After Van Halen, Bruce Springsteen, Radiohead, and Jay-Z all elected to skip Austin on their spring US tours, it's not unreasonable to feel that our music-loving town seems to be off the radar of the arena pop and rock circuit. This despite a perfectly functional (if rather dated) basketball arena smack in the center in town. Thankfully, the Louis Vuitton Don Kanye West agrees with you, and has elected to show Austin some big-production love with a date here at The Frank Erwin Center in late April....

Chicago rapper Lupe Fiasco’s two albums are anomalies on the rap racks: winding, wordy projects with few A-list cameos, recognizable producers, or sure-fire singles. That he’s managed to build himself into a successful international brand is not a little bit attributable to a unique set of circumstances. There’s the trap-hop backlash, a dirge in the straight-up New York sound resulting from Atlanta’s ascent, the Kanye Effect, the Jay-Z Effect, that music blogging thing... ...

It’s list-making season – for children who believe in Santa, music writers, etc – and there are three rap albums that you are bound to see wherever it is that you see lists: Jay-Z’s American Gangster, Kanye West’s Graduate, and Lil’ Wayne’s Da Drought 3. These artists all create good music and lots of people purchased and enjoyed all three of these works. Lil’ Wayne, in particular, may have produced the two most gifted hours......

Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full The problem with rock legends, assuming they live past 30, is that they are held to such high standards. But for Sir Paul McCartney, age 65, such standards exist nowhere if not in his own driven psyche. In the past two years, he has released a politely (read: coolly) received acoustic album, Chaos And Creation In The Backyard, performed an extravagantly surreal rendition of "Yesterday" with Jay-Z at the......

Austin native Rebecca Rosenberg has been living in South Korea teaching English, and she wants to share her experiences abroad with all of Austin. Austinist believes that we could all use some Korean culture. After nine months away from Austin, working as an English teacher in South Korea, I most miss lying on the grass with a margarita, relaxing at the meat market that is Barton Springs, with a Shady Thing pilfered from the......

Seattle's Aqueduct have been doggedly honing an indie/laptop pop sound for several years. Essentially a one-man studio band, David Terry channels influences ranging from a suburban Oklahoma upbringing to fandom of Guns 'N' Roses and The Princess Bride into his catchy, lo-fi home studio creations. Live, the band is a very different animal: at SXSW two years ago, they simply demolished the crowd with a blend of original tunes, rap covers, an Aqueduct theme......

Nas Hip Hop Is Dead (Def Jam) Nas' 8th studio album (and first with Def Jam) marks the end of the Jay-Z feud and the beginning of post-hip hop recording, should we believe his figurative burial scene. As one of rap's more prominent figures, the imagery begs the question: What exactly is Nas doing with this album if hip hop is dead? Are we listening to the birth of something new, or the funeral......

Clipse Hell Hath No Fury The bubble has burst. Ever since 50 Cent turned bullet wounds into a marketing bonanza—it really wasn’t that long ago, was it?—artists in the loosely defined subgenre known as “coke rap” have been falling all over themselves to convince suburban America that they sold more drugs, shot more people, and spent more time in jail than whoever happens to be selling records that week. The situation is so far gone......

Let's look back at a week in which no site in the -ist network adopted anyone from Africa... -Austinist reveled in the dumb antics of some U.T. law students and posted some great audio from former New Orleans natives who've decided to stay in Austin. But the best news for Austinist? They were voted Best Local Entertainment Web Site by the local Austin alt-weekly. Congrats, Austinist. -DCist gloried in being told their musical tastes made......

It could have been a lot worse. Mariah Carey could have walked away with Song, Record, or even Album of the Year; at that point, we would've completely given up on the music industry. Not that we have an extreme degree of faith in the corporate arts as is, but giving the big one to an album titled The Emancipation of Mimi would have all-but confirmed that those people are insane, evil, and totally......

Austin certainly has its share of talented DJs. But here, they seem to take a back seat to live acts in terms of entertainment credibility. Sure, they aren't strumming the sounds out from strings and hard-pushed air, but Austin almost has a stigma against the DJ (let alone turntablist). They’re almost seen as ornamentation rather than the purveyors of music culture that they actually are, if allowed. Well, the good ones anyway. But that's......

Could this be the good life? Sitting downtown in a coffeeshop, drinking a mocha, eating s'mores for lunch? Yes, we think this is the good life and you too can have the good life at Halcyon. It's where Ruta Maya used to be--that old brick building on Lavaca and 4th, sandwiched between Lavaca St. Bar and Fado. We hadn't been in a while and we were downtown and in need of coffee and a place......