Tupac could&#39;ve given to the world had he not been murdered at such a young age. 
 
By Michael Lacerna for RAPstation.com

Today, June 16th, is the birthday of one of hip hop&#39;s most influential and talented rappers: 2Pac. Had Pac not been cut down in his prime, he would&#39;ve turned 45 today.

Tupac Shakur was born on June 16th in East Harlem, New York. The son of two Black Panther members and named after a Peruv...

Remembering 2Pac on his birthday

YG&#39;s sophmore album, &quot;Still Brazy,&quot; wasn&#39;t scheduled to premiere until&nbsp;this Friday, but YG has surprised fans by debuting the album a few days early on Apple Music.

The Compton rapper&#39;s second album also features guest appearances from Drake, Lil Wayne, AD, and Nipsey Hussle, who joins YG for &quot;Fdt,&quot; a diss track targeted at presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. &quot;Still Brazy&quot; is the first studio album from YG after his RIAA gold certified selling debut, &quot;My Krazy Life.&quot;

<a href="https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/album/still-brazy-deluxe/id1123135509?app=music" target="_blank">The album is streaming on Apple Music now,</a>&nbsp;and will be available for purchase and download on other services on the album&#39;s original release date,&nbsp;this Friday.

Production on &quot;Still Brazy&quot; was briefly halted after YG was shot three times in the hip last year. 
 
By Michael Lacerna for RAPstation.com

YG&#39;s sophmore album, &quot;Still Brazy,&quot; wasn&#39;t scheduled to premiere until&nbsp;this Friday, but YG has surprised fans by debuting the album a few days early on Apple Music.

The Compton rapper&#39;s second album also features guest appearances from Drake, Lil Wayne, AD, and Nipsey H...

YG's Still Brazy drops early on Apple Music

Torii Wolf, a new singer/songwriter backed by producer DJ Premier, is making waves with her debut single, appropriately titled &quot;1st,&quot; which has just received an official remix featuring Dilated Peoples.

&ldquo;I thought it was dope right off the bat,&rdquo; Dilated Peoples&#39; Evidence said of his collaboration with Premier and Wolf. &nbsp;&ldquo;I kept playing it and really peeped what she was talking about; and felt it even more. Of course I was excited that Preem was cutting our voices up.&nbsp; I think every rapper secretly wishes that will happen to them.&rdquo;

&quot;Ev and Rakaa sent me 24 bars in total and I split them up into a sixteen and an eight bar set up. They sounded so good from the original it was a no brainer to get them on the Remix,&rdquo; Premier said.

The remix was released to promote Torii Wolf&#39;s upcoming album, &quot;Flow Riiot.&quot;&nbsp;<a href="https://soundcloud.com/dj_premier/torii-wolf-f-dilated-peoples-1st-remix-produced-by-dj-premier" target="_blank">You can listen to it via DJ Premier&#39;s SoundCloud here.</a> 
 
<a href="http://www.rapstation.com/videos/66/torii-wolf-1st-produced-by-dj-premier">Also, watch the Torii Wolf&#39;s&nbsp;&quot;1st&quot; Single Music Video here.</a> 
 
By Michael Lacerna for RAPstation.com

Torii Wolf, a new singer/songwriter backed by producer DJ Premier, is making waves with her debut single, appropriately titled &quot;1st,&quot; which has just received an official remix featuring Dilated Peoples.

&ldquo;I thought it was dope right off the bat,&rdquo; Dilated Peoples&#39; Evidence...

Torii Wolf's debut single gets a Dilated Peoples remix

Get to Know Your DJs

DJ Zone on the 1s and 2s

While &ldquo;DJ Zone&rdquo; may not immediately ring a bell, the names Aesop Rock and Macklemore surely do. Both artists have called upon the Portland-based turntablist to not only tour with them, but also cut it up on their records, including Aesop&rsquo;s most recent,&nbsp;The Impossible Kid.&nbsp;

Born in Portland, Oregon, DJ Zone (real name Patrick Lorenz) was raised in a musical household. His grandmother played violin and piano as a little girl and got a scholarship to Julliard School of the Arts, the prestigious New York City music school. She inspired his love of classical music, jazz and ragtime. His mother raised him on &lsquo;60s and &lsquo;70s classic rock, which helped mold his vast knowledge of all different types of genres. For a DJ to be any good, that&rsquo;s crucial.&nbsp;

After meeting several key players in the Northwest hip-hop scene, he was off and running. From The Chicharones and Grayskul to Aesop Rock and Macklemore, his skills are in high demand right now, but that clearly hasn&rsquo;t changed who he is. Humble and always down to tell his story, DJ Zone explained his origins, getting his first set of turntables and how he ended up on the road with Macklemore. &mdash;Kyle Eustice

RAPstation (Kyle Eustice): How did you get into hip-hop and turntablism?

DJ Zone: When I was 4 or 5-years-old, my mom&#39;s boyfriend at the time was a rapper from San Jose called The Cisco Kidd. He would leave all sorts of mixtapes around the house. I used to listen to them on my way to school, and that&#39;s when I started getting exposed to stuff like Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince, Cash Money and Marvelous Marvin, MC Hammer, Kris Kross, Bel Biv Devoe, Naughty By Nature, Das EFX, Run-DMC, Rakim, etc. We also used to watch movies together like&nbsp;New Jack City&nbsp;and&nbsp;Beat Street.&nbsp;

When did you hear scratching for the first time?&nbsp;

I remember hearing scratching for the first time on one of those mixtapes and falling in love with it. I would rewind the tape over and over again and try to imagine what was making that sound. I thought it was some kind of computer, but it had this funky human element to it, and I just couldn&#39;t figure it out.&nbsp;

