By Karev | Heritage Hip-Hop | Heritagehiphop.com
"You are now listening to an Ipkiss production." If you know, you know. And if you do not know yet, August 29 is going to fix that.
Stanley Ipkiss is an award-winning music producer from Newark, New Jersey — beat battle champion, CEO of Headphone Therapy LLC, and one of the most versatile creators in the culture right now. The name comes from Jim Carrey's character in the 1994 film The Mask, a nickname his friends would not let die after the movie dropped, so he took it and made it his own. That tells you something about the man before you hear a single beat. He takes what the world hands him and turns it into identity. And honestly, the name fits, because like the mask itself, when Ipkiss puts his hands on a record it transforms into something bigger, louder, and impossible to ignore.
Do not call him just a Hip-Hop producer, because the catalog will not let you. Ipkiss blends Hip-Hop, R&B, Soul, Dance, Club, and Gospel — no music is a challenge he backs away from, pushing the boundaries of sound with music that is big, electric, and soulful. His inspirations run from Michael Jackson to Timbaland, and his favorite comic book character is Superman, which makes sense, because the work ethic is not from this planet. He even took the comic book love all the way to wax, creating Comic Cons, an album built on comic book concepts with Deuce H. Wood the 5th. Rest in peace to Deuce — that record is part of his legacy now too, and Ipkiss carries it forward every time he presses play.
And the culture has tested him. This is not a producer who built a reputation in a bedroom and never defended it. Stanley Ipkiss has won producer beat battles across the United States, and then he did what champions are supposed to do — he built a stage so the next generation could compete. Battle in the Bricks is his signature live producer beat battle, presented in partnership with Newark's milestone Lincoln Park Music Festival, putting underground producers in front of industry judges like Rah Digga. A Newark producer, championing Newark producers, in the middle of a Newark institution. That is not networking. That is nation building.
Now the work stands nominated. Artificial Ipkiss 2 is up for Solo Project of the Year at the 2026 Heritage Hip-Hop Awards — a critically acclaimed album with complete creative concepts, deliberate song sequencing, and production themes that cross genres the way only Ipkiss crosses them. He came on Off The Record, right here on the Heritage Hip-Hop Podcast, and broke the whole album down — the catalog, the global beat-competing background, the creation process. If you want to understand how a champion thinks, that conversation is required listening.
And here is the part that shows you what this year's nominee class really is. Stanley Ipkiss is the main producer on Badmuthafucka — Janétza Miranda's album, nominated in the same Solo Project of the Year category. Sit with that. Two Newark artists, one producer's fingerprints, both standing in the same category on the same night. Add DJ Kawon producing D.R.U.M.S. RUGGED's Keep It Rugged and you see the truth about this year's Heritage Hip-Hop Awards: these nominees did not just make records, they made records together. This is not an industry. This is a community that builds each other up, from Newark to Dallas to Maryland to Massachusetts. Different cities. Different sounds. One culture.
The Heritage Hip-Hop Awards streams live Saturday, August 29, 2026 at 8 PM on YouTube at www.youtube.com/HeritageHipHop, hosted by The Bad Seed, Johnny Dough, Karev, and DJ Big A. Have you run Artificial Ipkiss 2 yet? Put it on today, follow him at @kingipkiss26, and catch his Off The Record breakdown on the Heritage Hip-Hop Podcast on iHeart. Then pull up on August 29 and be in the chat when Brick City's champion hears his name called. Salute to Stanley Ipkiss for proving that the producer is not behind the music. The producer IS the music. Hip-Hop is to be valued and able to grow representing God's people. God's people is his Heritage and his Heritage is Hip-Hop.
#StanleyIpkiss #ArtificialIpkiss2 #IpkissProduction #HeadphoneTherapy #BattleInTheBricks #HeritageHipHop #HeritageHipHopAwards #HipHopAwards2026 #SoloProjectOfTheYear #NewarkMusic #BrickCity #NJMusic #BeatBattle #ProducerLife #MusicProducer #LincolnParkMusicFestival #MultiGenre #BoomBap #IndependentHipHop #RealHipHop #SupportIndependentHipHop #HipHopCulture #HipHopBlog
By Karev | Heritage Hip-Hop | Heritagehiphop.com
Every year there is one nominee whose story reminds you why the culture is bigger than any one sound. This year that nominee is from Brick City.
Janétza Miranda is a Newark artist who combines the traditions of Jazz, Soul, Rhythm & Blues, Bolero, Bomba y Plena, Hip-Hop, and more into a remixed sonic delight of vocalizations and rhythmic proclamations that transport you to a space that is suspended in time. Read that list of traditions again, because that is not genre-hopping. That is heritage. A Puerto Rican girl from Newark whose first language is Spanish, carrying the sounds of her people and the sounds of her city in the same breath. When we say the Heritage Hip-Hop Awards celebrates different parts of urban culture from different parts of the world coming together, Janétza Miranda is what that looks like in one human being.
