Ben Westhoff

Best of Coachella 2013: Weekend Two

The Visual Stimulations for People Who Were High Coachella's art installations -- the ones designed to impress you while you're high, aka all of them -- were particularly impressive this year. There was the tesla coil, the crane that was formerly a flower but now a praying mantis, the giant floresce ... More >>

The Worst of Coachella, Weekend One

Daft Punk Fake-Out Friday and Saturday, all anyone could talk about was if Daft Punk was going to show up during Phoenix's set. Why? Because we were fucking teased. On the main stage before the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a long commercial for their new album played, and then we found out that members of the ... More >>

The Worst Moments From SXSW 2012

Over the last few days, Village Voice Media's music editors have been regaling you with stories of the best from Austin's South By Southwest Festival. But with the best must come the worst, and our critics unfortunately came across the following borefests, technical problems, and insults to their in ... More >>

50 Cent, Eminem, And Skrillex's Hordes Of Fans Swarm Austin On Day Three Of SXSW

If you're familiar with chaos theory, which in its basic form is the attempt to find patterns in this planet's many happenings, then you may understand the difficulty that comes with describing a full day at the South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. To break down the chaos, a few of Village ... More >>

Fiona Apple, The-Dream, And More At SXSW Day One (With Video Of Two New Fiona Apple Songs)

If you're familiar with chaos theory, which in its basic form is the attempt to find patterns in this planet's many happenings, then you may understand the difficulty that comes with describing a full day at the South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. To break down the chaos, a few of Village ... More >>

Five Questions To Ask At Ben Westhoff's Dirty South Reading

​Tonight, Voice contributor and hip-hop sommelier Ben Westhoff will read from Dirty South, his look at the populist rise of rap music from the southern states, at Williamsburg's Book Thug Nation. The book focuses on the bigger names to have emerged from the south, with chapters based around Bi ... More >>

MAKE IT RAIN

What has Southern rap done to hip-hop?

This Week in the Voice: Cartoons!

​This week in the Voice, it's the Comics Issue! Be sure to pick up a hard copy so you can fully appreciate all the vibrant illustrations and art, including an animated Robert Sietsema food review and Michael Musto's column as a cartoon. Just look at that cover; look at it! It's a piece of geni ... More >>

This Week In The Voice: Greg Tate On Marsha Ambrosius, Sadat X On Wine

​This week in the Village Voice: It's the comics issue! We're celebrating by having Ben Westhoff talk about wine with Sadat X, host of YouTube's premier hip-hop-and-wine show True Wine Connoisseurs, and giving Greg Tate the opportunity to dissect Marsha Ambrosius' slightly Stepfordized new alb ... More >>

Excerpt: Dirty South: OutKast, Lil Wayne, Soulja Boy, And The Southern Rappers Who Reinvented Hip-Hop, Wherein Scarface Recalls His Mental-Health-Ward Days

​Also-beloved friend-of-SOTC Ben Westhoff's new book, Dirty South: OutKast, Lil Wayne, Soulja Boy, and the Southern Rappers Who Reinvented Hip-Hop, will be available on May 1st from Chicago Review Press. This excerpt focuses on Southern pioneers Geto Boys and particularly beloved rapper Scarfa ... More >>

This Week in the Voice

​This week in the Voice, Camille Dodero profiles Pablo Airaldi, a New York bike messenger, fixture in the bike community, and legal permanent resident of the U.S. who's been detained indefinitely in New Jersey's Hudson County jail by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after pleading guil ... More >>

This Week's Voice: It's the Real, Dance-Music Labels WT, Golf Channel, and L.I.E.S., globalFEST 2011, and More

It's the Real: Guess which one of these guys is Just Blaze. Photo by Noah Kalina.​In this week's Village Voice, Ben Westhoff profiles the white, Jewish comedy-rap duo It's the Real, Andy Beta rounds up an exciting new crop of outer-borough dance music labels (including WT, Golf Channel, and L. ... More >>

Remembering Ariel Panero: Damon Dash, These Are Powers, Grooms, and More on the Man Behind Less Artists More Condos

Ariel Panero, doing what he did. Photo via Facebook.​The news began to circulate on Tuesday--Ariel Panero, the audacious NYC promoter behind Less Artists More Condos, had passed away suddenly, at the age of 25. Two days later, the details of what exactly happened are still in part unknown. But ... More >>

The Week in Food Blogs: Another Best Burgers List; Taste Testing Deep Dish Pizza

This week in food blogs... Zagat named its eight best burgers in the city. Yep, Shake Shack and Corner Bistro made the list. Eater came up with five fall restaurant openings it would have liked to see. Una Pizza NaBoaletana, anyone? Grub Street followed the beef between the Voice's own Ben Westho ... More >>

New York's Best Dive Bars

In his new book, New York City's Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the Big Apple, Ben Westhoff riffs on the five boroughs' finest dumps. Here are his 10 favorites.

