Danny Brown doesn’t make albums for the faint-of-heart. Throughout his career, Brown has pushed the limits of what one can say on a mainstream rap release, as well as the genre’s sonic boundaries. As he shifts rapidly between coked-out rampages, stoned relaxation, explicit sexual descriptions,[Read More…]
Arts & Entertainment
Keep up to date on local art, new albums, and everything entertainment-related.
Pop Dialectic: Snapchat Spectacles and the rise of wearable social media
Snap to it When Snapchat first arrived on the social media scene, it was hard to see its purpose beyond sending nudes. The app started as a project created by a group of Stanford students. On Snapchat, the user snaps a picture and sends it to a friend who can[Read More…]
Gold Panda electrifies audience at Newspeak
British producer, composer, and electronic artist Gold Panda walked up to an unassuming little table supporting his DJ mixer and turntable at Newspeak on Sunday, Sept. 11. Gold Panda released his third studio album, Good Luck and Do Your Best earlier this year, and has been touring about the world since,[Read More…]
Album Review: The Sun’s Tirade – Isaiah Rashad
Tennessean rapper Isaiah Rashad has some destructive tendencies. They were the subject of much of his deceptively laidback flows on his eye-opening 2014 debut, Cilvia Demo. The two years since have not been easy for Rashad: An addiction to Xanax, alcoholism, and the pressures of being his label’s prospective ‘next[Read More…]
Sketching on pins and needles
Walking into The Whole and its Parts (in French, Le Tout et la Partie) is entering Michèle Lemieux’s grayscale dream world of sketches and animations. Earlier this year, her film, Here and The Great Elsewhere (2012), was shown at the Canadian Culture Centre in Paris. Her exhibit, now at the Université de Québec à[Read More…]
Pop Rhetoric: Harry Potter and the burden of diversity
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has been in the news regularly for her steadfast refusal to let her series fade from public consciousness. These efforts range from small pieces uploaded to the website, pottermore.com, to the addition of an entirely new instalment in the form of a play script. In the[Read More…]
Album Review: AIM – M.I.A.
“Borders, what’s up with that?” asks Sri Lankan musician M.I.A. in the lead track “Borders.” Unfortunately, on her latest studio album, we never get a clear answer. AIM lacks a distinct target, and the final result misses the mark. Compared with previous hits “Sunshowers” and “Paper Planes” that propelled M.I.A’s message into[Read More…]
Pop Rhetoric: The small screen reaches a wider audience
Television has long been regarded as film’s more annoying, less accomplished younger sibling. Sound bytes like 'made for T.V. movie' and 'multi-camera sitcom' continue to haunt audiences’ psyches, evoking nightmares of outrageous laugh tracks and over-dramatic soap opera acting. For decades, critics considered film the real art form—a medium that actually allowed[Read More…]
Into the Deep: Honduran scuba divers brush with ‘mermaids’ in Liwa Mairin photography exhibit
The Liwa Mairin photography exhibit, taking place at the Maison du Développement Durable, showcases an unfamiliar terrain, the depths of the sea. The exhibit is being presented by documentary photographer Valérian Mazataud in collaboration with Handicap International, which is a non-profit organization that uses donations to support more than 2[Read More…]
Music streaming party could #SaveNelly
Tragedy has struck one of the most prominent musicians featured on middle-school dance playlists. Nelly—proud wearer of Air Force Ones and Band-Aids—reportedly owes the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over $2.4 million USD in unpaid taxes since 2013 and an additional $150,000 to the state of Missouri, according to a leak[Read More…]