There is an austerity to the Lifesavas that some will find off-putting or atypical of underground hip-hop acts. One skit on their debut album, Spirit in Stone, “Thuggity Skit,” clumsily parodies monosyllabic Southern rappers. On “Livin’ Time/Life Movement I,” Vursatyl proclaims, “We pro-life and we’re pro-longevity/Procreation/Produce/Provocative/And pro-prosperity,” while “State of…
Give me the mike: Late last February, Miami-based MC Peedo traveled up to Manhattan to participate in MTV’s first on-air freestyle battle, a competition it had limited to the first 1000 contestants who showed up at the Minskoff Theater in Times Square. What he didn’t bargain on was a riot…
Since his memorable mix CD for Global Underground’s Nubreed series two years ago, Sander Kleinenberg has earned a reputation as a storyteller, the rare DJ capable of building a stirring narrative with break beats, dark progressive house tracks, and trance anthems. The Holland-born Kleinenberg is also a strong producer in…
Nightlife, as any nocturnal adventurer will tell you, is all about comfort zones. Is that why Basshead has spent many a Saturday at Poplife? The music is familiar — after a brief infatuation, I have developed a strong aversion to Mount Simss How We Do, while learning to accept and…
Since entering the music business at age fifteen, singer-songwriter-rapper Laura Diamante has certainly encountered her share of heartbreak. There was the time she was hired as a back-up singer for Guru on his Jazzmatazz: Streetsoul European tour, only to suffer from stage fright during the first performance. (She says she…
Nas is one of the most influential artists of his generation. Want proof? Check out a lyric from his rival Jay-Z’s “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)”: “I was raised in the projects, roaches and rats/Smokers out back, sellin’ they mama’s sofa/Lookouts on the corner, focused on the Ave/Ladies in the window, focused on…
What would you do if gunshots were blasting toward you? “I couldn’t see who it was because I was, like, ducking,” says local rapper Oczaveus “Zay” Williams of that moment on Thursday, June 12, when a car full of assailants pulled alongside the van he and three other men were…
During the past six months I’ve been sent a whole dangdoodle of CDs. While a goodly percentage of them were crap, there were a few smashing titles: Cosmo Vitelli’s loopy, Eno-esque Clean; Busdriver, Radioinactive, and Daedelus’s whimsical The Weather; Beans’s post-Anti-Pop Tomorrow Right Now; and Prefuse 73’s One Word Extinguisher,…
Joe Budden’s self-titled debut comes to us courtesy of “Pump It Up,” a seemingly omnipresent club hit on which producer Just Blaze turns a sample from Kool and the Gang’s “Soul Vibration” into a stop-start, high-energy raveup. Not surprisingly, the underground success of “Pump It Up” and its lesser-known predecessor,…
Happy feet: Ah, nothing beats the taste of a foot in your mouth. (I guess its better than eating crow.) Last week Basshead maintained that the Slak Lounge had lost two of its clubs, Aquabooty and the Kitchen Club. While that is true — although, technically, the Kitchen Club will…
Longwave’s second album and major-label debut, The Strangest Things, has been steadily building a buzz since it was first released three months ago. It has its charms, thanks to lead guitarist Shannon Ferguson’s icily atmospheric guitar playing and the wall of sound producer Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev) erects…
What a difference a month makes. Just weeks after Street Miami crowned it the new home of Miami’s soul, Slak Lounge is losing two of its tenants. Aquabooty, the long-running house music showcase, is jetting over to I/O in downtown Miami. Meanwhile Kitchen Club is taking the Industrial Ball back…
“I’m a laid-back guy,” remarks Edgar “Push Button Objects” Farinas as he pulls a long drag of his cigarette. He and Basshead are sitting on the patio of his family’s Westchester home, where he’s currently staying while in between apartments: We watch torrents of rain sweep onto the lawn, onto…
The Miami Beach Convention Center parking lot is an odd place to film a video. Certainly, walking along Meridian Avenue, you would never notice that amid an encirclement of big rig trucks and mobile homes sit iced-out rappers, dressed down in jeans shorts and sports jerseys, and scantily clad models…
In Dead Prez’s world, politics and activism usually take precedence over the music or, to be more precise, motivate the music and give it a reason for being. Every song is another opportunity to talk about issues, whether it’s the gentrification of “Hip-Hop,” the transformation of urban America into a…
The dance music scene, we’re often told, is much better in Europe. As the stereotype goes, it’s far different and of much higher quality than the secondhand tracks we’re forced to listen to here. And what of Layo and Bushwacka? The two Londonites are well-known producers on the international breaks…
Last week Dr. Simon V. Glynn, a professor of philosophy at Florida Atlantic University, delivered a lecture titled “Storm the Reality Studios and Retake the Universe” at the Miami Museum of Science. He proclaimed that we have entered the age of the “hyperreal,” a “simulacrum” or artificial environment more adored…
Two weeks ago Style Wars, a PBS documentary on the early-Eighties graffiti scene in New York, was rereleased on DVD. For those who don’t know, Style Wars is necessary viewing for anyone wishing to know about old-school hip-hop in general and graff writing in particular. But the 1983 film never…
Count Jan Jelinek is another intriguingly “cutting-edge” German producer you’ve never heard of. Like compatriots Thomas Brinkmann and Laub, Jelinek specializes in crafting strange and wondrous experimental music that is surprisingly sleek and melodic, if not entirely free of pretension. Case in point: his most recent album, La Nouvelle Pauvreté,…
Omar Clemetson’s downtown Miami apartment is an exacting, austere place. Neatly arranged on one side of the room are a mixing board, an Akai 3200 XL sampler, and sundry other studio equipment, along with a bookshelf filled with records. There are a few boxes, products of his one-man job running…
In the small hours of last Saturday night, Poplife was slowly, inexorably fading to a close. Most of the faithful left in the Soho Lounge, an even split between ultra-trendroids clad in designer skirts and everypeople stuffed into T-shirts and jeans, had wandered up to the Red Room, its pulsating,…
The recent chart success of French duo Les Nubians’ One Step Forward is both a heartening rebuke and a disturbing indicator of our country’s xenophobic culture. Usually foreign-speaking artists have to learn to sing in English (like Shakira or T.A.T.U.) to succeed on the U.S. pop charts at the risk…
