Either Quavo found the hard drive that he lost with ‘Culture 2’ on it, or the Atlanta rap trio Migos is just re-recording everything from scratch! Either way, the project is definitely on the way. 
Migos member Offset has recently let it be known that he will be calling out a few rappers on ‘Culture 2’ as well.
Whomever Offset doesn’t f-ck with, it will certainly come out on this album. Offset even says that he’s going to call out folks by name!
Who do you think will be on the list? Lil Uzi Vert, Joe Budden? Heck maybe even Chris Brown?!

Maybe Migos should just focus on putting out good music instead of possibly igniting new beefs.
Can’t we all just get along?! Are you anticipating ‘Culture 2’? Will it live up to the hype?

It looks like Nicki Minaj is another rapper that’s incorporating her love for Gospel music into her Hip Hop music! 
If you are one of the biggest names in Hip Hop, it’s only right to recruit one of the biggest names in Gospel, like the Grammy Award-winning singer Tasha Cobbs.
A few months ago Nicki revealed to her social media followers that she would love to work with Cobbs, and according to a recent snippet that hit the net, her wish came true.
Nicki has been hoping back and forth between rap and pop music for years, so why not bring in a little gospel influence. I mean Lecrae and Chance The Rapper made some huge waves with their music and gospel inclusion, so we understand Nicki’s choice, especially if it’s authentic.

Nicki certainly spoke her wish into frutition a few months ago when she told Tasha,
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“@tashacobbsleonard when you finish recording the album, come to my studio so I can put a 16 on one of these songs miss thang! Can’t wait for this to drop!”
Tasha expressed that she was down for the collaboration, as she told Nicki,
“You already know. That’s gonna be BANANAS.”
It looks like we now have a snippet of the song that will be released on August 25th. Take a listen below and let us know your thoughts?

NEW MUSIC: I'm Getting Ready – Tasha Cobbs ft. Nicki Minaj #HeartPassionPursuit 8/25 pic.twitter.com/ni0M1Uhhyb
— Nicki Minaj Reports (@NickiMReports) July 21, 2017

Snippet of 'I'm Getting Ready' featuring Nicki Minaj!!pic.twitter.com/blONPnlDFo
— Nicki Minaj Reports (@NickiMReports) July 21, 2017

Yesterday, Meek Mill gave his most in-depth interview in years.
The Wins & Losses album creator sat down with Hot 97 to discuss a wide range of topics.

Of course, Meek’s highly publicized feud with Drake was brought up.
“I was out of control at that point, the way I was coming at everybody,” said the Philadelphia native. “I offended a lot of people at that point.

He added, “I think I could have approached things better, but it is what it is.”
Meek admitted it’s possible he and Drake could one day meet and officially settle their issues.

In addition, Hot 97 interview covered the 30-year-old entertainer expressing he had undergone significant personal growth over the last few years.
“I be trying to be on some positive, grown-man, get-to-the-money type vibe. What can you do? You gonna be Instagramming, tweeting, throwing shots, and popping sh-t forever?” Meek asked. “We gotta live real life, too. It’s two sides to that. I think people get caught up in the ‘Twilight Zone’  so much so times they forget that it’s okay to put your phone down.”
The conversation also included the “Young Black America” rhymer discussing Nicki Minaj, Safaree, Remy Ma, Jay-Z, drug use, catching hate on social media, business endeavors, and being a voice for the hood.
Watch Meek Mill’s interview and stream Wins & Losses (via Spotify) below.

For any independent artists out there, one of the most confusing parts of being in the music business today is likely to be the radio promotion side of things. How important is it for an independent artist to be played on the radio?
Long seen as one of the most challenging parts of being an artist, in the modern world it’s quite common to ask if you even need to bother with radio promotion anymore. After all, is it not a bit worn out?

