When you're fresh into a scene, it's hard to know who's telling what truths and who's leading on. The older I get and the more I fully dive into a career in music head-on, it becomes more obvious who's on their game and who's, for lack of a better term, full of shit.  

As we approach the beginning of a new decade, I decided to try to think of 100 reasons why I've enjoyed covering Cincinnati music over the past 3,650 days. At first I was worried I might not be able to come up with enough. A couple of hours into an "off the top of my head" list, I considered changing it to 1,000 reasons. After some hard editing choices, I've managed to squeeze the decade down into 50 items.  

Every year around this time is kind of like “Steelers Week” for football fans in Cincinnati. Only the fans aren’t football ones, they’re Hip Hop die-hards. You’ll see a lot of out of towners around the area this week, as Scribble Jam attracts Hip Hop heads from all over the country, either just to attend and have fun or to actually compete in the infamous “battles.”  

Every year around this time is kind of like "Steelers Week" for football fans in Cincinnati. Only the fans aren't football ones, they're Hip Hop die-hards. You'll see a lot of out of towners around the area this week, as Scribble Jam attracts Hip Hop heads from all over the country, either just to attend and have fun or to actually compete in the infamous "battles." Thankfully, only a few will probably be sporting yellow and black. Atmosphere, Blueprint, Channel Live and KRS-One perform Friday night. Thursday-Sunday at Annie's and other locations.  

Honesty. That's the first word that comes to mind when someone mentions Atmosphere, a fiercely independent Hip Hop duo (producer Ant and MC Slug) from Minneapolis whose reputation has grown exponentially (and organically) since its inception more than a decade ago.