The defining narrative of American politics since the turn of the millennium seems to be that ‘We the people’ are screwed no matter who gets elected. Elect a Republican: We engage in pre-emptive war, the national deficit skyrockets, and we sacrifice education and infrastructure investment. Elect a Democrat hoping things…
Holy hip-hop star Lecrae resides in Atlanta now, but the MC spent his early teens in Denver, so this is still a hometown show. The Dove Award winner and Grammy nominee has put in years of persistent grinding, which has helped him become one of the few gospel rappers to…
GZA @ SUMMIT MUSIC HALL | 9/22/12 “I don’t have a hypeman, so you’re my hype man,” Killer Mike tells the crowd two songs into his set. “So get hype, motherfuckers.” The crowd is more than happy to comply. Opening with the first three songs from his new album, the…
First known to hip-hop audiences outside of Georgia thanks to attention-grabbing cameos on OutKast records, Killer Mike has been a steady presence for a decade, mixing Southern street anthems and political consciousness on a handful of records and a laundry list of features. His collaboration with producer El-P, the 2012…
Twelve years in the making, the sequel to Deltron 3030 has attained mythical stature in many underground hip hop circles. The original — a turn-of-the-millenium sci-fi concept record that sprang from the collaboration of Del the Funky Homosapien, Dan The Automator and Kid Koala — balanced a dark, post-apocalyptic technological…
The self-titled, sci-fi-infused concept album born of the collaboration of Del Tha Funky Homosapien, Dan the Automator and Kid Koala way back in the year 2000 has maintained a devout, cult-like following of hip-hop heads. With Del unraveling tales of intergalactic rap battles atop some of Automator’s most distinctive production…
On “Here Lies,” a track from Paradox and Sean P’s latest, Mending, the beats are impressive — DJ Premier-esque, sample-driven boom bap — as are the rhymes, which touch on government conspiracies, injustice and sundry ills of society. This is solid underground hip-hop that doesn’t seem to match the label’s…
It’s no secret that Denver’s electronic-music scene has grown exponentially over the past couple of years. But while some of the world’s best DJs and producers might swing through town for a night to melt a dance floor, it leaves some local artists asking why we aren’t exporting as much…
“Fuck your money/Fuck your paycheck/I made negative dollars and still managed to stay fresh,” spits Rhyme Progression over a dusty-soul loop that pulses beneath this EP’s second tune, “Gat Damn Right.” While the MC brags at times, the album is far from a litany of machismo. More often, Rhyme Pro’s…
What happens when you mix a podcast conversation about telepathic octopuses with a psychedelic experience on DMT? The answer is Glucose’s jungle-heavy EP, Telepathic Octopus. For electronic music fans of a certain age — those old enough to remember the late ’90s — hearing Glucose’s new EP, Telepathic Octopus, for…
One day, historians will look back and marvel at how blogs changed the music industry — that is if they can avoid being distracted by the next big thing long enough to think analytically about history. Where just a few critics used to shape the tastes of music fans across…
See Also: – Paper Bird’s Esme Patterson flies solo – Amor, Est. goes from classical guitar to digital mayhem – Harpoontang combines Paper Bird, Laura Goldhamer and Kitty Crimes for raunchy fun – Tip Sheet archives A.Poco.Lips (aka Kyle Wilson) is in the midst of a prolific summer of music…
See Also: – Five worst moments in musical plagiarism – #ShitRappersSay on stage in Denver Hip-hop’s perennial debate topic “old school versus new school” got literal recently when legendary D.I.T.C. crew producer/rapper Lord Finesse swung a $10 million law suit at Mac Miller, his record label and the mixtape website…
See Also: Meet Extra Kool, the Creature From the Whack Lagoon Dirty Laboratory MC Extra Kool just dropped a new video for his tune “Is Anybody Thirsty?” The clip spills enough fake blood to make you forget the bucket scene from Carrie. With some help of shlock-horror experts from Troma,…
If you’re one of those folks who thinks electronic music is made by people lacking the manual dexterity to play “real” instruments, then Amor, Est. would like to prove you wrong. The local producer, born Steele Kempton, has a dozen years of classical guitar training, but preferred the expansive possibilities…
MC/label founder/activist Sole (aka Tim Holland) has been espousing the virtues of DIY long before the internet made it so easy for everybody to put out their own albums. But since splitting with Anticon (the label he founded), he’s been living his philosophy again, and that feels good. Now, having…
Default Champion’s new EP is a contemplative post-rock soundtrack for wide open spaces. The tightly arranged album opens with “Egg,” an introduction mingling introspective layers of guitar with sustained rips of distortion. “Caterpillar” is like the stoned teenage son of Joe Meek and Broken Social Scene, where layers of spaghetti-Western…
Among a handful of the local music-scene tributes to recently deceased Beastie Boy Adam Yauch, Time offered his respects for the fallen MC and activist on a new tune, “Too Sweet to Be Sour,” a cross-Atlantic collaboration with British MC Akira the Don. The track opens with a crisp horn…
Amanda Palmer recently set the record for crowd-sourced fundraising among music-related projects — a record once held by Five Iron Frenzy — after the Kickstarter campaign to fund her new record raised $735,000 in about two weeks. The former Dresden Dolls frontwoman served up tickets, copies of the album and…
ManCub’s noisy, distortion-washed dance punk seems like it could have been born of some combination of wide-eyed innocence and reckless abandon. Truth is, it’s a labor of spite. “I had a girlfriend at the time, and she broke up with me and broke my heart,” explains ManCub’s mastermind, Alex Anderson…
Over the weekend, Serena Williams might have been in Spain playing tennis, but she was getting more attention in the blogosphere for seventy seconds of a leaked rap song she made. The results sound like an amateurish impression of a collaboration between Missy Eliot and the Neptunes. The opening line…
When Michigan record store owner Jeff Bubeck acquired several thousand records from an abandoned storage unit in Clinton Township, he didn’t realize he might’ve taken possession of a piece of hip-hop history. Bubeck started sifting through the collection and found several items addressed to James Yancey (better known as legendary…
