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Food & Drink
Community-Focused Pizza Company Eats & Rhymes Eyes West End Storefront
Ashley and Clem McKinley are in pursuit of the American Dream. Situated on Beatties Ford Road, ground zero of the gentrification shuffle, the McKinleys’ new pizza parlor concept Eats and Rhymes pushes towards revitalization rather than redevelopment, giving back to the community while looking to build a legacy for their…
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Music
Benjamin Burdon Breaks Five-Year Hiatus with Refreshed Name, New Single
When Benjamin Burdon first started working on his forthcoming project five years ago, he did so amidst a personal crisis. Living in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood during the pandemic, Burdon was grappling with compounded loss. A couple of long-term friendships were fizzling out, including a falling out with one of…
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Music
Tracei’s Debut Album ‘MOOD’ Uplifts Romance and Self-Love
Every time we pick up our phones these days, we’re met with scenes of war, bloodshed and destruction, with all signs pointing to escalation. The anxiety is present when we fill our cars with gas and our bellies with food, the sting of bloated costs never far from our minds.…
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Music
Reuben Vincent’s Homecoming Show Bookends a Tale of Return and Rebirth
Reuben Vincent was ready to come home. From just a brief glance at his history, it might seem like the young lyricist has gotten quite a lot out of his career without having to go too far. The Charlotte emcee, originally discovered by renowned producer 9th Wonder on Twitter when…
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Arts & Culture
Meet Mike Jones, the Charlotte Creative Redefining Sports Design
Mike Jones is a transformative figure in the Charlotte arts scene, but he won’t tell you as much. The designer who has created Black Excellence jerseys for three professional sports teams in the Carolinas over the last three years will instead demur, telling you that as a Raleigh native, he’s…
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Music
Heather Victoria’s Latest Album Is a Concept That Defies Closure
When it comes to relationships, the kids are not alright. America’s rightward shift has brought draconian relationship standards bubbling back up into the popsphere. Studies have shown that more and more young adults across gender identities are taking a break from sex and dating. Socially repressive trends like tradwives (read:…
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Music
Gauxstman Represents Charlotte’s Southside on New Album ‘28217’
Charlotte rapper Gauxstman comes from a long and mostly venerable tradition of shit talking. Rappers like Too $hort, Suga Free and even Snoop Dogg circulated narratives of salacity and sagacity, playing off of their predecessors like Red Foxx, Moms Mabley and Richard Pryor. These comics built off an earlier tradition…
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Music
Gene Brown Marks Three Years of Producer Showcases in CLT
One cold night in December 2019, toward the end of a month-long sojourn in New York City, I was eager for a taste of home. I was in the midst of my third year of a Ph.D. program in English at UNC Chapel Hill and I had spent the last…
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Arts & Culture
Pauly Guwop Showcases Charlotte Artists in Avirex with It’s All Leather
DJ Pauly Guwop is bringing the power of hip-hop’s golden age into Charlotte’s present with his new digital publication, It’s All Leather, Vol. 1. Launched exclusively on Instagram on Jan. 15, It’s All Leather pays homage to Avirex, a brand that has shown love to hip-hop artists since the late…
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Music
Verbal Van Gogh Pays Homage to the Radio Era on ‘Top9@8’
The radio is long dead. Once the stalwarts of any local scene, radio DJs have been replaced by podcast hosts and music industry influencers. Car radio presets are gathering dust, replaced by the eminence of aux cords and Bluetooth systems. Radio countdowns gave way to industry-curated Apple and Spotify playlists. …
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Music
‘No Options’ Captures Wide-Ranging Talent of Appalachian Hip-Hop
The Appalachian area conjures distinct images for most Americans. Spanning Alabama to New York, the mountainous region conjures scenes of finger-picked banjo strings echoing over foggy mountain vistas at its best and red-county trailer park poverty at its worst. A new album release from the Kentucky-based June Appal Recordings label…
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Music
Nia J Explores New Sounds in Debut Album ‘Melomania’
The last we heard from Charlotte singer-songwriter Nia J, we followed her on a winding sonic journey in her debut EP Rabbit Hole (2021). Her artistic berth examined the emotional dissonance of life’s sweetness and absurdity through a diaristic songwriting style that felt simultaneously intimate and universal. If this sojourn…
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Arts & Culture
In ‘Carolina Noise,’ Nigel Malone Analyzes the NC Hip-Hop Sound
If you’re a fan of the Charlotte hip-hop scene, you’ve likely been touched by the imprint of Nigel Malone. Powerfully soft-spoken with a humility that carries the authority of experience, the multi-talented creative who’s also known as NXGXL could be described as a jack of all trades. As a rapper…
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Music
Kovasckitz Brothers Capture Magic of the Mundane in Home Movies Music Sessions
In today’s media landscape, intimacy has built up a bit of market value. TikTok sells us a window into someone’s daily minute moments, X documents our diaristic (and diarrheic) thoughts in short form, Uber lets us ride in other people’s cars, and Airbnb lets us briefly live in other people’s…
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Music
Cyanca Returns With New EP, Readies Debut Album
Charlotte’s hip-hop and R&B communities are having a moment. Mavi, a Queen City hip-hop stalwart, is reverberating nationwide, selling out shows around the country and landing profiles from major media outlets like NPR and Rolling Stone. Dexter Jordan, a staple of Charlotte R&B, sang alongside Ari Lennox in her Charlotte…
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Arts & Culture
Archive CLT Brings Black History Home to West Charlotte
As three Johnson C. Smith University students walked into Archive CLT for a recent field trip, they were met with a mélange of artifacts both consisting of and celebrating Black history. They first stopped at a wall-spanning mural done by local artist Sade Black depicting titans from Black cultural history…
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