The Next Best Thing

By now Slick Rick's "Children's Story" is a frat party standard and KRS-One's elementary style is a page in hip-hop history. With The Next Best Thing, a Jeremy Fish-illustrated picture book and read-along 7-inch by Aesop Rock, the duo are reinventing hip-hop storytelling for a new generation. A monologue on creative frustrations ("To my heart of gold medics with aesthetics on a string you will …

Puffy AmiYumi

Puffy AmiYumi is playing tomorrow night, 11 July 2006, at the World Financial Center Plaza. Presently in the midst of celebrating the 10th year of their luminous career, the duo is so much more than a manufactured J-pop girl band. At this point they're more like a veritable pop culture institution; it's a very special treat to see them perform live. Over the last decade …

Gilles Peterson: Back in Brazil

Two years after the lauded In Brazil, Amazon.