Michaelangelo Matos revisits the evolution of Prince’s revolution in a recent feature for the Pitchfork Review, spotlighting the seminal 1980 album Dirty Mind. Here are five highlights. Prince insisted on being signed to the Warner Bros. pop roster, not their R&B roster. In the segregated music world of the late ‘70s, it was very difficult to cross…

There’s something appropriately righteous about the fact that you have to cross Queen Avenue to get to Lizzo’s house—not to mention that her home is mere blocks from the schools and church basements where Prince played his first gigs with his high school band in the 1970s. The reigning Queen of Minneapolis Hip-Hop landed in…

I’ve often thought Minneapolis has been oddly reticent to publicly claim its important place in the seminal career of Janet Jackson. Any oversight along those lines was certainly remedied on Sunday night at Target Center, as Jackson’s longtime collaborators Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis joined her onstage to welcome Mayor Betsy Hodges, who officially declared it…

The Replacements‘ Paul Westerberg has teamed up with rocker Juliana Hatfield to form a new band they’re calling the I Don’t Cares. Not much more information is available as of yet, but their album Wild Stab is set to be released next year, and they’ve released a single: “1/2 2 P.” (Consequence of Sound) A spokesperson for The Voice UK says that…

Next Friday (Nov. 5), The Peanuts Movie hits theaters—with famous jazz musician Trombone Shorty in an unusual cameo role. He’s not on the soundtrack for the album: he actually plays the voices for the adult characters in the movie. The “wah wah” that’s heard whenever the young characters encounter an adult will be replaced by Trombone Shorty’s, well, trombone.…

One morning in early August, Pentatonix—a hugely popular vocal group—rolled into town, after being on a bus all night, for a show at the Xcel Energy Center with Kelly Clarkson. Only a few hours later, they were on the mics at RiverRock Studios in Northeast Minneapolis, recording a song that appears on their new self-titled release: an album that’s currently…

Happy Friday! There’s a chill in the air, there’s candy corn sitting untouched in little dishes around the city, and musicians are donning their finest costumes in preparation for one of the most festive live music nights of the year. Here’s a look at five of the best music videos to emerge in the scene this…

It’s official: Mark Mallman has shared his new single, “The End is Not the End.” The song is a preview of what’s to come on Mallman’s new album of the same name, set to be released in early 2016, which is being funded on Kickstarter. Mallman has released seven studio records since 1998. Optimistic and high-energy, the new single is typical…

The chance to take over the mic as Local Current DJ-in-Residence could not have come at a better time: this is the first month of the rest of my life as a full-time musician. At the beginning of October I left a stable, unionized job—a job I loved—to pursue the unpredictable music career I’ve been…

The bottomless yellow jumpsuit Prince wore to the VMAs in 1991 appears on a new Rolling Stone list of “20 great moments in rock star nudity.” There aren’t any other Minnesota artists on the list, but Minneapolis regular Janet Jackson makes the list with her Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction,” and Rock the Garden alumni Matt & Kim…