Critic's Notebook

Wigwood is less than three weeks away. So if you see a fierce giant squid out of the water and click-clacking in heels to the mainland, do not be alarmed.

More than 3,000 attendees are expected to gather at Historic Virginia Key Beach Park for a communal art experience.

Sometimes you reach a point where you’re pretty convinced you’ve seen it all. But in Miami, we’re always looking for new ways to reinvent the party wheel. Rather than become jaded by the same old nightlife offerings week after week, creative collective Late for Work came together this past October with one mission: to create unique experiences.

“There’s so many similarities to making it in football and making it in music,” T-RO, a onetime wide receiver and tight end at Southern California’s Mt. San Antonio College, tells New Times. “Football made my music career easier because I didn’t need to install discipline. I was coachable when I came into the rap game…

When New Times wrote about the acts it would like to perform in Miami in 2017, news quickly followed that Lorde and Björk would finally make their way down to the tip of Florida. The city’s music lovers were also close to finally seeing Omar Souleyman onstage at the North Beach Bandshell last year until visa issues forced the show’s cancellation…

Rapper Karl “Dice Raw” Jenkins, known for his frequent collaborations with the Roots, speaks to an assembly of ninth-graders at the Young Men’s Preparatory Academy in Wynwood. He’s there to talk about his latest project, a stage musical about the life of Henry “Box” Brown, who escaped slavery by sealing himself inside a wooden crate and mailing it from Virginia to Pennsylvania.

These artists should be on your radar in 2019.

Jacuzzi Boys drummer and Las Rosas mainstay DJ Diego Monasterios weighs in on Miami’s rock bands to watch in 2019.

Pitbull, DJ Khaled, Ultra, and dancing till dawn at megaclubs and massive arenas — that’s music in Miami. But there is another music scene, maybe a little rarer and a lot less flashy, but with a following equally ravenous. “A lot of people think of Miami and they just…

As cofounder of III Points, the wildly popular music festival held in Wynwood since its inception in 2013, David Sinopoli is keyed into Miami’s music scene. His level of expertise becomes apparent when he begins talking numbers: “With the Ground, Space, and Floyd, and before that Bardot, for the last eight years I’ve been programming 300 shows a year in Miami,”…

The Miami music scene would benefit by implementing these resolutions in 2019.

With the federal government shut down and Donald Trump tweeting angrily at anyone who dares defy him, it’s safe to say 2018 was a shit year. We hope 2019 will be better, but let’s be honest: It will probably be worse. But one thing that certainly wasn’t shit this year…

To live in Miami is to witness some of the city’s favorite bars, clubs, and music venues disappear into thin air — sometimes without warning. As options for live music diminish year-by-year, brave souls are up for the challenge of filling those voids. But before opening in a former space of one of the fallen, they might want to consider the history of these casualties. From bars to clubs, here are five venues the Magic City lost in 2018.

On an ordinary fall afternoon in 1968, Clarence Reid was putting the finishing touches on “Don’t Make the Good Girls Go Bad,” the followup to his first R&B song, “Girls Can’t Do What the Guys Do [And Still Be a Lady].” “We had momentum with the previous hit,” recalls Willie Clarke, a Miami public schoolteacher…

The NightGarden, the outdoor interactive exhibit that opened at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden just in time for Art Basel this year, recently announced an extended run due to popular demand. The illuminated garden will not only remain on display through January 11, 2019 (originally January 6), but also host New Year’s Eve festivities.

Kalil Bohannon invested only $150 in the launch of his avant-garde music showcase. It took place in an empty parking lot at Florida International University. Only 40 people showed up for the outdoor open mike composed of a tent, lights strung on a wall, and a few strewn-about tables. “It wasn’t that great,” Bohannon recalls. “I thought it went terribly. But the people who showed up, they loved it. They saw the vision, what I was trying to do.”

Rhythm and blues is finally getting the attention it deserves in South Florida. Over the past few years, entire platforms have been dedicated to the genre, including the event production company RnBae Collective, themed parties such as Friends & Lovers at Coyo on Sunday nights, and even an entire festival, Best Life…

It’s time to dress up your boat in its holiday finest and get ready to party at the Seminole Hard Rock Winterfest Boat Parade. This year’s theme is ’80s rock, and Grammy-winning musician Huey Lewis will take the helm as grand marshal.

According to Buddhist philosophy, humans live in an individual world created by subjective thoughts and perceptions. We are continuously re-creating our “self” through our experiences and choices, trapped in samsara — an endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth — until we are able to liberate ourselves from our illusions and find awakening through enlightenment…

“Young Thug as Paintings” is a viral Instagram account pairing existing photos of the Atlanta rapper with fine art depicting subjects in similar poses.

Renowned hip-hop photographer Jonathan Mannion rolls out a stunning collection of 665 Polaroid photos of hip-hop artists such as Jay-Z, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, Outkast, and Ludacris.

If you live in Miami, you couldn’t miss the Marlins’ rebranding campaign. Earlier this month, everything from street murals to Twitter teases hinted a new look was coming to Florida’s Major League Baseball team. The promotion was titled #OurColores, and after much anticipation and guessing by fans and the media, those colors were revealed: Caliente Red, Miami Blue, Midnight Black, and Slate Gray.