When Barack Obama claimed victory earlier this month, Brother Ali was the first rapper out the gate with a victory track, which was slightly ironic, given that a fury-eyed, Muslim rapper with an infamously angry single called “Uncle Sam Goddamn” is just about the last person the politically savvy president elect would want to align himself. Ali is so used to playing the outsider at this point, though, that he almost seems to prefer it, and aside from his labelmates Atmosphere—with whom he shares producer Ant on his latest album—nobody channels alienation into party music the way he does. Ali shares an 8 p.m. “Made in Milwaukee”-sponsored bill tonight at the Turner Hall Ballroom with Milwaukee’s most visible rap group, The Rusty P’s, playing here with their original line-up, the old-school soul band Kings Go Forth and DJs from the No Request and Chalice in the Palace crews.
Remember when bands cared about albums as an art form? Instead of
slapping together a dozen tracks because, hey, they'll just end up on
everyone's iPod shuffle anyway, musicians considered how their songs
might congeal as a whole or form some sort of dram
Elvis Costello's frequent collaborator T-Bone Burnett produced Secret, Profane & Sugarcane,
an Americana-inflected album working with country and folk traditions
for images of sawdust floors set to mandolin and fiddle. Costello
intended one s
You wouldn’t expect to find T-bone and sirloin dinners at a place with stool seating and a location next to a shop hawking cell phones and cigarettes. But one of the city’s most evocatively named eateries, ZaZa Steak & Lemonade (4919 W. Capito
The enduring fantasy of older men is that a gorgeous
young woman will fall in love with them, find them sexually arousing
and long to imbibe their wisdom while sitting at their feet. That
fantasy is the spring driving Woody Allen's often-hilarious f
Away We Go, a droll comedy-cum-drama by director Sam Mendes (American Beauty),
perceptively explores the lives of more-or-less ordinary 30-somethings
lost in a world without much meaning. Verona (Maya Rudolph) and Bu
