T-Pain

The First Listens of 2012: What We Got Right, What We Got Wrong

As evinced bu my initial take on Tyler, the Creator's Goblin and my final opinion, a lot happens between one's first listen to an album and their final conclusion after taking it in several times. What I love about writing these features is that you get to read my pure, unvarnished thoughts about a ... More >>

2 Chainz's 10 Best Song-Stealing Guest Verses

Atlanta rapper 2 Chainz (aka Tauheed Epps, 35) is no one's sidekick. He sold out his first night as a solo artist at The Warfield on Dec. 15 (tickets are still available for the Dec. 16 show) and has a Gold-certified single ("No Lie" featuring Drake) and a Grammy nomination (Best Rap Album for Based ... More >>

What Are the Best-Selling Bay Area Singles of the Last 25 Years?

Compared to the relatively few big-selling Bay Area albums of the last quarter-century, there's a plethora of singles that have sold at least a half-million copies since 1987. Can you guess the Bay Area singles that have sold the most in the last 25 years? Here are the surprising answers: See Also: ... More >>

DJ E-Rock on Life as a Traveling Top 40 DJ and His Bay Area Influences

Citing influences from some of the Bay Area's best known DJs, like Q Bert, Mix Master Mike, and Apollo, local DJ E-Rock's career began at the age of 12, when he learned to mix Poor Righteous Teachers "Shakiyla and Sway" into King Tech's Bum "Rush The Sound" at a friend's house. While his peers were ... More >>

Justin Bieber's Believe: A First Listen

Like my colleague Andrew Stout, I have mostly managed to avoid Justin Bieber for what I'm pretty sure are good reasons. He's a typical "innocent" white male singer trying to represent universality to nonwhites and nonmales. Then there's his musical blandness: bits that crept through my defenses of " ... More >>

Skream and Benga: Show Preview

Insurgent Hip-Hop: Kreayshawn, Lil B, and Bay Area Rappers Throw Out the Rules

T-Pain Goes After Auto-Tune Maker Antares, Company "Quite Surprised" By Lawsuit

via Flickr​So this might sound crazy, but T-Pain's voice doesn't actually sound the way it does in his songs -- he uses this thing called Auto-Tune to make it sound different. Wild, right? And this might sound even crazier, but the R&B singer is suing the company responsible for his signature ... More >>

T-Pain Sues Auto-Tune Company He Used to Endorse

T-Pain.net​Rapper T-Pain, famous for his use and endorsement of Auto-Tune technology in his music, has sued Antares, the company that makes Auto-Tune, claiming that it used his image and name in marketing Auto-Tune software without his consent.After three albums and multiple award-winning songs ma ... More >>

Mistah Fab, T-Pain, and the Cataracs Conspire for a Pop Breakthrough with "City Lights"

T-Pain and Mistah Fab​Here's another maverick move from Oakland's Mistah Fab. It's called "City Nights," and it's a radio-friendly pop rave up featuring the Auto-Tuned likes of T-Pain and production by the Cataracs (whom you may know from last summer's "Like a G6"). Here Fab ditches the two ... More >>

Friday Night: L.A. Fave Low End Theory Comes to S.F., Gives the City Exactly What it Needs

​Low End Theory S.F., with Daedelus, Baths, Gaslamp Killer and moreJanuary 21, 2011@ 103 Harriet Better than: Suffering through a pack of smelly trustafarians to hear some heavy bass. Let me waste no time getting to the point: Low End Theory SF is everything I've wanted a hip-hop/dubst ... More >>

American Idol Tryouts in S.F.: Too Bad You're Not Like Carrie Underwood

Contestants waiting to try out for American Idol in San Franicsco earlier this week​More than 8,000 singers flocked to AT&T Park yesterday with enough ambition and dedication to wait up to nine hours in order to give a 30-second audition for American Idol. To manage their excitement, contestan ... More >>

"Lottery Ticket": Bow Wow strikes it rich in the hood

For Next 17 Years, Call Backstreet Boys A 'Man Band'

​For all you doubters: Backstreet's back, alright? Next week the Boys are heading west to perform at San Francisco Pride and the Warfield Theater. If you asked the guys, though, they'd tell you they were "Never Gone" and "Unbreakable." (Yes, we're reading straight from some of their recent album ... More >>

Jack Dangers is back with a new beat manifesto

Annoy People on the Go with Drawdio

Techies love generating new ways to make strange noises. The iPhone gave us the ability to annoy friends with ease using a plethora of sound-generating apps like iAno or I Am T-Pain. Now, another kind of portable noise maker has surfaced, the slightly cooler seeming--though actually more obnoxious ... More >>

Real Resolutions

How locals plan to make life changes in the new year.

