The Sunday New York Times’ Arts & Leisure section has a great centerpiece slice-of-life piece on Alpine, New Jersey, which the likes of Fabolous, Lil’ Kim, Diddy and other Hip-Hop celebrities are said to inhabit. Diddy forked out a cool $7 million for his "krib" (described below) and his mentor Andre Harrell describes why he chose the locale:

The house he recently bought here, for a reported $7 million, is a
17,000-square-foot hilltop mansion with eight bedrooms, nine bathrooms,
indoor and outdoor pools (complete with waterfall), racquetball and
basketball courts, a home theater, a wine cellar and a six-car garage.

The
rapper-turned-C.E.O. Andre Harrell says it all started in nearby
Englewood. “The first attraction was the glamour of the Hollywood in
Jersey that Eddie Murphy
created,” he said. When Mr. Harrell moved to Alpine in 1990, however,
he found something quite different. “The trees and the rugged kind of
nature had a serenity. If you came from an environment of any sort of
urban blight, it made you feel like you’ve finally made it and you’re
at peace. It was so serene and storybooklike. It was the kind of thing
you grew up watching on television. You said, ‘O.K., this is what the
American dream is.’ ”

AllHipHop has also posted my interviews with DJ Skee and Bay Area rapper Milano, who is back after riding the bench during No Limit Records’ heyday as a member of the Sons of Funk.

Shout out to Octavia Bostick of AHH/Ballyhoo Public Relations for arranging the interviews and helping transcribe them.

-Slav

Slav Kandyba writes Hip-Hop Files, a hip-hop journalism column. For previous posts, go to Hip-Hop Files.