What do you want your local Firefighter to be doing right now? We'd want ours to be busily climbing ladders to save desperate families from 6th-floor smoke-billowing windows, or at least rescuing cute cats from tree branches. Last year Stephen-Remmell Coleman from Wimbledon fire station recorded a rap song to promote fire safety, which Londonist proudly reported on at the time. But now he's moved on, and recorded a bhangra rap version which now......

The last time Londonist caught up with Lupe Fiasco, in 2006, the Chicago rapper was sporting the quotidian hip hop uniform of suede Tims and baggy jeans. Last night was a different look altogether. Clearly setting out to match his surroundings, Lupe bounded onstage kitted in a tuxedo and fresh white shirt, his band similarly well attired. As he remarked later in the evening, Esquire have just anointed him one of their best-dressed men......

L-R: Panama Black and Jneiro Jarel of Shape Of Broad Minds; Dälek It is perhaps appropriate that, for a music so feverishly obsessed with being fresh, when forced to actually contemplate its own future hip-hop ends up delving back into the past for answers. On Thursday night we were treated to a glimpse, perhaps, of things to come. Atlanta's Shape Of Broad Minds stung the audience at Queen Elizabeth Hall into life after the fairly......

"Once upon a time in London, yo, I damn near had to steal the show" - Atmosphere, "God Loves Ugly" We know. We were there when it happened. But it wasn't last night. In 2006, Minneapolis producer-MC combo Atmosphere dragged a whole band along with them. The storming show, at Scala, was probably the finest live hip hop show London's witnessed that didn't involve The Roots. The fruit of that tour was new album......

Every so often we take a more indepth look at clubnights round London that peak our interest. This week it's Beat Poetry, an ecletic funky night which moved from Brixton to Spitalfields earlier this year. If you like the sound of it, the next installment is taking place this Friday (13/6) from 10pm and entry is a mini £3, with a promise of lollies, jelly beans and free CDs. Cool! When and why did......

June’s here, and we’re feeling a bit slack. But although the summer blockbusters have rolled into town to lessen the load on our addled brains, literary London keeps on cranking out the heavyweights. Lightweight summer reading? Not here, not yet. Tuesday: You might have inferred that we love London. We do, we really do. Which places us in the company of many a great poet: Wordsworth, Blake, Lawrence. Poems by these and plenty of......

This Sunday, rap fans will pay their respect to late hip-hop producer J-Dilla at Cargo in Shoreditch. DJs including Shortee Blitz, Marc Mac and DJ Spin Doctor will be bumping favourites from Dilla's back catalogue in an event held to honour his life and legacy. Born James Yancey, and also known as Jay Dee, Dilla was the "producer's producer": feted by the likes of Kanye and Pharrell, he was one of the most influential......