photos by Ryan Muir, words by Andrew Frisicano

Rick Ross / DFA1979

One Hanson Place, the cavernous ground-floor space of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower, served as the venue for a free-if-you-could-get-in Vice-sponsored concert on Thursday. As expected, the Weeknd didn't appear (he canceled the week before). Instead, the main attractions were Rick Ross, Death From Above 1979, a half dozen other bands, free beer and liquor and the Art Deco interior itself. A second stage in the basement--located inside a room-sized vault, with giant metallic doors at its entrance--featured acts like Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Anamanaguchi, Hanni El Khatib, Total Slacker and the Men. A-Trak was supposed to play, but cancelled after the sudden passing of his friend DJ Mehdi.

Tanlines kicked off the upstairs with songs that were aided by the high-vaulted ceilings and the reverb-heavy acoustics. Death from Above 1979 didn't fare as well; their songs already sound blown out and distorted on record, and the live show sacrifices any remaining fidelity for raw power. That said, both Sebastien Grainger and Jesse Keeler--one in white, one in black--put on spirited performances, thrashing around, with Sebastien at one point crawling along the bank teller windows into the crowd.

Rick Ross took the stage around 1am, after a brief intro set from Maybach Music Group rapper Stalley. The boss's set of about 35 minutes sped through songs that included "John," "9 Piece," "Hustin", "BMF", "MC Hammer," DJ Khaled's "All I Do Is Win" and "I'm On One," Waka's "O Let's Do It," and "Tupac Back" and "Ima Boss" (both Meek Mill's songs I think technically), at least for a chorus or two. Directly in front of the stage, where Ross' verses and exhortations were crystal clear, you could really get a sense of his imposing presence (DJ seemed genuinely afraid after starting one song too soon) and his ability to queue up any tune and make it totally his.

The amount of people upstairs was comfortable and not-overpacked; the downstairs, then, could be described as sadly under-attended. Unknown Mortal Orchestra had the benefit of playing before the main-stage acts started and sounded great. Hanni El Khatib, who played as a two-piece, shuffled out grungy, Americana-influenced rock, but to an audience of only about 50. One of the most pleasant surprise for me was Anamanaguchi, who I haven't seen in a few years. The quartet has molded themselves into an impressive instrumental outfit--with their NES as a less-dominant member--as they navigated their songs' post-rock-inspired swoops and climaxes with skill.

The Men closed the night with a post-2am set for the stragglers that hadn't yet succumbed to the hazards of the open bar. On my way downstairs I passed a handful of people doubled over, getting carried out by the EMTs. Downstairs wasn't much safer: at one point, a mic stand went flying into the crowd landing squarely on someone's head (hope you're alright dude).

More pictures from most of the night below...

Continue reading "pics from the Vice party in a bank (Death From Above 1979, Rick Ross, Anamanaguchi, Tanlines & more)"

DFA1979 fans @ Lollapalooza 2011 (more by Grant MacAllister)

The Weeknd was playing and then not playing and now it's this:

Following years of hard work, arm wrestling over domain names, and a little bit of high-tech stuff that we can't even begin to understand, we're proud to announce that VICE.COM is here. We've combined VBS.TV and Viceland.com to create super content one-stop-shop for all the videos and words you've come to expect from VICE.

Being that we're VICE, we decided to throw a party to celebrate our new URL with our best friends, like you and Rick Ross. RSVP is now open, details and flier below. Space will be limited.

Full Frontal VICE | The Official Launch of VICE.COM | Presented by boinc

Thursday, September 15th | 9:00PM - 3:00AM
Skylight One Hanson | One Hanson Place, Brooklyn

Performances by:
Rick Ross | A Trak | Death From Above 1979

And More Bands
Tanlines
Unknown Mortal Orchestra
The Men
Hanni El Khatib
Anamanaguchi
Total Slacker

And DJs
Nick Zinner
Black Lips
The New York Night Train
Lemonade
True Panther
Greenie

Complimentary Svedka and Grolsch | Invitation is non-transferable. 21+ and Photo ID required

RSVP is open.

Lupe Fiasco is currently in Australia as part of the Big Day Out Festival, touring with names like Iggy Pop, Deftones, Grinderman, and countless others. After returning back to the states, he'll get ready to welcome his new LP Lasers into this world, due on March 8th. The Chicago MC will celebrate the release with a date at Webster Hall the night before it hits the streets and tickets go on sale at noon today (1/28). Lupe recently released the first single from the LP, the Modest Mouse-sampling "The Show Must Go On" via iTunes.

Tickets also go on sale at noon for Rick Ross at Best Buy Theater on March 4th, and fortunately if you can't make that show you can make it out to see him support Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj at Nassau Coliseum on March 27th as part of the I Am Music II tour. Ticket info for that show hasn't been released yet. All dates below.

Those of you who want to see Lil Wayne but might prefer to see him in a much (much) different setting than the third of three hip hop acts (instead with Motley Crue, Waka Flocka Flame, Insane Clown Posse & Bruno Mars?) can catch the recently freed MC at Bamboozle 2011 in New Jersey. Tickets are still available for the festival in multi-day, and single day pass increments.

