When the crack epidemic hit the streets in the ’80s, it changed the social constructs of a generation. Not only did it birth a legion of children with addicted parents, but from Jay-Z to Rick Ross, it also served as thematic fodder for some of rap’s biggest names. Like hip-hop,…
DJ Quote is no stranger to controversy, having tangled with his fair share of detractors in the past. Actually, he’s no stranger at all: To date, he’s released more than 300 mixtapes, performed at parties at major sporting events across the country, and appeared on national television a handful of…
Its been over eight years since Eminem thrust the concept of battle rapping into the mainstream consciousness with his first feature film, 8 Mile. Even though hip-hop has thrived within different types of competition since its birth (including breakdancing battles, DJ competitions and crossed-out tags on walls), crowds in the…
By Matty Clark, bartender at Lost Lake Lounge (3602 East Colfax Avenue) in Denver. The bartender doesn’t actually hate you. Bartending is a stressful, complicated job that requires dealing with human beings at their absolute worst (when they’re drunk.)…
PHISH August 9-10, 2010 | Telluride Town Park Looking out over a crowd of roughly 10,000 people on the ball fields of Telluride’s town park after tearing through a cover of Traffic’s “Light up or Leave Me Alone,” Phish’s Trey Anastasio summed up the surroundings succinctly: “It’s still beautiful here.”…
J-Blev, the latest act out of Colorado Springs, has elevated his sound with the help of Turf DJ Ktone. The title of his latest mixtape, And Then There Was Me, alludes to the solitary nature of being a rapper, in which an artist must step out on his own to…
As half of the Benevento-Russo Duo, Marco Benevento played bass lines with his feet and held down organ and Wurlitzer parts with separate hands. But in the trio format, he’s completely at home behind the piano, which he says is totally his ax. The forward-thinking Benevento makes captivating music by…
As reported here last week, nearly half of the finalists competing for the US DMC title in New York City this past weekend hail from Colorado. Unfortunately, none of the five local contestants, who battled it out in front of a celebrity crowd against some of the most talented and…
Acting on impulse is a great way to succeed. Shira is an answers-first-figure-out-the-questions-later type of lady who know this all too well. Some years ago, she and her band decided they wanted to play The Warped Tour. Rather than sitting around waiting for an acceptance letter, ShiraGirl brazenly parked their…
Music and marriages have one major thing in common. By normal standard, the average life expectancy of either is around the three or four year mark, and sometimes ends due to a wandering eye, financial woes or just a blatant mismatch in chemistry. Fortunately for the Alkaline Trio, this isn’t…
A few months ago, the curious questions started circulating via tweets and Facebook comments. Everyone wanted to know where are these headshot sketches of Colorado’s most notable hip-hop artists were coming from? Who was responsible for putting in so much artistic time for so many people?…
Few bands in the annals of underground music in Denver have garnered as much notoriety as Warlock Pinchers. Beginning in 1987, the Pinchers made a name for themselves early on as a charmingly obnoxious outfit of musical pranksters whose legacy of creative mischief is as memorable as its shows and…
Update: DJ Etronik from Pico Rivera, California, ended up taking home honors over the weekend as the winner of this year’s DMC US Finals in NYC. This Saturday, August 7, another chapter will be added to the annals of hip-hop history in New York City. On what will presumably be…
Spoke In Wordz is a rapper with a background rooted in the structure of poetry. His flow is notably diverse. Like one of his major inspirations, Guru, Spoke uses a velvety voice to deliver his lyrics, but he also spits in Spanish, lightning-fast, with a tone used to provoke thought…
Lest the rest of the country think we’re merely home to indie rock goodness like Candy Claws and sugary sweet electro-pop confections like 3OH!3 or Breathe Carolina, Allegaeon’s new album, Fragments of Form & Function, issued two weeks ago on the storied Metal Blade Records imprint, should help dispel any…
See also: Input on how SupaHotBeats convinced him to share his harrowing Columbine experience These days, older terms like “backpack rap” and “college rap” have become interchangeable with markers like “conscious hip-hop” and “alt hip-hop,” as ways to attempt to describe and categorize hip-hop that’s thoughtful and introspective. While Input’s…
Ansel Adams, famous for capturing a multitude of black-and-white landscape photographs — many of which likely adorn the walls of your dentist’s office — once said, “You don’t take a photograph. You make it.” Seetwist Productions lives, breathes, shoots and essentially embodies those words by profiling some of the most…
From the Dirty South of the ATL to the fields of Kentucky and Nebraska to places as far away as South Africa, rapper and musician Proxy has been many places sharing his music and his service. Throughout his travels, though, Proxy says he became the man he felt he was…
The music of Miniature Tigers sounds like it has its roots in the sunnier, more upbeat end of ’60s guitar rock, utilizing spare melodies with melodic atmospheres that have an nostalgic immediacy — as though your future self could sing a song to you with words of compassion and comfort…
Nofrendo (aka Joseph Meezy) is the beat making equivalent of Nina Simone. Built on his love for soul and all things raw and gritty, his production style begets welcoming anachronistic melodies. Quite different from the sped up soul sample moves of many producers, he takes the properties of a record…
Reverend Deadeye started his wild-eyed, tent revival, country-gospel-blues one-man band in 2002, just as one his previous projects, the dark, gnarled post-punk outfit, the Bedraggled, was coming to an end. Embracing the music he grew up with as a child on a northeastern Arizona reservation, Reverend Deadeye (aka Brent Burkhart)…
Nautical Mile first caught our attention back in July of 2009 , and since then has pretty much destroyed any notions people might have had about the quality of local music. With a slew of some of the most radio-friendly pop rock songs to ever come out of Colorado, Nautical…
