Photo by Ryan Siverson

Slug performing during Atmosphere's stop at First Avenue in February.

Related:
Is Wiz Khalifa as "raunchy" as a Star Tribune writer says?
Slug of Atmosphere: 'Prince was a shitty version of Rick James and Parliament'
Top 20 best Minnesota musicians: The complete list

Judging by the number of racist comments this blog weathers, some locals believe any amount of Twin Cities rap is too much. (Perhaps a Star Tribune writer feels that way, too.) For those of us who do enjoy partaking in the beats and rhymes, it's still possible to reach a threshold. These Modern Radio message board users felt this way in 2005, and Atmosphere rapper Slug discussed the scene's "oversaturation" in a 2008 TC Daily Planet interview.

Now, a journalist writing for an Australian magazine -- these things seem to always originate overseas -- asked Slug to revisit that very same question of how crowded the local community has become.
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Photo by Erik Hess

Collectors digging in the bins at Hymie's during Record Store Day 2011.

Related:
2012 Record Store Day events roundup
A celebration of independent Twin City record stores

With Record Store Day upon us once more, it's a little hard to believe that this is only the event's fifth installment. The annual celebration of brick and mortar music retailers has turned into such an extravaganza, and feels so deeply embedded in the culture of the business, that it feels like it could easily have been going on twice as long.

This year, no doubt, will be bigger and better than ever, with stores across the Twin Cities pulling out all the stops on special releases, concerts, and a variety of other side shows, from beer gardens to clowns to face painting. Unquestionably, Record Store Day is the biggest day of the year for those who love crate-digging -- and, crucially, for the businesses themselves. But it also begs a question: Can these businesses survive without Record Store Day? And if so, do they need it?
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Let's turn this into a teaching moment.

​Minnesota Give Up. No, that's not the title of Howler's next album, nor is it the slogan for the eyebrow-raising marketing campaign the band rolled out last week. But, if you were to read some of the things being bandied about on the interwebs about the interview that their baby-faced bandleader, Jordan Gatesmith, gave to the Guardian's Alex Petridis, you might think just that.

There's been considerable hand-wringing -- as well as some intelligent conversation -- generated by Gatesmith's interview, in which he had some less-than-flattering words for his hometown music scene. What he said doesn't exactly qualify as grounds for controversy, so given the touchy reaction of some folks, it's probably just the kind of bratty behavior the Twin Cities could use more of. Lest we forget, it's just the sort of thing a journalist like Petridis would love Gatesmith to say about our exotic little backwater town.

Earlier this morning Gatesmith had the opportunity to explain himself, and he struck a mature and contrite tone. Yet this episode once again brings to the fore a long-percolating subject of debate: Just how healthy is the Twin Cities music scene these days?
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​The mere announcement that Doomtree rapper/poet/writer Dessa is giving a lecture/performance at the Nobel Peace Prize Forum this evening has already stirred up a bunch of debate regarding her qualifications to give the talk.

"Mic Lines: Art, Ethics, and their Contested Connections," is expected to delve into the question of whether or not rappers have social responsibilities for their words, or if they can pull a Charles Barkley. And, it seems that she's giving us a taste of what she'll discuss in an essay published via Star Tribune today.
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Photo by Erik Hess

Tapes 'n Tapes' Josh Grier never wanted to be your weekend lover.

​One of the surprises of the Current's 7th Birthday festivities at First Avenue this past weekend was undeniably Tapes 'n Tapes' climactic cover of Prince's epic hit "Purple Rain." Our Gimme Noise correspondent called it a "faithful, emphatic" take on the classic, and added that when staffers joined the band (and members of the evening's other groups) onstage, "it was a stirring, unifying moment." But, was it a sound plan artistically? After all, the song is notoriously long, it stretches a range of dynamics, emotions, and octaves in a way that only Prince can, and it shares the name with a flawed, but iconic film that is a love letter to the Twin Cities' music scene.
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via Instagram @centralalley

​Some people are mad at hair metal 'n' NBA critic Chuck Klosterman at the moment. This has to do with "The Pitfalls of Indie Fame," published yesterday on ESPN-offshoot commentary site Grantland regarding the Village Voice's Pazz & Jop 2011 album of the year, Tune-Yards' w h o k i l l.

Disclosure: This record was my fifth-favorite of the year at the time when I had to gather my thoughts, and there were moments early in 2011 when it was certainly my number one. However, the Midwest-born Klosterman, who is the author of eight books and has more impressive writing credentials than you do, decided to poke fun at Merrill Garbus' decadent, beats-bursting second album. He dwells on her past as a puppeteer -- the same profession as the moderately successful Jim Henson -- but mostly seems to come back to the point that the album wasn't popular enough for him to care about it sooner.
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​by Nikki Miller and Andrew Flanagan

For this second chapter of Rational Dialectic, Andrew Flanagan and Nikki Miller soak in the sold-out Korn show in First Avenue's Main Room, wherein they encounter a real-life vagitarian, black shirt farts, and confront head-on their checkered musical her-and-histories. And rimming.

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Nikki & Andrew doing research

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