Liz Reich

With the exception of announcing the arrival of royalty, trumpets aren't typically considered the most impressive of instruments on their own. They aren't particularly delicate or dainty and it takes quite a set of lungs – not to mention an abundance of saliva – to even produce a note.
So when someone is described as a trumpet master, it's bound to provoke some speculation as to what exactly this means. Does it mean having won four Grammys, six Billboard Awards and an Emmy? Perhaps it means having traveled the world performing across a wide scope of genres to create a musical career that hasn't slowed down in over 40 years? Could it be when HBO decides to make a movie out of said life and casts Andy Garcia as the star?

Mickey Avalon raps that he has a “dick like Jesus” (whatever that means) and he's not afraid to let his listeners know things like this about him. That's because the self-dubbed “Mr. Right” – a gaunt 35-year-old rapper, brings an inimitable fusion of glamour, sleaze and guyliner to a music scene that he never could've anticipated being part of.

Existential and profound may not be two qualities that come to mind when most people think of hip-hop, but they probably haven't heard of Brother Ali, who once proclaimed himself in a rap the “cross between John Gotti and Mahatma Gandhi.”
While Ali's no stranger to the rap game, he owes allegiance to the indie label Rhymesayers where he's among a tight-knit family of other Minnesota-based rappers like Atmosphere and Evidence.