You won’t want to miss #SOURCE360 in 2015
Before “Juicy” and “Big Poppa”, The Notorious B.I.G. was featured in the Unsigned Hype column. In March of 1998, Eminem was featured in the Unsigned Hype column. The next year, he released The Slim Shady LP, which has sold over 5 million copies. Common, Mobb Deep (before they were known as Mobb Deep), DMX, Macklemore, and many more of the culture’s biggest artists got their start in The Source’s Unsigned Hype column. In fact, before the digital proliferation of music and content, and long before American Idol, The Source, via Unsigned Hype, was the best way to discover new and innovative Hip-Hop talent. So, for #SOURCE360, we decided to expand the Unsigned Hype franchise to be an interactive platform to give artists from around the country the opportunity to be heard and recognized for their talents, making the 1st annual Unsigned Hype Compeition, sponsored by Coors Light, one of the most anticipated events of the The Source360 experience. Hundreds of aspiring emcees submitted their videos to The Source to have a chance to perform live on stage in front of their fans, old and new. The two-day event kicked off at Roulette on Friday, September 19th with Coors Light in full abundance and judges Khari Nixon, Mike Zombie and Amadeus ready to see which contestants could deliver the best bars.
Rapper Tray Pizzy belted out anthem-like tracks to his fans, which impressed Amadeus who has produced tracks for artists such as Game, Chris Brown and T.I. His songs helped him to move on to the second round, which took place Saturday afternoon outside of several SOURCE360 venues. Denzil Porter, however, was the clear winner of the battles, and became The Source‘s first annual Unsigned Hype Competition winner. The humble emcee reminded us he was still a fan, however, when he was announced as the winner by Ol’ Dirty Bastard‘s son Barson Jones, a.k.a. YDB Porter–who got to open up for The Wu-Tang Clan, Dipset and Lil Kim at The SOURCE360 Concert at Barclays later that night–walked up to YDB and posed, stating “I just gotta take a selfie.”
Take a look at some of the fun above, and look out for Denzil Porter to be featured as the Unsigned Hype in the upcoming Man of the Year/Rookie of the Year issue.