"Radio is still the most misunderstood aspect of this industry. I see people lose tens of thousands of dollars constantly in this industry because they either trust the wrong radio promoters or they don’t know what they are doing. " Wendy DayIf you still want to learn more about radio promotion, Stop The Breaks is still happy to provide resources to help you such as:

• How to Fund Radio Promotion for Independent Artists
• Making Your First Radio Promotion Steps a Success
• Hiring a Radio Promoter for Independent Hip Hop Artists

However, don’t think that radio play is essential for you to be successful in today’s music environment. Don’t get me wrong, having radio play will expose your music to a wide audience and most likely get you new fans, but this isn’t the ’90s anymore where radio play was the be all and end all for an artist’s career.
The world is far more connected today than it was once, after all. Instead of using the radio to be seen and heard, you can use the internet and various other mediums to get some status instead.
Back in the day artists were stuck dependent on radio for exposure. It was what they focused their goals on: get heard on local radio, then regional radio, national radio and then finally go global. Today, though, you can cut it out and just go for the globe from day once.
At the same time, though, music is so easily shared today that it would probably be a bit of a mistake to just flat out ignore radio play as part of your promotional campaigns. It’s still a majorly important part of the process and of increasingly improving the way that you think, feel and learn.
However, today you can build your own platform – your own means of being seen, heard and appreciated. How can you match the radio in terms of promotional power?
Build your own media platformsRather than going cap in hand to radio stations, jumping through whatever hoops they demand until you succeed, you can make up your own path to progress. You could for example build your own website. This gives you the chance to be streamed whenever, wherever. While it lacks the natural audience and new membership potential that a radio station can offer, it’s not all bad.
I might not have — getting a thousand spins a day on the radio, but what does that really matter when the label’s paying for that anyway?Freddie GibbsYou can instead get heard and shared all the time. In the past, if someone heard you track on the radio, they could tell some friends. If they were really on the ball, they could bootleg it and let friends in on your beats that way.
Today, though? They just share the link on their social media, on messengers and via text. It’s so much easier to get heard now because you can give yourself your own avenue to actually be heard.
“Aw man! This track on the radio earlier on…it was amazing!” might be good for the ego, but where’s the proof? Others then need to wait until you come on again before they can hear if you are worth listening to or not. With a radio station, you lack the availability that you can have when you make your own platform.
The audience has to be built up over time, but it’s an audience who came across you through choice, not because they happened to be tuned in when you were on the radio at that point.
In the same way, your music – your independent brand – can begin to augment and enhance your image with relative ease if you promote it yourself. You can go to other services that offer the same kind of volume of listeners at a radio station – probably more in many locations. You can then have yourself listed online, ready to be heard on-demand by anyone who comes across you and likes your music.
Get your music on streaming servicesStreaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play, SoundCloud and much more all offer easy and effective means of distributing your music to the masses. This is so much more reliable than just waiting for a radio station to play you at the right time.
Much like finding you on a website, a listener just has to point someone in the direction of your account on these profiles to showcase how good your music really is. No more waiting around until you come back on the radio – if you come back on the radio – to let other people hear how good you are.
I got a real core fan base, a grassroots fan base, and I just keep feeding them and they just keep growing. So unless a label gone come give me like $5 million, it really doesn’t make any sense because I’m making a lot of money doing what I’m doing.Freddie GibbsThis is such a powerful means of making sure that you get heard. It means you are never unavailable and that you can basically make sure you are heard and well received at all times. It’s a major part of ensuring that you can grow, develop and improve accordingly without having to rely on anyone.
After all, that’s the aim of an independent artist, right? To be heard, seen and appreciated all on your own?
Streaming allows you to do that, as does using services such as TuneCore. They allow you to distribute your music to all of the most popular streaming groups so that you can get on as many of them as possible. Frankly, no radio station can come close to that level of exposure.
Social media increases your reachOne thing that independent rappers back in the day didn’t have was social media networks like Twitter or Facebook. E-40, widely considered to be the pioneer of independent hip hop, used to drive around sell tapes out the trunk of his car.
These days, all you need to do is post up your music on a platform like Bandcamp, share it on Twitter and you could potentially have thousands to millions of people listening to your music.  A social media channel and easily relay links to your music all day, making it so much easier for people to find your music and to enjoy listening to it.
Again, no more waiting around for people to hear you on the radio. Social media is like a 24/7 advertisement; people can be finding you overnight and turning you into a sensation without you even taking part. It’s so much more effective for getting a new audience than hoping they just so happened to be tuned into the radio on the moment that you came on.
Artists can be widely successful without having to ever contact a radio station. Using streaming, social media and having a bit of personality about yourself will probably get radio stations contacting you wanting to use your music instead!
That feels great, knowing that you have people actively wanting to give you exposure. Rather than fighting to get that few minutes of radio fame, though, you can turn to other forms of exposure and instead build up a reputation that radio stations will want to help promote, not need convincing!
Example: Chance The RapperIt’s time to really show people what independent music can do. Let the stations know that we are here and independent music is not going anywhere.Chance The RapperLet’s take a look at Chance The Rapper, arguably the most successful independent artist right now:

