Last week when I was mastering the mundane act of washing clothes at the card-enabled laundromat in my neighborhood, I found a stack of Stash magazines next to a dude who was clipping his toenails. I snagged one and temporarily cured my boredom reading insider hip-hop information from this decidedly bay-area rap-scene focused zine. Small enough to fit in your back-pocket and published in Frisco, Stash magazine is chock-full of interviews, articles, top-5 lists, album reviews, and paparazzi photos from concerts and other events.

Stash seems to pride itself on nodding to the underground, featuring pieces on The Jacka, Yukmouth from the Luniz, Prodigy of Mobb Deep, and Lyrics Born (who I’m hoping to see on Friday at the SF Outside Lands Fest). The stories herein deal with anything from label problems to struggles with the law. My favorite page had to be the E-40 slang word search. So don’t be a beezy and check it out at Stash Online.

If you are in San Francisco this weekend and you want to see some real underground rappers throw a party, check out the Universal Figures reunion show at the Red Devil Lounge on Saturday night. I got a chance to see them a few times during their hay, and they have some great lyricists including Bucc Rogerz, who has a dope song with Kool Keith on his myspace page. I’ll be in LA and unfortunately I can’t make it.

While visiting Portland I met a former colleague of Dr. Tyrone Hayes. Dr. Hayes, a Biology Professor at UC Berkeley, has spent a great deal of his time researching amphibians, but that is just the start. His labs have examined the harmful effects of the herbicide Atrazine. I had never actually heard of Atrazine until I saw this video in which Dr. Hayes raises awareness through the medium of rap. I hope to get him in one of our episodes soon.

While browsing cute dog videos on Youtube, I noticed there are lots of home movies set to people’s favorite songs. So, I decided to set my latest rap song to the images of some of my favorite dog clips. Inspired by Weezer’s cute “Island in the Sun” video and the memetastic “Pork and Beans”, we bring you the latest Green Rapper Vid. Beat produced by J. Rief:

With the Beastie Boys making basketball documentaries, MC Serch hosting reality shows, and Eminem in self-imposed exile somewhere north of 8 Mile, there is a vacancy for hip-hop’s pigment-challenged ambassador. The next great white rapper might not come from New York or Motown, but instead the Pennsylvania suburbs. Asher Roth is a young, caucasoid MC who is branding himself as a sort of “Joe College” rapper. Its unclear if this sort of “Frat Rap” has an audience, but if novelty acts like MIA, Lady Sovereign, and Matisyahu can find a niche due to their talent, so too can Asher.

My initial impression is that the boy can flow, but he suffers from pop-culture reference dropping fever. His brief periods of introspection are weighted evenly with run of the mill, wack rapper misogyny. He is bound to get over-hyped in the next few months, but you can judge for yourself right now. Download his new mixtape The Green House Effect (which is more of a drug reference than a environmental reference) from his website, or check out this remake of Jay-Z’s Roc Boys, entitled Roth Boys:

We’ve been singing the praises of Ashkon’s Hottubbin’ song since we heard it months back on Jesse, Jordan GO! Since the video went up on Youtube, its gone totally viral. He’s got a new mix tape out that includes Hottubbin’ and a powerful remake of Soulja Boy’s bizarre song Crank That, entitled strangely enough Soldier Boy. If you still haven’t heard Hottubbin’, then what are you waiting for:

A couple of years ago, I was studying for the GRE and decided to make up a rap to learn the common vocabulary words found on the test. I recorded the song a while back and recently threw together a video for the song using stop motion animation and some choppy footage I took when I snuck my video camera into the library. As a public service for those who may be taking the SAT or GRE in the future, we bring you “Wordsmithin’” - a video guaranteed to teach you a new word and/or give you motion sickness. Ironically, I still haven’t applied to grad school or used one of these words in a conversation. The guys over at Flocabulary have turned educational raps into an art form, though I’m sure they’d probably have something to say about the pedagogical soundness of this video.

Read on for a full list of words in the song