Naughty by Nature

The Ten Best Concerts in New York This Weekend, 2/22/13

Here are the 10 best concerts around the city this weekend, in no particular order.

Let's Talk About Sex, Baby (and HIV and AIDS Awareness)

It was just over two decades ago that seminal rap group Salt-N-Pepa helped usher a discussion of HIV and AIDS awareness into the hip-hop community with their single "Let's Talk About Sex" and its reworking "Let's Talk About AIDS." Continuing that tradition of outreach, last weekend Pepa was on-hand ... More >>

Live: Slaughterhouse (Minus Joe Budden) Satisfy The Faithful At Best Buy Theater

Slaughterhouse w/Flatbush Zombies Best Buy Theater Thursday, March 29 Better than: Spending the next few nights in the bookings alongside Joe Budden. There's Joell Ortiz. Here comes Crooked I. Royce just bopped onstage... but where's... uh oh. "Where's Budden at?" shouted the tipsy Nets hat next t ... More >>

20 Albums From 1991 That Can Still Be Thought-Pieced To Death Before The Year Ends

20. Tom Petty, Into The Great Wide Open 19. Skid Row, Slave To The Grind 18. Teenage Fanclub, Bandwagonesque 17. Prince & The New Power Generation, Diamonds & Pearls

Live: NKOTBSB Keep The Fires Burning At The Izod Center

Bryan HorowitzThis was the last time it would get quiet all evening. ​ NKOTBSB w/Jordin Sparks Izod Center Tuesday, June 13 Better than: Sitting at home bitching about "manufactured pop." It was 8:35 last night when the lights at the Izod Center went down, and it was approximately 8:35:01 w ... More >>

Top 10 Rap-Related Reality-TV Moments

​"Reality rap" was once a phrase invoked by gangsta rappers to defend their music against moral outcry from the mainstream media and pesky suburban dwellers. These days, the term largely refers to the slew of emcees lining up to star in their own TV shows. While Boogie Down Productions associa ... More >>

Exclusive Download: Shark?, "You Don't Love Me (Anymore)"

Brooklyn's Shark? are a greasy splat of post-garage splendor, a remarkably consistent four-man blast of dive-bar jukebox rock who've been kicking around your Cake Shops and Don Pedros for a minute now--if we were in the business of using words like "underrated," we might consider slapping it on t ... More >>

Live: Matt & Kim Get Interplanetary For One Step Beyond At The Museum of Natural History

At least they're enjoying themselves. Pics by Chris, more below.​One Step Beyond Featuring Matt & Kim, Nacey, and AraabMuzik American Museum of Natural History Friday, January 14 Better Than: Night at the Museum Astronomy: It's so hot right now, from the recent zodiac-sign hoax to the rele ... 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 >>

My 10 Favorite Concerts Of 2010, Starring Jay-Z, Pavement, And Michael Bolton

Stephen Malkmus, at the first of Pavement's 50 shows here. Pics by Rob unless noted otherwise.​The 100-plus shows I saw this year spanned from the Cake Shop to Radio City Music Hall, from Williamsburg block parties to Michael Bolton's house in Connecticut, the events that occurred therein all ... More >>

Press Clips, Early Lunch Edition, Day 4: The Mediaite Street Fight

​Smell that? Media beefs, cooking everywhere this week. Also, blogging on drugs, suing the small guy, shady lobbyists, good hiring sprees, bad hiring sprees, and someone taking issue with Gawker's ethical standpoints. Happy Friday, Part 1, folks:

Your Guide to the 11th Annual Gathering of the Juggalos, Which Begins Tomorrow

The 11th Annual Gathering of the Juggalos begins tomorrow. There are over 100 performers booked for this event. They all lead up to one thing. . . the headlining onslaught of Insane Clown Posse. There is already an entire Internet full of jokes here. You do not need me. Instead, let us simply co ... More >>

Week in Review: This Means Something

Hey, Marty. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne.​In the week a former member of the Fugees declared his intention to run an entire country, despite his gross lack of qualifications for said job, we started a campaign against him. Sorry 'Clef, but this is ridiculous.