And lets say, for some godforsaken reason you felt like a double dose of Insane Clown Posse.... that can be arranged. Insane Clown Posse has taken time off of their busy wrestling schedule to shower New York City with Faygo on April 29th at Gramercy Theater. Tickets are still available all of you Juggalos and Juggalettes!

Full Bamboozle lineup and all Lil Wayne tour dates are below.

Continue reading "Lupe Fiasco adds record release show, Rick Ross playing NY before tour w/ Nicki Minaj & Lil Wayne (who plays Bamboozle w/ Insane Clown Posse) -- lineups & dates"

"Great show. Though, totally unnecessary 3+ hour wait to get in." - Anonymous

Nicki Minaj & Kanye West @ Bowery Ballroom (photo by Questlove)

Kanye West played his entire new album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy from start to finish, followed by a four song encore Tuesday night at the intimate Bowery Ballroom in NYC where Kanye literally brought in "all of the lights" (there were lots of lights). The show started with people who weren't Diddy (he walked right in) waiting on a long line. The show ended with Kanye going on a rant about racism, George Bush, Taylor Swift, the Today Show, etc. Audio of that final portion can be streamed below.

Album guest stars Kid Cudi, Raekwon, Jay-Z and RZA were nowhere to be found, but Terena Taylor, Bon Iver aka Justin Vernon (who might appear again with Kanye in the Thanksgiving Day Parade), Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj (who plays Hammerstein Ballroom on Thanksgiving), Pusha T, Prynce Cy Hi, Swizz Beatz, and John Legend (whose friend Questlove was in the balcony taking pictures) all performed at the show that started around 12:40am and was was over by around 2:15. Full setlist, videos and that audio below...

Continue reading "Kanye West played Bowery Ballroom w/ many special guests (setlist, videos & audio of the show-ending rant)"

"...On Monday West, who is 33, will release his fifth album, "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" (Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam), and it's terrific -- of course it's terrific -- a startlingly maximalist take on East Coast rap traditionalism. And yet that doesn't matter nearly as much as it should, at least partly because of West's insistence on his own greatness. By not allowing for responses to his work other than awe, the value of the work itself is diminished; it becomes an object of admiration, not of study. Instead the focus is on the whole of West's persona and character, which is more fractured and subject to a far wider range of responses. The result is that West becomes a polarizing public figure who happens to be the most artful pop musician of the day, not the other way around.

Nevertheless, West seems virtually incapable of making a bad record. He's committed to pop, and he's savvy and talented enough to make it great, every time. What's more, for him to make something other than a universally accepted smash would be a thing that his ego couldn't bear. Every Kanye West album, until the cancer of the world around him begins to encroach on the parts of his cerebral cortex that control his musical ear, will be excellent and huge. He'll never have an idiosyncratic period.

Even at his most extreme, West isn't an experimenter. His music is ornate, ostentatious, curious and vivacious. But risky? No. All of his fiddling is within recognized formulas. A producer as well as a rapper, West controls all of the major elements of his songs, unlike other artists who have to rely on their taste (or their record label's taste) in outside producers or songwriters.

To work on this album he retreated to Hawaii, as he did during the making of his previous album. And West's gravitational pull is such that he can import talent. Rick Ross, Kid Cudi, Pusha T, Nicki Minaj -- they all made the trip to make music that will appear on the album. The spooky indie folky Justin Vernon from Bon Iver spoke of smoking marijuana with Rick Ross on one of his three sojourns to Hawaii to work with West, about as surreal a tableau as has been created in the making of any pop album this year." [JON CARAMANICA, Sunday New York Times]

"Runaway" video below...

Continue reading "Kanye West 'seems virtually incapable of making a bad album'"

by BBG

DOWNLOAD: - Jim Jones - "Salute" Remix w/ Cam'ron, Juelz Santana, & Vado (MP3)

"Freddie Gibbs hella #underrated" - NiNO_WiLLIAMS

"only in NYC can you see Gotham Green, Black Milk, Freddie Gibbs, DJ Spinna and Tony Touch all rock in the same night." -jessfromcosign

"Jim Jones is at the Freddie Gibbs/Black Milk show. I didn't know he liked rap." - itsthereal

Freddie Gibbs at SXSW (photo by Villageslum.com)

Freddie Gibbs is the Str8 Killa (and a straight blunt killa, but more on that in a sec) and he celebrated his new EP with a show featuring the great Black Milk, Gotham Green, Push! Montana, Tony Touch, DJ Spinna and others last night at SOB's. Check out some videos from the event below.

In other Gibbs related news, odds are you won't see the MC at the upcoming Rick Ross / Diddy shindig at Governor's Island:

Complex: Switching topics: One of the hottest rappers right now is Rick Ross. One of your recent tweets read: "Who are you? Rick Ross, Big Meech or Larry Hoover? the rap game is like halloween every day?"

