Over the course of the week we read a lot of music stories. Here are a few we love, love, loved.

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Loren Wohl

Flower power: Kitty keeps rapping.

"It's a huge accident."

That's how Kitty Beckwith characterizes the fact we're even talking, over chocolate tea at Tarallucci E Vino, about her unlikely success as a rapper. The alleged teenager made waves last year as Kitty Pryde, a Claire's employee from Daytona Beach who appeared, like all viral stars, out of nowhere, with a string of languid rap videos about crushes, a habit of name-dropping Danny Brown in interviews, and an all-time Twitter mastery from the self-deprecating ("Lupe Fiasco is probably anti-me") to the most glorious of non sequiturs ("What if I take this giant Nutella jar from this frat house? Will I get in trouble?"). Oh, and she crowned herself the rap game's Taylor Swift. Needless to say, keepers of the purist hip-hop flame hate this shit.

See Also:
-Live: Kitty Pryde Has A Graduation Party At The Knitting Factory
-Kitty Pryde: Hazy Beats, Crushed-Out Lyrics, And A Keen Eye For Detail

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The Houston-via-Hollywood rapper Riff Raff dropped a new mixtape over the weekend! Titled Summer of Surf, the album includes collaborations with Internet darlings Kitty Pryde, Chief Keef and Lil Debbie; Riff Raff himself contributes quite a few bizarre boasts, not to mention a song titled "Versace Python." Here's a handy primer on the project's most preposterous lines.

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Kitty Pryde
Knitting Factory
Friday, June 15

Better than: Karmin.

What do you want to know about Kitty Pryde's New York debut that you haven't already read? The Wall Street Journal told you Donald Glover was there somewhere taking pictures, as was Tao Lin, who was tweeting with Kitty backstage under the pretense of buying her some gum. Pitchfork reported that Kitty's parents were present, which made saying the c-word live uncomfortable for her, and that the prom-gowned redhead's hypeman was her adorably stiff Skrillex-haired younger brother. Rolling Stone relayed the backstory to Kitty's crushwave track "Ay Shawty: THE SHREKONING!!!!," a song she wrote about a boy who responded by asking her to promote his band on Facebook. Billboard passed along this quote regarding her straplessness: "My boobs are gonna fall out. Y'all gonna take pictures and put them on your blog." And the fact they've all told you all this about a 19-year-old's first public show ever tells you even more.

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It would be easy to dismiss Kitty Pryde—scarlet-haired 19-year-old white women from Daytona Beach, Florida, would not fit anyone's profile of "the next to blow," and rap-singing songs about Justin Bieber ("Justin Bieber") and an object of her affection ("Okay Cupid") isn't the most direct path to street cred—and it would also be wrong. Kitty doesn't have sharp claws; her "hardest" bar, for my money, is from an obscure YouTube freestyle: "I'm Princess Fiona, I'm an ogre at night." But she does have a sharp eye for detail—she's earned her self-proclaimed "rap game Taylor Swift" title with precise lines about the imprecision of young love—as well as an ear for hazy, suspended-in-air beats, and a curlicue flow that approximates the ennui of being smart and young and living in Florida and is equal parts Tyler, The Creator and Lil B.

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Kitty Pryde plays the Knitting Factory on Friday night.

This weekend marks the return of the Northside Festival, the Brooklyn-blanketing series of concerts, films, art shows, and discussions of "entrepreneurship" now in its fourth year. The music lineup is pretty jam-packed with bands both local and visiting, and in order to assist you the SOTC staff has put its collective heads together and come up with seven shows over the course of the next four days that you shouldn't miss. (Note that our guide has ticket prices for the shows, because even if you do have a badge, there's a chance that you'll have to pay to get in—badge admissions are limited, thanks to some of the venues being pretty small.)

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