Late one evening I was fixated on my laptop screen with several windows open: editing material, dodging Facebook junkies, replying to correspondence and sifting through my inbox. Typical late night multitasking. I came upon one particular email with an audio file attached.

This summer's calendar of events once again includes the Inner-City Muslim Action Network's bi-annual one-day summer festival called "Takin' It To The Streets."

He seems to overfill the social categories of religion, language, ethnicity, national origin, and nationality. Not to mention the music to which he’s dedicated his life’s labor to. No one can be certain he’d ever be able to answer the oversimplified, but purportedly voluntary, questions about race and ethnicity we’ve all had to fret over at some point in our lives.

Hip-hop artist Amir Sulaiman with brothers Hamza and Suliman Perez of the MTeam

SheSoWriteous host Yahsmin premieres a new podcast featuring an interview with Colorado based hip-hop couple The ReMinders and a classic track off their album, ReCollect.

Hip-Hop was born out of the ashes of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. The messages of Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and other Muslim activists arose naturally into the lyrics of Hip-Hop from day one.

I grew up in Oakland between two areas. My mother’s on 11th Avenue, which was known as Funktown, and 43rd Sstreet in North Oakland with my younger cousins and uncles. I was raised on Reaganomics and the crack epidemic.

I sat there in my pajamas, hypnotized by the woofer pulsing as the crowd cried to the heavens with Malcolm. It was a happy, yet seemingly insignificant moment in my life, that is, until 1988. That was the year I bought Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back on the first day it came out.

Adisa Banjoko, Co-founder of Hip Hop Chess Federation, Lectures @ Harvard on Islam and Hip-Hop.

The first time a gun was put in my face, it was by the SFPD. A cop drew a 9mm pistol on me for wearing a red and black jacket with the words PARIS (a pro-black rapper not the chick) across the back.