Here’s an old school Miami bass joint from way back in the day. Some of you might remember Half Pint from the early ’90s. He was a short, stocky, and permanently oiled-up little rapper with lots of spunk and stamina. He didn’t release a whole lot of material, but his…
A few of us over here at Crossfade (okay, mostly me) were excited about the upcoming Boy George gig scheduled for July 25 at Club Cinema in Pompano. So, um, I was totally bummed out when I just received an official missive from Boy George’s camp announcing that the entire…
This is one of the few times you’ll ever hear me defend Soulja Boy on anything! I’m not a fan of his music or his immaturity, although at the age of 17, I can definitely understand the latter. Recently, long-time rapper, and current Law and Order cast member Ice-T recorded…
Montserrat She doesn’t sound very concerned with how many bodies will – or won’t be – occupying seats inside the Byron Carlyle in Miami Beach on Wednesday night. “That’s out of my control,” says Spanish soprano singer Montserrat. “As long as the people there accept my work and I’m able…
It’s fashionable, isn’t it, pulling an In Rainbows and giving away your music or letting people pick their own price. It’s also fashionable to like the Pittsburgh DJ/producer/remixer guy Greg Gillis, better known as Girl Talk… Sooooo is it any surprise you can download the latest Girl Talk CD for…
The Counting Crows kick off their summer tour at the end of July in Virginia Beach. It doesn’t roll down to South Florida until October 4 at the Cruzan Ampitheatre in West Palm Beach, but it’ll still be hot as hell then so we’ll still count it as summer. As…
If you haven’t heard of the Fort Lauderdale based hip-hop group, Major League, they’ve been making a strong name for themselves as one of the hardest working groups in South Florida for close to a year now. They gig all over town, throw a weekly every Friday at the White…
VH1 reported yesterday that Lil Wayne finally confirmed the rumors floating around that he’s forming a “supergroup” with T-Pain. In typical Weezy, uh, succinct fashion, he confirmed it thusly: “Yeah.” (T-Pain, however, was a little more talkative on the matter.) Still, that’s just two people; technically it would take at…
True hometown hero (Miami born and raised!) Desmond Child gets inducted today into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in New York. Boasting almost three decades in the biz, Child may not quite be a household name – but the stars for whom he’s crafted megawatt hits are. Enjoy this streaming…
Whether it’s American Airlines Arena or the BankAtlantic Center, it seems America’s sports teams are more than willing to pimp their reputation out to anybody for a buck these days, and now our country’s rock stars are lining up to show they’re just as big of whores as the sports…
One could say that Jamaican singer Papa Winnie had a serendipitous hand in the creation of O Rappa, the Rio de Janeiro-based reggae/funk-rock band that performs this weekend in Pompano Beach. In 1993, Winnie arrived in Brazil for an extended tour with no backing musicians. A pickup band was quickly…
It’s hard to believe that 2008 is already halfway gone. There’s no need to lament the New Year’s resolutions you thought you’d keep; six months from now, we’ll all be holiday shopping again and reading year-end top-ten lists of the best albums of 2008. Since it’ll all be a blur…
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. And nowhere is this more evident than in a Southern small-town thrift store, where beer helmets and broken furniture end up as impromptu amusement-park rides on lawns and libidinous nights. It’s the place in a college town where students and townie kids alike…
My dad occasionally speaks of our family clan’s unluckiness: “We never win anything.” I’ve never asked why he thinks that, but knowing my eccentric assortment of relatives, I don’t doubt that one of them could have pissed off some voodoo queen enough to get the whole family hexed. Whether luck…
One of the joys of being a music critic is that every day, you get albums from all over the world. Every week, new music shows up in my mailbox from around the globe, and most of it is stuff I think audiophiles around these parts need to hear. The…
Even beyond his 1991 death, Miles Davis remains one of the world’s most influential musicians and bandleaders. Davis impacted the jazz world first with his groundbreaking approaches in the 1950s and early ’60s. Arguably, his electric period (roughly from 1970’s Bitches Brew onward) directly impacted rock, funk, punk, and electronica…
Seeing Sounds is the third album from N.E.R.D., the “artist” project from the members of production team the Neptunes (Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo), plus their buddy Shay Haley. It’s the compact-disc equivalent of an ad campaign trying to appeal to the Red Bull/sorta grown and totally sexy/BlackBerry generation. “We…
She may give the impression of being the sensitive type, but Kris Delmhorst isn’t your father’s folkie. Nor for that matter is she is one of your dad’s old-school singer/songwriter types, i.e., the James Taylor/Jackson Browne/Joni Mitchell brood that defined the genre back in the ’70s. That’s not to deny…
The hip-hop disorder that sampling producer/arrangers the Herbaliser (Jake Wherry and Ollie Teeba) loaded onto the FabricLive 26 compilation two years ago stands in sharp contrast to their previous LP’s spy-film grooves. It was a clear sign that the British duo were exploring new sounds, and real fans of the…
Destined to be a stoner classic, Tha Carter III should silence critics who think Lil Wayne can’t make a cohesive album. His vision and self-confidence have improved exponentially since the humorless mishmash of styles that was Tha Carter II. Instead of trying to record the hardest Southern gangsta album of…
For a long time, there was a roadside billboard in Little Haiti that read “Soul Is Waterproof.” It was an ode to Hurricane Katrina survivors, and those words ring true when it comes to one of New Orleans’ finest exports, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. It’s been a force in…
Like Green Day, Rancid was once reviled as a band of poseurs by much of the punk-rock intelligentsia but is now seen as a standard-bearer for the genre — and sheer persistence is a big reason. Early discs such as 1995’s And Out Come the Wolves were so derivative of…
