Arts, Entertainment, and Media

Cam'ron on Camera: Cam's 5 Most Memorable On-Screen Moments

Tonight at S.O.B.'s, one of Harlem's favorite sons, Cam'ron, takes the stage to remind us all why, for almost two decades, he's been one of hip-hop's most endearing personalities. But along with all of his quotable verses and unforgettable Cam-isms on record, he's given us some moments in front of t ... More >>

Summer 2013 Film Guide

The Ultimate List of Free Summer Concerts in NYC, 2013

Get ready to plug this in your bookmarks, iCals, sticky notes, and religious shrines, because the ultimate guide to free summer concerts in New York City is here! Seriously, scroll down and don't be stingy - share with your friends. Concerts aren't fun without friends. Just ask the lucky gal above e ... More >>

In a Bumper Year, Four New American Plays Won Obies; Eight More Were Strong Contenders

The plays are the thing

French Montana's Excuse My French Is Finally Here, Though It Almost Didn't Happen

Moroccan-born, Bronx-raised rapper French Montana is at a photo shoot in Tompkins Square Park's basketball court. He's shooting the shit in fluent French with the photographer. A gaggle of scruffy teen skaters recognize him and look over as he saunters slowly—always slowly—about. See al ... More >>

Songs of Disco and Dictators

Former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne on Imelda Marcos and the bubble of power

Fast & Furious & Elegant: Justin Lin and the Vulgar Auteurs

Statik Selektah on the Troll Power of Putting Mac Miller and Sean Price on the Same Song

Editor's note: In "Tweets Is Watching," Phillip Mlynar asks local artists questions based solely on the contents of their Twitter timeline. Statik Selaktah promises his upcoming album, Extended Play, will "remind you of the hip-hop you grew up on, but it's like the new fresh version of that." To hi ... More >>

Announcing the Winners of the 2013 Village Voice Obie Awards

The 58th Annual Village Voice Obie Awards, celebrating achievement in the Off-Broadway and off-off Broadway theater, were given out at a ceremony tonight at Webster Hall. The awards ceremony was co-hosted by Jessica Hecht and Jeremy Shamos. The awards were presented by Bobby Cannavale, Tracee Chimo, ... More >>

The Best Bands Featuring the Album Art of John Dyer Baizley

Tonight Norwegian power rock band Kvelertak play Webster Hall along with Georgia stoner hardcore metallers Black Tusk. (Canadian punks Cancer Bats open, as well.) Besides loudness and shouted vocals (in very different languages), what do Kvelertak and Black Tusk have in common? That would be the a ... More >>

Paramore Kitten - Hammerstein Ballroom - 5/16/13

Paramore Kitten Hammerstein Ballroom 5/16/13 Better Than: Anything J.J. Abrams has done in 2013 Before seeing Paramore tonight, I went to the movies with my best friend. We're both huge sci-fi/fantasy dweebs, so we, of course, had seen the new Star Trek movie on its opening day. The movie was ... More >>

The Oral History of NYC's Metal/Hardcore Crossover

Excerpted from the book Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal, published by It Books and available May 14 New York is a music mecca—the Brill Building, Broadway, street performers, subway buskers, the Metropolitan opera—but it's not known for its abundance of successful ... More >>

Ghostface's Twelve Reasons to Die and Hip-Hop's Other Audio Films

One of rap's most overused cliches is the phrase "my life is like a movie." Significantly much harder to come across are the artists who liken their entire albums to the medium of film. Most recently, Ghostface Killah and Adrian Younge teamed up for Twelve Reasons to Die, an album made to sound like ... More >>

Jay-Z's Great Gatsby Soundtrack is a Failure

When the first trailer for Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby was released a year ago, it was set to the music of Jay-Z and Kanye West's "No Church in the Wild," from the sometimes duo's incredibly self-important Watch the Throne album. On the surface it made sense. Jay-Z -- who retired as a rapper in ... More >>

Havoc of Mobb Deep: "Donald Trump is Like a Biggie to Me!"

