Erykah Badu

The Ten Best Concerts In New York This Week

These are the 10 best concerts in NYC this week.

Live: Imani Uzuri Brings The Gypsy Life To Joe's Pub

Imani Uzuri Joe's Pub Friday, June 1 Better Than: Being sad that Alice Coltrane and Cesaria Evora are dead and that Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill don't make albums together. The Gypsy Diaries is North Carolina homegirl Imani Uzuri's second self-produced release, and it proves that major-label suppor ... More >>

Tacks On Tacks: Artist Andre Woolery Pins Down Kanye, Jay, And Other Hip-Hop Figures

A hip-hop Lichtenstein with a Staples "Easy" button, contemporary artist Andre Woolery used thumbtacks to create the mosaics that make up his first solo exhibit, "Bruised Thumbs," which opened at the Frontrunner Gallery in Tribeca last night. Woolery's vibrant tribute to black music includes ornate ... More >>

Running The Numbers: The Four-Disc, 73-Track Bob Dylan Covers Comp With Miley, Ke$ha, Lenny, And Many Others

​Today Amnesty International releases Chimes Of Freedom, a really, really huge compilation of bob Dylan covers by artists both canonized and obscure. Trying to analyze such a huge undertaking can only be done in one way: Mathematically. Amount of music in this collection: 73 songs on four CD ... More >>

Download: Skeletons' Road Rage Rumination "More Than The One Thing"

Though originally birthed in Oberlin, Skeletons are a quintessential New York amalgam, guided by a fluttery art-jazz shimmer, a minimalist aesthetic, a grab bag of post-punk grooves and those disjunctive melodies currently turning the underground into a 12-tone headfuck (cf. Dirty Projectors, Tyond ... More >>

An Idiot's Guide to SXSW 2011: DFA 1979 Chaos, Kanye in a Power Plant, Screeching Weasel Assault, and More

photo by Nate "Igor" SmithTexan frat-boy didgeridoos We know you hated us, and at this moment, we hate ourselves too. Since you probably (definitely/rightfully) blocked all the spirited gluttony and gleeful ignorance cluttering your Twitter feed about SXSW, let's just accept that a few things happe ... More >>

Announcing the 2011 Village Voice and Frank 151 SXSW Party, Featuring the Wu-Tang Clan, Yelawolf, Wild Flag, Fishbone, and More

Rocky Business at the Mercury Lounge last week. Photo by Nate "Igor" Smith.​With three weeks to go and counting, we figured we might as well make it official: please join us in welcoming the 2011 Village Voice SXSW party, presented in concert with Frank 151, and starring the Wu-Tang Clan, Fish ... More >>

Arcade Fire Sell Nearly Half A Million Records in 2010, Will Perform at the Grammys

​"The whole chart thing is kind of like sports," said an unimpressed Merge label chief Laura Ballance, back when Arcade Fire hit #1 on the Billboard charts. That may well be true. But if selling records is like sports, Arcade Fire are weirdly good at it, considering they're a bunch of spindly ... More >>

2010: The Year In Music Photos

​The year in music, circa 2010, started at the Cake Shop, with a shred-down to the New Year courtesy of Siren Festival MVP-to-be Marissa Paternoster and her band Screaming Females. After a tour through the NYE fetes of the Lower East Side and Williamsburg, that night ended amidst a marathon sh ... More >>

Was 2010 The Best Year For Music Ever? Throw Taylor Swift In A Well

Welcome to Sound of the City's year-in-review rock-critic roundtable, an amiable ongoing conversation between five prominent Voice critics: Rob Harvilla, Zach Baron, Sean Fennessey, Maura Johnston, and Rich Juzwiak. We'll be here all week! Pay Rich Juzwiak what you owe him, Jay Leno. Twitpic by Dav ... More >>

Live: Stars Bring The Melodrama At Terminal 5, Inspire A Semi-Onstage Marriage Proposal

Torquil and Amy, waxing romantic. Pics by Rob, more below.​ Stars Terminal 5 Friday, September 24 Better than: Popping the question via JumboTron at a Yankees game. Montreal's Stars are the sort of band that scatters roses all over the place -- atop amps, laced into microphone stands, draped ... More >>

