Iowa City live music
Posted inArts & Entertainment

The art of partying: An interview with Andrew W.K.

by Drew Bulman

There’s a moment in a recent Andrew W.K. interview with WatchMojo where the rocker — famed for his high-energy stage presence — is asked if he ever plans on slowing down. Without missing a beat, W.K. launches into an endearing sort of non-answer about how he “should still be going strong” into his 80s. It’s almost quaint—the kind of answer you might expect from a musician whose party reputation precedes him. It’s not until he starts talking about aging-yet-active musicians like 77-year-old Lee “Scratch” Perry that it starts to sink in: W.K. has spent a lot of time thinking about this particular question, and he’s dead serious.

Posted inArts & Entertainment

Live music preview: Mobb Deep, Coolzey, Bleached and more

by A.C. Hawley

The duo Prodigy and Havoc are legendary rappers from the golden era of hardcore hip hop. Hailing from the Queensbridge Projects in New York City, Mobb Deep’s seminal sophomore album The Infamous was a realistic tale of the street gangsta. Rather than glorifying the lifestyle, Prodigy’s poetic rhymes and Havoc’s minimalist, bleak production presented a life full of misery, violence and paranoia. This album cemented their legacy as one of the great hip-hop groups to come out of the New York hardcore scene and built a legacy for the area’s future rap crews like Dipset. Anyone who has an interest in hardcore rap or likes the grittiness of New York rap should be at this show.

Posted inArts & Entertainment, Prairie Pop

Prairie Pop: Mobb Deep’s past, present and future

by Kembrew McLeod

“I got you stuck off the realness / we be the infamous”—Prodigy rapped in the opening verse of “Shook Ones, Part II,” Mobb Deep’s classic 1995 single—“you heard of us / official Queensbridge murderers / the Mobb comes equipped with warfare, beware.” Grimy, blood-soaked and unrelentingly bleak, Mobb Deep’s albums were filled with first-person tales delivered over menacing beats and minor key samples. Prodigy and his partner-in-musical-crime Havoc sounded like they had roamed the mean streets of New York since they were old enough to lift a banana clip. The reality, however, was a little more mundane.

Posted inAlbum Reviews

Album Reviews: Silk Duck – Self-titled EP

by Kent Williams

Justin Cox and Jeff Ryon, once and possibly future members of the Iowa City hip-hop group Bad Fathers, are back in Iowa after a few years out in Los Angeles doing their best to hit it big. Silk Duck is their reaction to the self-promotional treadmill that trying to break into the big time can be. This EP–free to download on Sound Cloud–was an outlet for the lyrical impulses that didn’t fit the over-the-top punk hip hop of Bad Fathers.

Posted inArts & Entertainment

Check out The Appleseed Cast this Tuesday at Gabe’s

by John Miller

Kansas-based band The Appleseed Cast are scheduled to play Gabe’s Tuesday at 8 p.m.

The band has gone through a number of lineup changes since forming in the late ‘90s, and as a result each of their albums has a markedly different feel. Early in their career, The Appleseed Cast was defined by critics as being an emo band. In a lot of ways, they were an emo band at the time, but recently it seems like they’ve outgrown that label and moved closer to something more quantifiable as post-rock.

Verify your email

We'll send a verification code to .

Gift this article