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When all else fails to explain American violence, blame a rapper & hip-hop music
Super Afro Soul: the music of Orlando Julius, titan of Nigerian music
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NFT $RAP UP: Crypto, Music NFT, Wearable & Metaverse news
When all else fails to explain American violence, blame a rapper & hip-hop music
Super Afro Soul: the music of Orlando Julius, titan of Nigerian music
Online Streaming Act claims to level the playing field … but for whom?
Russian artists grapple with the same dilemma as their Soviet forebears – to stay or to go?
NFT $RAP UP: Crypto, Music NFT, Wearable & Metaverse news
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Post Malone announces the Twelve Carat Tour with stops in Toronto & Vancouver
June 2: Budding Toronto rapper Road Runner to headline in Ottawa
US-based #iVoted Festival 2022 announces first round of artists including Run The Jewels, Lil Nunni, Lil’ Scrappy, & more
Rolling Loud Toronto will be headlined by Future, WizKid & Dave between September 9-11
The Retrospected Tour: Classified announces new Canadian tour kicking off Oct. 14
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Published
Crypto News
For the first time in years the price of gas on the Ethereum blockchain has dropped to less than $5 per transaction. And for the first time ever Polygon gas fees are higher than ETH. Artists that have been holding onto art may finally have a moment to mint those pieces.
Crypto prices are slowly rising but experts still say Bitcoin is on its way to passing the $100,000 mark. Some say it’ll happen within a year, while some say it could take five years. As we know with crypto, it’s a little hard to predict. Even though it’s at its low right now it’s still more than twice as valuable as it was a couple of years ago.
Crypto prices are always changing. These are prices at the time of writing, watch online for current prices.
- Bitcoin $40,156.96 CAD
- Ethereum $2443.61 CAD
- Binance $404.73 CAD
- Cardano $0.76 CAD
- Mana – Decentraland $1.32 CAD
NFT News
We all watched the craziness over the big NFT drops, first with Rare Pepes, Cyberpunks, and Cryptokitties in 2016, 2017. People were collecting everything that dropped, it was cool enough just to own an NFT.
In 2022, however, we expect NFTS to come with utility, some sort of a function. It only makes sense that the future of NFTS is Play to Earn games.
Play to Earn doesn’t necessarily mean free to play. A lot of the games that you can earn money playing require you to buy a wearable or an NFT of a character, car, or a shoe, etc. The reward can be a cryptocurrency, an NFT, or the value increase of an already purchased NFT.
A couple of our favorites are:
- Decentral Games ICE Poker in the Decentraland Metaverse. From the website, “Decentral Games ICE Poker is a free metaverse poker game where players earn tokens by completing daily challenges and competing against each other on a daily leaderboard. ICE is the in-game currency that incentivizes player liquidity and enables upgrades of in-game items.” Either you buy an ICE Poker wearable and play yourself, or you can delegate it to a player anywhere in the world and still Earn ICE as they play. ICE can be traded for CAD or USD.
- STEPN is a walking app that lets you earn GST as you walk. First you buy a sneaker, a walking, jogging, running, or jogging one. Then you basically walk and the app on your phone counts your steps, and you get paid according to the distance you walked. The app is easy to use, and GST can be traded for CAD or USD as well.
Wearable News
There are a lot of amazing wearable designers in Decentraland with a lot of very cool wearables. One that caught my eye recently was this tongue in cheek, pun of a wearable. An actual wear-a bell made by Cyclopa @opaaq0 on Twitter. 
I laughed out loud when I saw the avatar swaying in the bell. Cyclopa is a wearable designer and developer in Decentraland and has done beautiful builds for Guerrilla Music and Parcel Party, among others.
Guerrilla Music bought our first Charity Guild ICE wearable. All the ICE earned in the poker lounge will go toward the Color the Blockchain initiative to buy computers and internet access for artists around the world. If you’d like to help us Color the Blockchain there’s more information here: https://opensea.io/collection/teamrapup 
Metaverse Events
Sandbox seems to be the place the stars want to be. They’ve just welcomed the legendary Jamiroquai into the space.