Editor's note: In "Tweets Is Watching," Phillip Mlynar asks local artists questions based solely on the contents of their Twitter timeline. Havoc dropped his new 13 album earlier this week, a project he calls "an ode to hip-hop." He'll soon be hitting the tour circuit in the name of promotional dut ... More >>

Dear Mama: A Mother's Day Hip-Hop Playlist

This Sunday is Mother's Day. (Yes, we're sure. Yes, there's still time to get her something.) And what better way to thank the person who brought you into this world than with the gift of music? Few genres have dedicated as many songs to the importance of mothers and mother-figures as hip-hop, but i ... More >>

Cinderella Star On Not Having To Compete With The Matilda Girls

Laura Osnes is very good in Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, and as a result, she's one of the frontrunners for the Tony Award for best actress in a musical. One of the other frontrunners (or four of them, actually) would have been the girls who star in Matilda, alternating in the role. But in ... More >>

Lady Antebellum and Brandy Clark Headline a Night of Country Concerts

Better Than: This divided by two. Let it go into record that for once, on the night of May 7 in the year 2013, Manhattan had too many good country—country referring to popular country, as imported from Nashville—shows to attend, overlapping bookings that could have both been the highlight ... More >>

French Montana's Excuse My French Listening Party - HiLo - 5/7/13

Better Than: Keeping track of when Excuse My French is finally coming out. French Montana has three glittering chains around his neck (one of which is a jewel-studded Pillsbury Doughboy), a pinkie ring so large and sparkly I consider whether it's been wholly carved out of a giant diamond, and fresh ... More >>

Bull: Revolving Toreador

Mike Bartlett turns downsizing into a blood sport

GHOST STORIES

Ghostface Killah and Adrian Younge at Gramercy theatr

EATS & BEATS

A music festival with fantastic food? Done

BLOW-UP

Zoom in on Chuck's Close's artistic process

Bill Clinton Asked Led Zeppelin to Reunite for Hurricane Sandy Concert, And They Said 'No'

There's certainly a pessimistic way to interpret this story: According to a feature on CBS' "60 Minutes Overtime" with the Robin Hood Foundation's David Saltzman, Bill Clinton asked Led Zeppelin to play at the celebrity-studded 12-12-12 Hurricane Sandy relief concert, but the band declined. Bill Cli ... More >>

PHOTOS: The Met's "PUNK: Chaos to Couture" Attempts to be Legit

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is slightly loosening up its tie with their latest Costume Institute exhibition "PUNK: Chaos to Couture," which opens Thursday and is on view through August 14. "Punk began as an impulse, as a feeling," curator Andrew Bolton said during a press preview this morning. ... More >>

He's Old, Missing Teeth, and Has a Funny Haircut: He's Danny Brown, Rap's Biggest Deal

Apart from the overcrowding and cost of living, subway ads are one of the most depressing things about New York City. But now, next to the usual ads offering escape in vacation destinations and self-realization in a pair of shoes, you'll find a glimmer of hope in a Uniqlo ad featuring 32-year-old De ... More >>

Nas, 2 Chainz, Fabolous, Miguel More - Capitale - 4/30/13

Better Than: Farmville "Why am I here?" That's the refrain that kept running through my head as I walked into Capitale on the Bowery last night, where Nas, 2 Chainz, Miguel, Elle Varner and a whole host of hip-hop and R&B; artists emerged to celebrate the launch of Gig-IT, a new performance-based Fa ... More >>

Will There Be Face-Recognition Surveillance at the Statue of Liberty?

The National Park Service describes the Statue of Liberty as "a universal symbol of freedom and democracy." What better place to implement powerful new surveillance systems complete with next-generation facial-recognition technology? Late last year, Police Product Insight, a trade journal for polic ... More >>

The Memory Show: Senior Moments

Exploring the pain of Alzheimer’s

Matthew E. White

Which Way Is the Front Line From Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington

Escape - Saint Vitus - 4/29/13

Better Than: A Cuban cigar. On Saturday night, Cuban metal band Escape played their first NYC gig at Tobacco Road in Manhattan; last night, they played Saint Vitus in Brooklyn. In so doing, they made history. They are the first metal band from Cuba to perform in the United States. And it took the h ... More >>

The Complete Guide to Understanding Lil B

How does one explain God? How does one explain faith? How does one explain Limp Bizkit's cover of George Michael's "Faith?" The answer, of course, is you cannot explain that which is ineffable, and also Fred Durst is playing at a club in Long Island tonight. Either way, the equally ineffable Lil B i ... More >>

