“Drive Me Crazy” by Don Yute featuring Amerika Six cops sit in patrol cars outside Diamonds Cabaret, a swank-meets-hood black strip club on the western, industrial edge of North Miami Beach. It’s just before midnight, and three security guards stand near the door. The club once had a bad reputation…
Ah, Uffie, the Ed Banger artist who claims she is from Miami originally but whose story doesn’t exactly add up. What we know is true is that Uffie at one point attended Nova High School in Davie, but she has admitted to moving around a lot as a child, so…
Our sister paper, the LA Weekly, reported this morning on some sad news for longtime local scene-watchers. The artist and musician Brad Stewart, a.k.a. Gidget Gein, was found dead yesterday in his home in Burbank. He was born and raised around Hollywood, Florida, and gained notoriety in the Nineties as…
So there’s a new mixtape DJ on the prowl in Broward County and she (that’s right, I said she) has a deft ear for good music. Her name is Miss Face, and she just released a red-hot digital download called “Face Smusher” which, when you hear these beats drop, will…
In ten distinctive but complementary entries, Berlin’s ~scape label explores an increasingly obvious link between dub techno and the U.K.-born attributes of dubstep on Round Black Ghosts. Label co-owner and celebrated electronic artist Pole helped assemble the compilation, which includes works from Pinch, Martyn, and Peverlist. Pole’s own “Alles Klar”…
“Roll It Gal” by Alison Hinds: For lovers of Caribbean music, Carnival Weekend 2008 is easily the best four-day weekend of the year. Folks representing the entire island chain are already beginning to pour into South Florida to participate in the festivities. There’s an almost palpable buzz floating around Broward…
Africa to Appalachia is one of those recordings that demonstrates — and celebrates — the fact that music from disparate cultures has more aspects in common than “separating” them. But Africa to Appalachia isn’t a dry, piously reverent lecture — it’s a meeting of open-eared musicians finding common ground and…
The third installment in Crammed Discs’ awesome series of “Congotronics” releases continues in the praiseworthy path of its predecessors, delivering yet another defiantly nonacademic album of African music. Just like the first “Congotronics” album, the unfuckwithably mind-blowing Konono N°1 disc that gave the series its title, this set from the…
For a buzz band, Blitzen Trapper is extremely modest. Instead of trying to overwhelm listeners with their awesomeness, singer/songwriter Eric Earley and crew create casually adventurous tracks that draw from American music in ways that seem familiar and fresh. “Sleepy Time in the Western World” opens the album with an…
“Spring Love” by Stevie B: Miguel Carver looks devilishly happy as he rounds the corner of the roller rink. He skates close to the inside of the oval, bent slightly forward, lost in his own world. The DJ spins a freestyle classic from 1988 — Stevie B’s “Spring Love.” It’s…
Charlie Pickett Bar Band Americanus – The Best of Charlie Picket And (Bloodshot) Both as a music addict and “critic,” I hear lots of music that slips into cult following-status and/or obscurity while less talented musicians reap the big rewards. Take South Floridian Charlie Pickett for example. Throughout the1980’s he…
According to a press release that showed up in my inbox this morning, pop icon Janet Jackson has indefinitely postponed her concert scheduled for tomorrow at the BankAtlantic Center due to ill health. Just a week and a half ago, Jackson postponed three shows in Montreal, Philadelphia, and Boston for…
So Miami-based super rapper/pop-star of the year Lil Wayne is now officially a blogger. He’s recently started a weekly blog over at ESPN.com about his opinions on sports and, so far, it’s actually enjoyable. The first post of his was a little dry but it gave a glimpse into how…
Maraca Lo Que Quiero Es Fiesta!!! (Ahi-Nama) On his first collection of new music in four years, Havana-based maestro Orlando “Maraca” Valle returns to the spotlight with a collection of tunes that basically celebrate life and the need to enjoy it to the fullest. As a former alum of Irakere…
The case of Charlie Pickett is one of rock ‘n’ roll’s classic stories of almost-was. The Dania Beach homeboy spent much of the ’80s working the road from here to the heartland, producing three highly acclaimed albums and an EP, and he garnered a rabid local following in the process…
So I’m on the phone with Sean Daley — better-known as the rapper Slug — who alongside his producer/beat-making partner, Anthony “Ant” Davis, forms Minnesota’s long-running hip-hop duo Atmosphere. For kicks, I’m reading Slug some reviews of Atmosphere’s latest album, When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold,…
I’ve always hated football. Maybe it’s because I personally suck at organized sports. Maybe it’s because I just never saw the appeal of watching a bunch of hulking idiots trying to break one another’s bones and making millions of dollars doing it. Football fans, I thought, were a low-brow pack…
I can remember DJ Laz being on the air at Power 96, in some form or another, since I was in elementary school in the early/mid-Nineties. Much like his home station itself, I really didn’t expect him to go anywhere. Still, Beasley Broadcast Miami, who owns Power 96 (and 99.9…
Onstage and in interviews, Lee “Scratch” Perry’s persona is a mix of giddy surrealism, folk wisdom, apocalyptic theology, and simple crudity (fart jokes, raw sex talk, etc.). Although there’s fun to be had in listening to him ramble, when you unpack his riffs, there are deep worries in there —…
Once upon a time, grasshopper, instrumental rock bands were common. Groups like the Ventures, Champs, Shadows, Dick Dale, and (the occasionally vocal) Link Wray & the Raymen rocked both sides of the Atlantic waithout the “benefit” of a singer. (The Who’s Pete Townshend remarked that were it not for Wray,…
It’s something of an understatement to say that Henry Rollins is one of the hardest-working men in show business. For the past quarter century, he’s averaged more than 100 shows a year in more countries than most people can identify on a map, and he’s covered more ground — politically,…
Metallica didn’t commit its biggest sin when it exposed its dirty laundry in gory, self-indulgent detail in the 2003 film Some Kind of Monster. No, Metallica disgraced itself 12 years earlier on the wretched “Black Album,” when it abandoned the thrash-metal art form it helped invent. Then the band insultingly…