Live: Joell Ortiz and Jay Electronica Command A Tough Crowd At Highline Ballroom

Possibly more people onstage than in the crowd here. Joell Ortiz/Jay Electronica Highline Ballroom Tuesday, June 30 After basically booing both CyHi Da Prynce (who I--and I guess only I--actually like) and Big Krit off the stage, an extra hard NYC crowd made it clear that they weren't going to ma ... More >>

Summer Guide: Kelis Tries For A Rebound

With her new album Flesh Tone, the "Milkshake" singer tries on some club-pop

Of Montreal and Ghostface Killah Played Columbia's $100k Spring Bacchanal

All photos by Rebecca Smeyne If there's any metaphor for the price tag on elite higher education, just look to its student-run concerts. For Columbia's 250th anniversary a few years back, this alum remembers a blowout that included a no-show by Erykah Badu and one recently-hospitalized Wyclef Jean ... More >>

Shelby Lynne, Miss Independent

Country vixen finally free to indulge in partial nudity and not make a Polly Perfect record

Music Sales Are In Free Fall Right Now, and That Fact Still Matters

Can this man get Ted Leo paid?​This week's album chart is topped by Justin Bieber, with the Canadian idol's My World 2.0 bubbling back into the No. 1 slot despite a 65% sales drop from the previous week. World moved 102,000 copies, enough to best last week's No. 1, Usher's Raymond Vs. Raymond, ... More >>

Usher Is #1, But It's Still Justin Bieber Who Is Saving the Record Industry

​Usher's Raymond Vs. Raymond took the top spot on the albums chart this week, selling 329,000 copies in the wake of its March 30 release. But once again, this week's chart-related headlines belong to the impeccably blow-dried Canadian singer Justin Bieber. The Usher protégé and native Ontari ... More >>

Lollapalooza Lineup Announced in Full

​Featuring the odd return of 1995, in the persons of Soundgarden and Green Day, modern arena-rock surrogates the Strokes, Arcade Fire, MGMT, Phoenix, the National, and the Black Keys, and who else but Lady Gaga? Music is a befuddling tapestry in which Cypress Hill will always have a home. Comp ... More >>

Photos of the Dame Dash DIY Hideout Under 100

Somewhere downstairs Erykah Badu is covering Pavement. All photos of Under 100 by Rebecca Smeyne.​Brief recap, from yesterday: Under 100, the city's newest and potentially only Manhattan-based DIY showspace, just happens to be located in the basement of one Damon Dash, former Jay-Z partner and ... More >>

Week in Review: Costumes Are Relatively Minimal But There Is No Nudity Involved

This kind of behavior is really unacceptable. APW photo by Rebecca Smeyne.​In the week a shiny pair of crispy white shoes ventured out to New Jersey and All Points West, never to return, we joined the rest of the rainsoaked masses in saluting the Beastie Boys, who weren't there, though they di ... More >>

Sporadically Vibrant Reports From the R&B Salt Mines with Ciara and Chrisette Michele

New jams for low-riders and supper clubs, respectively

Notes on the Biz (What's Left of It)

On metal, genre-based critical bias, layoffs, industry hysteria, and the Loudness Wars

Way More Important Things to Worry About

How politics changed how we thought about music, if we thought about music at all

Maxwell Returns. So Do the Giant Panties.

Brooklyn's finest exiled soul singer clearly doesn't mind if you're just in it for the sex

Al Green Samples Some New Producers

The Roots Bury the Leader

Rising Down's nuanced dystopia threatens to overwhelm the guy at its center

Live: Baltimore Rap Vet Plays Show to Nobody

Extensions of a Woman

Alicia Keys is still a few albums away from her masterpiece. She'll get there.

Still Shining

Widely mourned but still underrated beat deity goes back to the present

Saturday 8/12

The Roots Reconsidered

Film

Music

No-Sweat Gift Guide

Rousing Constituencies

Old dogs singin' slow songs and fairygodmotherfuckers for discerning dilettantes

No Jagged Edges

Neo-Soul Men Take the Emery Board to Their Heroes

Homeboys on the Range

Vagina Monologues

Music

Higher Ground

Will You Scrub Me Tomorrow

Rising to the Top

Laps and Marco Polo in the Hip Hop Pool

Mix and Remix

You Go, Grrrl!

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Blue's Buppies

Love Jones

F(reakiness) M

Too Deep for Anger

To be Black in this Country is to Always Affirm Something