The weirdos were out in full force at Okeechobee Music & Arts Festival. Minds were pushed as far to the edge of sanity as socially acceptable. In festie land, anything goes. George Clinton and his legendary Parliament Funkadelic lit the fuse on Okeechobee’s rocket ship Saturday with a funkdafied performance on the Now stage.
Dirty ankles, warm beer, tank-top sunburns, and never-ending groove. Yes, Okeechobee Music & Arts Festival is in full swing. Once again, the quiet community of Sunshine Grove is filled with tens of thousands of hip-hop heads, beat freaks, rock jocks, and all manner of folks looking for a good time.
As you roam the forest of Okeechobee Festival and lounge by the lakeside beach, you may find yourself face to face with a neon, glowing, 25-foot tall geometric flamingo. No, you’re not hallucinating. That’s the visual calling card of the Miami Design Shop, the same folks who crafted the 25-foot…
Sometimes between late-night DJ sets and loud, sweaty rock shows; plane boardings and landings; hotel showers and studio sessions that blur into one another and out of society at large, Jesse F. Keeler thinks to himself: “What am I gonna do after I live this life?” Then, before he can answer, he finds himself reinspired and reinvigorated, and suddenly he’s back in the studio or standing behind another set of turntables, and he’s doing what he’s always done: his best at making it up as he goes.
When Barclay Crenshaw first began mixing hip-hop sets, it was for an in-house radio show at his Detroit high school, and fans weren’t exactly clogging the airwaves. “We could never get anybody to listen,” he laughs, “so we would buy a takeout pizza every week and give it to the…
In a time when drops are celebrated over lyrics, pop is high art, and Migos is compared to the Beatles, rock ‘n’ roll sits perched on the edge of its death bed complaining of achy bones. It often seems the great guitar poets of bygone days spent their lives partying instead of procreating, especially in Miami, where most live musical entertainment plugs into Serato.
The political upheaval of the ’60s and ’70s begat some of the greatest and most enlightened rock ‘n’ roll ever recorded. Now, as the United States finds itself at its most divisive and politically charged moment since the great civil rights movement, many are looking to musicians to step up to the plate.
Right now, 168 million children are working, and 85 million of them are slaves. They might be toiling on farms or in factories. They might be hidden hands of hospitality. Three things are certain: They’re being robbed of their childhood, they need your help, and some of them are here in Miami.
Over the course of nearly 13 years of careful construction, fine-tuning, and experimentation, Doctor P has developed a sound immediately recognizable in the dubstep world. It is forceful yet playful, like dancing in a thunderstorm. That sound made him one of the world’s premier dubstep producers from the moment he…
Move over, South Beach. Miami has a new tourist destination, and it’s not yet universally despised by locals. Just five years ago, Wynwood was the kind of place you wanted to be too long after dark. Then artists began moving in, opening galleries, and putting up murals. Soon the relatively small area became a much desired locale for real-estate developer Tony Goldman, the same man who helped turn South Beach and New York City’s SoHo into hoppin’, shoppin’ centers of cultural interest.
Step aside, Taylor Swift. Look out, Drake. Adele, go ahead and get out of the way. You’re some of the biggest names in pop music the Western world has ever heard, but there’s a right sugary fierceness coming from the East, and American tweens are looking for love in all-new…
Another year has come and gone, and what’ve you got to show for it? A pocketful of unused drink tickets and an addiction to Tylenol? Oh, Miami, you party so hard. Look, 2017 will be different. You’ll be all about living that #FitLyfe, going to bed at a decent hour,…
While many Miamians complain they have to leave home to make it in the music business, Steven A. Clark landed a track on Pitbull’s latest album, Climate Change after moving here from North Carolina. “I was seeking culture,” the sensual singer-songwriter says. “I just wanted to live. I just wanted…
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.
Imagine coming to Club Space on a Tuesday to catch a live act. The show ends around midnight, and if you’re feeling frisky, you stop at Libertine for a well-crafted nightcap. You get home around 1 a.m. and wake up the next day to find your phone hasn’t been stolen, your jaw doesn’t ache, and you — shockingly — don’t feel the urge to dive headfirst into a bag of McDonald’s breakfast and take a 48-hour nap.
Courtney Love is a feminist icon. Courtney Love is a bitch. She’s a powerful force of raw emotion, or an evil nymph who slept her way to fame. She’s a mournful widow thrust in the harsh spotlight of shame and accusation, a frazzled single mother struggling to raise a girl-child…
Jake Jefferson has always put music first. In the eighth grade, he snuck out to a Cypress Hill concert, made his way backstage, smoked weed with rapper B-Real, and helped DJ Muggs pack his turntables. In college, when he was just 12 credits short of a Florida International University degree,…
It’s a rough climb from the gutters of Carol City to the top of the Billboard charts. You’ve got to take your hatchet and clear the path of snakes and weeds. Good thing Rick Ross is on his fitness tip. “It’s just like hiking for the first time,” the Teflon…
I’m guilty of wishing bad things on good people. When I hear a beautiful album full of frustration and pain, I fall totally in love with the sound of the artist’s struggle. When that artist inevitably finds success and happiness, I feel a little cheated. The music is never quite so…
It’s Halloween season, and while the rest of the country is carving pumpkins and sippin’ spiced lattes, Miami is doing spooky the only way it knows how: really, really weird partying. A lot of scariness and strangeness happens around these parts, so it’s only natural that the oddballs who make…
Day three is always a royal bitch. With blistered feet and damaged ear drums (seriously — where were you earplugs this year, people?), many were on autopilot at the final day of III Points 2016, a year marked by both adversity and triumph. Luckily, there is a cure for such…
While Hurricane Matthew threw an obvious speed bump into Friday night’s festivities, there would be no excuse for not pulling things off on day two. Luckily, that’s exactly what III Points did. With ever stage up and operational — and with only slightly amended set times — Saturday night showcased…
