Can we say Alex Cruz is a walking conglomerate? “My whole life, I’ve always been into something, and I end up getting into it so much that it becomes an inconvenience financially,” says the 26-year-old entrepreneur, co-owner of the new Fort Lauderdale-based music studio/clothing store Hi-Top Studios. “So I turn…
Lady Saw claimed she’s “too nice fi inna cock fight” and “too rich to argue with bitch” on 2004’s “Man Is the Least,” but that was all chat compared to her eighth LP, Walk Out. “Make me introduce you to mi cutlass,” she threatens one heifer on “Chat to Mi…
Boston-based music group Willard Grant Conspiracy sure knows how to make a music critic’s job tough. Whereas most bands can be blithely described with a few words, WGC practically requires a new genre tag. Stylistically, it’s got strong folk-rock and rootsy overtones but isn’t exactly Americana. Instead, WGC couches the…
Leave it to Trent Reznor — one of the few musicians who doesn’t need to hype his art by this point — to trump every other viral marketer with the promotional campaign for the new Nine Inch Nails album Year Zero. Besides leaking MP3s via USB drives left on bathroom…
There’s absolutely no reason to show up to a reggae show on time. You can almost guarantee that no matter when such a gig is supposed to start, it won’t get going until a couple of hours later. Maybe more. And such was the case at Monday morning’s band show…
An ordinary Wednesday at Alligator Alley, 9 p.m.: Felix Pastorius is warming up on his bass, nimble-fingered, notes flying all over the place. His twin brother, Julius, finishes lashing his drum kit together and sits, working rapidly into a soft groove. The twins’ rhythms work against each other at first,…
Working as the head of a record company is a difficult job. You’ve got artists to manage, sales figures to monitor, record samples to clear, budgets to attend to, and that’s all before noon. Try sticking to this regimen and being an artist on your own record label and you’ve…
It’s a Tuesday evening, and local radio station 101.5 FM is playing Corinne Bailey Rae’s smash single “Girl Put Your Records On” for the umpteenth time. It’s the only song that most American audiences know her by, but she’s touring the States all summer long trying to change that. The…
Those who think that pop-music junkies represent music fandom’s lowest-common denominator should read the comments left on iTunes about Avril Lavigne’s cheerleader-chant-from-hell single “Girlfriend.” Namely, this astute one: “The Avril I looked up to was her own person, and proud of it. She wasn’t afraid to act like herself, and…
It’s not strange that Prodigy of the duo Mobb Deep’s second solo release, Return of the Mac, is a gritty, New York-centric quest to maintain order in an increasingly hip-pop driven world. What is surprising is that, after signing on with 50 Cent’s crumbling G-Unit empire and dropping the watered-down…
Forget the Foo Fighters — the true champ when it comes to blending melody and mayhem is a tumultuous trio known as Dinosaur Jr. These prototypical hardcore heroes were making heads bop and torsos flail back when Dave Grohl was still taking his cues from Kurt Cobain. The group’s bassist,…
Local MC Wrekonize has recently dropped his latest mixtape, Elevator Music, and it’s so far one of the strongest hip-hop releases of the year. That’s not exclusive to independent artists, as the tracks on Elevator Music are solid enough to compete with anything put out by a major record label…
The new CD by Phoenix-based industrial metal band the Iris sounds like a sonic blueprint for a band that’s finding its sound and getting hotter by the minute. But the blueprint isn’t new — Marilyn Manson, Deftones, and a dozen other bands drew it. What’s great about The Vanity Fair…
As singer for namesake L.A. fusion metal band Otep as well as a self-published poet, Otep Shamaya very much views herself as a serious artist and Otep’s music as serious art. Most of the band’s fervent fans, with whom Otep interacts extensively online, agree with that idea. And right now,…
Back in early 2003, the Killers were just another name littered in the demo piles of A&R departments across the country. Few people in the music industry knew much about the Las Vegas-based rock group or if it would amount to anything beyond being a four-man band with a heap…
A remastered reissue of an out-of-print underground hip-hop classic, Ruff Draft is the late, great J Dilla at a creative apex. It took him a week to turn the whole thing out, but that was more than enough time to unleash a maelstrom of lo-fi breakbeat jams that paid tribute…
After a six-year recording hiatus, Redman returns to the mic with the engaging and stimulating, yet not particularly memorable, release of Red Gone Wild. Delayed and pushed back for more than a year while lodged on the proverbial Def Jam shelf, this album is plagued by the same poor promotion…
Sharon Stone makes another movie, bands of the 1978-1982 epoch reunite, technology advances, trans fats are banned — yet the Fall perseveres, with Mark E. Smith the sole remaining founding member. Tart-tongued leader Smith still rants like he’s got the world’s number, though portions of Reformation find phone-it-in weariness creeping…
Warning: This will hurt, but kindly access your memory banks and retrieve two commercials: “Seagram’s golden wine coooolers/They’re wet and they’re dry/My My My” and that heinous Chili’s bit — not the faux doo-wop tune but the smoky blues number — “Chili’s… baby back riiiiiiibs…” Got ’em? Good — because…
Mixtape hip-hop is starting to get old. Most of the people putting out mixtapes don’t realize that these de facto compilation albums used to be tools of the trade for DJs only. So it’s good to see real mix-masters like the folks at Feel Good Entertainment come out swinging on…
Turns out there’s a simple recipe for becoming South Florida’s most talked-about new band, and it’s so simple, you’ll smack yourself for not thinking of it first. 1) Start with a 28-year-old economics student who looks a lot like Paul Giamatti, wearing glasses and dorky ties, an acid-tripping smile, and…
A gigantic UFO descending to the stage that puts P-Funk’s Mothership to shame. Huge inflatable aliens and Santa Clauses. Dancing bears and rabbits. Gyrating strippers. Balloons galore. Silly String shooting out of cannons. Giant foam fists. Roadies dressed as superheroes. Nearly as much confetti as Times Square on New Year’s…
