Kelly Osbourne, Ozzy Osbourne, Mary J. Blige, Andrea Bocelli, Ringo Starr, Phil Collins, Robert Downey Jr., Josh Groban, Elton John, Katie Melua, Pink, Gavin Rossdale, Gwen Stefani, Rod Stewart, Steven Tyler, and Velvet Revolver cover Eric Clapton’s mid-Nineties classic “Tears in Heaven” for Hurricane Katrina relief. And it’s even worse…

Born on hip-hop and driven delirious by dancehall’s sub-bass and garage’s A.D.D. beats, the UK genre grime is new enough to have more energy than it does discipline — which makes it both exhilarating and barely listenable. Vertically Challenged, the first stateside offering from eighteen-year-old London MC Lady Sovereign, suffers…

Holly Robb slinks past the large graffiti mural on the corner of Fourteenth Court and Fourteenth Street in Miami’s Overtown district. The tall, curly-haired supermodel is immaculately primped, wearing a translucent orange top with a visible black bra and a short denim skirt that shows off her oiled-up and impossibly…

Though less than a decade has passed since 1998, it seems like a lifetime ago. There was a Democrat in the White House and a robust economy, and the greatest threat to national security arose from a little stain on a blue dress. It was also the year America was…

The pied piper of yellowcake R&B returns to his masterwork, the 35-minute pop opera that brazenly defies dramatic structure, radio formatting, and just plain good sense. Redneck bumpkins impregnated by anatomically “blessed” midgets, Omar from The Wire, and a bloodied brother-in-law are all afoot in what the DVD packaging ominously…

Hypnotic keyboard work, richly organic production, and a sexy though at times plaintive voice put John Legend squarely in residence in the house Stevie Wonder built. Songs such as “Ordinary People,” “Refugee (When It’s Cold Outside),” and “It Don’t Have to Change” are among the most addictive and satisfying R&B…

With their swooshing synths and stuttering, coked-out drums, Miami production duo Cool and Dre are the latest of hip-hop’s metrosexual beatsmiths-turned-MCs (other offenders include the man in pink — Kanye West — and Gwen Stefani’s new boy toy, Pharrell Williams). “Naomi,” as you might have guessed, is their tribute to…

Hip-hop collides with Comic-Con as subconscious loiterer/indie-microphone-god MF Doom meets Beatle-plunderer Danger Mouse in the whacked-out and ostensibly weird world of Adult Swim. The gravelly voiced Doom delivers his usual dazzling array of subverted clich’s, multisyllabic rhymes, and bottom-feeder pop cult references — but the MC’s scrabbled word safaris are…

While his peers from NYC’s Eighties garage/house explosion are busy trying to re-up their ecstasy-drained serotonin levels in rehab centers, Masters of Work superstar DJ Louie Vega is still behind the decks and rallying the faithful at clubs across America. He may have lost the “Little” prefix over the past…

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. There are no displays of bullshit nationalistic pride or messy Christmas trees. And more than just an excuse for children disguised as ghosts, goblins, and so on to case your house and hope for a hand-out, Halloween is about partying. The last Halloween…

Jennings’s bittersweet tale of a vicarious romantic will make married women swoon and lonely men cry. Sure, the music is syrupy-slow R&B schmaltz, but you have to give it up to Jennings for making the point that a good woman will be there “even when those twenties stop spinning.” Ladies,…

Two things you’ll probably never do: travel to the moon or rap as fast as Twista. The first is a child’s pipe dream, the second a rapper’s gimmick — a parlor trick for the Bathing Ape set. And though Twista’s helix coil flow may have earned him a spot in…

Like a mirage rising from a Deco desert of stars, skin, and heat, Pure Records and its sole recording artist, a 22-year-old R&B singer from Ohio named Na’sha, emerged this past summer as a major new force in Miami’s music scene. Until recently, few outside the industry had heard of…

For a lady best known as the “baddest bitch,” Miami hip-hop star Trina seems surprisingly demure as she sits down for an interview at the New Times office. Sure, she’s a little grumpy at first — her publicist had given her the wrong address and had not informed her of…

Since the emergence of shoegazers such as My Bloody Valentine, an entire generation of bands has attempted to latch onto that sliver of ethereality that aligns the thick clouds of careful cacophony. The path of guitar wash leads to the palace of wisdom, apparently, and Jucipher does its best to…

Gangsta rap demigod 50 Cent recently hypothesized that Kanye West’s popularity stems from a backlash to G-Unit’s pop-cult blitzkrieg of the past few years. Fiddy figured that fans were growing tired of his own gratuitous violence and ridiculously exaggerated masculinity and wanted a kinder, gentler, more metrosexual take on hip-hop…

DJ music for hipsters is one of the most quickly morphing subgenres in modern music. Three years ago it was all Soul Wax and pop music mashups, but now the Zeitgeist has quickly recentered on Southern hip-hop, Baltimore club music, and South American sounds. And few have done more to…