Freddie Gibbs: [Laughs.] That's real, man. That dude makes good records, but I just can't support no bold-faced lying on records. I guess he's entertaining people. It's like a movie, like Scarface. He can have that fake lane. I'll stay in the real lane. We got a non-fiction lane of rap, that's how I'm looking at it now. So you got that fiction lane over there where they're doing all them. I do the non-fiction, the autobiography, the real shit. It's all good.... I mean you can't really trip on him yelling names out. This the same dude that told you he knew Noriega when he first came out, so...

Ouchie. He goes on to speak on Diddy, Khaled, and many others in the same interview.

As you can see above, Jim Jones was spotted at the Freddie Gibbs/Black Milk shindig. Jones's reunited partner in rhyme (dipset all day, as the kids say) Cam'ron will headline the Funkmaster Flex birthday party next Wednesday (8/11) at BB King's. Look for Killa Cam to perform alongside a team Ja Rule, Capone & Noreaga, Group Home (who just played Brooklyn Hip Hop Fest) and DJ Premier (him too). Tickets are on sale, yuhnahmean? Dig on the remix for "Salute" from Jim Jones's upcoming LP The Capo (9/28 via E1) featuring Juelz Santana, Vado, and Cam'ron above.

Video from the Freddie Gibbs/Black Milk show last night, as well as some of Mr. Gibbs and Best Coast (ex-Vivian Girl Ali included) sharing some ganj at the Pitchfork Fest, is below...

Continue reading "Freddie Gibbs played SOB's, smoked weed w/ Best Coast (video) ++ Rick Ross is fiction?, a Cam'ron show & more"

by BBG

Would you confuse these two men?

California ex-drug kingpin Ricky "Freeway" Ross filed a trademark lawsuit against rapper Rick Ross in a California Federal Court on Friday June 18. According to the Miami New Times blog, Ross is suing the rapper for stealing his name, image and likeness to create a successful rap career. ...Ross and his lawyer Melvin Sharpe Jr. are also suing Maybach Music -- rapper Rick Ross' label -- Universal Music Group Recordings, Slip-N-Slide Records -- the independent label the rapper first signed to before signing to a major -- and Jay-Z, who was President of Def Jam Records when rapper Rick Ross signed to the label in 2006. - [Billboard]

Maybe "Freeway" Ricky Ross is trying to get at the dough that the Miami MC will make at the Power 105.1 show at The Beach at Governor's Island on August 22nd. There, the former prison guard (named after a drug dealer?) will join up with Diddy & Dirty Money, Ciara, Kelly Rowland, Keri Hilson, Bobby Valentino, Fat Joe, Maino, and others. Tickets are on sale at noon today (7/2).

Also on board is Jay-Z prodigy J Cole, who recently released a new video for "Who Dat" available below. The MC will drop his as-yet untitled Roc Nation debut this October, which features contributions from Pharrell, Jim Jonsin, and Salaam Remi though the bulk of the production was handled by Chicago producer (and Kanye West mentor) No I.D.. Look for that.

That J Cole video, as well as a few others are below...

Continue reading "drug kingpin Ricky Ross suing rapper Rick Ross (who is playing Governors Island w/ J Cole, Diddy & Dirty Money, more)"

photos by Chris La Putt

Indie darlings Matt & Kim kicked off the show -- which celebrates the year's best music as determined by MTVu's college-centric audience -- with an energetic performance of their breakout single "Lessons Learned." Later, the duo returned to accept their Best Video Woodie award.

"We've had one heck of a year," said Matt Johnson, before counterpart Kim Schifino leapt into the crowd.

Additional performers included veteran alt-rockers Death Cab for Cutie, who rocked the audience with its "New Moon" soundtrack single "Meet Me on the Equinox," as well as Passion Pit, the Dead Weather and Clipse, who were joined onstage by fellow rappers Cam'ron and Rick Ross.

Presenter highlights came from Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz and pop prankserts 3OH!3. Wentz rolled onto the stage holding a red Solo cup, while 3OH!3 gave a nod to Lady Gaga by dressing in her various VMA outfits. Asher Roth, will.i.am, and surprise guest Cyndi Lauper also presented awards. [Billboard]

Cyndi presented an award with Gossip Girl's Leighton Meester who also recently made an appearance at the Weezer (and Matt & Kim) show on Halloween that was sponsored by RXP aka the Matt Pinfield station. Matt was also at the Woodies as was Diplo who was DJing and David Cross, Zooey Deschanel, Janelle Monae, Dave 1 from Chromeo, and Mary Louise Parker. Matt and Kim didn't get naked like they do in their winning video (their second MTV win for that video), but their backup singers did strip down to their underwear.

The Dead Weather also played a show one day before the Woodies in Brooklyn. The Woodies air December 4th at 10pm. More pictures from the event (11/18 at Roseland Ballroom in NYC), below...

Continue reading "2009 mtvU Woodie Awards @ Roseland - pics (Passion Pit, Dead Weather, Matt & Kim, Clipse, Death Cab, more) "