Vince Staples didn’t set out to be a rapper when he was growing up in Long Beach, California. But a chance trip with some friends to Los Angeles, where he met and befriended members of the Odd Future collective, changed his life trajectory. Now considered not just a promising rapper,…
Since its inception in 2003, Emmure has been one of the most polarizing metalcore acts. Vocalist Frankie Palmeri hasn’t shied away from Internet trolls, meeting trash talk with a no-fucks-given attitude. He’s had beef with bands like the Acacia Strain, rattles off offensive lyrics like “Ask your girl what my…
Stewart Copeland, drummer and co-founder of the Police, wants people to know that if they see him and the Colorado Symphony perform Tyrant’s Crush, his concerto for trap set and orchestra, this weekend, that “they can make as much noise as they want. This ain’t Mahler.” Tyrant’s Crush, Copeland’s first concerto,…
The members of the influential hip-hop crew Hieroglyphics grew up within walking distance of each other in Oakland. They steeped their psyches in the city’s diverse cultural offerings and cultivated their instinct for originality on their own terms.
Molina Speaks is not demure. His new podcast, about different perspectives on art, healing and activism, which he’s co-producing with his partner and fellow artist and poet Sheree “Lovemestiza” Brown, is called Brown Genius. Molina, who used the tag “Chicano Picasso” on works he’s created in the past year, made…
Thundercat has had a career that would be the envy of any modern musician.
Last week we brought you a list of twelve defunct DIY spaces that shaped Denver’s music scene; this week we’re focusing on alternative venues. Though the distinction between the two is blurry, what distinguishes an alternative space is that it has another function entirely: Perhaps it’s a coffee shop, an art gallery or a bike repair shop, but it also hosts occasional concerts.
The Colfax Tattered Cover Was Once the Historic Bonfils Memorial Theatre
Opera has a bad reputation of being so exorbitantly epic that it’s hard for all but the wealthiest to access. Boulder Opera challenges that notion.
Perched high above the basketball court, nearly in the rafters, Cassidy Bednark watches Pepsi Center workers prepare for another game: the Nuggets versus the Clippers. Bednark is nestled into his signature yellow and powder-blue DJ booth. Going over his playlist before tip-off, Bednark — who is the official Denver Nuggets DJ — steps behind his turntables and becomes DJ Bedz: The White Shadow, ready to rock the stadium.
Having recently ditched the quaint academic haven of western Massachusetts for the sunny shores of southern California, the members of Potty Mouth are in a transitional phase.
Larry Damore played in a new-wave cover band in Chicago throughout most of his teenage years. Like many people growing up in the ’80s, he was inspired by The Decline of Western Civilization, a documentary chronicling Los Angeles’s early punk scene that included bands like Black Flag, the Germs and X.
A brief comic history of Denver’s downtown theater neighborhood, the Great White Way.
When people who knew Clayton Counts saw a Facebook memorial account for him, they assumed it was a joke. That would be his style. He had faked his own death on at least one occasion and left in his wake a long string of pranks. Sadly, this was no hi-jinks.
For a moment, Theo Bleckmann didn’t know if he was alive or dead. Five years ago, the New York-based vocalist and composer, who has been a fixture in the avant-garde and jazz scenes for 25 years, was in a car accident that severely damaged his eyes.
Used to be that a bar was only as good as its jukebox, until even the most respectable of hole-in-the-walls started going digital. Not that we can blame them. Maintaining a thirty-, forty-, fifty-year-old machine that’s constantly prodded by drunk people is expensive. Indeed, the list of bars that maintain…
A brief cartoon history of the Rainbow Music Hall.
Indie rock band Lemuria is on tour, celebrating the tenth anniversary of its debut album, Get Better. But the band’s tour line-up will include long-time collaborator Tony Flaminio on keyboards, vocals and guitar, meaning Get Better will be presented as it was recorded.
The metro Denver hip-hop and rap scene has been booming for a long time now, although there’s always that nagging feeling that people further afield should be paying more attention. We have artists here that span the various nooks and crannies that make up the genre, creating intelligent and fascinating music. Here are ten artists that could well make a big noise this year, ordered alphabetically.
What happens when you juxtapose Ludwig Van Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 9 in D Minor,” an orchestral masterpiece whose sublime grandeur seems impossible to rival, with Kevin Puts’s much gentler (albeit not that gentle) “Symphony No. 2,” a modern orchestral work the contemporary composer wrote in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks?
Brooklyn hip-hop artist and social activist Talib Kweli has built a career on incisive, intelligent lyrics with his thought-provoking rap. Surrounded by a family of university educators, Kweli came to the public’s attention in 1996 when he appeared on the album Doom by Cleveland group Mood. It was in 2002, with the release of his debut solo album Quality, that he saw his reputation blossom nationally.
From the opening lines of Qbala’s new track, “So Alone,” the MC establishes themselves as a fluid being, unbound by binary gender and what can be contained in merely a human form.
