King Tee is on the beach in California backed by a 12-foot wall of sound. His DJ, a squad of bikini girls, and some homies rally up for the music video to his song “Bass,” an early Compton gangsta boogie track from 1987. Later, the Notorious B.I.G. would tell friends…
Miami and Kaskade have kind of a special thing going. On last year’s Freaks of Nature tour, Miami’s sold-out event at Bayfront Amphitheater was the game-changer. We set the tone for the rest of the experience, and in the artist’s mind, it was a new peak for his musical career…
J. Cole and Wale What Dreams May Come Tour James L. Knight Center, Miami Tuesday, September 10, 2013 Better Than: Any evening when Rick Ross doesn’t suddenly emerge from the darkness. Which is most nights for us. J. Cole and Wale are both men who, only a handful of years…
Buy kicks. Guzzle drank. Go hard like the motherfuckin’ Bawse. In 11 days, Sneaker Pimps will be back in the 305. So naturally, the “world’s largest sneaker show,” in cahoots with buy-sell-trader DunkxChange and Monster Energy Drink, has signed up our city’s biggest ballin’ rap gang — Rick Ross and…
Black Flag With Good for You Grand Central, Miami Saturday, September 7, 2013 Better Than: Seeing Keith Morris sing Rollins-era Black Flag songs. To expect a performance by the 2013 incarnation of Black Flag to provide the same animalistic, confrontational assault of yore would be to live in a state…
The weekend may have flown by as quickly as the end of summer. But hey, in your mind it’s still Friday. And with shows from J. Cole’s smooth rap to Maroon 5’s rockin’ serenades to Depeche Mode’s dark pop, everyday will feel like a weekend bash. Here are the five…
Peace, love, unity, and respect are words that ravers throw around a lot. But rarely do you meet a partier who steadfastly lives by that code, let alone a producer, like Kaskade, whose music so honestly captures the PLUR spirit. He’s quickly become one of the most beloved producer-DJs on…
To call Lapalux’s music simply lo-fi is just lazy. There are far better ways to describe the British musician’s work — warm, full-bodied, and richly textured. And now with a proper full-length, Nostalchic, released via Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder label, Lapalux (AKA Stuart Howard) has shown that his sound may only…
DJ-producer M A N I K (AKA Chris Manik) might be best known as an uhntz-uhntz purveyor on the global party circuit. But from the beginning, he also set himself apart as a serious musician — a classically trained production wunderkind with a knack for arrangement and melodic hooks, not…
Being the electronic music geeks that we are here at Crossfade, we’ve been following the “post-dubstep” confluence of house and bass music in the UK with major interest for some time now. Influences from jungle, drum ‘n’ bass, UK garage, and other styles are seeping into house’s four-on-the-floor mold, injecting…
Andrés Cepeda is one seriously hopeless romantic. Who else would moan something like, “When there is no one left in this world to love you, I will be here to tell you I will wait for you until I die”? That kind of over-the-top passion is what the Colombian crooner’s…
Bass, the final frontier. For a venue that’s made its name giving house heads and the trance family a place to party into the wee morning hours, Space is just beginning to open its doors to the newer, rawer rhythms of the trap movement. For the last couple of months,…
Being a music journalist in Miami is what one might call a “sick deal.” For starters, you get press passes to Ultra Music Festival with the opportunity to cover almost every artist on the forefront of electronic music. Some might say it’s enviable, but it’s honestly more of a headache…
The first five days of the week are the hardest… Well, at least you only have to endure four days of cubicle dust, paper cuts, and nosy coworkers this week! And if that isn’t enough to put an encouraging smile on your face, maybe some of the shows going down…
Robin Thicke and Pharrell As part of the BleauLive concert series Fontainebleau Miami Beach Sunday, September 1, 2013 Better Than: Any typical Sunday funday that includes a concert and cocktails. Is there anything better than a long weekend spent at the iconic Fontainebleau Miami Beach? It hasn’t been voted one…
Bruno Mars Moonshine Jungle Tour With Fritz & the Tantrums American Airlines Arena, Miami Friday, August 30, 2013 It all started with the steady, pounding bass and jungle-like beat of the drums. As ladies in tribal-printed leggings, floral blouses, and tight royal blue dresses, and dudes in black blazers, blue…
For ten years, Gainesville indie-rock outfit Holopaw has been putting out music, first through the perennial indie label Sub Pop and more recently via Misra Records. The band dropped Academy Songs, Volume I earlier this year, which is an oddity in the era of the single track. It follows a…
“Hey, hey, hey, you don’t need no papers.” Just some free tix, baby. This Labor Day weekend, debonair pop dudes Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams will be bringing those “Blurred Lines” to the Fontainebleau Miami Beach for a mid-afternoon Bleau Live concert bash. And yes, we’ve got some gratis passes…
Wale’s third full-length release, The Gifted, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 when it dropped in July. But the DC rapper still hasn’t scored a platinum single, and he’s cool with that fact. Because in an era dominated by quick hits, he’s into making albums. And eventually, he…
It’s been almost ten years since Goodie Mob’s Cee Lo, Big Gipp, Khujo, and T-Mo last released an album together. And a lot has changed. Their funky, forward-thinking approach helped put Southern hip-hop on the map in the ’90s and early 2000s. And in their absence, the South has continued…
The Black Madonna (AKA Marea Vierge-Noire) has a bone to pick with the current state of dance music, particularly online digital distribution and the decline of analog audio formats like vinyl and tape. After all, she came up during the golden age of rave, before corporate “EDM” co-opted electronic dance…
Which way to III Points? Just buy a ticket, follow the noise, and take a sharp turn toward Wynwood in exactly 36 days. Yesterday, the III Points crew revealed its plans for a sprawling music, art, and technology festival that’ll swarm Miami’s hippest hood for a full three days during…
