At some point around midnight last night, I decided to stop fighting with my mom about Yeezus. Since his appearance on "SNL" a month ago, Kanye West and his new material has been somewhat of a lightening rod issue in my family. Voices have been raised, phones have been slammed...

"Guilty Pleasure." According to my cursory Google search, it's a term that refers to "lowbrow" or "otherwise embarrassing tastes," and the irrational fear we feel about being discovered engaging in them and it dates all the way back to 1907 (Sidebar, 1907 guilty pleasures: Ping pong? Scott Joplin? "Anne of...

Mostly, I consider myself a modern-day Sherlock Holmes. The only difference between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's whimsical detective and myself, however, is that the only mystery I'm interested in solving regards the enigmatic phenomena known only as "Beyonce." As I and countless others of Destiny's Children have addressed...

I need to be honest about something right from the jump: I'm not a fan of Justin Bieber (*braces for the full wrath of the Bieliebers*).

To be clear, my distaste for the Biebs is not the result of any bullshit anti-pop, anti-bubblegum, anti-teenybopper, pretentious asshole-DJ disposition. Quite the...

On Tuesday, Odd Future mastermind Tyler, The Creator released his latest opus, "Wolf." Of course, as with most of his creative output (as well as his personal antics), the release was met with a highly-polarized response. While most reviewers paid high compliments to the album's production and Tyler's evolution as...

Life is an ambiguous journey, laden with mysteries. Some of these we can actually answer, like who framed Roger Rabbit and the conundrum of will.i.am's enduring popularity (conclusion: he doesn't make music, he supplies brain crack to fiending drunk people). Others, like just what in the hell we're all doing...

South By Southwest, the Austin, Texas art festival / showcase / general musical shit-show has gone through quite an evolution over the past decade. Founded in 1987, SXSW, or "South-by" as it often referred to, was initially a music-industry insider's event: a place for label A&Rs, managers, lawyers, and the...

This morning, as always, I sat down and opened a very credible newspaper (the internet), and discovered that Chelsea Handler has, to the surprise of approximately 0 people, weighed in on the Taylor Swift-Tina Fey-Amy Pohler "feud" that's been the toast of the blogesphere this week. In the well-researched think-piece...

On Saturday night, Beyoncé, birth-giver to our future overlord Blue Ivy Carter, capped off what can only be described as a month-long media invasion with the premiere of her self-directed "documentary" on HBO, Life Is But a Dream. I put the word "documentary" in quotation marks because, to the extent...

It goes without saying that the years surrounding puberty are a nightmare for most of us: Awkward, ever-changing bodies, cliques, rampant bullying, and overbearing parents make for an incredibly perplexing and sometimes painful period of life. But for us, certain prime pop culture real-estate saved...

Being a DJ has a ton of perks: I get to play music for living, pretend I'm kinda-sorta famous and go on an unqualified ego trip for a few hours every night and most importantly, get wasted at work in full view of my employers with absolutely no fear of...

To the surprise of absolutely no one, my mom and I don't see eye-to-eye on all music. Of course, like all kids, she and my dad's musical taste has had a huge influence on me and we share an appreciation for certain things: The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson (duh), the...

As the Year of Our Lord 2012, and indeed mankind as a whole, barrels toward its inevitable conclusion at breakneck speed, most of our nation's top music critics have been busy compiling their yearly "best-of" song lists. Many of these compendiums are masterfully comprehensive, sweeping across genres and covering everything...

Twitter has been one of my best, worst frenemies for years now. He was rather mysterious and alluring at first: I didn't quite know what he wanted me say, what I would gain from sharing with him or why each of our exchanges had to be limited to 140 characters....

Oh hey, Lana Del Rey, what a tumultuous year we've had! Indeed we, the pop music-loving public, have had one hell of a torrid love affair with you, the self-self-proclaimed "Gangster Nancy Sinatra" during the past 12 months. It has been a time fraught with some pretty glorious ups (the...

"So, when did you come out?" is probably one of the single most commonly fielded questions by gay folks, whether it be from new friends, distant family members, dates or your grandma's weird-smelling friend at Rosh Hashanah dinner. The question is largely rooted in two sources: 1) straight people's curiosity...

Last night, the University of Denver hosted the closest thing we have to an all-out gladiatorial sword fight in American Politics: The First Presidential Debate. Here, instead of playing Mean Girls and throwing catty barbs at one another from across the lunchroom, our two candidates, President Barack Obama and Governor...

"Ugh, Beyonce stop emailing me," is something no one has ever said ever. This is what makes Thursday September 13, 2012 a very special day for us, the peasants who toil away tirelessly in the Carter-Knowles fiefdom. On this day, "B-Day" if you will, Queen B broke her all-encompassing digital...

We've all felt it: a deep-rooted, visceral pain in our collective soul, one which grows evermore present with each passing day and with no sign of relief in sight. These days, the emotions (confusion, anger, sadness, impending doom, et al) wash over us while dancing with our friends in the...

Look, I'm just gonna be super real with you here: DJs hate when you make requests. Put yourself in our shoes for just a moment. Imagine there is some random, sloppy wasted chick in a size-too-small Herve Leger at your office, interminably standing over your desk while you're trying to...