Nick Waterhouse does not make retro soul. He digs more on late '50s and early '60s rhythm and blues—Magic Sam, Ike Turner, British bands like The Premiers working out the American South—and writes bummed and bitter three-minute songs with horn stabs and maracas drenched in period aesthetics. Waterhouse is 25, a big music geek, and [...]
On the Fader-premiered “Russian Roulette,” underground-D.C.-rap-hero-turned-emerging national-product Fat Trel makes an impressive, aggressive power play. He’s hanging out with Chicago’s Chief Keef now, a 16-year-old prospect who just landed a Kanye remix on the strength of a stand-out March mixtape. Rather than tacking on 45 seconds of name-dropping and vague threats to someone else’s song, [...]
Over the last three months,I spent a lot of time around Fat Trel and his entourage. I felt like the accountant in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou.
If there's one thing I can't stress enough, it's how intelligent Fat Trel is. He's consumes culture like a philosopher, and immediately takes a sharp stand on it. [...]
Maryland rapper Marky used Valentine's Day to drop another hip-hop video featuring a song wherein dude raps over an enormous indie-rock hit. It almost works. The rhymes are well-written, although Marky sounds like he didn't memorize them before laying down vocals. That's a swagger killer.
M83's "Midnight City" has been itching to be on urban radio since non-Pitchfork [...]
Oddisee made the best DMV album of 2011. But I’m tired of reading about him in Arts Desk posts.
On the national side of sounds, the year was mostly about slowing down and turning up the bass (see: James Blake, Drizzy Drake, The Weeknd, Bon Iver, Girls, Frank Ocean). However, some Haterade for all the buzzy [...]
After a predictable delay that surely bummed out hip-hop nerds on their lunch breaks, M-1 and stic.man of Dead Prez converged in a makeshift Occupy D.C. tent in the middle of McPherson Square today and performed for crunk homeless men, shoeless hippies, earnest fans, and a dude in a V For Vendetta mask. The concert was barely audible beyond [...]
Is “Otis” a terrible song?
I thought so. It’s a lazy, looped beat that is trampled on by weak punch-lines, and is just about impossible to consume. But three songs into Thursday night’s Monsters of Rap summit, the track felt central to whatever cultural unifiers linger in the middle class’ societal fabric. An extended intro turned [...]
Billy McCarthy is still standing. After dealing with the disintegration of a promising band doomed to rot on a dying indie label, the unexpected suicides of his mother and brother, and problems with alcohol abuse, the Brooklyn-based songwriter has resurfaced with his new band We Are Augustines.
McCarthy's old band—the anthemic and pleading Pela—would chew on [...]
On Saturday, the Virgin Mobile FreeFest dodged rainy forecasts and generally moved forward on the Merriweather Post Pavilion grounds with the efficiency and grace of a Tony Romo drive, at least for the first three quarters. The Ferris wheel was steady; burritos in the press tent were easy to smuggle; no one in the dance [...]
On a scale between "click on a link" and "volunteer for at-risk youth," this year's Virgin Mobile FreeFest lineup is worth, say, assembling toiletry kits at a drop-in center for the homeless. What the cornerstone back-to-school party lacks in area talent and a discernible, reliable musical identity, it compensates for with exhausting marketing.
While the gimmicky stylings [...]
