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…
The Brooklyn-based trio Fannypack — 16-year-old Belinda, 17-year-old Jessibel, and 21-year-old Cat — is already hitting “media darling” status and drawing comparisons to Salt-N-Pepa, J.J. Fad, L’Trimm, and other bass-loving ladies of Eighties funk. Discovered while rhyming on the street and subsequently ushered into the studio by producers Fancy and…
On Dancefloor Principles, DJ Heather of the house-centric, Chicago-based Super Jane Collective offers a collection that marks the sixth anniversary of Vancouver, B.C.’s Sonar nightclub, a haven for all genres of dance music in the Pacific Northwest. Putting her extensive DJing talents to work, DJ Heather creates a disc that…
The Black Eyed Peas’ third album, Elephunk, is exactly what its title conveys: large funk. The lead single, “Where is the Love,” is an infectious combination of pulsing horns and a Michael Jackson-esque chorus provided by Justin Timberlake. Lyrics like, “But if you only have love for your own race/Then…
Since he was a five-year-old child prodigy, Lucky Peterson has been one of the blues world’s most impressive, if underappreciated, triple-threat talents. The former Florida resident and son of bluesman/ex-nightclub operator James Peterson has proved his mettle with vital releases on Alligator, Verve, and other labels. Along the way, he…
Argentineans are as fascinated by Paris as the French are infatuated with tango, a mutual affection that, over the last three years, has even reached the European charts in the form of the Gotan Project. This Paris-based team includes French producer Philippe Cohen Solal, his Swiss partner Christoph H. Muller,…
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…
“South Beach is stale,” asserts George Morel as he looks out over Biscayne Bay during a brief walk from his South Beach home. “The music in the clubs is too much the same.” Morel knows about club music. His Groove-On Studios is one of the most successful dance music recording…
From their formation in 1979 to their dissolution in 1997, the Cocteau Twins traveled far above the clouds and well below the radar. In Britain the group’s legendary, uniquely divine ethereal-pop atmospherics earned heaps of critical praise and established a sound and vision for the renowned English indie label 4AD,…
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…
With Revés/Yosoy (1999), Café Tacuba (by far the best Mexican rock group ever) got away with murder. The risky double album didn’t sell shit but it deservedly won a Latin Grammy and was at the top of everyone’s year-end lists. Cuatro Caminos (Four Roads), their first real studio album in…
While listening to several cuts from Gang Starr’s latest album and taking notes, I made the following observation: “Typical.” However, I later realized that with any other rap group that word would be used in the pejorative sense. But not with DJ Premier and Guru. Even relative new jacks Jay-Z…
Dare it be said that the idea of a turntable-driven album lay dead in the conceptual pine box of hip-hop. But don’t let the disc jocks from the NYC DJ collective Tableturns hear that, for they’ve attempted to create a bold statement on the mutating “state of the world,” a…
With Profound Sounds v2, the followup to 1999’s Profound Sounds, Philadelphia-based DJ/producer Josh Wink marks a rare achievement in the world of mix CDs. After choosing sixteen selections from various artists like David Alvarado, Swayzak, and Dave Clarke, Wink created a special, exclusive edit of each song on his computer,…
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…
Dressed in platform leather combat boots and a red and black baby doll dress, nouveau songstress Fernanda Porto certainly played the part of a musician on the frontlines of modern Brazilian culture. Looking like a cross between a ruby-headed majorette and Star Trek’s sexy Lt. Uhura, she defied expectations during…
One of the songs that the funky Fort Lauderdale trio Hashbrown is recording for its untitled forthcoming album is called “All Familiar.” In fact the band can be viewed as an “all familiar” staple of the Broward scene, considering how it has played on the local circuit for the past…
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,…
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…
In recent months, pundits around the world have been debating the origins of a dangerous new virus called wack-ass music, or WAM. Some believe it evolved when the recording industry first merged into five major labels, nullifying any need for artistic competition. Others say it started in Louisiana when gold-toothed…
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…
With a tone as clear and strong as a Dexter Gordon saxophone solo — bell-like and vibrant — a virtuoso vocal range, and formidable control of pitch and timbre, Kurt Elling has managed in his short eight-year career to revive the moribund state of male jazz singing while pushing the…
