​The new New Yorker contains Yet Another Story On Odd Future, although Kelefa Sanneh's piece outstrips its many bibliographic counterparts thanks to its particular focus on the LA hip-hop collective's most sloganeered member, Earl Sweatshirt. The 8,000-word piece, which took nine months of gestation and research to complete (oh, those media outlets that don't work on blog time!), contains interviews with Earl's father (the South African poet Keorapetse Kgositsile), mother (who does not want to be identified) and the M.I.A. rapper, real name Thebe Neruda Kgositsile, himself.

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A triumphant, newly shoed Tyler, post-negotiation. Tim's in the middle, succeeding in his quest to not look too nervous. Also: Fuck Steve Harvey.

​So Odd Future mastermind Tyler, the Creator lost his shoe while crowd-surfing during the L.A. rap crew's raucous show at Santos Party House Wednesday night, and damned if he didn't want it back. Thankfully, the fans who stole the shoe follow Tyler on Twitter, and soon, via the magic of @s and Direct Messages, Fordham student Tim Askerov and his friend (the actual thief, code-named Louis) were able to work out a deal. Here's what Askerov had to say about the theft, the negotiation, and the handoff.

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Delicious and nutritious

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There comes a time in a foreign country's life when it has to stand up and say, "No, Rihanna, we do not want to see you deep-throat that banana." That time was last week, when 11 countries banned the pop star's new bubblegum-colored, bondage-laden music video for her song "S&M." Supposedly, according to director Melina Matsoukas and Rihanna herself, the video is a light-hearted examination of the latter's relationship with the press -- she enjoys enduring daily paparazzi pain, because that's what gives her the pleasure of fame. As for the U.S., MTV is considering a clean edit. Meanwhile, to assess the validity of the video's so-called inappropriateness, we went directly to the source: sex shops. We asked the kind folks at Fantasy Party, Cherry Boxxx, and Tic Tac Toe what they thought of all the hullabaloo -- and Rihanna's S&M prowess.

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So yesterday we conducted an in-depth analysis of Best Coast's lyrics, to chart the frequency with which she sings the words "boy," "love," "summer," "weed," and "cat," as compared to the frequency with which her critics/admirers use those same words to describe her. General findings: The general public uses "weed" and "cat" way more than she does. Gripping stuff. But it has since been pointed out to us, reasonably, that as vital a source of data as they may be, Bethany Cosentino's lyrics may not be the clearest, most intimate window into the depths of her soul. That, of course, would be her Twitter account.

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Bethany Cosentino and her alleged muse

​You can summarize Best Coast's roughly 1,040,000 Google-search results in just seven words: "boy," "love," "summer," "weed," "cat," "cat," and "cat." This is remarkable because a) frontwoman Bethany Cosentino has been anointed indie-rock's first ever "crazy cat lady," which is an accomplishment of sorts, and b) holy crap, she only mentions the word "cat" in one song. That's it! The line is, "I wish my cat could talk." Why is it, then, that nearly every review, feature, or blog post about the band gives a shout-out to her cat, Snacks?

The short answer is that Cosentino has enough marketing know-how to be a character on Mad Men. The long answer is revealed in a pseudo-credible statistical analysis we've conducted here at SOTC, juxtaposing the words critics most often use when describing Best Coast's debut album, Crazy for You, with the lyrics to Best Coast's actual songs. The results will make you say, "Well, huh."

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One guess as to what they call the expressions they're making in this photo

​Readers of this morning's Salem review on Pitchfork might have recoiled a bit as the piece's writer, Larry Fitzmaurice, casually rattled off a few terms commonly used to describe the gothy Michigan band's sound--"witch house, drag, haunted house, rape gaze, and so on." Rape gaze? What could that phrase possibly describe? Not knowing ourselves, we called up local DJ Lauren Flax, who along with Lauren Dillard plays music in the frequently-tagged-as-witch house ("I think we've graduated from that sound," Flax avers) Brooklyn duo Creep. They're the ones who first coined the term, posting it on their MySpace page earlier this year. So what does it mean?

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​Yesterday, ubiquitous New York turntable presence DJ Ayres found his monthly Savalas party, Strictly Hits, abruptly cancelled. The reason? In the words of the club: Savalas is "taking a rap sabbatical." What this meant became clear when SOTC obtained the email a Savalas employee had sent to club's entire DJ roster, explaining that "the crowd at Savalas has been changing recently" and the venue's own regulars were being replaced with "drug dealers, meat heads, [and] dare I say *gasp* New Jersey kids"--hence the club banning what they perceive to be the bridge and tunnel's music of choice. We reached out to Ayres to see what happened to his party, whether this kind of rap alarmism is a constant in the life of a New York DJ, and whether he has any kind of future with Savalas. This is what he told us:

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Sunn O))) meets the Brooklyn Masonic Temple. Photo via the Fader.

​Last night, Sunn O))) and Boris combined to blow out the power at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, consigning the rest of their set to utter darkness as the venue killed the lights to save electricity. It didn't hurt the band's volume levels, though: the show was so loud it drew the cops, who watched in amusement as the crowd staggered out at the show's conclusion, punished by the combination of Sunn O))) dissonance and the venue's ridiculous acoustics--an experience a publication no less authoritative than the New York Times described last year as working "like sonar drills on your guts." The Brooklyn Masonic Temple has to be the loudest venue in all of NYC, right?

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Are these kids at a Phish show or an Animal Collective show? You'll never know. Photo by Max Herman.

​Over the weekend, the Washington Post suggested that a shift was underway in the indie-rock community. As the headline went: "For indie rockers, 'jam band' increasingly no longer a shameful term." The idea was that the newly revealed jam band days of currently in vogue indie-rockers like Vampire Weekend's Chris Tomson and Real Estate's Alex Bleeker--not to mention those of some good indie-centric critics, like Pitchfork's Rob Mitchum and our own contributor Jesse Jarnow--are proof that indie-rock is "starting to, well, mellow out" when it comes to the Grateful Dead and their ilk. As Bleeker puts it: "I don't want 'jam band' to be a dirty word in the indie-rock community anymore." In saying this, Bleeker perhaps unknowingly joined a long and illustrious tradition, adding one more so-called "dirty word" to the long list of theoretically prohibited actions and influences in indie-rock, perhaps the most reactionary style of music on the planet, give or take a couple of metal subgenres. Or so people would have you believe, anyway. Join us on a brief tour of all the myriad things that have threatened indie-rock since its inception in the 1980s, when things were purer and less complicated than they are now. Allegedly.

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Friday's 3D 13 Dimensional Dance Party at the Bushwick collective Surreal Estate became infamous yesterday, as video circulated of what appeared to be a plainclothes police officer threatening a civilian with imprisonment and rape. ("You're gonna go to jail, and you're gonna get abused in jail. The guys in jail are gonna rape you," the alleged officer says to the cameraman, Vladimir Teichberg.) Needless to say, outrage swiftly followed, at Gothamist, Gawker, and here, among other places. Now, however, the NYPD have responded, saying that the tie-dyed psychopath who appears on Teichberg's tape is not a police officer at all. Said a department spokesperson to us just now: "He's not a cop. That guy with the iPhone and tie-dye? Not a cop." The spokesperson, Detective Cheryl Crispin, went on to tell us that "he was a drunken guy who ended up getting a summons," shortly after getting kicked out of a club and stumbling over to Surreal Estate, where he began threatening Teichberg. Crispin was adamant: "The individual in the video who is making the statements that you are referring to is not an NYPD officer," she said.

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