In Hibernation
What happened to the Mayor’s Safe Art Space Task Force and how is the DIY scene carrying on?
Music
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Self Help: Kendrick Lamar's "DAMN." as intervention
Kung Fu Kenny, the 5-foot-5 giant and hip-hop's resident Vitruvian Man, awoke from his sleep to deliver us his fourth studio album back in April—"DAMN.," a proper follow-up to put detractors of 2015's "To Pimp A Butterfly" back in their cocoons. "DAMN." is a 14-track, 55-minute cathartic therapy...
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Southern Exposure: Jason Isbell discusses reckoning with white Southern masculinity on new album "The Nashville Sound"
Jason Isbell's "The Nashville Sound" is the summer soundtrack for those of us who fled small towns because of the sexism or the racism or the lack of opportunities, only to see all of those things amplified with the election of Donald Trump, rendering our hometowns almost hostile to our very existence....
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2017 Big Music Issue
City Paper’s Big Music Issue I’ll level with you: This year’s Music Issue is a rip-off of the New York Times’ feature “25 Songs That Tell Us Where Music Is Going,” a very neat thing that paper has done over the past two years, offering up some great song recommendations and music writing along...
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Playful and Persistent: Julius Eastman, Abdu Ali, and the Women's March are all vital to Horse Lords' latest release
On Horse Lords' cover of 'Stay on It,' a composition from noted '70s and '80s New York composer Julius Eastman who innately bridged disco and classical music, drummer Sam Haberman aggrandizes the rhythmic punctuation latent in Eastman while Andrew Bernstein's wailing sax feels like vicarious liberation—the...
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Baltimore Pride headliner and New Orleans bounce icon Big Freedia talks Pride, God, and ass-shaking
Big Freedia's voice is steady, strong, and commanding. It is powerful even when she isn't yelling out instructions on how and when to shake your ass in her songs, or showing up in Beyoncé's 'Formation' ("I did not come to play with you hoes," she exclaims as Bey, dressed all in black, nods her...
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JPEGMAFIA and rap legend Willie D of Geto Boys talk Trump, Russia, Steve Harvey, and more
The first time I ever went to Texas was on a bus with curtains draped over the windows. I just joined the military and got shipped off to basic training in San Antonio. I didn't see much when I stepped out, because I had an armed soldier in my face telling me how much of a bitch I was even though...
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Slow and Steady: Snail Mail is making moves
At Maryland's music mega-fortress, Merriweather Post Pavilion, 17-year-old Lindsey Jordan yells at concert rabble-rousers in a heavy, stern voice: "Sir, don't stand on that chair! . . . Sir, put that out!" She has been laying down the law and holding doors for bands backstage as a Merriweather...
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City Paper staff recommends some summer music
Kleenex/LiLiPUT, "First Songs" (Kill Rock Stars) The cover of Kleenex/Liliput's compilation album "First Songs," released last December as a double LP with their music from 1978-1982, features three of the band's female members in cardboard, vaguely crustacean-inspired costumes, a la Dada daddy...
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The Best Ever Country Radio Show Out of Worton: Next time you're on the Eastern Shore, check out Southern Star Country Club on 90.5
Southern Star Country Club is a radio show broadcasting out of the small town of Worton, Maryland on WKHS, a commercial-free station connected to Kent County High School on Monday nights at 8 p.m. It's hosted by Mike Martinez, a country and western savant who mixes contemporary country of all sorts...
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Merriweather Post Pavillon looks back at 50 years of music—and forward to some big changes
Summer means outdoor concerts, and for 50 years, people around Baltimore and Washington have been heading to Merriweather Post Pavilion for music in the woods. Originally designed by Frank Gehry as a home for the National Symphony Orchestra, the pavilion and lawn have played host to some of the...
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Scavenger’s Delight: DJ Booman and DJ Kool Breez are record-scouring duo Dust Addicts
"My gold mine is flea markets," Kool Breez tells me. "I love flea markets, man. As long as we have gas money, and money to get there, we are good. I don't even need a lot of money. We have been dealing with some of the same dealers for 20 years. And you can give these dealers a wish list, and they...
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Bongs Don't Cry, Except When They Do: Wildhoney release a weeded collection of solo tracks for Record Store Day
The Cure was kind of a great "stoner" band. No, it didn't have the guitar-noodling tropes of the '70s bong-rattling rock, nor a '90s grunge baked guitar fuzz and apathy. Robert Smith and the rest of the Cure focused more on Big Emotions: misanthropy, death, loneliness. His weren't just loves, they...
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Wild Heart: On Stevie Nicks and her dogged tenderness
At Royal Farms Arena a couple weeks ago, CP's Performing Arts Editor Maura Callahan and I are standing among a swarm of people who all look like vaguely different amalgamations of a certain type of person I have known throughout my life—people I grew up going to church with, people I worked for,...
