The cries and calls for a thriving local music scene in Miami are inescapable. Form a band, become a promoter, train as a sound engineer, and eventually the city’s natural roadblocks will squash your hopes of entertainment industry success like a cat making its way across I-95’s Express Lane. Last…
Back in the summer of 2011, we here at Crossfade gave you a heads up about this pretty cool little weekly show on WDNA 88.9 FM radio and five major reasons you should tune in for it. Well, we sure hope you took our advice then, because the Sunday Coolout has…
See Crossfade’s righteous, nine-part guide to Marley Fest 2012, AKA Nine Mile Music Festival. Before you roll up and roll out to Virginia Key Beach Park next weekend for the Nine Mile Music Festival (which Miami has known as Marley Fest for as long as anyone can remember), be aware…
While popular electronic music has become synonymous with hugely inflated ticket prices, tables full of empty bottles, and mindlessly overproduced big-room bangers, Miami’s own Jonathan Cowan keeps the fire burning for the South Beach’s long-lost underground. For Winter Music Conference 2012, The Shelborne Hotel and Shine, alongside DJ Mag, will…
The last time Jacobs Ladder’s Sammy Gonzalez chatted with Crossfade, he was preaching the gospel of classical guitar. But these days, Gonzalez is grooving on his band’s ever-evolving “Miami Reggae Rock.” He and bandmates Oren Maisner and Brian Hernandez “are really into the sound and are gearing up to start…
Rihanna celebrated her 24th birthday yesterday by dropping “Birthday Cake (Remix),” a sadomasochistic collaboration with abusive ex-boyfriend Chris Brown. At just under four minutes long, “Birthday Cake (Remix)” is an uncomfortable trek into the former lovers’ highly volatile and incredibly kinky personal lives. We learn that Chris Brown “wants to…
Hank III may be satan’s favorite grandson. His daddy was a cactus, his momma was a bear trap, and he was born with his boots on in a river full of moonshine. At age 11, he ripped out his own throat and cooked it over a forest fire. The next…
Art and politics can make strange, confusing bedfellows. German playwright (and all around Commie) Bertolt Brecht would tell you that unless your work directly protests the global capitalist hegemony by alienating the buorgeois theatre-going audience, it amounts to little but titillation for the ruling classes. On the other end of…
Everyone in North Florida is straight freaking out about this band Hundred Waters and its otherworldy indie sound. Having just released a six-song EP, ironically titled EP, the group’s being hailed as the best thing to hit the mean musical streets of Gainesville in a long time, and one of…
The folks over at MTV News are the tits when it comes to milking arbitrary blog coverage for web hits. In December, Music Television’s news team assembled a March Madness-like bracket system to countdown Britney Spear’s 30 best videos. Over 1 million people voted and crowned “I’m A Slave 4…
Prior to his untimely death last March, “G-Funk’s most melodic homie” had several “hoes in different area codes.” And on at least one occasion, he and his “Bad Girls” kept it “G-A-N-G-S-T-A” by shooting a homemade porno. According to TMZ, there is a Nate Dogg sex tape that’s being “shopped…
If there’s one party during WMC week that truly encapsulates the transatlantic tech-house zeitgeist, it’s Leftroom vs. Culprit at Treehouse Miami Beach on March 21. And that’s because the party showcases two of the scene’s most hotly tipped labels from (literally) both sides of the pond — the UK’s Leftroom…
As subtly alluded to via our front page illustration (see right), the Storch story involves a shit-ton of drugs. Not just any drugs, mind you. He wasn’t just smoking a lil’ weed and hitting a whip-it every now and then. No, Scott Storch — whose collaborators include Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Dr…
Diana Ross is coming out to South Florida and she wants the world to know. The 67-year-old Motown singer is bringing her live show to the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino’s Hard Rock Live venue on Thursday, February 23. And if she’s anything like her Supremes soul sister Mary…
The internet, a safe haven where perverts can download fetish porn and degenerates bet on sports. It’s an information superhighway trolled by digital pirates on the lookout for copyrighted gold and a place where everyone can be the star of their very own Truman Show. But on Saturday, February 18,…
A week ago local poet, musician, and promoter Benjamin Shahoulian started a comment war on his Facebook page, stemming from his frustration at local musicians’ constant complaints about promoters. As the exchanges were getting pretty intense, hip-hop artist and promoter Erik Grizzly jokingly suggested making a video for “Shit Miami…
Check out Ultra Music Festival 2012’s Phase 1 lineup. There are only five weeks left till epic levels of uhntz-uhntz turn Downtown Miami into a 150,000-person public orgy! Back in December, Ultra Music Festival announced its initial 92-act roster. And just 14 days later, the fest “completely sold-out.” But this…
Miami isn’t just some metaphorical cheap beach motel where the electronic dance music industry from overseas gathers to mingle and party during WMC. No, it’s also the place where some of the world’s top EDM brands are actually born. Case in point: Flying Circus, the long-standing WMC party conceived by…
Miami beatmaker Amtrac celebrated the release of his album Came Along at Grand Central in September. And ever since, he’s been riding a chillwave of success. He put out a video for the album’s title track. The song was recently featured on Jersey Shore. And now he’s back with another…
Bonnaroo unveiled its 2012 lineup moments ago with the random help of ESPN’s John Anderson. And according the SportsCenter funnyman, it’s going to be “crazy good.” Appearing in a YouTube video, Anderson pulls out a Roland AX-Synth from under his desk–a keytar he lovingly calls his battle-axe–and comically recalls the…
Last year, when Frank Ocean’s Nostalgia, Ultra and The Weeknd’s House of Balloons dropped within weeks of each other, critics and music fans celebrated the arrival of a fresh movement in R&B. Though the moods of those recordings differed considerably, they were both remarkably self-assured and sophisticated for artists so…
Here’s a musical math lesson. What do you get when you take 16 DJs, divide them by three dance floors, and add everyone 18 years or older? Well, besides the obvious onslaught of kandi bracelets and neon tanks, you get 1 Night In Miami, Committee Entertainment’s latest endeavor. Committee’s the…
