John Coltrane is the only No. 1 seed remaining in the tournament.

This week, our search for New York's quintessential post-1955 musician is about to get hectic, with the winner crowned as the calendar flips to April on Saturday night. (A rundown of all the matches so far is here.) So for the Round of 16 matchups—four of which will happen today, four tomorrow—we're going to dispense with the punditry and get to the voting. The combatants, which hail from the Uptown and Brooklyn quadrants: John Coltrane and Bette Midler; Alicia Keys and Laura Nyro; A Tribe Called Quest and Wu-Tang Clan; and Rakim and Norah Jones. Ballot below. Please note that you have to vote in all four races in order for your vote to count.

More »

​Sound of the City's search for the quintessential New York City musician enters Round Two this week, with battles in the Round of 32 daily. Keep up with all the action here.

Being that he's a card-carrying member of the Illuminati and all, you might want to suggest Jay-Z used his influence to buy his way through the first round of SOTC's search for the quintessential New York musician. But you can only beat what's placed in front of you, and Jay did his duty in waltzing through to the next round against the recently defunct ensemble Parts & Labor. Now, the man from Marcy Projects is faced with a showdown against one of Queens' finest rap ensembles—the No. 8 seed A Tribe Called Quest, who saw off the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in the opening bout. Sit back and enjoy what's sure to be a feisty cross-generational hip-hop matchup.

More »

​The Round of 64 for Sound of the City's own version of March Madness—in which you, the Sound of the City voting public, help determine the quintessential New York musician—continues, and you get to vote on who makes it to Round Two. (The schedule and results are here; the full bracket is here. This time out, we return to the Brooklyn division with a matchup between its eight and nine seeds, A Tribe Called Quest and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Cast your vote over on Facebook.

More »

Aaliyah.

Not very many hours after Beyoncé gave birth to their daughter Blue Ivy Carter, Jay-Z commemorated the occasion in song. "Glory" sounds humbled and relieved, and soft enough to bear some marks; at certain points, Jay's voice almost seems to quaver. He goes from revealing a past miscarriage to sharing the precise date of conception, as if still ambling through the ward in elated exhaustion. Next time he leaves condoms on a baby seat, it'll feel like a sitcom joke, not potential diss material.

The kid herself makes an appearance, wailing all over the track. Blue Ivy must be the first infant to receive a feature credit for their sampled gurgles—canny as ever, dad—but she's only the youngest entry in pop's tiny, adorable line of incidental newborns. Given that the subtlety of the effect in question falls somewhere between siren noises and neighing, it tends to be used sparingly yet memorably. Pace Kelis, here are six other songs of the baby.

More »

Coming to you from heaven's art gallery: "Triumph Of A Heaven."

As you may have heard, Björk's latest album, Biophilia, has been specially designed to work best on an Alphasmart 2000 word-processor. This pioneering piece of multimedia is likely huge fun for tech-heads, but for music fans it might also be the aural equivalent of playing with your food. And Björk's food is usually fine as is.

So, then, why not take the opportunity of Biophilia's release to plot Björk's hip-hop connections. She said that Public Enemy's music was a fixture on the Sugarcubes' tour bus back in the day. Since fleeing that band and going solo, she's maintained on-and-off collaborations with rap artists and industry figures alike. Here then are Björk's ten most prominent connections to rap, listed in chronological order for optimum nerd-friendliness.

More »

This should probably not be how you do it.

It's a common dilemma of the booty club: You're buzzing off the overpriced drinks, two-stepping with the opposite sex. The lighting is right and you're getting closer and closer to each other... and then DJ Lack-of-Direction throws on some bullshit. You know, one of those songs that wack DJs use as crutches to hold up their mediocre-at-best sets.

The song being spun might not have been bad on first, second, or even 20th listen. But when you've heard it at every party you went to that week and it's not even new, being subjected to it again can throw a monkey wrench in your flow. And then, to further kill the mood, cornballs start singing along in unison. "Here we go yo! Here we go yo! So what, so what, so what's the scenario?!" Cool out, dude—we know you know the whole song by heart (though you mumble your way through most of Dinco D's verse). We know every word, too, and have since it came out in 1991.

Buzzkills like this aren't the patrons' fault, though. I blame the DJ and his/her lack of crate digging, lethargic mixing, and desire to get cheap thrills out of the crowd. (The DJ's probably the least intoxicated individual in the building, so it's not like they can blame their predictable choices on the a-a-a-a-a-alcohol like the rest of us partygoers.) Below, and just in time for the long weekend, a list of 10 songs that any DJ in the know should already have banned from their sets, and any DJ with sense should probably get to swapping out soon.

More »

Blue Note's cover art: Also an inspiration. (Original on the left, homage on the right.)

Hip-hop artists have never been shy about sampling songs from the vaults of the Blue Note jazz label, and few have pilfered with as much creativity and gusto as A Tribe Called Quest's one-time de facto leader Q-Tip. During Tribe's heyday, Tip mined heavily from Blue Note's stylistic peak in the '70s, with cornerstone tracks from the group's first three albums being hooked around jazz grooves. Ahead of Michael Rapaport's documentary about the band, which hits screens on July 8, here are ten Blue Note tracks that have been flipped into rap classics—including, of course, a liberal number of Q-Tip compositions.

More »

Large Professor cuts an outside figure in the New York hip-hop scene these days. As a producer who also happens to rap in an endearingly economical manner, he's integral to any overview of hip-hop's storied golden era--he tutored under Paul C, contributed production input to Eric B & Rakim songs, scored a classic with his own group Main Source's Breaking Atoms, and helped kick-start the career of a [then] Nasty Nas when Queensbridge's golden son was still rocking a band-aid over his cheek in promotional pics. But since his late-'80s emergence, Large Pro's solo career has unfortunately faltered, with his intended solo debut The LP caught up in label politics and long-delayed, and his subsequent statement on Matador, First Class, resonating limply at best. As a producer, Large Pro has never caught a particularly pop break either--unlike, say, DJ Premier he's never been handed an opportunity to gallivant with a feisty chanteuse. Instead, he's maintained a dedication to working with grass-roots New York rap talent as if the very idea of cracking the mainstream is absurd.

Large Pro's newest project, the album Still On The Hustle, reunites him with fellow Queens resident Neek The Exotic--a pairing last heard on 2003's Exotic Is Raw set, for which Large Pro handled around half of the production duties. It's a release unlikely to trouble those whose RSS feeds frolic above rap's underground layer, but it's a collaboration that allows Large Pro to continue to dwell in a hip-hop world of his own creation. When I interviewed him a couple of years ago, he was late because he was cycling around Flushing Meadows Park while listening to his iPod--the impression given was that he'd prefer to produce at his own leisurely pace and on his own terms rather than pucker up and play the major-label game. It's a stance that should be applauded. With that in mind, here are ten commendable hometown anthems produced--as opposed to remixed, which would be a whole other lengthy listicle--by Flushing's finest self-proclaimed "live guy with glasses."

More »

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 show at Bushwick's Shea Stadium, right around the time the Blastoids' drummer poured paint on his kit and started splattering away.

More »

So Sundance 2011, set to invade Utah in January, has announced a lineup that includes, in the documentary category, competing with such works as The Redemption of General Butt Naked, Page One: A year inside the New York Times, and BEING ELMO: A Puppeteer's Journey (ooooh), a long-rumored film titled Beats, Rhymes and Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest, directed by one Michael Rapaport, because of course it is. A rough trailer leaked online a few days ago and was promptly pulled down; people seem genuinely excited about it. Not among those excited about it is Q-Tip, of A Tribe Called Quest.

More »