The 20 Best Miami Songs of 2016

For all the awful stuff that happened this year, rest assured of one thing: Miami’s music scene is alive and well. Whether it’s dance, hip-hop, rock, metal, or everything in between, 305’s artists made themselves heard with an amazing body of work that had listeners in awe. If your knowledge of Miami music goes only as far as Pitbull and Rick Ross, now is the time to get to know the acts who actually made the most of 2016.

The Voice‘s Paxton Ingram Won’t Quit Calling Miami Home

As a singer who’s made it to primetime, Paxton Ingram has learned to improvise both onstage and off. He’s quick to pull out a stick of incense from his backpack and light it during stressful moments like, for instance, when his interviewer is 45 minutes late and panicked because she…

Wax Is OK With Being Sort of Famous

With the advent of social media, our culture’s come to know nontraditional ways of attaining varying levels of fame and the unique artists that often take advantage of those unconventional paths to success. These avenues weren’t available decades or even years ago. And because of that, some rocket from the depths…

Edan Archer’s New EP Is a Southern-Gothic Fever Dream

“I look like a flower, but smell like an ashtray,” sings Gainesville-raised Miami transplant Edan Archer on her new single, “Cutthroat.” It’s the closing track on new her alt-country EP, Cruel Mother. Not only is the lyric an apt summation of Archer’s eagerness to challenge modern expectations of femininity in…

RnBae Wants to Teach Miami How to Love Again

It’s hard to believe the world continued spinning after such a monumental loss, but 2016 marked 15 years since Aaliyah’s shocking death. It’s interesting to ponder what the Princess of R&B’s music might have sounded like today, in a world where singers forgo an individual, signature sound and turn to…

Josephine Phoenix Looks Beyond Her Reality-TV Fame

In real life, Josephine Phoenix looks a lot like a TV writer’s storyboard blueprint of a hippie character. Her waist-length, curly red hair cascades down, mirroring the breezy, flowing fabrics she uses to drape her petite frame. And she’s likely to wax poetic about “the feminine divine” and gypsy life.

Miami’s Venus Rising Challenges Gender Roles Through Drum and Dance

The past week’s fracturing of the political climate and escalation of dangerous rhetoric against marginalized groups across the country has left many wondering how to heal the wounds between neighbors and friends and even within ourselves in the aftermath of an unprecedented election season. Talk of self-care and…

Plastic Pinks Celebrate New EP With a Churchill’s Takeover

Over the past few years, Plastic Pinks have worked and played their way toward becoming one of the most recognizable names in Miami music. And their upcoming EP-release show at Churchill’s promises to be both a celebration of the band’s accomplishments thus far and a launching pad toward a new…

Adele Talks Walking Dead and Channels Missy Elliott in Miami

Adele’s introduction to her iconic Bond theme, “Skyfall,” on night one of back-to-back shows at the American Airlines Arena was quintessential Adele. “Every morning, the first thing I see when I go for my morning wee is an Oscar.” At first glance, Adele appears to be just like the rest…

Ten Times Adele Acted Like a True Miamian

In 2016, celebrations worldwide marked the 90th birthday of Queen Elizabeth II, but for many of us outside the UK, there’s only one true British queen, and her name is Adele. At only 19 years of age, she burst onto the scene singing her full-throated lamentation “Chasing Pavements,” a song…

What This III Points Rookie Learned Last Weekend

As a lifelong music addict who mainlines concerts for sustenance, I’ve been to my fair share of music festivals, and I’ve seen it all. I’ve been to festivals where families have picnics by their RVs, and I’ve been to others where young people’s crater-wide pupils make it pretty obvious why…

III Points 2016, Day One: Complications Linger, but the Show Goes On

Down its biggest headliner and plagued by last-minute hiccups, III Points limped into day one, badly wounded. The forces of god, nature, and misfortune had seemingly unloaded their entire arsenal on the Wynwood festival this year in the form of wind, mosquitoes, and cancelled flights.  Year four would be the…