Listen to the new Dr. Dre single “Die Hard”

Legendary hip-hop producer Dr. Dre hasn’t released a full length album since 1999’s 2001, and his upcoming Detox has become a Chinese Democracy project of sorts. But that hasn’t stopped him from randomly releasing singles for the album over the past year. On Friday night during the Showtime series Fight Camp 360°, Dre debuted the third single from the LP “Die Hard,” which features none other than Dre protégé Eminem.

You can listen to the track and the clip that goes along with it over at Showtime’s website. Other singles from the album have included “Kush” and “I Need a Doctor,” released in September 2010 and February 2011 respectively. Detox is expected to be released at some point this year, though the album’s original release date was fall of 2005, so good luck with that. In the meantime, Dre has a line of really expensive headphones for sale.

“Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest” playing tonight at Tribeca Film Festival

One of my favorite hip-hop groups of all time, A Tribe Called Quest, reunited back in 2008 for a few shows and have performed intermittently since then. During that 2008 tour, actor Michael Rapaport followed the group with film crew on hand and the results are found in his new documentary Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest. The film chronicles their early history of how they formed and the deep-rooted tension between members Q-Tip and Phife.

Beats, Rhymes & Life will not officially open in theaters until July 8th, but for us lucky New Yorkers the film will be playing tonight (4/27) as part of the Tribeca Film Festival at 6pm at the BMCC Tribeca PAC and tomorrow (4/28) at 1pm at AMC Loews Village. More info can be found on the Tribeca Film Festival’s website. Regular tickets are currently sold out; however, “Rush Tickets” are available if you line up around 45 minutes prior to the showtime. Good luck!

Listen to the new Beastie Boys single

The new single from the upcoming Beastie Boys release Hot Sauce Committee Pt. 2 has been leaked by the Beasties themselves. After a 30 second “preview” made its rounds last week, you can now listen to the single “Make Some Noise” in its entirety over at the Beastie Boys website.

It sounds like a return to the Check Your Head-era Beastie Boys sound that expanded their unique brand of hip-hop to a much wider audience in the early 90’s. As much as I loved the simple nature of To The Five Boroughs, it was a pretty weak follow up to the awesomeness of 1998’s Hello Nasty. I had a hard time even acknowledging the Mix Up as a new Beastie Boys album… is that wrong?

J Dilla Estate releasing new album

According to Hip Hop DX, the estate of the late hip-hop producer J Dilla will be releasing an album of unreleased music from Dilla entitled The Rebirth of Detroit. Read the article and see if you can make sense of exactly what Rebirth will consist of. “Completely new material and ideas” from a producer who passed away 5 years ago is confusing. Help me out here.