Mr. Knowledge Reigns Supreme Over Nearly Everyone isn’t just any indie-label rapper. This 1986 new-school graduate has become certifiably old-school as he nears his 20th anniversary of MCing professionally. Having renounced the path of criminal-mindedness after his DJ, Scott La Rock, was senselessly murdered 17 years ago, KRS has blazed…
At a dance party at the Fox and Hound in Fort Lauderdale last year, just as the DJ put on Dre and Snoop’s “Gin and Juice,” a young man casually slipped me a CD. He looked deep into my glassy, alcohol-fogged eyes and said, “Few DJs have mastered the very…
With a concert festival named Projekt Revolution, there is an implied guarantee that madness will ensue at said event. Why? Only the truly mad would switch out the letter c for the letter k in the word Project. Consider it the illegitimate child who was conceived when Lollapalooza, Warped Tour,…
At a recent Saturday night rock show at the Billabong Pub (3000 Country Club Ln., Pembroke Park), two sports fans were overheard arguing about Mets catcher Mike Piazza and dissecting his stats. It started getting hot. That is, until Piazza’s defender laid it all on the line: Look, I’ve made…
On a recent Wednesday, if you were playing (or being played) at Voodoo Lounge’s ladies night and looked past sweating ice buckets, through the dance floor, and to the DJ table above, you would have seen Cato K — baggy jeans, T-shirt, baseball cap — spinning his South Beach mix…
It was such a weird, surreal thing when emo became a commodity.” So says Rjyan Kidwell. For anyone familiar with the IDM-cum-menacing glitch-hop of his more notable alias Cex, this reflection might be surprising at first. But on second thought, it’s not. The 22-year-old Baltimore native’s inner conflict embodies emo…
His 2003 full-length, Leave Luck to Heaven, still induces compulsive gyration in even the most discriminating clubbin’ hipsters. This year, Detroit micro-house darling Matthew Dear returns with his extended EP, Backstroke. Like the three states of matter, Backstroke travels through phases of solid, liquid, and gas. Dear swiftly stimulates the…
The pop smorgasbord on Beenie Man’s previous major-label releases, 2000’s Art and Life and 2002’s Tropical Storm, disguised the vocal vigor of one of dancehall reggae’s most charismatic artists. But on his first authentic dancehall album in years, Back to Basics, he displays an impressive, at times astonishing DJ flow,…
Guess who has more gold and platinum records than any MC in the history of rap? Todd “Too $hort” Shaw, that’s who. It takes a lot more than just repeated usage of the b word to achieve that kind of success, especially considering how much the rap game has changed…
Listening to this Britpop band’s debut CD is like enjoying a perfectly dry martini only to discover that the olive is rotten. Playing the part of the olive is lead singer Greg Gilbert, whose voice takes disturbing turns from ethereal falsetto to raspy growl. If he stayed aloft — making…
The CD cover for Georgia blues rock quintet Delta Moon is truly weird. A bearded man wearing only overalls and a grin stands in a field of flowers holding a guitar. Behind him are two green, glowing aliens and a perfectly Photoshopped UFO in a menacing sky. It made it…
“It’s hard to say. Back then, it was all about having huge hair and adoring (sometimes-underage) blonds worshiping you. These days, hair is also important but in a completely different way. It’s all about arty mod cuts, lead male singers having the fashion sense of female lead singers, and adoring…
Every Thursday night in July, the Factory, that bastion of all things spandex and neon, hosted a Rock en Español showcase. Now it’s decided to continue it. Not quite sure what the REE-volution is all about? Take some metal, punk, or good ol’ rock ‘n’ roll, then add some Latin…
Of all the bands swearing devotion to the Sonics/Stones/Stooges holy trinity of garage rock, the Hives have always seemed to have the most fun. Unhindered by the Strokes’ penchant for rock-star cliché or the White Stripes’ Machiavellian creepiness, the Hives reveled in the simple pleasures of three chords, a bare-bones…
Do you own wind chimes? Do you have an obscene amount of candles in your house? You might be a Bebel Gilberto fan. But that’s not to say the Brazilian chanteuse is just for folks who read all of Oprah’s book-club selections. Hell, no. Gilberto is, in a word, smooth…
The CoolJunkie DJ Spin Off is like American Idol for DJs. Check their steez at Crobar all month long, as new DJs throw down mixes for your vodka-and-tonic-drinkin’ ass in hopes of being the next big thing. You might get to see the next Paul VanOakenDyk or something. Think of…
The following conversation was heard on the lawn at the Cure show, between two 30-something professionals: Man number one: Did you see that movie Jackass? Man number two: Yeah, pretty funny. Man number one: Whatever! I was pissed. I was doing that stuff in college years before those guys. I…
When people talk about “old school” sounds, they’re likely referring to styles indigenous to the mid-1970s or early ’80s (and maybe even the ’90s; writer Harlan Ellison lamented that today’s youth have no sense of history: “They’re nostalgic for what they had for breakfast.”). But singer Ricky Fanté is so…
There seems no respite from New York’s relentless insistence on musical relevance. Yes, we’re aware of this dance-punk, post-funk, electro-crash thing you do so well, over and over again. Still, bands like the Fever try to add some inspired swagger to the overdone sashay. You might’ve heard the catchy-as-hell club…
Sometimes to move forward, you have to step back. Shying away from the cracked, free-form jams of 2002’s Phrenology, the Roots return to the more traditional boom-bap-cum-Native Tongues aesthetic of their previous work on The Tipping Point. Tracks such as “Stay Cool” and “Boom,” carry the torch from Phrenology, but…
In the mid- to late ’90s, Armand Van Helden was the name in American progressive trance and house, penning hits such as “U Don’t Know Me” and “Witch Doktor” while remixing tracks by everyone from Puff Daddy to the Rolling Stones. His two post-millennial LPs met with tepid critical press…
The juxtaposition of cowboy and hippie imagery on the cover of the Atomic Cowboys¹ Wake Up! CD is indicative of the band¹s socially conscious mix of country and alternative rock. These guys aren¹t some fly-the-flag-or-yer-a-sissy hicks, nor are they sloganeering causeheads. They¹re Atomic Cowboys, damn it! It¹s no fluke that…
