M.I.A.
Maya Arulpragasam spent the early years of her life in a number of places. She moved from London, England, to her parents' native Sri Lanka at the age of six months, only to relocate to Madras, India. During a return stay in Sri Lanka, the civil war taking place within the country escalated to the point where Arulpragasam began to lose family members and friends. She didn't see her father -- a devout and active separatist as part of the Tamil rebellion, which has clashed with the Sinhalese majority -- often throughout these years, but her life stabilized once she and the rest of her family were able to make it back to London.

MENUDO
A new, updated version of MENUDO is back, with a contemporary sound and look, and the same universal appeal. The five new members Carlos Olivero (18 years old, Mexican/Puerto Rican, Chicago, IL); Chris Moy (15 years old, Puerto Rican/Venezuelan/Chinese, Bronx / Dutchess County, NY); Emmanuel Vélez Pagán (16 years old, Puerto Rican, Trujillo Alto, PR); José Bordonada Collazo (15 years old, Puerto Rican, Manati, Puerto Rico) and Monti Montañez (18 years old, Puerto Rican, Caguas, Puerto Rico / Now Laredo, TX) are young, polished, highly professional singing-and-dancing boy group.

website | menudoworld.com

FLOBOTS
When a pair of intelligent, visionary emcees joins forces with a battle-hardened, groove-fusing rhythm section, a classically trained violist, and a jazz trumpet player, the result is a sound that explores and expands the frontiers of live hip-hop. Progressive in both style and message, the band's ability to drop from symphonic rock-infused crescendos into stripped-down string-laden breakbeats has earned Flobots a reputation for both originality and authenticity.

 

website | flobots.com

Rock was as focused as he’d ever been for Rock N Roll Jesus, and that led to his most cohesive record to date. The album is heavily coloured by the music he was raised on; his parents regularly held barn parties on the family spread in suburban Michigan, and on any given Friday, you’d hear Hank Williams and Johnny Cash cranked back-to-back with the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Rock has never hid the fact that classic country and southern rock mean just as much to him as golden-age hip-hop and old-school rap; the Metallica-sampling “American Bad Ass” from 2000’s The History of Rock laid everything out with lines like “I like AC/DC and ZZ Top/Bocephus, Beasties and the Kings of Rock/Skynyrd, Seger, Limp, Korn, the Stones/David Allen Coe and no-show Jones.”

website | kidrock.com