Live: Salt-N-Pepa, Naughty By Nature, And Slick Rick Do "Old-School Night" At Wingate Field

Still talking about sex, albeit very briefly. Pics by Rebecca Smeyne, more below.​Salt-N-Pepa/Naughty by Nature/Slick Rick Wingate Field Monday, August 2 "Y'all look like a free concert out here," notes Salt wryly, shortly before launching into "I'll Take Your Man" in front of, indeed, thousa ... More >>

RIP Melvin Bliss, Creator of "Synthetic Substitution"

Wax Poetics reported yesterday that Melvin Bliss, singer of one the most sampled songs of all time, 1973's "Synthetic Substitution," has died. The list of artists who've borrowed from the track is long and overwhelming: Ultramagnetic MC's, Public Enemy, De La Soul, Naughty By Nature, Gang Starr, ... More >>

The Media T-Shirt Project!

​It's Summer, and as we all know, many businesses get slow in the summer. Media is one of these businesses, and in media, you have to diversify in order to stay afloat, or something. It's bad enough you have to concern yourself with the terrible fate of blogger burnout in this heat! But making ... More >>

The Real Sugar Hill Records Story: In-House Drummer Keith Le Blanc on the Myths Surrounding Rap's First Label

​"I don't think the true Sugar Hill Records story has ever been told because there's so much skull-duggery attached to it," says Keith Le Blanc, the one-time in-house drummer for Sugar Hill Records. The pioneering New York label, which brought hip-hop to the world's ears in 1979 with the Sugar ... More >>

The Choice Is His: Black Sheep's Dres Picks The Five Best Bar Mitzvah/Sweet 16-Rocking Hip-Hop Classics Of All Time

Dres still loves "The Humpty Dance," just like the rest of us.​Few hip-hop songs rival the mass-anthemic appeal of Black Sheep's "The Choice Is Yours (Revisited)." A tweaked incarnation of an album track on M.C. Dres and producer Mista Lawnge's 1991 debut A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, it endeare ... More >>

10 Profoundly Depressing "Celebrity" Sightings at This Year's Big Apple Comic Con

The special guest line-up for this past weekend's Big Apple Comic Con read a lot like a wish list for VH1's The Surreal Life: classic TV-show refugees (Different Strokes' Todd Bridges, Silver Spoons' Erin Gray, Dukes of Hazzard's Tom Wopat); cartoony wrestlers (Ric Flair, The Iron Sheik, Bushwacke ... More >>

From the Voice Archives: Scott Poulson-Bryant Reviews the Michael Jackson/Michael Jordon Collision That is "Jam"

In honor of Michael Jackson, we're raiding our archives. Below, Scott Poulson-Bryant's review of the Michael Jackson/Michael Jordan convergence that was the video for "Jam," first published in August, 1992. Be Like Mike By Scott Poulson-Bryant August 4, 1992 You've been ruminating on Black Beaut ... More >>

Tonight! Regina Spektor, Loudon Wainwright III, Tinted Windows, and Raekwon

Next week, Regina Spektor will release her first new album in three years. What we've heard of Far is more cinematic than her often bare 2006 breakthrough, Begin to Hope, which may or may not be a good thing. Take a peek at the Beacon tonight. Loudon Wainwright III, patriarch of the venerated Wai ... More >>

PRISON PALS

Naughty by Nature? Seriously?

'Naughty By Nature+M.O.P.: Hip-Hop Inauguration Celebration'

Hip-Hop Inauguration Celebration

VHI and Slick Rick, Together at Last at Hip-Hop Honors

The channel's cheerfully confounding tribute to rap's golden oldies

'Uncle' Ralph McDaniels, A Hip-Hop Pioneer, Still Inside the Box

Celebrating 25 years of his trailblazing rap-video show

Friday

BACK IN BUSINESS

EPMD bring New York back

Hot 97: Evicted?

Harmonic Convergence

Aussie teenpop sisters pit identity against intimacy for either sharp sentiment or caustic sap

Boxing Day

Don't Stop

Two unlikely DJs, Womanmaker and Fancypants, spin hip-hop at the unlikeliest venue

Close Up On: East Orange, New Jersey

Techno Rabble

Down and Alt

The Beast of Both Worlds

Rappers and R&B Singers Unite for Commerce’s Common Cause

Love Wars Resurrection

Listings

Daddy Under the Gun

Publicly, Rap Mogul Won’t Beg; Quietly, He Pleads

Music

Music

Do the math.