Kraftwerk's Anthologie makes up for lost time

T-Pain DataSF = Tinny Voiced Do-Gooder Web Apps?

There's an app for that...​Calling all computer-whiz nerds: not one, but two Bay Area-based Web application contests were announced this week. First, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has been helping to promote the DataSF App contest, which challenges entrants to create civic-minded applications b ... More >>

Just Tweet It

Wallpaper.’s Eric Frederic is an unstoppable viral music producer. But can the incessant songwriting, video blogging, and booty tweeting make him a star?

Goapele's Extreme Makeover

Before...​ When last we saw Oakland singer Goapele--back in 2005--she was a socially-conscious neo-soul hippie, surrounded by fairytale-esque flowers and rainbows on the cover of her second album Change It All. Her music ranged from Lynda Perry-penned romantic ballads ("Dark Side of the Moon") to ... More >>

YACHT breaks fan barriers

Town Bizness Cancels SF Show

EKAphotographyTown Bizness Too $hort's highly-anticipated supergroup Town Bizness  has canceled their scheduled March 27 show at the Grand Ballroom. No official reason was given for the cancellation, and the show has yet to be rescheduled. A representative for $hort's label Up All Nite, reach ... More >>

Hitsville: The Year in Music, by the Numbers

By Randall Roberts You don't need a half-wit music critic to tell you it's been a remarkable year for America, one historians will be discussing and researching for centuries to come. War, financial collapse, politics, technology: All have been dinner-table topics for many Americans. Racial barrier ... More >>

Top Ten Hip-Hop Albums Of 2008

By Dan Leroy A couple of weeks ago, an expert on the Harry Potter series told an audience of high school kids how lucky they were to have this Big Shared Experience--these seven books and 41,000 words in common. What does Harry Potter have to do with hip-hop in 2008? In an age when many year-end ... More >>

Top Ten Dance Collections of 2008, Both Mixed and Unmixed

By Randall RobertsAny knucklehead with DSL and a laptop can now make an electronic track. With a half hour of clicking and fiddling, you can sample enough cheesy beats and mashups to clog arteries from here to Berlin. Simple dropdown mouse maneuvers can transform electro tracks into progressive hous ... More >>

The Year in Music: 2008's Top Ten Pop Songs

By Annie ZaleskiPop music often gets a bad rap for being disposable or vapid, and in many cases that's true. (Katy Perry, Danity Kane and the Pussycat Dolls, step right up!) But every year, a few irresistible bits of innovative ear candy rocket up the charts and seep into our subconscious. The foll ... More >>

Busted Rhymes: The Top 10 Most Preposterous Rap Songs of 2008

By Ben Westhoff Hip-hop A-listers including Rick Ross, Akon and Plies were caught grossly exaggerating their gangster credentials this year. (Turns out they were painfully law-abiding. The horror!) But even if your favorite rapper wasn't caught in a lie, you can bet he or she put out a hilariously ... More >>

Tuesday Night: Keys to the City at the Independent

Keys to the City The Independent Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2009 Notes by Jackie Lopez The Independent was chilly on the inside Tuesday night. The venue had left the doors wide open and it just wasn't packed enough for the crowd to steal some body heat from others in attendance. Still, a good number showed u ... More >>

MP3 of the Day: E-40

(Photo from E-40's MySpace page)E-40 is no stranger to clever puns, and the title of the Vallejo heavy's latest release, The Ball Street Journal, shows the rapper isn't slowing down the slang any time soon. The album,  featuring 40's signature rubber tongue alongside guests like Snoop Dogg, Bu ... More >>

SF Weekly Interview: E-40

By Tamara Palmer It's now been more than 20 years since Earl Stevens (aka E-40) put his first independent record out on the streets of the Bay Area and set out on a mission to put his hometown of Vallejo on the international rap map and his colorful phraseology into the mouths of society at large ... More >>

Al Green goes back to the basics

Last Night: KMEL Block Party at Oracle Arena

A brief history of vocal fakery from Zapp to "Lollipop"

Donna Summer

Crayons (Burgundy S)

Foxy Brown

Brooklyn's Don Diva (Black Rose Entertainment/Koch)

The infamy rollercoaster that is R. Kelly's life

Is Wu-Tang Clan's Ghostface Killah as Dumb as He Sometimes Acts?

Gorilla Zoe – Welcome To The Zoo - Grade: D-

CD Review: Kanye West -- Graduation

Kanye West

Graduation (Island Def Jam/Roc-A-Fella)

We Want Candy

Beyoncé and Ciara battle it out for your entertainment dollar

My Name Is Earl

E-40 blows up, and takes the rest of the Bay Area with him

Mixtape Shmixtape

Wherein we review Yay Area mixtapes of the day