RH Pitchfork Festival Schedule
Over the last 13 years Pitchfork Music Festival has become one of the most important and highly curated music festivals in Chicago, which says a lot considering that Chicago has the most summer festivals of any city in America. This year's festival is dominated by internationally known stars like Ms. Lauryn Hill (celebrating the 20th anniversary of her legendary album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill) and Tame Impala headlining, but earlier in the day there are a lot of upcoming rappers and singers from Chicago and beyond like Kweku Collins, Ravyn Lenae and Berhana. Because music festivals can get overwhelming we decided to put together a list of the shows that we're looking forward to seeing.
Friday
4:00 Open Mike Eagle @ Blue Stage
4:15 Tierra Whack @ Green Stage
5:15 Saba @ Red Stage
6:15 Syd @ Green Stage
8:30 Tame Impala @ Green Stage
Saturday
1:00 Paul Cherry @ Green Stage
1:45 Berhana @ Red Stage
3:20 Nilüfer Yanya @ Red Stage
4:15 Moses Sumney @ Green Stage
5:15 Raphael Saadiq @ Red Stage
7:45 Kelela @ Blue Stage
Sunday
1:00 Nnamdi Ogbonnaya @ Green Stage
2:30 Kweku Collins @ Green Stage
3:20 Ravyn Lenae @ Red Stage
4:15 Smino @ Green Stage
5:15 Noname @ Red Stage
6:15 DRAM @ Green Stage
7:25 Chaka Khan @ Red Stage
8:30 Ms. Lauryn Hill @ Green Stage
Top Artists to See at Lollapalooza 2015
Alright cool kids it’s that time of the year we all look forward to - when summer actually feels like summer (for two weeks) and you can drink booze outside with a couple hundred thousand of your closest friends while Millennium Park is raging with some of the most epic and fresh artists to date for Chicago’s largest annual summer music festival, Lollapalooza.
[Songs of the Day] 3/7/14 (Feat. Kendrick Lamar, Tame Impala & Lil Boosie)
....And it's Friday. We're back with the latest songs to hit the Internet and keep you tied over til Monday. Leading things off is yet another hit from Big K.R.I.T. who takes a page out of Vic Mensa's book in "Egyptian Cotton" while an amazing collaboration took place between Kendrick Lamar and Tame Impala who got together for "Backwards" as part of what appears to be the soundtrack of the year for 'Divergent'. RL Grime and What So Not got together on a dance number for "Tell Me" and Casey Veggies gave listeners a new one in "Anything Goes" and Lil Boosie, fresh out of prison let everyone know things aren't that different on "Same Game". Check em all out below, see you at SXSW!
Track of the Day: Kendrick Lamar & Tame Impala: "Backwards"
Big K.R.I.T.: "Egyptian Cotton"
Kendrick Lamar & Tame Impala: "Backwards"
RL Grime & What So Not: "Tell Me"
Casey Veggies: "Anything Goes"
Lil Boosie: "Same Game"
Grading The 2014 Grammy Winners
So, back in December, around the time the Grammy nominations were officially announced, I wrote a post titled "Grading The Grammys" where I gave my two cents on what I thought of the nominees, who I thought should win and who I thought actually would win. The music industry equivalent to filling out an NCAA tournament bracket in March, I watched yesterday as my picks were scuttled fairly quickly. Using the mentality that it is better to recognize many rather than few and spread an award rather than smother one artist with them, my choices for Grammy winners was a bit different from what actually went down last night in LA. Read on to see who I thought would win, who actually did and how that makes me feel, here below.
Record of The Year
Nominees:
- "Get Lucky" - Daft Punk & Pharrell Williams
- "Radioactive" - Imagine Dragons
- "Royals" - Lorde
- "Locked Out Of Heaven" - Bruno Mars
- "Blurred Lines" - Robin Thicke Featuring T.I. & Pharrell
Actual Winner: "Get Lucky" - Daft Punk & Pharrell Williams
My Prediction: “Royals” – Lorde
Breakdown: I read somewhere in the lead up to this year's Grammys that the award show could very quickly devolve into a sort of Lifetime Achievement Award for Daft Punk, who did have arguably the song of the year in "Get Lucky" which seemed to be on an endless loop throughout the Summer. "Royals" certainly had its own run, but looking back it was somewhat ridiculous to think she could overtake Daft Punk.
Grading the Grammy Nominations
As the music industry has evolved over the past decade into the digital world, things have changed quite a bit. Hard copies are hardly ever bought anymore, nor does anyone seem to buy whole albums at all, as the iTunes Store model has taken over and the industry has increasingly become about what the consumer wants as opposed to what the labels want the listeners to hear. While this has resulted in a sort of musical reawakening, creating a culture where listeners can stream, download or play any track they can think of with the touch of a button, music has expanded at a rapid pace, creating new genres and sub-genres and infinite new off-shoots that don't fit cleanly into any one established genre or sound.
Standing behind this industry, bearing the largest prize of all, is the Grammy Awards. This year, the award show enters its 56th installment and, while a dance music category was finally introduced last year, the judging seems more out of touch than ever, but of course this has been an issue for some time. The Grammys are like Social Security. You don't really care about it much until you're too old to get up from the sofa. Generations have rallied against the award for years. In 1991 Sinead O'Connor simply refused to show up and boycotted the show, despite being nominated in four categories. After winning "Best Hard Rock Performance" in 1998, Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder stood onstage perplexed and, staring at the golden trophy, said into the microphone, "I don't know what this means. I don't think it means anything." It's not news that the team behind the Grammy Awards has been out of touch for some time, but at no time in history has it been so blatantly about the money in an industry that today makes significantly less money than it used to. It's macroeconomics of the current American condition played out with celebrities and gold gramophone statues. Plus, Kanye already spoke out. So, for this latest round of Grammy nominations, I figured I would sift through who was chosen and offer up my own choices for the top prizes in music this year.