Chicago – Yo New York, I’ma let you finish but you ain’t got nothing on Chicago when it comes to blizzards! Twenty inches of snow? Check. Below freezing temps? Check. Letting winter disrupt our lives? No dice! Monday night was proof Chicagoans refuse to let frigid temperatures and a little bit of snow stop the
Portland – When Best New Bands spoke with Kat Dahlia last month, she was very eager to share her debut album with the world. Though it has been a while since her first single off the record, “Gangsta,” was released in 2013, My Garden (out this week on Epic subsidiary Vested In Culture) is well
Portland – Rae Sremmurd, a hip-hop duo from Tulepo, Mississippi, could prove to be a divisive group in the years to come. For those who can appreciate the deliberate weirdness of Swae Lee and his older sibling Slim Jimmy, their debut album SremmLife, out this week, is an enjoyable, if occasionally uneven record. The album
Chicago – When does an underground hip hop group officially become mainstream? For Run The Jewels, perhaps the answer may be as simple as when you need to add a second show because the first instantly sold out. Rappers El-P and Killer Mike played back-to-back shows at The Metro Saturday night. The duo has only
San Francisco – Treasure Island Music Festival has been a staple of the bay area ever since its inaugural event, held in 2007. Since then the festival has seen headliners such as Beck, Belle and Sebastian, Modest Mouse, and LCD Soundsystem. This year they’ve tapped Outkast and Massive Attack as headliners, and while they both
Chicago – Sunday night the main floor of Chicago’s House of Blues was tightly packed with gaggles of girls. The last time I found myself in such close quarters with so many screaming teenagers, I was at NKOTB’s The Magic Summer Tour. This time around I wasn’t a crying tween excited to see my favorite
Los Angeles – A$AP Ferg is under the weather. The Turnt x Burnt tour is Ferg’s first as a headliner. He’s brought his A$AP Mob cohorts (minus Rocky) with him on the road and tonight’s sell out at the Glasshouse is exactly the midway point of their cross-country trek. 14 shows remain and sold out houses have been the norm. Ferg’s tour manager
Los Angeles – “Weed is tight.” This was the message MellowHigh preached. It’s easy to say that as the blunt smoke sifted up into the air and joints changed hands this night was all about the dope, son. The stoned grouping of Domo Genesis, Hodgy Beats and Left Brain from the Odd Future collective spawned
In recent years, Coachella has dedicated at least one headlining spot to a hip-hop act. In 2010 it was Beastie Boys, 2011 Kanye West, last year Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, and this year the reunion of the Wu-Tang Clan. But despite the lure and appeal of hip-hop heavyweights, the genre’s general presence has
One thing I have learned from shooting as many shows as I have, is that opportunities often randomly present themselves and lead to some crazy outcomes. That was the exact thing that happened the last night at SXSW. A friend scored Sleigh Bells and Nas passes, sadly I couldn’t make it in time for Sleigh