Music

Last month marked the 20th anniversary of the release of Sign o’ the Times, the album regarded by many critics and fans as Prince’s creative high-water mark. Due to the animus Prince feels toward Warner Bros. (the label that released the double-LP opus… only after insisting it be cut back…

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…