The first things I notice about Cuban hip-hop MC Don Dinero are the long multicolored collares hanging down over his white tee. The beads are artifacts of Dinero’s faith, a form of worship known as Santería, which fuses aspects of Catholicism with African religions such as Yor¬bá. It ain’t the…
Common is hip-hop’s prodigal son. A succession of mid-Nineties classics — 1994’s Resurrection and 1997’s One Day It’ll All Make Sense — established him as the king of true skool hip-hop. But on 2002’s Electric Circus, the Chi-town rapper seemed to have lost his footing, adrift in a messy mixture…
The Backstreet Boys! Yeah, I know, I should have told the joke before I got to the punch line. In 2005, though, the Backstreet Boys are both. The mere mention of Orlando’s most popular musical export conjures up images of a pop juggernaut crashing under the weight of its own…
It is a Friday afternoon and hundreds of eager, sweaty teens swarm outside of South Beach club Mansion. They have all but overtaken the sidewalks between Twelfth and Thirteenth streets on Washington Avenue and are trading demos, cracking jokes, and exchanging rumors of celebrity sightings. Two girls immediately blocking my…
Listening to Missy Elliott’s albums has always been like entering a pop playground where beats stop, stutter, and then slink toward a fusion of world music, classic electro, and good old-fashioned boom-bap swagger. From the tabla beat science of her breakout single, 2001’s “Get Ur Freak On,” to the chocha-shavin’…
As we duck the hurricanes, crank up the A/C, and flock to the beaches, it’s become perfectly clear that summer is upon us. And the two things that epitomize summer for Apollo Kid are those sugary summer hip-hop jams and a good book to read while lounging at the pool…
After a six-year layoff, Peter Thomas’s “How Can I Be Down?” conference returns to South Beach. “How Can I Be Down?” is the largest urban music seminar in the world and (for a $300 registration fee) will purportedly teach industry novices how to navigate hip-hop’s shark-infested waters. There’s a ton…
With a father who accompanied Miles Davis on piano and a brother who played bass for George Benson, DJ Disciple seems destined for musical greatness. Disciple has spent the past few years burning up NYC’s underground scene with his eclectic mix of garage, disco, Latin, and hard house. Last year…
While they await the debut album from Florida’s favorite teenage synthpop band, fans can satiate their appetite when Dance, Jenny shuffles into I/O this weekend. Pitch-perfect lilting melodies, abstract lyrics, and boy-toy indie charm are the order of the day. Lovers of like-minded indietronica acts such as the Books and…
You know the end is nigh when the summer’s biggest song is a sixteen-minute morality play by R. Kelly. While his latest, TP.3 Reloaded, contains all the key elements of his past albums — the club anthems (“Playa’s Only” featuring Game) and the slow sex jams (the masterfully titled “[Sex]…
With a hammer-of-the-gods voice and enough street cred to be the ghetto president, Slim Thug is the latest import from the scorching Houston underground. Of course it doesn’t hurt that his major-label debut, the optimistically titled Already Platinum, is a collaborative effort with reigning pop kings the Neptunes. It’s an…
The air hangs in the sky like molasses on this hot South Florida Saturday night as I wind through the poorly lit pathway that leads to the lavish Vizcaya Museum and Gardens. I’ve arrived with the departing music editor, the admirable Mosi Reeves, who like me made the unfortunate decision…
After a six-year hiatus, the Beastie Boys return with To the Five Boroughs and position themselves alternately as pop-culture bottom feeders and political pedants. While anti-Bush screeds “That’s It That’s All” and “Time to Build” come across as heavy-handed, the terse “Open Letter to NYC” does manage to channel that…
