Born on hip-hop and driven delirious by dancehall’s sub-bass and garage’s A.D.D. beats, the UK genre grime is new enough to have more energy than it does discipline — which makes it both exhilarating and barely listenable. Vertically Challenged, the first stateside offering from eighteen-year-old London MC Lady Sovereign, suffers…
Kelly Osbourne, Ozzy Osbourne, Mary J. Blige, Andrea Bocelli, Ringo Starr, Phil Collins, Robert Downey Jr., Josh Groban, Elton John, Katie Melua, Pink, Gavin Rossdale, Gwen Stefani, Rod Stewart, Steven Tyler, and Velvet Revolver cover Eric Clapton’s mid-Nineties classic “Tears in Heaven” for Hurricane Katrina relief. And it’s even worse…
Follow your dreams and one day you’ll be rich like Twista and Pharrell, according to the pair on “Lavish,” a Neptunes production that’s as lovely as it is unoriginal (Bobby Valentino and his damn bongos have a lot to answer for). Twista and Pharrell whiz through status symbols and brand…
Make Believe might be too unashamedly mawkish for many old-school fans (A power ballad named “Hold Me”? Yeesh.), but the chorus for “Perfect Situation” shows that Rivers Cuomo can still knock out an ingratiating hook — as long as he doesn’t attach any words to it…
It’s bling love for Gwen Stefani on “Luxurious,” the fifth and second-best single from Love.Angel.Music.Baby. Gwen draws parallels between decadent love and material possessions, and so does the music — the Egyptian cotton reference weaves right into the sample of the Isley Brothers’ “Between the Sheets.” Yeah, it’s that tune…
Summiting the Rickenbacker Causeway on a bicycle at sunset offers a startling take on Miami. Whitewashed skyline juts like an artificial reef from Biscayne Bay, which stretches far below and southward into endless Atlantic. Cars whiz by indifferently. From the peak of the causeway’s towering hump, two scruffy cyclists take…
Though less than a decade has passed since 1998, it seems like a lifetime ago. There was a Democrat in the White House and a robust economy, and the greatest threat to national security arose from a little stain on a blue dress. It was also the year America was…
“Mixing pop and politics, he asks me what the use is/I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses.” — Billy Bragg, “Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards” Musicologists will argue about the beginnings of politically conscious music, but a thumbnail sketch of its life span might look something like this:…
If Madonna were half the intellectual she colors (sorry, colours) herself as, she’d be embarrassed by her own lyrics. The cliché-ridden, pretentious Confessions on a Dance Floor attempts to transplant Madonna’s inner life onto a spinning platform under a disco ball. But a loud club, after all, is a terrible…
Alt-country’s answer to Frank Abagnale, Will Oldham has recorded under noms de plume such as Palace Brothers, Pushkin, and Superwolf. Although his work under these monikers has gravitated toward eleventh-hour dustbowl despair and pre-ironic acoustic minimalism, Oldham has spent much of the 21st Century loitering as the warbling country-gent Bonnie…
The debut album from viola player and disco-dork-cum-regular-dork Kelley Polar, Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens, is a letter of acceptance to all who cut loose on the dance floor but probably shouldn’t. See, Polar is the quintessential outsider (he was kicked out of Juilliard), and Gardens’ charm is paradoxical…
In what will inevitably go down as one of 2005’s most unlikely collaborations, Irish songstress Sinéad O’Connor teamed up with legendary Jamaican reggae producers/musicians Sly and Robbie to make Throw Down Your Arms, O’Connor’s new album and her first release since she announced she was quitting the music business for…
Ninja High School shoots for a middle ground between pop culture’s flash and trash and agitprop’s polemical slash and burn. The arty rap/rock band from Toronto hoists Eighties synth squeak, early No Wave sax noodling, and booty-bouncing Miami bass beats atop rapid-fire lyrical rants laced with politics, wicked humor, and…
Brazilian composer and saxophonist Livio Tragtenberg has reassembled his Nervous City Orchestra and is set to take Miami audiences on a second trip around the world. And though Nervous City may ostensibly be dubbed world music — for lack of a better description — Tragtenberg’s project has more in common…
Leslie Hall is the reigning female geek of 2005. A graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the 23-year-old rapper is riding the crest of a dork-chic phenomenon that began with Napoleon Dynamite and will inevitably end with an entirely new generation of system administrators. And…
Life is more than poppin’ bubbly, clockin’ on the corner, or even riding on dubs. Life is gray days you can’t put on a billboard, capture in a video, or corral into a four-second hook. And since the sudden seclusion of Lauryn Hill, you’ve been hard-pressed to find this side…
At what should have been the biggest moment of his career, Jorge Drexler was nowhere in sight. It was Oscar night, 2004, and Drexler’s contribution to The Motorcycle Diaries soundtrack, “Al Otro Lado del Rio,” was nominated for Best Song. But the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences board…
Hypnotic keyboard work, richly organic production, and a sexy though at times plaintive voice put John Legend squarely in residence in the house Stevie Wonder built. Songs such as “Ordinary People,” “Refugee (When It’s Cold Outside),” and “It Don’t Have to Change” are among the most addictive and satisfying R&B…
Wearing a black bowler hat and baggy pants, Latin hip-hop MC Platano steps inside Hoy Como Ayer and struts through the crowd. He settles near the back of the club, where he anxiously awaits the stage while watching the SoFla Kings finish their set. The Kings (consisting of MCs Bombillo…
Some MCs are dancers and dodgers — they’re like Barry Sanders on the microphone, and it’s hard to get a grip on them. Bun B is not one of those rappers. As befits his stocky frame, he’s more in the vein of Jerome Bettis and Larry Csonka, a human cannonball…
As though the Orion nebula shines from her hearth, Kate Bush has always bridged the cozy with the stratospheric. As the title of her first work in twelve years suggests, the two-disc set Aerial strays a little further into the ether than some of her previous work. While the sweepingly…
Micah Blue plays folk blues in a style both archaic and timeless. He made a name for himself in the Boston punk scene of the Eighties and Nineties with bands like Pinkerton Thugs and Out Cold. In the new century he dropped out for a while before returning with 2002’s…
