Here’s an oldie but goody from Detroit R&B crooner Dwele. He’s been featured recently on Kanye’s “Flashing Lights” and Common’s “The People” singing hooks–which makes you think that Chicago MC’s have a soft spot for him. A lot of the love he gets from the hip-hop community has more to…
Miami Symphony April 27, 2008 The Lincoln Theatre Better Than: 100 years of symphonic solitude sung by Marquez himself. It’s not every night that one gets to hear a hundred year span of classical music played live; then again, it’s not every night that The Miami Symphony Orchestra hits one…
Washington Wizard forward DeShawn Stevenson is finding that out the hard way. In what seems like a feud that was on it’s way toward being a nonstory, Stevenson’s war of words with LeBron James just went to an unexpected level. Over the weekend, Jay-Z recorded a (rather funny) diss track…
Honda Civic Tour Panic at the Disco, Motion City Soundtrack, The Hush Sound, Phantom Planet Wednesday, April 23, 2008 The Fillmore Better than: waiting outside the venue in your min-van to pick up your 12-year-old daughter and her four best friends. I seem to have lost track of when shows…
Bonde Do Rolê Thursday, April 24, 2008 Studio A Better Than: Carnival at Rio. In a mish-mash of Western, Latin and African sounds, Brazilian quartet Bonde Do Rolê got the crowd shakin’ their respective asses last night as they introduced their new lineup after lead singer Marina Ribatski unexpectedly left…
I just got this press release forwarded to me so I apologize for getting this info to folks with such short notice. But it sounds like an alright festival and if bands want to be a part of it, reach out to the organizers asap. –Jonathan Cunningham CULTURA Festival ’08…
I like to think I’m a little more culturally savvy than your average cookie-cutter blond American girl. I’m a hookah pro. I love licorice from northern Europe. I can swear in at least six different languages. And I’ll drink alcohol that’s been imported from just about anywhere. Still, there’s something…
Navigating your way through the music industry as an independent artist isn’t easy. The road is typically filled with more negative experiences than positive ones and opportunities to get your music heard by the masses aren’t always readily available. At times, it seems like getting radio play as an indie…
Even by their own genre’s standards, Polish black/death metal outfit Behemoth sounds like a relentless hailstorm of jackhammer drumming and super-fast, abrasive riffing. As if the band’s whiteface outfits and anti-Christian artwork weren’t clear enough, the latest album is called The Apostasy, which means “renunciation of religion.” Thankfully, though, there’s…
Reggae music is rarely considered a genre in which artists are afraid to speak truth to power. The music has a storied tradition of rebellious singers, from Bob Marley to Burning Spear to Lucky Dube, who railed against society’s ills and often suffered persecution for speaking out on behalf of…
There was a time when I knew what I wanted to listen to. I was poor, but I bought CDs anyway, and I had stacks of them, purchased with enthusiasm and knowledge shared among friends. A pricey endeavor, sure. But once I discovered Napster and CD-burning, finances stopped counting. I…
It’s probably safe to say that nobody’s South By Southwest experience this year was as comprehensive as that of Paul Ford, an editor at Harper’s and a blogger at themorningnews.org. And here’s the thing — Ford never left New York City. Instead, he downloaded the SXSW 2008 Torrent File, which…
Passion + good music = respect. It’s a formula few rappers in today’s hip-hop climate seem to understand, much less use. Pontiac, Michigan, emcee One.Be.Lo is quickly positioning himself as one of the country’s more highly appreciated underground emcees, thanks in part to his ability to work said formula to…
We expect a lot from our indie-ethos, crossover pop stars nowadays, even from a duo as inspired as Gnarls Barkley, AKA DJ Danger Mouse and rapper/singer/preacher Cee-Lo. We expect guilt-free yet radio-worthy earworms such as “Crazy,” plus genuine pathos, groundbreaking production, and minimal amounts of filler, all of which Gnarls…
Though this Gonzalo Rubalcaba fellow is an ace jazz pianist originally from Cuba, don’t tag him a “Cuban” or “Afro-Cuban” jazz musician. While he’s been influenced by his homeland’s traditions, Rubalcaba’s approach has been likewise impacted by classical music and the whole post-WWII jazz continuum, from bop, to free, to…
The dense, crushing expansiveness of Pelican’s four-song debut EP was an incisive slice through heavy metal’s bloated corpse, with its pinnacle track — the appropriately titled “Mammoth” — being little more than a plunging meditation on a single bruising riff. Following that release with 2003’s Australasia album, Pelican proved they…
There’s always been something a little wacky about Jamaican dancehall legend Ninjaman. He emerged in the late 1980s as one of the hardest and rudest dancehall acts on the scene. Since then, his image has always been half gangster and half weirdo, but the hard-driving and unmistakably eerie music he…
Carlos Santana has a lot on his plate these days: He’s launching a chain of Mexican restaurants, appearing in Macy’s commercials to hype the line of women’s shoes he’s designed, and advocating a national holiday to honor labor leader César Chávez. But he still finds time now and then to…
For a red-hot decade, Kansas City’s the Wilders have been walking the line between pleasing the folk-festival contingent and the teamsters who warm the bar stools at local honky-tonks. Having already put their own righteous spin on traditional numbers, the next logical step for the quartet was to develop its…
When the latest 7-inch release from Howitzer showed up at the New Times office a month or so ago, it was an odd surprise. For starters, most bands don’t have enough cojones to send vinyl in the mail. So there’s all types of swagger attached to a band that does…
In the club culture of Las Olas Riverfront, among the booze and the miniskirts, you’ll find a wholly different atmosphere at Atmosphere Lounge. The Lounge is best known for its espresso, but the wine, beer, and live entertainment make this a sleeper destination for weekend night dwellers. Coffee shops that…
The Smoking Gun recently reported in a long, investigative entry that R&B singer Akon, who has built a career on making a huge deal out of his alleged criminal past, is not as bad as he says he is. Since the release of Akon’s 2004 debut, Trouble, the singer has…