Her story starts where so many Newark stories start — in a moment where the city needed something. Two months after 9/11, her school principal asked her to sing "The Prayer" at a fundraiser the school refused to cancel, because the community needed to gather and needed to reflect. She learned Italian for the performance. Her mother and father sat front row, and Newark's Mayor at the time, Sharpe James, commended her when it was done. A voice asked to console a grieving city before she was even grown. Remember that, because it tells you everything about what came next.
She went on to study Music Education with a focus on voice, trained in opera, and when college became unaffordable she did what Newark does — she kept working. She landed at Skippers, the legendary jazz spot in Newark, where she became known as "the singing waitress," bringing you your food and then stepping up to sing Billie Holiday. At Skippers she learned jazz in the room with giants — Amiri and Amina Baraka, Stanley Jordan, Charles Bradley, George Benson. From there came the bands, her own group Miss Pop and the Bad Touch, and stages most artists only dream about: Carnegie Hall, Gotham Hall, Cipriani, The Cutting Room, the Count Basie Theatre, NJPAC Sounds of the City, Milan in Italy, and International Jazz Day in Luanda, Angola two years running. She traveled the nation for NBC's The Voice and made the Top 18 out of 60,000 artists who auditioned. She is in the city of Newark's own tourism video alongside Mayor Ras J. Baraka. And once, singing "Contigo en la Distancia" with a 40-piece orchestra at the top of the Rockefeller building, Luis Miguel himself — the originator — came up to her afterward and told her that her voice healed his heart.
Healed. That word follows her everywhere, and she knows it. Janétza will tell you her brand is healing — not the brand she set out to create, but the one the times demanded. During the pandemic she picked up her guitar and sang live on Instagram at 3:33, giving her music away so people stuck in the house could get through it together. She sits with organizations like WhyHunger talking about feeding people through food and through music, because for her those are the same work. This is a humanitarian with a catalog, not a catalog with a charity line in the bio.
So do not let the album title fool you — earn it she did. Badmuthafucka is nominated for Solo Project of the Year at the 2026 Heritage Hip-Hop Awards, and the title is the story. A voice trained in opera and raised on bolero, seasoned in a Newark jazz room, tested on national television, blessed by legends on two continents — walking into a Hip-Hop awards show and standing in a category with five nominees. That takes exactly what the title says it takes. Newark has always produced artists who cannot be put in a box, and Janétza Miranda is cut from that same cloth. This show streams from the culture Heritage Hip-Hop was built in, and this year the culture gets to celebrate one of Brick City's own.
The Heritage Hip-Hop Awards streams live Saturday, August 29, 2026 at 8 PM on YouTube at www.youtube.com/HeritageHipHop, hosted by The Bad Seed, Johnny Dough, Karev, and DJ Big A. Have you sat with Badmuthafucka yet? Run it today, follow her on Instagram at @jane.tza, and catch her Voices At The Root conversation with WhyHunger to understand the woman behind the voice. Then pull up on August 29 and be in the chat repping Brick City when her name gets called. Salute to Janétza Miranda for carrying Newark, Puerto Rico, and the healing power of music every time she opens her mouth to sing. Hip-Hop is to be valued and able to grow representing God's people. God's people is his Heritage and his Heritage is Hip-Hop.
#JanetzaMiranda #Badmuthafucka #HeritageHipHop #HeritageHipHopAwards #HipHopAwards2026 #SoloProjectOfTheYear #NewarkMusic #BrickCity #NJMusic #PuertoRican #BombaYPlena #Bolero #Jazz #Soul #RnB #LatinSoul #WomenInMusic #WomenInHipHop #TheVoice #WhyHunger #HealingMusic #IndependentArtist #SupportIndependentArtists #HipHopCulture #HipHopBlog
This was a hard one to pick because how do you shut down classic releases. This was not about fan fare or who was liked better. This was about the statement made from the creation of 2 stellular projects. Let's break this down:
Double O released the Classic The Huntsmen Volume 1 and this was the New Jersey Hip-Hop unity album. People had a chance to hear people like Big Stomp, Wayne Danja, Runt Dawg, Dot Bundini, Quas Amil, Chops tha Savior, O-Solo, Pushbuttinz and so many more people to name that the average Hip-Hop fan would not be able to name. This was a boom bap hardcore rap fans dream project because here LYRICS MATTERED. The Mcs that were present had bars and messages on this release and from the mouths of the people I interviewed about his project "EVERY TIME I listened to this album I had a NEW FAVORITE song". Take that into account when how picking the winner of this award came to be.
Samad Savage released his second album The Grey Area this year and the response was stellular as well. Track about dealing with parental misguidance, and seeking a higher self helped this artist reach a level of respect that not many receive on a underground level. Samad Savage's song Watch out is an attention grabber that made even the hardened old school Mcs take notice and say this young man is a problem. When interviewing people about this project I quote one person by saying "Look at my arm, this album gives me goose bumps".
Personally these albums are more than just that. It is the connection of old school and new school holding the culture up and I will be damned if I penalize either album due to preference of Lyrics and bars, and social media followings. They both have great fan bases and Here is to hoping we get a song of these 2 artists together where we can appreciate them both and celebrate our NJ Hip-Hop culture and Hip-Hop in general. Salute to Double O and Samad Savage.
