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.
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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.
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By Karev | Heritage Hip-Hop | Heritagehiphop.com
When people talk about vintage Hip-Hop, they usually point to New York. They should also be pointing to Dallas.
D.R.U.M.S. RUGGED is a Dallas, Texas native who was heavily influenced by the emerging sounds of Hip-Hop in the early, mid, and late 80s — the era when the culture was still being poured into its foundation, when the beat and the rhyme and the block party were the whole blueprint. Some artists study that era like homework. D.R.U.M.S. lived it, absorbed it, and carries it in his sound to this day. He is a true Hip-Hop head, and you can hear it in every bar.
What separates him is the range. A unique flow and cadence that belongs to nobody else. A diverse spread of topics and subject matter that moves from braggadocious to conscious without ever losing the thread, all of it sitting on top of rugged beats — that is his specialty, and it is right there in the name. Too many artists pick one lane and camp in it. D.R.U.M.S. RUGGED covers the whole road the way the golden era emcees did, when you had to be able to talk your talk AND say something, flex AND teach, all on the same record. That is the standard he was raised on and that is the standard he keeps.
And now that standard has a nomination behind it. At the 2026 Heritage Hip-Hop Awards, D.R.U.M.S. RUGGED is up for Solo Project of the Year with his album Keep It Rugged — produced by DJ Kawon. Sit with that for a second, because the culture is telling on itself in the best way. DJ Kawon is nominated this year for Group/Collab Project of the Year with Boom Bap Alumni, and here he is again behind the boards on another nominated album. Dallas emcee. Kawon on production. A vintage Hip-Hop sound and feel built between different corners of the map. That is not an accident. That is what happens when real ones find each other and build, and it is exactly the story of this year's show. Different cities. Different sounds. One culture.
Representing the South matters here too, and let the record show it. The South has carried Hip-Hop on its back for decades, but the vintage, true-school side of southern Hip-Hop does not always get its flowers. D.R.U.M.S. RUGGED is proof that the tradition lives in Texas — that a Dallas native raised on 80s Hip-Hop can make a record in 2026 that honors the foundation without imitating it. Keep It Rugged is not a throwback. It is a torch being carried. There is a difference.
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 Keep It Rugged front to back yet? Put it on today and hear what the South sounds like when it keeps it true. Then pull up on August 29 and be in the chat repping Dallas when his name gets called. Salute to D.R.U.M.S. RUGGED for holding the vintage sound down below the Mason-Dixon and reminding the culture that real Hip-Hop lives everywhere. 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.
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