The weekend is about to start in a few hours, and what better way to get it started than with a DJ mix courtesy of Tom Laroc? Laroc released his State of the Union mixtape yesterday via the Rakontur blog. The mix features tracks by Ludacris, Bob Marley, Jay-Z and…
In this week’s issue of the Miami New Times, I talk to DJ I-Dee about his debut full-length original album, Solitude. It’s a solid album, but one of its best tracks didn’t make it onto the CD, thanks to sample clearance issues. It’s called “The Right,” and features one of…
We are seriously sorry for the previously omitted “On the List,” but last weekend in our book qualified as a bust — there was absolutely nothing worth doing. If you were smart, you picked up a book or something of educational value. There was also that darn Ike. Everyone was…
I’m labeling this post as Bossip because thus far, news of a new Kanye album is still a rumor. But according to various retailers (Amazon and Target.com specifically) who must be trying to drum up anticipation for the holiday shopping sprees already, rapper Kanye West may have a new album…
In the span of about two weeks, Patterson Hood got divorced, had his car stolen, and watched the band he started with Mike Cooley, Adam’s House Cat, break up. This was back in 1991. Shortly thereafter, he and Cooley were eating dinner and listening to an elderly couple who looked…
In 1989, Lloyd Dobler held an obnoxiously large boom box over his head outside Diane Court’s window and blasted “In Your Eyes” to prove to her how much he loved her. Somehow this was viewed as romantic by an entire generation of women who now expect equally grandiose gestures from…
With a sound that’s heavily rooted in New Orleans jazz, the Stanton Moore Trio could be fine on its own just sticking to that style of music. Instead, the three opt to pepper their music with well-placed traces of funk and jam-band rifts. That makes sense since Moore, who plays…
It’s a hot Saturday night at Miami’s Transit Lounge, and it seems like, temperature-wise, there’s no relief in sight. Just as a breeze starts to blow through the semi-open air bar, Miami’s hotter-than-lava Latin funk band, Suénalo, takes the stage and cranks up the heat even more. Instantly, everyone inside…
After a nearly two-year hiatus, experimental progressive-rock act Finch has reunited. The group began touring and released a four-song EP earlier this year. Known for explosive, hardcore melodic music, which the band describes as the sound of “a dump truck falling off of the Empire State Building,” this California-based quintet…
The DJ/producer duo known as L.A. Riots are definitely products of 2k8, an amped-up redux of French house and new electro mashed through the hyperspeed of the blogosphere. Making music together for just under two years, the twosome of Daniel LeDisko and Jo B quickly garnered massive downloads of their…
In my first month of living deep in the heart of Wilton Manors, I stopped at Georgie’s Alibi for a drink — and found myself to be the only young female for miles. After about an hour, someone approached me, asked if I was lost, and offered to direct me…
Is Richard Ashcroft talking about his bandmates when he sings “sometimes life seems to tear us apart/I don’t wanna let you go” on the Verve’s latest album? The band did break up prematurely in 1999 and finally reunited last year. Whatever the case, if the Verve ever suffered from any…
Rappers and producers who appear on the Game’s third album, L.A.X., include… everybody. There’s Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Scott Storch, Cool & Dre, Travis Barker, Keisha Cole, Ludacris, DJ Toomp, and Ne-Yo, for starters. OK, so none of the Shady/Aftermath crowd is here, but the point is, Game worked with…
The title of Ra Ra Riot’s full-length debut, The Rhumb Line, is a nautical term, and there’s a definite oceanic feel to the undulating cello, violin, and bass lines found on the release. But it’s clear that — unlike other string-heavy collectives that use the nautical to quite literal ends…
Jamaican singer and songwriter Winston Rodney, AKA Burning Spear, did some of the best roots reggae of the 1970’s (we hipsters called it just “reggae” back then), loaded with Rastafarian anger at the forces of oppression, gutsy island soul, and deep grooves. But now that it’s 2008, what is Burning…
For Miami-based guitarist and bandleader DJ Le Spam (AKA Andrew Yeomanson), his band’s name, the Spam Allstars, has nothing to do with the famed meat substitute. Instead, what the moniker actually represents is this eclectic act’s mission “to blend improvisational electronic elements and turntables with Latin, funk, and dub to…
Boston’s punk quintet Street Dogs makes music that’s fit for throwing back pints, raising sturdy fists into the air, and singing along to working-class battle-cry pub anthems. Founded by vocalist Mike McColgan (an ex-firefighter, former lead singer of Dropkick Murphys, and Gulf War vet), the band carries a stomp-and-mosh ska-punk…
Back in 1993, John Joseph Cullen, the local MC known as Butta Verses, left the grimy streets of his native Bronx, New York, to surf and attend classes in sunny South Florida. But instead of catching that perfect wave, the now-33-year-old b-boy ended up frequenting spots like the Sugar Shack…
It’s so ingrained in Fort Lauderdale culture that it’s often passed over for being too familiar. Like the palm trees and the art deco, some locals don’t give it as much as a second glance. But it’s there. It’s practically always been there. The Elbo Room spent its 70th summer…
If you saw the full-length version of the Kim Kardashian sex-tape, for some ladies, this is a no brainer. But VH1 is in the process of starting a new television show called, So You Want to Date Ray J? One can only suspect that it’s all about lining up eligible…
Miramar-based rapper Rahsaan is quickly showing himself to be one of the hardest working MCs in South Florida. The Georgetown, Guyana-born, Brooklyn/Kendall raised lyricist has been on a tear lately, first hopping on the Rock the Bells tour with his crew, the Outfit, then linking up with Scheme Magazine to…
For such a relatively short existence, few bands have excited such extreme reactions in the heavy music world as the Orlando-based quartet Trivium. Formed in the earlier part of this decade while the members were still teenagers, the band’s 2003 full-length debut, Ember to Inferno, messed with the metal heterodoxy…
