With this weather, it's hard to believe that summer will ever arrive... but sure enough, warmer weather and music festivals will be right around the corner. In just over three weeks on May 26, Canterbury Park Festival Field will be packed with fans clamoring to see Snoop Dogg, Atmosphere, Brother Ali, and the rest of the Soundset artists. Rhymesayers just released a video hyping this year's incredible lineup for one of the season's most hotly-anticipated festivals.

See also:
Soundset 2013 lineup: Atmosphere, Snoop Dogg, Mac Miller & more

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Photo courtesy of the artist

"If we keep outdoing ourselves, who am I going to be playing after next year? Kanye?" was what Atmosphere rapper Slug said about last year's impressive Soundset lineup. Well, Soundset 2013 didn't get Mr. West, but it did land the G-funk legend Snoop Dogg. (Although, isn't he going by Snoop Lion these days?) Anyhow, from the looks of the flyer, the Dr. Dre protege born Calvin Cordozar Broadus is opening for Atmosphere at the sixth running of the Rhymesayers hip-hop festival at Canterbury Park on Sunday, May 26.

The ever-evolving event's big names also include Mac Miller, Tech N9ne, Busta Rhymes, Brother Ali, Three 6 Mafia's Juicy J, P.O.S, Schoolboy Q, and Aesop Rock filling up the main stages. There are several dozen more -- including locals like Mixed Blood Majority and the Chalice, and blog fave$ like Joey Bada$$ and A$AP Ferg -- and the hosting finesse of Sway Calloway (of MTV fame), Blueprint, and J Pratt. The full lineup is below.

See Also:
Review: Soundset at Canterbury Park, 5/27/12
Soundset 2012 evacuated amid tornado watch
Soundset Slideshows 2012
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Photo by Erik Hess

Here's Macklemore surfing the Soundset 2012 throngs.

Rhymesayers Entertainment has announced the date for the 2013 running of Soundset, its yearly hip-hop festival.

Now in its sixth year, the gathering has established itself as one of Minnesota's largest showcases of music and culture, and one of the strongest within the hip-hop realm anywhere. We detailed the lead-up to this past year's Soundset in a City Pages cover story (Also: Behind the Soundset cover) back in May.

See Also:
Review: Soundset battled extreme weather at Canterbury Park, 5/27/12
Soundset photos 2012: Performers, people, the evacuation, the after party, and more
How Rhymesayers set up the Soundset Festival: Minnesota's biggest annual hip-hop showcase enters its fifth year
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Screenshot from ZZZ Top.

See Also:
Review: Soundset 2012 at Canterbury Park, 5/27/12

There's good news for the Aesop Rock fans who've been impatiently itching for a follow-up to 2007's None Shall Pass: By all indications so far, Skelethon is going to be well worth the five-year wait. Aesop Rock's newest video, "ZZZ TOP," premiered on MTV today. It's the second single off the upcoming solo album -- being released by Rhymesayers on July 10 -- and it doesn't disappoint. More »

Related:
Soundset review, 2012
Soundset photos, 2012
Soundset 2012 evacuated amid tornado watch

The majesty and the drama of Soundset 2012 gets a reverent treatment in a new video featuring some of the main stages' highlights and a bounty of hip-hop fans. Captured with some high-end equipment this is an eight-minute document of Lupe Fiasco, Kendrick Lamar, Prof, Grieves, Danny Brown, and more of the primo entertainment from the day taken often mere inches away from the stage.


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Photo by Erik Hess

By Reed Fischer and Ian Traas

Soundset
With Atmosphere, Lupe Fiasco, Ghostface Killah & Raekwon, Astronautalis, Big K.R.I.T., and more
Canterbury Park Festival Field, Shakopee
Sunday, May 27, 2012

Related:
Soundset 2012 evacuated amid tornado watch
Soundset photos 2012

Up until about 7:20 p.m., the fifth installment of Rhymesayers' Soundset hip-hop festival was the perfect storm of culture, music, and social behavior on an unseasonably hot day. As we now know, the thing turned into a real weather hazard, and the day was cut short -- sort of. In the middle of Lupe Fiasco's set -- one of the wildest performances of the day -- the skies quickly turned dark and then stormy enough that warnings of a tornado and severe thunderstorms abruptly halted things (more on that here).


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Photo by Erik Hess

7:31 p.m.: Here's the warning put on the big screens on either side of the main stage.

Related:
Review: Soundset at Canterbury Park, 5/27/12

The fifth annual Soundset festival at Canterbury Park Festival Field in Shakopee came to an abrupt halt when a Tornado Watch was announced midway through Lupe Fiasco's performance. More »

With Soundset about to go off on Sunday at Canterbury Park, it's time for all of the online debate and heated discussions about the local hip-hop scene to grow silent in favor of the music itself, as the beats and rhymes of some of the best rap artists in the game are set to bring Minnesota hip-hop fans together and get Shakopee moving.

The Get Cryphy crew have done their part in bringing the focus back to the music, as they just dropped a fresh hour-long mix featuring all of the acts set to appear at Soundset 2012.

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Spencer Wirth-Davis

By Mike Madden

Related:
How Rhymesayers set up the Soundset Festival

One of the groups set to make their Soundset debut this year, the duo of the Tribe and Big Cats! was born out of a somewhat unlikely relationship. MC Chris "Truthbetold" Hooks spent parts of his youth in Chicago's south side and began rapping at just six years old, eventually tuning in to guys like Big Daddy Kane and Eric B. & Rakim; producer Spencer "Big Cats!" Wirth-Davis, on the other hand, grew up in St. Paul suburbs and studied classical music in high school to go along with tenures playing bass in various garage bands.

Formative differences aside, however, Truthbetold and Big Cats! have produced an ordinarily unified and idiosyncratic sound. On last December's Make Good, featuring appearances by the likes of Harlem's Smoke DZA and Twin Cities spitter MaLLy, the duo set the album off in directions at once trunk-thumping and silky ("Drive," "Stay High") and hazy and layered ("We Gone," "Jordan Numbers").

Gimme Noise caught up with Truthbetold to chat about learning to rhyme through his uncle's guidance, the Twin Cities' rap scene, and how TTxBC is approaching Sunday's big event.

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