Dope Boy Last year I interviewed OOH, longtime frontman of the veteran Baltimore hip-hop band Brown F.I.S.H., about the launch of his solo career and his plans at the time to release both an EP, The Big 7, and a mixtape, The King of Pops. What he didn’t mention at the time, though, was...
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Ian Hesford Just over a week ago, Telesma, the Baltimore-based “psychedelic tribal modern world dance music” band, was playing a headlining show at Ram’s Head Live, and gearing up to release its second studio album, Action/in/Inaction, due out later this spring. But band member Ian Hesford, who plays a diverse array of instruments including...
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Vivek Muralidhar The Maryland music community has lost some well-known figures in April, including Child’s Play frontman Brian Jack and Music Monthly publisher Susie Mudd. One passing that flew under the radar, however, was Vivek Muralidhar, who recorded songs under the band name Valium Eel, and died earlier this month. I first heard Valium...
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from Facebook Susie Mudd, a fixture in the Baltimore music media for over two decades, passed away on April 4. In 1984, she began covering local music for Maryland Musician, and three years later acquired ownership of the publication, which she renamed Music Monthly. She published the free magazine until 2007, when she was...
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Watch the Throne Last year was probably the quietest year in Bossman’s career since before 2004, when he became one of the best-known rappers in Baltimore. He may have been laying low after a busy, tumultuous 2010, which included the release of his second album The Re-Up and a brief, pointless beef with Wale....
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Making Moves One of the increasingly rare local rap singles to make it into daily mix-show spins on 92Q in the past few months is “Trashbags,” an anthemic banger by DBoi Da Dome featuring Starrz. It isn’t a great song, but functional and fun to shout along with, and radio-friendly in the sense that...
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by Rarah On Monday afternoon, MTV News blew up the rap blogosphere with some news regarding up-and-coming Baltimore rapper Los and legendary hip-hop label Bad Boy Records. “We have a new artist named Los that we signed,” Sean “Diddy” Combs told MTV cameras in an interview taped last week. It was an interesting choice...
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Repelican Last year, I wrote a City Paper feature on the band White Life as well as a lengthy companion piece here on Noise about frontman Jon Ehrens’ countless other bands, many of which have never properly released a record. But Ehse Records, the same illustrious Baltimore label that released White Life’s debut album,...
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Cookamonga Last summer when I sat down with Baltimore rapper Caddy Da Don for his City Paper cover story, he was riding high off the breakthrough single “Grindin’ On Me,” and he’s been plenty busy since then, releasing the Powder Meth Blow mixtape and doing lots of shows, videos, and interviews. His camp also...
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Asleep at the wheel During 50 Cent’s beef with Jadakiss, Jada memorably remarked that he did “real songs with Big, no made up shits,” referring to the fact that he had once collaborated with the living Notorious B.I.G., whereas 50 had only appeared on a song that posthumously sampled Biggie’s vocals. That lyric ran...
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The Crown Ain't Safe Earlier this week, I logged onto the popular mixtape hub DatPiff.com to listen to some of hip-hop’s latest underground releases, and was pleasantly surprised to see that the banner at the top of the site counting down the day’s big new release was from Baltimore’s own Los. The eagerly anticipated...
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Black Ring Earlier in the year, up-and-coming Baltimore rapper Rome Cee coiled as many dope rhymes as he could into the one-minute “Rap Messiah Freestyle” that served as both an announcement of his signing to Under Sound Music and a warning shot for his latest album, The Extra Mile. Not one to rest on...
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Reina Williams, from Facebook Though we picked her as the city’s best solo artist in last year’s Best of Baltimore awards, singer/songwriter/rapper/producer/guitarist Reina Williams is the kind of uncategorizable musical talent that you tend not to see on reality TV talent shows like American Idol. But Simon Cowell’s latest show, the U.S. edition of...
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By Liz Caruana Trans Am, the post-rock trio founded in Bethesda, Maryland in the mid-’90s that has since spread its members across the country, recently reissued its 1999 album Futureworld. Currently the band is on tour, jumping on the ever-more-crowded bandwagon of acts playing one of their best known albums in its entirety in...
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The Beautiful Mind It’s commonplace for unsigned rappers to keep throwing out free releases on the mixtape circuit for months or years while hyping up their eventual (and, they hope, major label) proper debut album. Baltimore’s Skarr Akbar is no exception, but he’s taken the practice to an unusual extreme, touting the forthcoming album...
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Riding the rides A roller coaster ride would be a temptingly lazy metaphor to describe either the soft-loud dynamics of Wye Oak’s songs or the runaway success the Baltimore duo’s third full-length Civilian has enjoyed since its release in March. But the new video for “Holy Holy,” directed by Jeremy Johnstone, features the members...
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Flier I first met local rapper Darrell “Yuk” Bolling in 2007 while profiling his then-label, For The People Entertainment, for which he recorded as a member of the groups Yuk and Cut and Squadre Committee. Since then, the rapper also known as Mr. Livewire has been active as a solo artist, currently recording with...
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Cover art Alto Verde is the latest band fronted by longtime Baltimore rock fixture Andy Bopp, whose history includes Love Nut’s brief major label tenure in the ’90s as well as the long-running solo project Myracle Brah. Anchored by bassist Kris Heath, also of local powerpoppers Gary B. and the Notions, and drummer Nicholas...
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By Danny Clinch Steely Dan is one of the few bands in rock history, alongside the Beatles and R.E.M., that reached its creative and commercial peak during a period when it was purely a studio act, opting out of touring altogether. Steely Dan’s founding braintrust of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen stayed off the...
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By Josh Sisk This Thursday marks the third anniversary of the death of Baltimore club DJ and local radio icon Khia “Club Queen K-Swift” Edgerton, a tragic loss to the city’s music scene that hasn’t gotten any less heartbreaking or difficult to accept in the time since then. Countless tribute songs popped up in...
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