• Chance’s breakout mixtape Acid Rap got over a million downloads on DatPiff
• Surf was the first free iTunes exclusive release
• Coloring Book was the first album to chart on the Billboard 200 based solely on streaming
• Chance has been nominated for 7 Grammy Awards and won 3 – Best New Artist,  Best Rap Performance for “No Problems” and  Best Rap Album for Coloring Book
• Coloring Book was the first ever streaming-only album to receive a Grammy nomination

Not bad for an independent artist right? Now let’s take a look at his radio track record:

• “No Problem” peaked at 43 on the Billboard Hot 100 and has some success on the rap charts
• “Confident” has some moderate success around the world, hitting number one in Denmark but that was largely thanks to Justin Bieber
• “All My Friends” also had some success around the world but didn’t chart on the Billboard Hot 100 at all

Sure, Chance has been played on the radio before and he’ll continue to get played but it has never been the reason for his success. Chance’s incredible success as an independent rapper was built on giving away quality music, creating dope merchandise, engaging with his fans and touring.
Follow in Chance’s path and you’ll be successful: focus on creating dope music, getting it distributed to your fans and make sure you’re always touring.
"I’m still gonna tour the world and sell merchandise. How Chance the Rapper makes money is how I make money. It’s how legitimate artists, a true artist with a fanbase, makes money."Logic

Benefits of press releasesIn an era where most up-and-coming independent hip-hop artists are just spamming links and flooding Twitter with their music, with no real promotion plan or marketing strategy, writing and distributing a press release can be the one tool that helps you stand out.
Of course, like anything else, you need to be smart about when and where you use a press release. Most people tend to release one when they want to notify the media about an upcoming event such as a new project release, starting a new tour, signing to a major labelor more. 
A company won’t produce your PR without you giving them some news in return – it has to be important and it has to be newsworthy. The big problem when releasing PRs is that you need to know the people you are asking – do they like the kind of message you want to send out? Do they consider that news?
Remember that the publicity that you are going to get from creating a strong, effective PR statement is going to be far more than anything you get from paid ads. Here are a few benefits of sending out a press release:
1. Higher engagement – Articles get a far higher response rate than ads as they are seen as more honest and credible. When you’re browsing a website or flicking through a magazine, don’t you tend to just read the content and ignore the ads?
2. Cheaper than ads – Distributing a strong press release that gets picked up by multiple outlets and publications can be way more effective and cheaper than buying ads. 
You only need to write the press release (or hire someone to do it) and probably pay a small fee for distributing to the right people. The only downside is that it’s much harder for a press release to be picked up – especially if you don’t know what you’re doing.
3. Search engine optimization (SEO) – In addition to boosting your visibility with the media, a published press release will help improve your brand’s SEO presence. The more high quality content there is about you online, the more that will help improve your brand’s rankings on search engines like Google and Yahoo, leading to more traffic to your website, leading to more exposure for your music. ​
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Writing the ReleaseThe main challenge that you get with writing the release, though, is getting good at the writing side of things. Whilst you could outsource it online to another writer, you want it to come from your own soul – this is why observing the following should help you become a better PR writer;

• Get creative with the headline – it might change if it’s used in an article but it’s a good hook to get the media person interested in the first place.
• Always make sure that your first lines are FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE/FOR RELEASE DATE and also “For more information/for further details, contact” etc.
• Make sure that you aren’t just generic and banal – be exciting, be creative. If it’s something basic then fair enough, but if you’re releasing new content be explosive with that. Use the theme of the content in the text, it makes it sound more personalized.
• Your first paragraph absolutely has to include the important stuff such as dates, locations, prices and everything else you can think of.
• Lastly, try and avoid going over the top – be creative but don’t make yourself sound like a legend either.