How did you figure it out?&nbsp;

Fast forward to when I was 7, I saw Roc Raida (RIP) on SNL and it all clicked. I was like, &lsquo;Oh! It&#39;s a record that&#39;s making that sound!&rsquo; And I remember it all making perfect sense. Like I didn&#39;t know everything that was going on, but I understood the concept of the crossfader right away. I was like, &lsquo;So when it&#39;s on that side it&#39;s that turntable, and that side it&#39;s that turntable, and the middle is both.&rsquo; &nbsp;

Did you get turntables right away?&nbsp;

I immediately ran to my mom&#39;s record player and started scratching &ldquo;Hotel California.&rdquo; Then she came home and was of course like, &lsquo;What are you doing!? You&#39;re gonna break it!&rsquo; When I was 10, I had my own turntable and fashioned an on/off switch with a paper clip by cutting the speaker wire, so when I pressed the paper clip together it would connect the two ends. It was crude, but I used to take long tones or stuff like Disney&#39;s Sounds of the Haunted House and practice transforming. I wanted to get a real turntable setup, but it was too expensive, so when I was 13 I started working at the bar my mom managed.&nbsp;

So you were trying to earn money to buy a set?&nbsp;

Yeah, on Tuesdays, I did magic and on Saturdays I did disco night, which I tried turning into hip-hop night, but we ended up settling on &rsquo;70s night. After a few months they shut down and I ended up getting hired as a magician at Huber&#39;s, which quickly took all my attention away from music because I started making really good money&mdash;especially for my age. Then when I was 15, I remembered the whole reason I started working in the first place was to save up for turntables, so I got a cheap setup from a friend of mine, which I used until I felt confident dropping some real money on Technics when I was 17. That&#39;s when I started really focusing on the craft of DJing, mixing and scratching.

How did you hone the craft?&nbsp;

I shut myself up in my apartment for the next two years and practiced 14-16 hours a day, paying my way through life by doing magic on the weekends. When I was 19, I was approached by some old friends&mdash;Flawless and Docta Suse&mdash;from high school to start a group with two other people, Max Graves and Jon Doe. That pulled me back out into the real world outside of my apartment. Our group at the time was called Lethal Audio. Eventually Max and I started our own group, MastandMind, and we met up with Max&#39;s old friend Daps, and we started NightCrawlers. That&#39;s when I met Sleep and he started taking me out on tour, where I started meeting the rest of Oldominion&mdash;Bishop I, Onry, JFK, Pale Soul, Zeb, Smoke, NyQuil, etc.&nbsp;

How did you end up with The Chicharones?&nbsp;

Sleep introduced me to Josh Martinez and we brought back Sleep and Josh&#39;s group The Chicharones. In the midst of that we started a band called Eddie Valiant with Max, David Lincoln Mann, Scotty Del, and Chase Burton on drums. Chase also plays drums for The Chicharones and Sleep, and we also have a DJ/drummer combo called ChaseandtheDragon. Later down the road, we started a crew in Portland called Big Bang that ended up transforming into our label Proper Knocks, consisting of DMLH, Gepetto, Daps, Everybody Knows, Cray, Oculus, Abadawn, Max Graves, Scotty Del and Diction Uno. There&#39;s much more to the story that I&#39;m skipping over, but that&#39;s the basics.

Are there any DJs you admire?

There are too many to name. I&#39;m a huge fan of turntablism and try to keep up with the movement as much as time will allow, but it&#39;s easier to talk about the DJs that inspired me before I became a DJ myself. My biggest influences growing up were Babu, D-Styles, Jazzy Jeff, Cash Money, DJ Quest, and DJ Jeff. They&#39;re the ones that I used to listen to and say, I want to do&nbsp;that.&nbsp;

How did you end up on Macklemore&#39;s tour?

I&#39;ve known Macklemore and XP for about nine years or so now. I met them back when I first started doing a lot of shows. Daps, DMLH and I put a show together at the Satyricon for our NightCrawlers album release, and put Macklemore on the bill, which is around the same time I met XP. They had a group together called Step Cousins and were doing tracks with our homies Sandpeople. I got to know Macklemore a little better while I was DJing for Grayskul. We did a tour opening up for Living Legends and Macklemore was Grayskul&#39;s special guest, doing hypes and a verse or two in the set.&nbsp;

Do you remember what it was like pre-The Heist&nbsp;then?&nbsp;

The last time I saw him before he went full on supernova was at SXSW and I DJ&rsquo;ed for him opening up for The Chicharones at this little bar. XP is in Oldominion and I&#39;d done multiple shows with him and kicked it here and there, but started really getting more involved with his music a couple years ago when he moved to Portland and was staying at Sleep&#39;s house. I was basically living at Sleep&#39;s too and recording&nbsp;24/7. Sleep, XP and I were working on multiple projects all the time, and then XP got called back up to Seattle to help with the writing of Mack&#39;s new album&nbsp;This Unruly Mess I&#39;ve Made. When he got the news that he would be opening on the tour, he asked me if I would DJ for him, which I graciously accepted.

Get to Know Your DJs

DJ Zone on the 1s and 2s

While &ldquo;DJ Zone&rdquo; may not immediately ring a bell, the names Aesop Rock and Macklemore surely do. Both artists have called upon the Portland-based turntablist to not only tour with them, but also cut it up on their records, including Aeso...

Watch the first trailer for the 2Pac biopic

Mr CRF: Critical Beatdown Radio

Remembering 2Pac on his birthday

YG's Still Brazy drops early on Apple Music

Torii Wolf's debut single gets a Dilated Peoples remix

DJ Zone Interview Part I

Sight

Sound

Story