Music

Only a few short years ago, a Wisin y Yandel album would have meant little to international hip-hop playas such as Ja Rule. How quickly things change. With reggaeton now firmly implanted as the musical ambassador of the Latin American world, and Ja’s star fading further amid litigation and mediocrity,…

By employing the chopped and screwed mix method — a style developed by Houston’s own DJ Screw that slows down a song’s tempo for a lurching, dizzying effect akin to a codeine-cough-syrup high — Southern DJs have produced a spate of slurring, visceral remix albums that often sound better than…

Beck’s 2005 full-length Guero revealed the folk-rock-rap-whatever artist’s usual ironic self-awareness. The title, for one, translates to “white boy,” belying a record drizzled with country twang, Mexican slang, grungy hip-hop, orchestral bossa nova, and electronica funk. Out of that mélange comes Guerolito, on which different producers have remixed every Guero…

Troubleman Unlimited Wooden Wand’s track doesn’t chronicle the flood per se as much as it does the messy, boggy aftermath. A moldy, nightmare glut of tuneless gypsy guitar plucks, one-drum pum-pums, and weak, strangulated woodwind wisps accompanies Satya Sai and Rev. Wand as they wade through the monotonous wreckage: “The…

Self-described tramp Ariel “Pink” Rosenberg transforms impounded auto lemons into neutered pop lemonade, sharing a stern, scratchy voicemail from his unwilling-to-cough-up-much-needed-ducats dad before sliding into a rambling, anti-fi netherworld of nut-squeezing, multitrack falsetto pukes and warped, rickety disco axe licks. As usual, the fruit of his labor is a glorious…

Germany’s Gabor Schablitzki, who sometimes spells his name backward and is also half of the Wighnomy Brothers, might be the sliest producer to beep and blip since the heyday of Aphex Twin. Here Robag flings snares, winks, and then takes quicksilver stutter-steps that recall “Windowlicker,” even as a minor-key melody…

The following two events are connected: Now, right now, Madonna has a single on the pop charts — “Hung Up” — an eminently danceable throwback to her Eighties heyday. And, in 2000, after foibles as stone-faced global moralists and the humbling horrors of “Lemon” and “Discothque,” U2 enjoyed a late-career…

Hip-Hop Hors D’oeuvres There were at least a couple of classic albums (Beanie Sigel’s The B. Coming and Kanye West’s Late Registration) and a slew of great ones (Madlib’s The Further Adventures of Lord Quas, Young Jeezy’s Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101, and The Game’s The Documentary) in 2005…

Hate it or love it, reggaeton was everywhere in 2005. It became the format for dozens of Latin radio stations across the nation. Two of its biggest stars — Tego Calderon and Daddy Yankee — were the first in the genre to sign with major labels. This year reggaeton faced…

This year’s crop of electronic music seemed more concerned with looking in than locking in. For the most part top producers haven’t seemed as worried about innovation as connotation. It’s been a year of cobbling together old genres rather than molding new ones, and there’s a definite trend toward composing…

These strays are too artsy and meandering for No Dep, too rootsy and plainspoken for Pitchfork, and too concise for the hippies at Relix. My Morning Jacket, Z (ATO): Sure, the lyrics are stupid (burning kittens and babies in blenders, anyone?), and the pub-rock/Hawaii 5-0/carnival-in-Hell middle stretch of the record…

Exploration and expansion in urban music marked 2005. Against a Matrix-like background of corporate-controlled radio and TV, iPod-enabled consumers demanded more musical choices. For every lackluster commercial effort (like 50 Cent’s The Massacre), 50 superior underground albums stepped up. Meanwhile the global fusion trend developing over the past decade reaped…

This year major festivals like Austin City Limits, Bonnaroo, and the revived Lollapalooza mashed up alt-rock mainstays with a colorful new breed of improv road warriors. These groups share a noncommercial, tour-intensive work ethic that assures grassroots devotion across the country. So get hip, kid. Sound Tribe Sector 9, Artifact…

My undying love for Dudes with Guitars Who Think Way Too Much About Girls is now a critical liability, for rockism has recently become grounds for public execution. I can only hope my final hours (before I am decapitated by Missy Elliott) are as graceful, poignant, and unabashedly melodramatic as…

I need variety, which is why I hog the headphones at the Putumayo World Music sampler stand every time I go to Wild Oats supermarket. This year, while everyone else in the store was contemplating low-fat tofu, I was daydreaming of nibbling Serrano ham tapas and sipping red wine in…

A few turntablists aside, DJing has always been as much about what you play as how you play it. And Diplo, perhaps more than any other DJ from this decade, is adept at locating the sonic correlations between culturally disparate sounds. His sets effortlessly oscillate between Rio de Janeiro’s favela…

Philadelphia’s The Roots have broken down hip-hop stereotypes. They may not have been the first hip-hop band to employ live instrumentation — that distinction belongs to Stetsasonic — but they certainly made the idea palpable for mainstream audiences. Since emerging in the early Nineties, they have had a long, prosperous…

When asked about favorite Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa memories, most people remember the good times. Ask a musician the same question and, instead of poignant tales of seasonal mirth, you hear stories of embarrassment and crime. There’s a lesson about artists wrapped up in there somewhere, but it’s a little…

The Source Latino made its debut on newsstands across the nation this week. The South Beach-based publication is the first nationally distributed magazine to concentrate solely on the Latin hip-hop and reggaeton markets. While this is an exciting development for these woefully underreported genres, the actions and stature of its…

Last month it was revealed that Sony BMG Music had been covertly installing spyware on its new CDs to combat music piracy. Sony used a program called XCP, created by UK firm First 4 Internet, that employed a cloaking system to hide the proprietary media player so consumers were forced…

It has been fifteen years since Albita Rodriguez decided to pack her bags and leave Cuba. And much has changed with the expressive and vocally gifted Cuban sonera/songwriter. Gone is the closely cropped hair. Gone are the Armani suits and fedora hats. But one thing that hasn’t changed is her…