Step-by-step, Kemba has built a pathway from the underground over the last decade and change. The Bronx, New York MC previously known as YC The Cynic now has a major label deal and a forthcoming album honoring his late mother (Gilda). "Nobody I Can Trust" is the biggest set-up to... Read more

Kemba has been turning heads since age 19, with the release of his debut mixtape, You're Welcome, which dropped back in 2010. The project set a promising stage for the young rapper as the tape portrayed an artist in the midst of developing a voice, but never revealing any sense of... Read more

Some may know Kemba as the artist that shut it down with an acappella after Kendrick Lamar pulled him onstage in the Bronx two years ago. Others may remember the MC from albums including You're Welcome (2010), Fall FWD (2011), and GNK (2013) released under his previous moniker "YC The... Read more

Bronx, New York-bred rapper Kemba, a staple of the city’s Hip-Hop scene, changed his name from former moniker YC The Cynic to release his Negus album last year. More than just an aesthetic decision, his reintroduction symbolized a shift in his musical direction. When Kendrick Lamar pulled him up onstage... Read more

Entrenched within Ethiopian and Eritrean history, the word "Negus" has recently enjoyed a renaissance of sorts, thanks in part to Kendrick Lamar's use of it on To Pimp a Butterfly's "i." But the word's rich cultural and contextual history stretches back millennia and while there exists debate about how it... Read more

As with any social-justice movement, there are cultural takeaways that come to represent the modern-day civil rights movement in searingly visual ways. For generations past, images of police dogs, water hoses, and segregated water fountains are markers signifying a time and place during which struggle for equality was forcibly constricted... Read more