Proving that it is almost never wise to compare the results of rough sex to Emmett Till's face, Lil Wayne was dropped from his Mountain Dew campaign last week. Emmett Till, for those of you who aren't familiar, was a 14-year-old boy who was beaten to death, shot, and dumped in the river for whistlin ... More >>
A thrilling corruption of the Disney princess set.
On this day in 1994 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that parodies, commercial or non-commercial, do not violate copyright law. 2 Live Crew had applied for permission to parody Roy Orbinson's "Oh Pretty Woman," but were refused. They made the song anyway, and after a quarter of a million ... More >>
If you take Jorge Perez's word for it, four bouncy asses and a lone cymbal are proof that music can be found anywhere (as long as you have four willing women to bare their bums in the name of art, of course.) Solidifying his status as the envy of dudes everywhere, Jorge convinced four women to bare ... More >>
Woof woof woof woof woof. Get used to that, 'cause Arsenio is back. Nearly two decades after The Arsenio Hall Show disappeared from TV's late-night landscape following a five-year run, the man himself is being recalled to duty by CBS's syndicated-programming wing. The new Arsenio debuts in the fall ... More >>
You are a human and you have eyeballs and you also have the Internet, so you've likely read some things. That's sort of what this is, except sort of not too. We went through a ton of headlines of hip-hop "stories" from the past week, picked out the ten most egregious one, pasted them below, then ad ... More >>
Mötley Crüe, those depraved kings of '80s sleaze, took a major step toward strip-club immortality 25 years ago this week when the band released its fourth album, Girls, Girls, Girls.. Glossy, debauched heavy metal ruled the charts in the summer of 1987 -- Whitesnake, Ozzy, Bon Jovi and Poison all ... More >>
White Rabbits aren't your run-of-the-mill hipsters. The New York Times recently likened the New York band's third album, Milk Famous, to "Radiohead's technique of surrounding a sustained vocal melody with jagged pointillism... some songs barely bother to flesh out their chords. They're all rhythm an ... More >>
Photo by Marco TorresDJ EQUE at the launch party for Pharrell's Qreme liqueur, Las Vilas, September 23, 2011DJ EQUE has been making her mark in the industry for more than 10 years, but it was never something that came easy for her. The Houston-bred beauty had a lot to prove before she was tak ... More >>
Luther Campbell brings the crazinessYes, we're dusting off the Biggest Loser feature again! I'm sure you're fired up. The feature that was originally meant to highlight specific groups of people with dysfunctional behavior and whose rules were subsequently bent to include specific individuals ... More >>
For almost two weeks now, Rocks Off has been obsessed with the year exactly 25 flips of the calendar backward from this one. It started when Steve Earle did one of his "Time Machine" shows, where the singer-songwriter who plays House of Blues Wednesday spotlights a dozen or so of his favorite ... More >>
The hip-hop world is a less than sensible place -lots of times, you're even required to clarify when bad means bad and when bad means good- so once a week we're going to get with a rapper and ask them to explain things. Have something you always wanted to ask a rapper? Email sheaserrano@gmail.com. ... More >>
Rocks Off just finished reading Ian Christe's 2007 Van Halen biography, Everybody Wants Some, which chronicles the band's history from the Van Halen boys' entry into the U.S., the upbringing of David Lee Roth, and devastating, fatal 1985 crash into Mount Sammy Hagar. Sad stuff if you're a Rot ... More >>
Admit it, when you hear the term "deadbeat dad," you immediately think of a black rapper rocking Gucci stunna shades in a perfectly dimmed room, pants drooping to his ankles. Truth be told, hip-hop dads would be wise to step up and heed Ed OG's words: "Be a Father to Your Child." Relationsh ... More >>
Congratulations to Houston folksinger Glenna Bell. Her "The Cougar Anthem," from this year's Perfectly Legal: Songs of Sex, Love and Murder, was singled out Tuesday alongside Aaron Neville, Keith Richards, Norah Jones and Paul McCartney & Wings in USA Today's weekly "The Playlist" feature. I ... More >>
Mike Myers will probably go down in history as the most uncomfortable white guy next to a black guy in TV history, thanks to Kanye West's unscripted outburst during that infamous Hurricane Katrina telethon. It began with Myers reading his part of the script verbatim. Two-thirds into the PSA, ... More >>
Some rappers happen to be thoughtful, intelligent people. Every Monday (that isn't a national holiday) Rocks Off will have some of them here discussing issues relevant to their culture. Photo illustration by John Seaborn GrayThis Week's Panel: Chuckway, Renzo, Kyle Hubbard Not Invited: Our ... More >>
VH1 honored the Dirty South for the 2010 edition of Hip-Hop Honors. We flew out there and sat in on the taping this past weekend. Or we Tivo'd it while we put our kids to bed and then watched it afterwards. One of those is true. Willie D​ 8:00 p.m.: Oh, good. Darrell from The Office is hosting to ... More >>
Photos by Marco Torres​8:00 p.m.: There is a female behind the decks onstage. Aftermath loves seeing females who can hold it down on the 1s and 2s. She has a bedazzled Macbook and goes by the name of DJ Superstar. Go on with your bad self, girl. 8:10 p.m.: The audience is a bona fide rainbow ... More >>
Welcome back to Turning the Screw, Rocks Off's weekly rap post. It probably won't rhyme, at least most of the time. E-mail tips to introducingliston@gmail.com. Thanks, homies. ​Single of the Week: "Rain Drops," Yung Redd feat. T.C. This is a leak from the soon-to-be-released Eviction Notice 4. You ... More >>
Let's get one thing perfectly clear: Blowfly is the original dirty rapper. Before anyone in 2 Live Crew was old enough to set foot into a peepshow stall or buy a pack of cigarettes, Clarence "Blowfly" Reid was spewing forth raucous raps like "Spermy Night In Georgia" and "What a Difference a Lay Mak ... More >>
The final installment of our Five States of Texas project brings it all back home, to the new state of Brazoria, encompassing all of Southeast Texas from the Brazos Valley to Sabine Pass. ​Patron Saint: Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. A master of rock and roll, country, Cajun/Creole, blues and jazz, n ... More >>
You know Soledad. He's the vocalist from controversial Houston rap-metal act Daylight Coma. He's got a lot to say. Sometimes it's insightful, sometimes less so, but it's almost always said with conviction. This week, in honor of the fast-approaching HPMA, we asked him who he thinks are Houston's fiv ... More >>
Noise breaks down the months of live music ahead
...otherwise known as the H-Town 20
Translating the German Wikipedia entries of Houston's top MCs
Twisted G is most definitely not trapped in the closet
UT's national championship and the rise of Texas rap – coincidence or symbiosis?
Trill
Talkin' dirty with 2 Live Crew's spinster
The wonder that is Devin the Dude
The Geto Boys showed the nation hip-hop with real staying power
Shake it with the horned-up East Coast ladies of Avenue D
Jackal and Hyde breed badass beats
Danseparc, Substance and Stereo Bar reinvent the steel wheels
Ludacris rankles the white pride of the National Alliance and Bill O'Reilly
Galveston Mardi Gras
Local Music Reviewed
Too Much Joy cowers in the mouth of adulthood
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