Best Time Warp: JD McPherson For about an hour, Norman wasn’t in the year 2013, but instead 1953. Broken Arrow native JD McPherson has turned the success of his debut, Signs & Signifiers, into spots on Conan and more, and Norman got a chance to see just what it is NPR and the like have […]
Jabee
Posted inMusic
Street cred
In grade school, a lot of us were too busy playing Nintendo and sipping Capri Sun to even think about attempting anything artistic. But not Jabee Williams, aka Oklahoma City rapper Jabee. “I wrote my first rap when I was 7. That’s when I started,” Jabee said. “It just went on from there. I went […]
Posted inMusic
Sample size
It’s hard to imagine that Gregg Gillis — best known as Girl Talk — spent several years playing for handfuls of people, being that he now regularly plays for 10,000 or more a night. No matter the number, he infused the same manic energy into his mad mash-ups. “I’d yell and jump on them, anything […]
Posted inMusic
Kick it
“I work two jobs, and my car doesn’t have a front bumper,” said Oklahoma City rapper Jabee Williams. “I’m a real-life person.” But crowd-funding website Kickstarter.com gives musicians worldwide the opportunity to release the same quality product as major labels. “Basically, it takes the place of a record label,” said Brandon Lovelace, lead singer of […]
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Revolt!-ing
“Fuck, yeah, we’re garish!” Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt! singer Neil Fridd shouted on the phone, from somewhere in Minnesota. If nothing else, the man’s concise. “There are a million bands I can go see. We’re gonna do the opposite of that,” he said. “It’s only garish because there’s a ton of really boring bands.” “Overt” […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Paint the town Red
Pull that red dress out of the closet and bust out the emergency fund, because Saturday, you’ll need them both at the Red Night bachelor auction. “The goal for Red Night is to showcase the work that the YWCA does to help women and their families, and to assist them by raising as much money […]
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Chrome extension
It’s not multiple personality disorder, exactly. Many of the area’s finest musicians, after all, flit between multiple projects, playing a festival here, helping on a record there. Local pop musician Steven Battles is familiar with the phenomenon, having backed Norman acts like The Nghiems and Jacob Abello. When Battles lends a hand to electro-pop act […]
Posted inMusic
Chrome extension
It’s not multiple personality disorder, exactly. Many of the area’s finest musicians, after all, flit between multiple projects, playing a festival here, helping on a record there. Local pop musician Steven Battles is familiar with the phenomenon, having backed Norman acts like The Nghiems and Jacob Abello. When Battles lends a hand to electro-pop act […]
Posted inMusic
Soundcheck: Beetyman — Underdog
That said, another quality GRP FLY-sporting rapper’s emerged from the fertile Oklahoma City ground that produced Jabee, Josh Sallee and aDDLib. Beetyman hails from the east side, as he informs us on his aptly named debut LP “Underdog,” a record full of optimistic brass samples that surround a genuine, young talent. Per the album title, […]
Posted inMusic
Beet it
Will Beatty — who raps under the name Beetyman — is quick to point out exactly what he expects from fellow hip-hop artists: Honesty ranks high, and by extension, authenticity. Really, it has to do with speaking about what you know, and much of what Beatty knows has to do with being the underdog. The […]