Dan Weiss

Low Cut Connie is a band that basically defies all laws about how a band is supposed to make it in 2013. I know this because instead of sending me a CD or asking me to review a show, the duo's singer took me out to lunch and invited my......

Rap only exists in extremes. Don't let the polite reviews of Lil Wayne's Carter IV fool you, for instance. It got lots of polite 6 out of 10s, but people hated that thing. History will invalidate it. There are three ways rap fans remember periods of an artist's career: 1......

Michael Bolton was before my time. I know this because Office Space had a character who was ashamed to share a name with him, and because half the laughs for his surprise appearance in SNL's "Jack Sparrow" skit were Because It's Him, and because I haven't actually heard any of......

One of hip-hop's do-no-wrong stories of 2012, Albanian Queens-native Action Bronson put out Blue Chips for free and followed it up with Rare Chandeliers last year. He signed to Vice Records and made countless critics' year-end lists flowing unpretentiously on typical rap fare (girls, chronic, hookers,) and his own (food,......

Huey Lewis is a dick. It's not hip to be square -- it's square to be square, the thing that the hip will always fight against. Garth Brooks could never be hip, because he's a master of the square. And since as a music-loving society we're ready to admit in......

See also: Meet Iggy Azalea, the Street Smart Blonde Bombshell Behind "Pu$$y" Megalomaniacal Hollywood gossip blogger and one-time self-described "Queen of All Media" Perez Hilton's first CD compilation, Pop Up! #1, was released earlier this week on the Opus Label. As early as 2009, there was talk of Hilton getting......

See also: Top 20 Sexiest Female Musicians of All Time: The Complete List I'm into fat chicks. I run a blog about this subject because, even though I'm not alone (oh, not even close) it's still rare for dudes to come out and say it. Last year, LA Weekly's sister......

In 2004, Dismemberment Plan frontman Travis Morrison released his somewhat-anticipated solo debut, Travistan to a few polite reviews (Blender, Spin, AV Club) and one notably different one. Won over to the Plan in 2003 by the best show I'd ever seen in my life (one of their last before retiring),......

Stephin Merritt might be the greatest songwriter of his generation. Still, as has been reported before, interviewing him can be quite difficult. He takes extraordinarily long pauses, then suddenly decides to interrupt just when you thought it was safe to speak. If you refer to him calling himself "introverted" in......