As part of this weekend's Catalpa Festival, Snoop Dogg will slouch around Randall's Island to perform his debut album, Doggystyle, in its entirety. With the Doggfather being somewhat obsessed with all things canine, SOTC decided it was fine time to shed light on hip-hop's infatuation with dogs. But be warned: This ain't exactly the equivalent of watching the cute lil' puppies prance around in the window of that pet store on Sixth Avenue in the West Village.

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Since the days of Wild Style and Krush Groove, rappers have put their music on hold and delved into the film world. A bunch of these efforts were pretty bad—remember Ice-T in Leprechaun in the Hood—while others were so bad they were good. Cam crying in Killa Season or KRS fleeing the scene without a word in Who's The Man? had some unintentional comedy, as did DMX trying to explain to Nas what our purpose on earth is ("Shorty can't eat no books!") in Belly. And then there were the ones that were actually straight-up good.

The 18 films that follow didn't get much in the way of Oscar recognition, but if cinema is meant to entertain, well, they do that and then some.

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Dan Dealy/KEAPHOPE Collective

DMX
S.O.B.'s
Thursday, February 23

Better than: Time travel.

Shot in grainy black-and-white in NYC's notorious Tunnel nightclub, the 1998 music video for DMX's first single "Get At Me Dog" was pure, unadulterated hip-hop; it set X apart as a raw, menacing rapper at a time when the genre was inundated with braggadocio, lyrical fluff and one too many shiny suits. X stripped away the genre's materialistic veneer and replaced it with real-life pain and achingly honest emotion, winning crossover success (he is the second rapper in history, after Tupac Shakur, to have released two albums in the same year that debuted at No. 1) without relinquishing credibility. Perpetual legal issues, erratic behavior and battles with addiction over the past decade or so have all but stalled that career and what was touted as his grand homecoming show—the first in years—was seen as a potential disaster. That is, if the Yonkers rapper even showed up to perform at all.

DMX not only showed up last night; he took the sold-out crowd at S.O.B.'s right back to the Tunnel.

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Waka Flocka Flame is the sort of of hip-hop artist who doesn't so much rap or flow as he shouts his ass off. It's a formula that imbues the Atlanta-based rapper's songs with a boisterous, visceral appeal—and one that he's looking to continue with the release of his second studio album, Triple F For Life: Friends, Fans And Family, which will officially drop on New Year's Eve. But Waka's not alone in pledging his allegiance to the lowbrow art of shout rap; the following hip-hop gents also excel at vociferating into microphones.

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For a generation, the unexpected death of Aaliyah Dana Haughton 10 years ago today remains as significant as the deaths of Notorious B.I.G. and 2Pac. This especially rings true for millennial men, who were just realizing girls really didn't have cooties when Aaliyah released her debut, Age Ain't Nothin' But A Number, in 1994. In the years since the plane carrying her and her entourage crashed shortly after taking off, killing everyone on board, the fanboy-like appreciation for Aaliyah has only grown.

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The rapper DMX is currently serving out a one-year sentence for parole violation at the Mental Health Unit of the Arizona State Prison. It's the latest nefarious chapter of a life that the artist known more formally to the cops as Earl Simmons has lived out as if he were playing it out through an episode of the Grand Theft Auto video game series. Being picked up and locked up for drug use, reckless driving, robbery, or impersonating officers of the law seems to offer no deterrent to DMX, whose musical career has unfortunately been dwarfed by his real world problems. So in honor of this week's release of DMX's Greatest Hits With A Twist project, here are ten great japes from the Yonkers yapper.

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Less than a month ago, Jadakiss was telling MTV that he wanted Cam'ron and Kanye West on the remix for "Who's Real," the Swizz Beatz-produced, improbably successful fifth single off The Last Kiss. Instead, it turns out we got...a Ruff Ryders reunion? This was a buzzed-about possibility ever since Kiss said, essentially, that he'd looking for DMX ever since X had gotten out of a Florida jail. And then on Monday X's verse from the song leaked, and by Monday night, Flex was dropping thousands of bombs heralding the return of a New York rap legend. But nobody said anything about Eve or Drag-On, two rappers nobody's heard much of anything from in years. Add Styles P and Sheek Louch and you've got a full-blown reconvention of a long-departed New York movement.

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