dirt-hustle
v.— «He used to press up his own CDs and hand them out for free, just to get a buzz going. The practice of “dirt-hustlin,” as it’s called, is a time-honored tradition in the Bay Area music industry. With no major-label infrastructure to support the hundreds of independent rap artists trying to make a name for themselves, rappers, DJs, promoters, and producers have had to be creative, engineering DIY schemes and networking with other like-minded individuals.» —“Got Flow? No Dough? Dirt-Hustle!” by Eric K. Arnold East Bay Express (Oakland, California) Sept. 20, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
How do you transform ancient Chinese script for use in the modern age? English uses a keyboard with just 26 letters, but the first Chinese typewriter looked like a small table under a huge disk with more than 4,000 characters. A new book chronicles...
What’s up with ketchup? The shifting history and spelling of the name of this condiment. For centuries, ketchup was a fishy sauce originating in Asia—the tomatoes came only later! Plus, a new book shows what’s lost when a language dies: when there...