This should be enough to help you create PRs that people care about and find interesting, rather than the same old fluff that other artists are boring media teams with. It’ll take you time to get used to how to go about PR and it might put you out of your comfort zone, but don’t hold back – it’s 100% worth it.
Building Media RelationshipsFirst off, you need to understand where your press releases should be going. You need to make sure that you target your PR releases towards someone who actually cares about what you have to say and what you are bringing to the table. 
Do your homework on anyone who you intend to market to as they have a strong duty themselves, to their readership, to produce interesting information that people will genuinely care about. They don’t owe you anything and so just because you sent them content does not mean they will use it.
You also want to be getting in touch with independent blogs and magazines to show off your rise and your growth. Instead of just sending it out to every publication and website that you visit, create a targeted media list with the main contacts, email addresses, areas of interest so you know who to send the press release to when the time comes. 
Keep building this media list over the years and make you update it regularly so you aren’t sending out press releases to people who have left the publication and missing new people who just started. 
Distributing your press releaseThe hardest part then, as we discussed, is distributing it. The best ways are to get involved with the three following locations;
Online databases – These will give you a chance to get involved with media outlets and to give them the chance to access your PRs. This works kind of like a licensing gig, in that you give people a chance to pick up what you have on offer for themselves in exchange for benefiting you with publicity. 
Many online databases will be paid services so you’ll most likely need to pay either a subscription fee or a one-time fee for every press release you distribute with them. 
Email newsletters – No matter what kind of hip hop you are making, you’ll find a popular newsletter talking about it. 
You can find that the issues you discuss and the kind of music that you make will be of interest to someone out there and their newsletter readership. Make the most of that and produce a little letter asking them if they would promote you – it’s worth a shot, and could get you good circulation.
Of course, you can also create your own email newsletter to distribute the press release. The easiest way to do this is by setting up your own website (if you don’t have one already) and adding a subscribe feature so visitors can sign up to your newsletter. From there, it’s just a matter of building up that newsletter database and sending them high quality content on a regular basis.
Personal contacts – Depending on how strong your relationship is with various media outlets and publications, your personal contacts can include friends, family, collaborators, producers and DJs you’ve worked with as well as media contacts. 
Just like the media list, keep building out and updating this list to make sure it’s as fresh as possible. The worst thing to have is an outdated contact list. 

When Tyga was first questioned by paparazzi about the public spat between former couple Blac Chyna and Rob Kardashian, he mostly avoided addressing the situation.
The California rapper was more talkative about the mother of his child during an interview with The Breakfast Club.

“I told homie what the play was,” Tyga said. “I told him what he was going to deal with.”
The B-tch I’m the Sh-t 2 mixtape creator added, “I was just like, ‘Bro, I was just with her for three, four years. This is what you’re about to deal with.”

After being asked to clarify his exact warning for Kardashian, Tyga stated, “Y’all see what [Chyna’s got] going on…. She just got a different mentality. She really is a good person at heart, but she’s been through a lot in life and she didn’t really have people to help guide her in her life.”
He also stated, “I just knew a n-gga like him ain’t gonna be able to handle somebody like her.”
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​Blac Chyna has been accused of having a child with Rob in order to get revenge against Tyga, his now ex-girlfriend Kylie Jenner, and the rest of the Kardashian family.
“That’s not even my character. I see all these things on the internet and I never address it, because I’m the bigger person,” Chyna told Good Morning America earlier this month. “Robert came at me.”

Young M.A. is one of the most talked about rappers of this current generation.
The “Ooouuu” spitter spoke with Montreality about what she perceives as the lack of balance in Hip Hop at the moment.

​Young M.A. specifically addressed 2016 XXL Freshman cover artists Lil Yachty and Lil Uzi Vert as well as Grammy-winning emcee Kendrick Lamar.

“I’m not saying I’m not a fan of ‘the others’  – Lil Yachty or Lil Uzi. That’s their thing, and I think Kendrick that’s his thing,” said the Brooklynite. “I could never knock nobody, but the Lil Yachtys and the Lil Uzis are definitely outweighing the game right now.”

M.A also presented a defense of young rhymers like Yachty and Uzi.
“These kids out here, they’re making money. They’re enjoying it. They’re not gonna stop being how they are, and I can respect that,” she offered. “People bash them so much, but I don’t feel like bashing them is going to help anything.”

M.A. added, “[Hip Hop] is not where it used to be, and it doesn’t put me too much in that zone that I used to be in because it’s not the same anymore.”
Despite the changes taking place in the culture, Young M.A said she will always be in love with Hip Hop.
“I didn’t want to do nothing else with my life. I wanted to be a rapper, and that’s what it was. I made sure I became that,” said the New York representative.