This Week's Voice: Drake, the Gaslight Anthem, Styles P, a Summer Live-Jazz Cheat Sheet, Revive Da Live, Jason Moran, and More

Gaslight Anthem: New Jersey nostalgia. Photo by Ashley Maile​In this week's Village Voice, Sean Fennessey weights in on the all-encompassing Drake phenomenon, Michael Robbins compares the Gaslight Anthem to Walt Whitman, Ben Westhoff talks to Styles P about the rapper's debut novel, Stacey And ... More >>

This Week's Voice: The National, Ariel Pink, Battle of the Memphis Rap Crews, Colt Ford, and More

​In this week's Village Voice, Michael D. Ayers writes our cover story on the National, who make the awkward look cool and despair sound hilarious. Elsewhere, Mike Powell hangs out with creepy chillwave godfather Ariel Pink, Ben Westhoff on the massively divergent fates of Memphis rap crews Th ... More >>

Less Artists More Condos Flee Under 100, Land at New Venue: St. James Church in Chinatown

St. James Church. Photo via​It was Ariel Panero's Less Artists More Condos that was putting on the shows down in Damon Dash's Under 100 basement, at least until Dame shut everything down and rebranded the entire enterprise as DD172. Before that, LAMC called an actual West Village condo on West ... More >>

This Week's Voice: Vampire Weekend, Ke$ha, MC Paul Barman, Rosanne Cash, and More

The cast of Survivor: Upper West Side. Photo by Soren Solkaer Starbird​In this week's Village Voice, Rob Harvilla wrestles with Vampire Weekend's vastly ambitious, vastly improved Contra, Ben Westhoff hangs out in MOMA's outdoor sculpture garden with MC Paul Barman, Ryan Dombal chronicles the ... More >>

This Week's Voice: R.A. the Rugged Man, Lil Wayne's The Carter Documentary, Zadie Smith, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Urs Fischer, and More

R.A. the Rugged Man: More dirty laundry than you can imagine. Photo by Calvin Godfrey.​In this week's Village Voice, Ben Westhoff recounts the long, setback- and STD-ridden journey of Long Island's own R.A. the Rugged Man, Jed Lipinski talks to the players involved with the semi-embargoed Lil ... More >>

This Week in the Voice

​When their pets die, most New Yorkers can't bury them in the backyard. They can put the earthly remains in the trash (properly marked). If that's too weird, there are people who will handle the deceased animals. They are, as you might imagine, an interesting bunch. Steven Thrasher walks among ... More >>

This Week's Voice: Todd P Goes to Austin, John Forte, Abandon Ship, Lev Grossman's The Magicians, and More

Polaroids from another long, strange trip by Bridget Finn. Todd P, far right. In this week's Village Voice, Rob Harvilla talks with the director and main subject of the new doc Todd P Goes to Austin: "A documentary or other such deification was inevitable, though Austin, directed by longtime Todd ... More >>

This Week in the Voice

​New Yorkers can do a lot of things other people can't: ride the Staten Island Ferry at midnight, have lunch in Central Park, etc. But we can't buy a damn bottle of wine at the grocery store. This year we had a chance to change it -- but the state's liquor stores and their lobbyists blocked it ... More >>

This Week's Voice: Michael Jackson, 1958-2009

In this week's Village Voice, we remember Michael Jackson: Greg Tate on the man and his legacy, rapper Jean Grae on what Jackson meant to musicians everywhere, and Jessica Hopper, reporting live from Gary, Indiana the night Jackson died. Elsewhere, Rob Harvilla describes the daffy sci-fi audacity ... More >>

This Week's Voice: The Death of the Record Industry, Kurtis Blow, Godard's Made in U.S.A., the Future of Art Criticism, and More

In this week's Village Voice Music Section, Rob Harvilla talks to Rolling Stone vet Steve Knopper about his new book, Appetite for Self-Destruction, and the bitter decline of the music industry. Ben Westhoff breaks bread with Kurtis Blow in Harlem's only hip-hop church. Ross Simonini plumbs the ... More >>

In This Week's Voice

We said last week's Net Hentoff column would be his last at the Voice. Turns out we were wrong. The "excessed" journalistic legend delivers his own valedictory in this week's edition. Will our public servants suffer any consequences for their near-criminal handling of the Yankee Stadium boondoggl ... More >>

This Week's Voice: Waterboarding, African Music Blogs, and More

Letters

Letters

Reader: Sex, Sure, But Where Is the Love?