“The metaverse is driving creativity through new forms of expression and technology in the music and entertainment industry, and it is an honor to welcome Jamiroquai to The Sandbox,” said Sebastien Borget, COO and Co-Founder of The Sandbox. “We now have partnerships with various legendary musical artists and labels including Snoop Dogg, Jamiroquai, BLOND:ISH, and Deadmau5, and we’re excited to be making The Sandbox a home where artists can connect with their fans in a direct and genuine way.”
Tuesday’s in Decentraland, join Guerrilla Music and Decentral Games for Meta-Verzus Español hosted by Pixelia and Milito. Spanish rappers and producers go head-to-head in the weekly Meta-Verzus music battle. 10 PM UTC/6 PM EDT in the Stronghold Lounge. Link: https://events.decentraland.org/event/?id=ebe696a5-1171-4fb4-83aa-513562662d15
Thursday’s join King Mizo for his weekly 2 hour Party & Bullish DJ set in the $ICE Lounges in Decentraland. Brought to you by Guerrilla Music and Decentral Games. Follow @KingMizoMadeIt on Twitter for links and event information. 9PM UTC/5 PM EDT in the Stronghold Lounge. Link: https://events.decentraland.org/event/?id=961752fa-a762-4bce-b218-06e3e07c5e62 
Guerrilla Music is holding the metaverses very first Spray to Earn game. Go to the House of $RAP in Decentraland and spray paint a pixel picture on the graffiti wall. Enter your graffiti masterpiece in the twitter link. First place earns 3000 $RAP tokens, and a $RAPHEADZ wearable. 2nd to 5th place earns 500 $RAP tokens. Deadline is June 15th, 2022 (Multiple entries ALLOWED!) Good luck! 
Music NFT Radar
About the STEMbits
7025 randomly generated STEMbits on the Polygon blockchain. The STEMbits are composed of 56 hand-drawn assets and 45 audio STEMS combining 8 different traits to create your unique STEMbits. Ownership includes creative & commercial rights of your STEMbits (& associated audio STEM) as well as initiation into the STEMbits-Trade it up community. Collect all the STEMs for any of the exclusive tracks and you will be able to FORGE a new 1/1 full track NFT (while keeping all your original STEMbits notes). None are the same and all are lit af.
Website: https://stembitsnft.club
Opensea: https://opensea.io/collection/stembits
Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/StemBitsNFT 
Q&A with the STEMbits Team
Q: What is the cost?
A: 1 MATIC
Q: Where can I get a STEMbits?
A: https://stembitsnft.club
Q: How many Full Tracks are there in total with there being 45 Unique STEMS?
A: There are 7 unique tracks created by Lil Astro! Each was created live in a Twitter Space in front of an audience, some big some small.
Q: Are any of these 7 unique tracks included in the STEMbits collection and if so how do I collect them?
A: Yes! They are all included! You have to collect each STEM from the beat you want, then get verified as a STMEbits track owner. Only then will you be able to forge a new NFT with the full track (plus downloadable content notes)
Q: What happened to the first 150 STEMbits?
A: 150 STEMbits were reserved for AirDrops to OG holders, Pre-sale events and giveaways.
Q: Where does my STEMbits live?
A: All audio, images and metadata will be hosted on IPFS. STEMbits forever gem (@ 100% mint we are seriously considering freezing the metadata onchain!)
Q: Is there a intergalactic romp-map?
A: Romp-map ALPHA can be found in the rocket-interglactic-romp-map
Q: Commercial Rights Concerns:
A: As the owner of a unique STEMbits and the subsequent, more common, STEM associated with it, you will have limited commercial rights to use this STEM and unlimited rights for your unique STEMbits visual art. You ARE allowed to use your STEM as a sample to create a unique beat/artwork of your own without fear of copyright infringement or having royalties sought from your commercial gains. You DO NOT HAVE EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS to bar other owners of any STEM and its sounds from using it in a similar creative fashion.
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Written by @ADayInTheSky, and curated by @KingMizoMadeIt.
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