Best Hip-Hop Mixtape 2010 | The Format, FOE & DJ Awhat | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Hip-Hop Mixtape

The Format, FOE & DJ Awhat

In a crowded field of standout releases from some of the city's finest MCs and DJs, The Format, a mixtape by FOE and DJ Awhat, quickly rose to the head of the class — and that's saying a lot, because many of those mixes are hot as hell. Gliding on top of dense electro backdrops fashioned from borrowed beats put together by Awhat, FOE (Father of Enemies, aka Bobby Rogers) spits with a velvety-smooth, unhurried cadence, offering the kind of languid delivery that sounds like it was crafted in a dispensary for, ahem, medicinal purposes. Add to that cameos by Karma, ManeRok, Trouble, Yonnas Abraham from The Pirate Signal, Haven and 800 the Jewell, and you have a mixtape that shows just how high hip-hop in the Mile High can go.

Best New Hip-Hop Act

Air Dubai

Air Dubai, which began life as a hip-hop duo and showed tons of potential right out of the gate with its debut long player, 2008's The Early October, has made an absolutely stunning transformation. From the sounds of the act's latest tune, "I Know How," recorded at Coupe Studios with studio time the group earned through a recent University of Colorado battle of the bands victory, Air Dubai, now a seven-member crew, has kicked things up a few notches. Recalling the classic soul flavor and musicality of cuts like "Break You Off," by the Roots, this new tune is instantly entrancing and offers a promising glimpse of what's to come from this act — which is clearly no cookie-cutter rap-rock hybrid. Air Dubai is currently in the studio working on its next album, due out sometime later this year.

Best Barely Recognizable Cover Song

"Subbacultcha," The Lovely and Talented

Many bands are content with learning the chords and melody of one of their favorite songs, then getting up on stage and pumping it out. The so-called faithful cover song is often a cop-out or just plain filler — but not in the hands of JT Nolan of the Lovely and Talented. He decided to put a hot-jazz spin on his nearly unrecognizable rendition of the Pixies' "Subbacultcha." It's such a radical reinterpretation, Nolan even gives himself co-songwriting credit with the Pixies' Frank Blank on the liner notes of the Lovely and Talented's latest disc, The New American Fable. That takes some chutzpah — but one listen to Nolan's version is enough to make you realize he's earned it.

Best Karaoke Bar

Charlie Brown's Bar & Grill

Mark Antonation

Good karaoke bars need several things: cheap booze, a thick songbook, a DJ capable of inflating your ego, a no-cuts-no-butts-no-coconuts method of choosing singers and, perhaps most important, a loyal following of wannabe Axl Roses who will sing along to the lyrics of almost anything and cheer you on while you do the Vanilla Ice dance during instrumental breaks. Charlie Brown's has all this and more. The cheap booze flows from morning until night, and you can keep your pipes primed during the five-times-a-week piano sing-along. That way, when the karaoke starts at 9:30 p.m. on Sundays, you'll be ready to join in with the rest of the appreciative audience, encouraging every intoxicated rendition of "Ice Ice Baby." Word to your mother.

Best Jazz Jam

Jazz Expo

Evan Semón

When guitarist Cole Rudy started his every-other-Monday Jazz Expo nights at the Meadowlark, he was looking to re-create the backyard jams he'd enjoyed with his music-school friends. Some of those friends are now part of a rotating cast that includes gypsy-jazz guitarist M'hamed El Menjra, trumpeter Gabe Mervine and alto saxophonist Matt Pitts. Whether they're burning through standards or collectively improvising, these Jazz Expo musicians make some of the most exciting music you'll find in town — especially on a Monday night.

Best Actress in a One-Woman Show

Ethelyn Friend, Calamity

Yes, there was a man on stage in Calamity _ a musician supposedly hired by Calamity Jane for the crazed, disorganized Wild West show with which she attempted to eke out a living later in life — but he served primarily as a foil for the drunken, obscenity-spewing, self-pitying, self-destructive creature Jane had become. This was essentially a one-woman show, and Ethelyn Friend was unstoppable in the role of Calamity: singing, staggering, insulting her musician and the audience, cradling her bottle, and filling the small theater with gust after gust of insane energy.

Best Free Movie Series

Ubisububi Room

Tony White

The tiny, intimate Ubisububi Room, in the basement of the Thin Man, has quietly become home to the best free film series in town. Curated by Gio and Carmela Toninelo, the Ubisububi has turned Wednesday nights into a chance to see programs featuring everything from sci-fi classics to indie romances, frequently with a seasonal twist (expect to see horror movies come Halloween). The siblings' deep appreciation of cinema and eclectic tastes keep the selections fresh and engaging, balancing must-see favorites with more left-field fare. And since the series is free, you can spend those last few dollars in your wallet at the bar upstairs, which is bound to help your enjoyment of any movie.

Best Poets for a Captive Audience

Captured Words/Free Thoughts

Residents of the Denver Women's Correctional Facility have a lot of time to think — and they show that they've put that time to very good use in Captured Words, a collection of poems, stories and essays that they wrote in the fall of 2009, when a group from the University of Colorado Denver visited the facility every week to work with the women. As Erika Baro wrote: "The skies are dark and gray/The rain won't stop falling/The lightning throbs and screams/Looking at the turmoil in my soul/I realize I'm not the only one/Who feels this way/The world also hurts/It just broke before I did."

Best Museum Show — Solo

Rex Ray

San Francisco artist Rex Ray, who used to live in Colorado, has become a hot property over the past few years. Fortunately, Denver is one of the spots where his remarkable signature style is regularly highlighted. Ray's work riffs on mid-century modern, using organic shapes in cut paper arranged in the manner of abstract landscapes. For most of 2009, a Ray mural hung in the Promenade Space at MCA Denver, surrounded by wallpaper that he also designed. Both elements were created specifically for this show, a solo tour de force curated by former MCA director Cydney Payton, who returned to the museum to do it.

Best Abstract Show by an Out-of-Towner

Barnaby Furnas: Floods

New York artist Barnaby Furnas, who's achieved international fame over the past ten years, made his local debut this year at MCA Denver in a show put together by new director Adam Lerner. Handsomely ensconced in the Large Works Gallery, Barnaby Furnas: Floods included a handful of the artist's remarkable — and sometime huge — acrylic paintings. Furnas considers himself a narrative painter in the tradition of the great European landscape artists, and if you squinted a little, you could almost see what he means — but these works clearly place him among the heirs to abstract expressionism, with his technique of pouring paint and his embrace of spontaneity and accidents, à la Jackson Pollock. Good show!

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