A good rule of thumb for concerts: If the artist comes onstage blasting pyrotechnics and riding a motorcycle, it’s probably going to be a pretty fun show. That was how Chance The Rapper opened his show Tuesday night at Nationwide Arena, and for two ...

I first heard about Steadfast Festival through a friend who had signed up to volunteer. I was immediately interested –– music festivals are always a lot of fun, and with several of the more prominent festivals in Columbus disappearing, I was eager to check out ...

Every band has an origin story. For Andre Walker and Eric Rollin — the creators of Mistar Anderson — it all started with a song shared after a concert more than six years ago. Rollin and Walker had played in two different acts that night. ...

Listen to local acts TRiBE and PZA PRTY, and one might not hear much resemblance, but Stray Soul Entertainment does. TRiBE, a low-fi hip-hop group, and PZA PRTY, an experimental trip-hop duo, were both signed by Stray Soul for their alternative styles. The Columbus-based record ...

Ohio State student Louis Halley has taken on the challenge of keeping the onC.U.E dance organization alive on campus. OnC.U.E, which stands for on Create, Unite and Empower, was started at OSU by former graduate student Quilan Cue Arnold in 2015. It has since spread ...

While in elementary school, Tupac Shakur organized a boycott to support a teacher who was fired because of the school’s financial issues. Later, as a high-school student, he led rallies for AIDS awareness and spoke out against violence in inner-city neighborhoods. At 19, he released ...

The genre of hip-hop music might not seem to naturally lend itself to higher education. To the novice, there might not be much to it other than scantily clad women dancing in music videos that accompany songs with choruses about illegal drug use. But some ...

On a cold April evening at the urban-themed coffeehouse Upper Cup Coffee Co. in Olde Towne East, veteran Columbus rapper Dominique Larue scoffed at the idea of people proclaiming the underground music scene was buried. “A lot of people, they just get comfortable and they ...

  A monthly party is giving people the chance to be a trap queen (or king) for a night. Trapathon features trap music and no cover charge for ages 18 and up, and has been drawing a crowd larger than the venue, Spacebar. Longtime friends ...

Back in December 2014, Kendrick Lamar intensified the thirst for his sophomore album, “To Pimp a Butterfly,” the rapper’s magnum opus (thus far), with the debut of an untitled track on “The Colbert Report.” This performance followed up his first official single: the upbeat, 21st-century ...