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18 digressions about Hans-Joachim Roedelius
1. Diagonal composer Hans-Joachim Rodelius plays the Creative Alliance on Sunday night, part of a lineup that's a testament to the West German art rock subgenre "krautrock" and its influence on Baltimore. Also on the bill are drum-and-synth minimalists Wume (named after Wümme, the city where clamorous...
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Caleb Stine and the Revelations brings country rock and quiet resistance
Remington gem Caleb Stine's country-folk at Trinacria Italian Cafe on Friday, Feb. 24, was full of moments that threatened to take one's breath away with their sincerity and craft, rousing a crowd into hoots, hollers, and claps over pizza and pasta. With the help of a six-piece dubbed the Revelations...
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HEY GRIFF!: Baltimore club icon steps away from 92Q's 9 O'Clock mix
Roll down the car window at any red light in Baltimore around 9 o’clock on a Friday night and you’re almost guaranteed to hear KW Griff’s 92Q radio club mix bumpin’ from the car next to you. Since about 1996, Griff – the acclaimed Unruly Records producer and 92Q DJ – has spun a spry soundtrack...
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Kahlon's Cut Up Series returns with audio-visual exhibition
When Kahlon ceased to exist in its capacity as a bimonthly party at The Crown, it felt like a blow to the city's music scene, which was finally starting to feel a bit less siloed. That was due to the series' eclectic lineups, bringing artists of disparate sounds and scenes together under the umbrella...
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Florida Noir: Broward County rap phenom Kodak Black echoes Boosie but brings with him a troubled past
If you missed Bronx rapper French Montana's excellent "Wave Gods" mixtape from last year, you probably still heard a song called 'Lockjaw.' The duet with a young rapper named Kodak Black was repurposed for French's album, "MC4," hit #16 on the Billboard Rap charts, and eventually went gold. Bad...
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Delineate It Yourself: After the Bell Foundry, mayor's Safe Arts Space Task Force is formed
Within a few weeks of Station North arts space the Bell Foundry being condemned and its upstairs tenants evicted, Mayor Catherine Pugh stood in front of members of city agencies, artists and artist groups, lawyers, developers, and funders, and announced a Safe Arts Space Task Force. Pugh cited...
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Top Ten Non-Local Albums of 2016
1. Beyoncé, “Lemonade” (Columbia Records/Parkwood Entertainment) Beyoncé did a lot this year. Most recently, she took the stage at the Country Music Awards, flanked by the Dixie Chicks, and dared anyone in the audience and at home not to enjoy themselves. The song she performed, ‘Daddy Lessons,’...
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Top Ten Baltimore Singles of 2016
1. Dooley, Tlow, and Lor Roger, ‘CIT4DT’ (self-released) The day after the election, when everyone was trying however they could to grapple with the reality that Donald Trump is evidently going to be our next President, it was important to remember that while some people were presented with the...
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Top Ten Baltimore Albums of 2016
1. JPEGMAFIA, “Black Ben Carson” (Memorials Of Distinction) Every song on “Black Ben Carson” wields the kind of weaponized vitriol usually reserved for socialist meme pages on Facebook. The title is reason enough to draft legislation to make license plates wider in the new year, but it isn’t just...
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A Place Away From the Bullshit: The end of DIY arts space the Bell Foundry
Musician, DJ, videographer, and writer Qué Pequeño first came to the Bell Foundry back in 2011. "I know the exact date—it was April 30, 2011," he said, a few days after he and a dozen or so other artists were evicted from the Station North arts studio and performance space. "My friend Tariq—who...
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Bond St. District look back to look forward on new album 'A Church On Vulcan'
Bond St. District's new album, "A Church on Vulcan" ends at the beginning, telling the story of how rapper DDm and producer Paul Hutson met—what's referred to here as 'A Happy Accident': "So what's up with them beats?/ I heard you got that fire/ Put your number in my phone and I'mma hit you up...
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Teacher by day, beatmaker by night, meet Jumbled
Mild-mannered, soft-spoken, and conservatively dressed in a plaid button-down shirt and cardigan, Jumbled doesn't quite fit Baltimore's classic archetype of a DIY hip-hop producer. By day he's known as John Bachman, a high school teacher; but by night he transforms into Jumbled, one of Baltimore's...
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Unfortunate Son: The roots of Tupac Shakur's rebellion
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Tupac Shakur, who was shot on Sept. 7, 1996 and died on Sept. 13, 1996. It also marks the anniversary of his album, "All Eyez On Me," released on Feb. 13, 1996. Shakur, who lived for a time in Baltimore at 3955 Greenmount Ave., is forever associated...