Drake
S.O.B.'s
Tuesday, May 26

The banner behind the stage at S.O.B.'s last night' read, "Who's Next" but Drake, the Degrassi-famous member of Lil' Wayne's Young Money crew, is right now. He's the finished product with a movie star smirk that seems to suggest he genuinely appreciates the love while still floating above it all. His show last night was more of a coronation than a coming out party--the rapper's 40-minute set was comprised entirely of mixtape hits, but to the 60-40 female-to-male crowd, they went over like longtime favorites. A 45-minute delay (as well as the presence Lyor Cohen, Kanye West and half of the hip-hop blog illuminati) gave the illusion that we were in for something important and, when the rapper finally appeared, his stage presence had a degree of effortless charm and showmanship that suggested a real star quality at work.

"I mean Aspen, Portland: They're on the West Coast, but for an L.A. dude it's like the middle of nowhere. We got U.S. Marshals hopping on the bus in Salt Lake City."

Not since the emergence of The Game on the national hip-hop scene has Los Angeles had such a promising new rapper as Nipsey Hussle. A member of the notorious Rolling Sixty Crips from the Crenshaw and Slauson neighborhood of Los Angeles, Nipsey has--on the strength of two volumes of his Bullets Ain't Got No Name mixtape series, narrated in a sing-songy flow that recalls an edgier Snoop Dogg--steadily gained national attention. It's a fact not lost on his musical sponsor, Game, who has brought Nipsey along on his most recent national tour, which stops at the Blender Theatre on Saturday. We talked to Nipsey about his youth, his music, and touring in America's other badlands.--Chris Ryan

Tell me a little about growing up in LA

I grew up on the Westside of L.A.: Crenshaw district. That area was controlled by gangs and in my teenage years I got involved with that lifestyle. I like to say I grew up better than some and worse than others. I don't like to tell no sad story about how it was so rough coming up. I had the same drama a lot of young black kids had: drugs, gangbanging, violence. But I also had a love for music and when I saw a lot of my friends, a lot of the people around me going off to jail, music is what sent me in a different direction.

all photos by David Atlas

Fleetwood Mac
Madison Square Garden
March 19

It was sometime during Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham's delicate duet performance of the lullabye-like "Never Going Back Again" at last night's Madison Square Garden Fleetwood Mac show when someone behind me opined, "They shouldn't even be allowed to fucking play these hallowed fuckin' halls."

This self-appointed curator of Madison Square Garden, a man who could be best described as what would've happened to Turtle from Entourage had he never gotten out of Queens, was dismayed at the similarity of last night's set to previous Mac gigs he had seen. And while I wouldn't exactly put it the same way, you could empathize with his frustration.

Busta Rhymes and Ron Browz
B.B. King Blues Club
March 10

Star power does funny things to your eyes. Take last night's Busta Rhymes/Ron Browz show at B.B. King, for instance. I mistook Kool Herc for Grey's Anatomy's Dr. Richard Webber--an honest mistake considering that the four elements of hip-hop are: 1) beatboxing; 2) graffitti; and 3) hospital dramas--but it speaks to kind of night it was.

After a lively if traditional DJ set from DJ Self, Ron Browz took the stage to a medley of his hit productions ("I'll Whip Ya Head Boy," "Ether"). The Harlem producer made the interesting decision to sing without auto-tune. LeBron James doesn't show up to basketball games without his sneakers, so God knows why Browz left the pitch corrector in his foot locker uptown. After a tone-deaf rendition of "Jumping Out the Window," Browz brought out Juelz Santana, rocking a hat that gave him a decidedly Topol/Fiddler on the Roof look, to perform his verse on the smash "Pop Champagne." Santana went on to do an abbreviated version of "Mic Check," and upon seeing Browz's rather casually dressed male dancers Krumping to his classic, a look came across his face that screamed, "Man, I wish Ron Browz would have told me a couple of guys who look like T-Mobile salesmen were going to Krumping while I was onstage because I have a feeling the internet will collectively say, 'Pause,' tomorrow when this footage hits the web."

all photos by Rebecca Smeyne

If you were cynical you might say that Jimmy Eat World, who took the stage at Terminal 5 last night in celebration of the 10th anniversary of their 1999 album Clarity, were dropping their Foo Fighters-covering-the Outfield radio rock of recent days to cash in on the relatively recent, rapacious phenomenon of nostalgia touring. But let's be cautious: Even then, Jimmy Eat World looked like a bunch of dudes who'd just stumbled out of a Saturday night bowling league at Kingpins. They've always sounded like the Foo Fighters covering the Outfield. And besides, if you were cynical, it would beg the question as to why the fuck you were at a Jimmy Eat World show in the first place.

