Oh, the perks of being the Jiggaman and Queen Bey’s baby girl. At only 14 days old, Jay Z and Beyonce’s daughter, Blue Ivy Carter (born January 7, 2012), became the youngest person in the history of recorded music to crack Billboard’s Top 100 Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs by contributing heartbeats…
What’s your favorite turn-up song? Ours is still French Montana’s “Don’t Stop.” But somewhere in Miami, it’s very possible that your favorite stripper is twerking to Kirby Maurier’s “Iz U Wit It.” The provocative Bass Boys Intl. produced melody has distanced itself from Maurier’s previous project, Class of 96, a…
What do bass music, a pig, and Miami have in common? Why, Slow Roast Records, of course! Now, you may know that Slow Roast was spawned by the 305’s own three-time DMC world champ, DJ Craze, and studio-junky producer Kill the Noise. And you may have heard how their artist…
Mere days after Deadmau5 declared, “I won’t be playing any more Miami clubs,” he is considering the possibility of playing a Miami club. However, unlike the Mau5 man’s usual flip-flops (e.g. bitching about Ultra Music Festival 2012, then headlining UMF 2013), this latest 180-degree turnabout might not be so bad…
If, as the Rick Ross says, “Every day, [he’s] hustlin'” … Why did it take three full years to sue LMFAO’s Redfoo and SkyBlu (plus Kobalt Music Publishing America and Kia Motors America Inc.) for profiting off that famous, Bawsely lyrical phrase? Maybe he was too busy battling (and beating)…
Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll go together so well that people just wear t-shirts that say, “Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll.” But what about pop music? It turns out drugs and pop music go together like money and excess. But in the pop music world, being a substance…
Deadmau5 rants again. Two years ago, he denounced Ultra Music Festival over its ticket prices and exclusivity contracts. And last year, he slandered UMF as “the same fucking thing every year.” But then he coheadlined Ultra 2013. He’s also bitched about “EDM” just being an acronym for “Event-Driven Marketing,” not…
William Michael Smith (left, photo by Chris Knight) and David Thorpe The eleven alternative weeklies of Voice Media Group are responsible for a tremendous amount of music writing: This year, we produced thousands of pages of printed stories and tens of thousands of blog posts. We’re proud to present the…
Do you hear that ding-a-ling, Heat Nation? It’s wedding bells chiming for LeBron James’ mom, Gloria, and her 31-year-old rapping boytoy, Lambo! A few months ago, we here at Crossfade admitted, “Love is a powerful thang,” while noting that the King’s mama happened to be dating a dude about the…
Wynwood … It’s the kinda place where hip-hop power couples chow down on exotic pizza pie. We here at Crossfade can say so with confidence ’cause our pal, Broward-Palm Beach New Times music editor Liz Tracy, just caught Jay Z and Beyoncé coming out of Joey’s Italian Café and snapped…
R.I.P., PAX. After two and a half years, Crossfade’s favorite little club under I-95 (and the Miami New Times’ Best Latin Club of 2013) has closed. Over the weekend, the Performing Arts Exchange held a final show and said goodbye to the 305 scene. “THANK YOU MIAMI!!!” PAX tweeted just…
It’s been a crazy ride. But tonight, six years of hard work pays off in a big way. Miami’s paint party pioneers can’t wait to open the doors for the first-ever Life in Color Festival. The crew has worked all night to transform the Sun Life Stadium parking lot into…
Sounds like the 305. Just stumble down the street, slip into the club at 3 a.m., or tune into some pirate radio station while crossing the causeway from South Beach to the mainland. And almost as if by accident, a Magic City soundtrack will arise from the cacophony — a…
If it wasn’t for Miami, there wouldn’t be ska. This musical style was born in Jamaica during the 1950s from a mix of traditional Caribbean mento with American jazz and R&B. But when Miami radio first started playing independent black music in the 1940s, Jamaica and the rest of the…
Miami’s rap scene is on the come-up. There is no stopping or denying it. Over the past couple of years, numerous local talents have taken to the mic and released quality material that warrants outsiders’ ears. Our city’s rappers aren’t only about the keys picked up at the Port of…
We here at Crossfade almost lost our thick-framed glasses and striped shirts when we discovered that Wood Tavern owner Caesar Morales had leased the former Soho Lounge space. Fond (and somewhat hazy) memories flashed back, as if it were only yesterday that we were getting down to indie-dance tunes on…
In Life’s Little Instruction Book, H. Jackson Brown Jr. famously wrote: “An overnight success takes about 15 years.” If that’s the case, Life in Color is way ahead of schedule. Over the course of just seven years, this crew of Miami-based paint party professionals has fought, struggled, and lost a…
Holy Ship!!! Oh yeah, we’re experiencing a level of excitement that can only be expressed with three exclamation marks. That, and it’s the third year running for the world’s greatest electro-based music cruise. This year, the ship is bigger and better than ever. For 2013, HARD upgraded to the brand-new…
Yes, Britney Spears is considering retirement after the completion of her upcoming Las Vegas residency. The show begins in early 2014 and it’s slated for a two-year run, which means we may only have a couple of years left to get our “Britney Bitch” on. And you know what? That’s…
Look, we get it. You’ve been busy. You’ve had important things to do. You had to travel for Thanksgiving, and then you had to go shopping for holiday presents, and then there was that whole week of debauchery masquerading as culture that just ended. Hell, you’re probably still hungover. But…
You can’t tell Steven Braddy shit. He actually says so on one of his songs, multiple times. After devoting years of his life to football, Braddy knew his future and heart were no longer in the sport after high school. Instead, Braddy, known as SDotBraddy to Miami rap fans, headed…
Hey, Arcade Fire! So, uh, like, you guys wouldn’t lie to us, right? ‘Cause we really believed Win (perhaps naively and too eagerly) when he teased us with yet another Miami show during October’s special two-night stand as the Reflektors at downtown’s Mekka Nightclub and the Little Haiti Cultural Center…
