Editorial Voice

Rick Scott and Bill McCollum want to turn Miami into an immigration prison

(Stiff Pole Records) www.stiffpolerecords.com In honor of Richard “Big Stiff” Konwinski, who passed this past July in Tampa, I’ll be juggling between the County Grind and Crossfade blogs doing my Blast From the Past thing on the record label that he founded, Stiff Pole Records. In my opinion, it came to…

The Game and Cool & Dre have a long history together. “Hate It Or Love It,” from 2005, was the first collaboration among the three. Since then, they’ve frequently worked together, with Cool and Dre landing placements on all of the Game’s subsequent albums.Fast forward to 2010, and the Game…

Raising cash for county commission and school board races in Miami-Dade is like making it rain at the strip club. The more loot you fling, the more popular you are! As voters start going to the polls for early voting, Banana Republican compiled the top five ballers greasing the wheels…

Mayday still never ceases to amaze us. Every leaked record from their upcoming Stuck On An Island album has been nothing but sure-fire hip-hop goodness, mixed with a little bit of a multi-genre twist. A couple setbacks have delayed the album’s release, though. An original May date was changed to September,…

Uncle Luke, the man whose booty-shaking madness once made the U.S. Supreme Court stand up for free speech, gets as nasty as he wants to be for Miami New Times. This week, Luke claims Democrats are missing in action in the governor’s race.The Democratic Party is out of sight and…

Even though Ralph Arza recently popped up at one of her fundraisers and at her campaign headquarters in Hialeah, Perla Tabares Hantman insists the disgraced former state representative is not working on her re-election campaign for Miami-Dade School Board. “He has no involvement as far as I know,” Tabares Hantman tells Banana Republican…

The last year or so has been tough for our city’s paper of record, where I used to work. Reporters at the Miami Herald have gotten the shaft, and editors have been forced to do double duty. But hey, guys, please cover the City of Miami. It is the wheel around…

With the primary election less than a month away, Riptide is doing its civic duty by letting readers know about the five worst candidates running in local, state, and federal races. A vote for these jokers is just another leap toward Idiocracy, the made-up future world conjured by Beavis &…

The ratings for last night’s Miami-set premier of Jersey Shore season two are in, and they’ve broken records. Amongst advertiser’s favorite demographics it was the most watched cable program of 2010, and the biggest MTV premier in ages. We’d pop bottles to celebrate, but sadly the unique goddess known as…

If I thought that Orion had solidified his bones with his work with Elastic Bond, I was certainly humbled and pleasantly surprised by his first solo effort, Esperanza. It was a sweet dose of chemically balanced hip-hop that not only paid respect to his Caribbean roots, but used them as a…

Just a few months ago everything was right in the world. South Beach was home to its own particular brand of party trash, and the world’s most famous guidos and guidettes were in their native Long Island/Statan Island/Rhode Island settings. Then MTV shook everything up and decided to set Snooki,…

When I first saw The Miami Herald front page headline this morning — “It’s Time To Add The ‘Spice'”, I thought reporter Elaine Walker was copying Short Order’s tallying of which restaurants were worth going to for Spice and which weren’t. But there was no critical commentary involved — probably…

DJ Spinna (no relation to New York based hip-hop producer of the same name) is a young gunn in the DJ game, but it seems that at age 17, he’s further along than his competition. Good song selection, quality graphic,s and great mixing — these are all elements that DJ…

As you may have heard, M.I.A. has a new album out. She also performed a string of North American tour dates before jetting off to Europe for the summer festival circuit. Part of that schedule originally included a set at Hard Summer Festival in Los Angeles and New York.Unfortunately, for…

Are you prepared for the most important night in Miami pop culture history? MTV unleashes the second season of Jersey Shore tonight at 10. It follows everyone’s favorite guidos as they hook up, drink, and fight their way through South Beach. This might bring a tiny bit of shame to…

Afrobeta needs little introduction to Crossfade readers, but the band is finally and deservedly gaining some serious international traction. Of course, there was that performance at the massive Glastonbury festival, and a gig with Booka Shade in Ibiza (!) around the same time. Now, they’ve also got a PR representation…

When he was a county commissioner, Miguel Diaz de la Portilla would pass the time spewing hate at Alex Penelas, who was elected Miami-Dade’s first executive mayor in 1996. Four years later, when he announced on March 29, 2000, his run for mayor against Penelas, Diaz de la Portilla got…

Hamid Karzai likely had Louis Maxwell killed, Part 3

Letters from the issue of July 29, 2010

Michelle Spence-Jones is innocent, dummy!

Ortanique’s Web site has an “Accolades” tab. One click on it lists 23 excellence awards. Esquire Magazine named it “Best New Restaurant in America.” And the eatery was placed on Zagat’s Top 10 Best Restaurant List nine times. The New Times has even shown its love more than once. Our…