The Many, Many Weird Guest Appearances of Sir Elton John

Elton John may be one of the most silently pervasive artists ever. At award shows, tribute concerts, and even on random albums, including his most recent stint on Fall Out Boy's currently #1 Save Rock and Roll, the "Candle in the Wind" crooner knows how to steal the spotlight from whichever star is ... More >>

Emo is Dead, Long Live Emo: 30 Bands Making it Safe to Hurt Again

It's a confusing time to be an emo fan. My Chemical Romance recently called it quits, while Fall Out Boy, surprisingly, have the #1 album in the country. That album, however, is a far cry from the sound old heads remember from the Take This to Your Grave era. Bro, are you even emo anymore? See also ... More >>

R.A. the Rugged Man: The Music Industry is "Crooked Fake Phonies Marketing hemselves to the world

R.A. The Rugged Man releases his Legends Never Die album this week. It's a project the thuggish ruggish rap chap promises will showcase his ability to "annihilate any rapper on this Earth." We don't doubt the Rugged man. In other, chirpier news, here's R.A. explaining away his Twitter timeline chatt ... More >>

Death-Metal Band The Faceless Draw Criticism for Becoming Less Death-Metal

By Jason Roche When music from Los Angeles metal group The Faceless' newest album, Autotheism, began to leak out into the blogosphere last summer, fans were divided, and so were critics. "A botched experiment of sorts," opined SputnikMusic.com; "razor sharp," countered ThePRP.com. The group's prev ... More >>

"The Hippest Street Artist Since Banksy" Installs Himself in Times Square

Times Square was wickedly crowded today, nothing out of the ordinary. But there were more faces in the crowd that usual. Hundreds of black and white posters of peoples faces were pasted all over the corner of 47th Street and 7th Avenue. It looked pretty damn extraordinary. The spectacle was the bra ... More >>

Ghostface Killah and Adrian Younge Produce an Album That's a Movie

Twelve reasons to buy

Young Guru Ushers in the Era of the Engineer, Prefers De La to Tribe

You know Young Guru as the super-engineer knob-twiddler behind hits from Jay-Z, Rick Ross and Drake, but last week he steeped out from behind the boards to deliver a lecture at N.Y.U.'s Clive Davis School of Recorded Music as part of his Era of the Engineer tour. In tandem with Grammy U, the session ... More >>

The Ten Best Concerts in New York This Week, 4/22/13

Here are the top 10 concerts around the city this week, in no particular order.

Rabbi Darkside on Bringing Prospect Avenue Around the World

Few underground hip-hop artists in New York have had the staying power of Rabbi Darkside. From an era where everyone had a vinyl single, through rap battling at the start of the mid-2000s rising next wave of battle leagues, to being a coach on "MTV's Made" and one of the centerpieces of the Hip-Hop ... More >>

Talking Louis C.K., South Park and Popcorn With Talib Kweli

Editor's note: In Tweets is Watching, Phillip Mlynar asks local artists questions based solely on the contents of their Twitter timeline. Talib Kweli is gearing up to release his fifth solo album, Prisoner of Consciousness, on May 7th. The project features collaborations with Kendrick Lamar, Curren ... More >>

Motown and The Rascals: Jukebox Mausoleum

Boomers Turn Broadway into a Pop-Music Scrapbook

SHATTERED LENS

Sebastian Junger honors a friend

MAD WORLD

Chat with Don Draper and co.

REO Speedwagon+Styx

From Hesher to Hardcore: Lewis Dimmick on His New Book This Music

In the early 80's, the phenomenon known as Hardcore Punk whipped through the U.S. like the pissed off, privileged child that it was. By the mid '80s though, most of the bands who coined the sound and term were either donning black and weeping or doing bad AC/DC impressions. There were also those who ... More >>

H.R. of Bad Brains is Not Crazy, Insists Jamie Saft

With a monstrously flowing godlike beard, multi-instrumental guru Jamie Saft resembles a Hasidic mountain man who should be jamming on meaty blues licks with his beloved ZZ Top instead of the downtown avant-gardist and John Zorn ensemble vet for which he's known. The catch is, dude actually makes hi ... More >>

Diana Ross Went To See Motown: The Musical?

Luscious legend Diana Ross went to the Broadway opening of Motown The Musical last night, and I have to say when I heard that, I had to stop in the name of love for a second and think about it. I'm surprised Di's gotten aboard this soul train! After all, Diana can be prickly about anything involvin ... More >>