Tupac Shakur would have turned 40 Thursday.

The legendary poet-rap writer was gunned down in 1996 by four-shots from a gunman after watching the Mike Tyson vs. Bruce Sheldon boxing match at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.

That incident is largely believed to have kicked off the West coast rap - East coast rap feud that is attributed to the eventual deaths of both Shakur and Notorious B.I.G.

Erykah Badu will headline a birthday concert celebrating the Tupac's legacy Thursday night in Atlanta. Rappers Too $hort, Bun B, and 8 Ball & MJG are also set to perform. Proceeds from the event benefit the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation.

In the Fall of 1997, the University of California at Berkeley offered "History 98: Poetry and History of Tupac Shakur" and became the first accredited school to develop a course based on the hip-hop music, life and lyrics.

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Eminem took to his Twitter to announce Bad Meets Evil's upcoming EP title: "Hell: The Sequel."

"Hell: The Sequel" is Bad Meet Evil's (Eminem as Evil and Royce da 5'9" as Bad) second EP and will be dropping this summer, June 14.

Eminem and Royce dropped their first project as Bad Meets Evil titled, "Nuttin' to Do" in 1999. They're reconnecting more than ten years later and hitting the lab with producers such as Havoc, DJ Khalil, Bangladesh and D-12's Mr. Porter for "Hell: The Sequel."

Bad Meets Ǝvil - Fast Lane

After a period of relative quiet following the multi-platinum success of Recovery, Eminem has been popping up with quite a few guests spots at the end of the year. It just got interesting: on each of the last two days a new Eminem/Royce da 5’9″ track has hit the web (first “Living Proof”, then “Echo”), setting the rumor mill ablaze. Not one, but two, Eminem songs leak out of nowhere, with no announced album from either artist on the horizon? Adding to the mix was a tweet by Royce boasting that some mysterious record to be released in the near future would dwarf Kanye West and Jay-Z’s approaching Watch the Throne. Bold words to be sure, but exciting ones nonetheless.

Things began to patch up between Royce and Eminem some time ago, and culminated with Royce doing a considerable amount of press for Recovery with Slim Shady and a bonus track collaboration along with the rest of his group Slaughterhouse. These tracks, however, are simply Royce and Em goin’ at it like it’s ’99. Not only are they refreshing to hear, but the relatively simple songs hearken back to an earlier sound as well.

Based off Royce’s own words and the absolutely out of left field nature of these songs, there may well be a Bad Meets Evil EP approaching. The material released thus far would suggest a far less commercial effort on the part of Eminem in comparison to his most recent album. Exciting news for any fan of early Slim Shady and hip hop.

In the modern recording studio the current vogue is for the MC to be very close to the mic. This helps to cut down on unwanted background noise from "hip hop beat" from headphones and also reduces the acoustic ambience of the 'mic room'.

Given today's increasingly cheap technology such as digital and convolution reverbs, delays, echoes you would think that it's best to get as 'dry' a recording as possible and then 'wet' it  with artificial reverb at the mix stage rather than to struggle with overly 'wet' recordings that are impossible to get back to a 'dry' state without obvious artefacts.
The problem with close mic'ing is that it's almost always a very intimate sound, every tongue, lip-smacking and breathing sound is picked up by the microphone and if the microphone is looking upwards towards the noise it can also sound a bit more nasal in tone.

The contribution of the chest cavity to a voice sound shouldn't be under estimated, it helps to warm up the sound, so backing off the microphone by several feet will help to achieve this. This makes sense really, when you think about how you normally listen to MC, you hear them in the room, not right next to them.

The problem with putting the microphone further away is that you hear more of the room's acoustics and in a small recording studio it can sound 'boxy'. To reduce this effect you'll need to hang sound absorbent materials such as curtains or duvets behind the singer in particular, since this is where the microphone is picking up most of its sound, and on other walls until you have a suitably 'dry' sound.

Wow! How many singles is Dr. Dre going to release for "Detox" before the album gets a final, proper release date? Because it looks like we're going to hear a new one called "Die Hard" this Friday, May 6. And it will again feature Dre collaborating with Eminem :), who appeared on "Detox's" previous single, "I Need a Doctor." What's it going to take to give us a release date, Dre? Do you really just need one of these tracks to blow up? Probably. I just really hope the song doesn't contain too many Die Hard references. Рэп минуса

[Rap Radar]