Amanda M Hatfield

Los Campesinos
Bowery Ballroom
February 15

On Sunday, the second of their two-night, sold-out stand at the Bowery Ballroom, Los Campesinos! played their parts. The Welsh seven-piece, who look like they just walked off the cover of Dear Catastrophe Waitress, sing songs about girls with coffee breath and their lack of use for Calvin Johnson; they cover early Pavement nuggets, and suggest, by way of diffident haircuts and a certain useful enthusiasm, a genre all of their own: tweemo, by way of musket and sextant.

Beginning with a panoramic, ominous series of God's-eye shots of the Los Angeles skyline flipped on its axis so that skyscrapers jutting down like stalactites, Crips and Bloods: Made In America is director Stacy Peralta's third look at an underground L.A. subculture in as many films. After tackling the origins of skateboarding (Dogtown and Z-Boys) and surfing (Riding Giants), Made In America takes a look at the decades-long-running feud between America's two most notorious gangs. Lacking any of the attention to detail, unique insight and, frankly, familiarity and sensitivity to its subject matter that made his earlier efforts compelling accounts of SoCal youth culture, Made In America, whether out of reverence or fear, starts out with a distant, wide perspective and never tracks in.

At a Q&A session following Saturday night's IFC Center screening, Peralta dutifully faced questions regarding everything from whether he was, in fact, Stacy Peralta the skater to whether he did, in fact, intentionally ignore the 'well known fact' that the CIA funded and perpetuated the crack epidemic to fund their illegal covert wars in Central America (West Village Militia stand up! That dude definitely has a blog). And as audience members peppered him with questions, asking why the role of women, or the presence of powerful Mexican and Central American gangs had been ignored by the film, Peralta's answer was the same: the subject matter was too big for one film to take on all the various elements. No one, it turned out, was courageous enough to ask why the director couldn't choose even one angle to do well.

Doing his small part to form a more perfect post-racial America, next-gen Atlanta up-and-comer Young Dro is taking the fight to Cate Blanchett with his new mixtape Black Boy White Boy. The rapper's revolutionary philosophy of black dudes wearing scarves is set up nicely by the mixtape's cover: Dro, wearing a green sweater, yellow scarf, and orange cape reads the International Herald Trib while drinking tea. A Stevens-the-butler-from-Remains of the Day-looking dude posts up in the back. Yung LA is there, too, hovering over a teapot bigger than his own head. And on the table sits a lithograph of a woman who, given the participants, could only be Emily Bronte.

In a perfect world we'd be getting into some Gosford Park trap music, right? Well, Black Boy White Boy is more concerned with contemporary sartorial and pharmaceutical issues than the emotional repression of the early 20th Century Brit class system. But after you pick yourself up off the floor following that disappointment, you have a blinding mixtape to listen to.

Conceived over the summer of '08 as a fourth quarter game-changer, Maroon 5's Call and Response inexplicably gathered such disparate talents as Of Montreal and Deerhoof, Just Blaze, Pharrell Williams, Cool Kids, and Cut Copy together, in the same place. Here now, for the first time, is the story of the making of the album. Some of the characters may in fact be fictional; all of the quotes are complete fantasy.--Chris Ryan

Photos by David Atlas

Oasis
Madison Square Garden
Wednesday, December 17

Stature can say a lot. At last night's Madison Square Garden Oasis gig, opener Ryan Adams, never known as the quiet, non-effacing type (what with all the tumblr dice he used to roll online) left the banter to his Cardinals guitarist Neal Cassal, positioned himself decidedly out of the spotlight (except of course when he was, literally, spotlit), and more or less put in a shift. A Cardinology-heavy set (with a nice version of "Fix It") elicited some "woo's" from the early-arrivals; a shambolic take on "Come Pick Me Up" prompted the lady in front of me to pole dance on her boyfriend in the Credit Suisse fleece. While their psych-country sound certainly reached the luxury suites of the Garden, the Cardinals seemed non-plussed by the venue: You'd hardly think anyone was watching them.

Oasis' Liam Gallagher, on the other hand, prowled the Garden stage as if he was about to take part in a title fight, occasionally breaking off from the stoic frontman bit to pantomime jerking off at someone up front who was offending his delicate Manchester sensibilities, or to acknowledge some members of the armed forces in attendance by asking if they were "gay boys."