When I read that the Boardwalk was bringing Dirt Nasty and Andre Legacy to Sacramento, I was really excited. I was turned on to Dirt's music by a friend toward the end of last summer, and this was to be my first Dirt Nasty show. Attending live shows has always been a way for me, the listener, to connect with the artist on a more personal level. Dirt Nasty's music is upbeat and party-oriented. His lyrics are a bit on the crude side and are intended to shock the crowd. Anytime I have been in a party situation with friends and a Dirt Nasty song came on, the energy in the room intensifies. Dirt has a certain pentameter and delivery in his music that invokes those around to sing along, word

 As a longtime fan of Scary Kids Scaring Kids, I jumped at the chance to cover their Sacramento show Wednesday. The Gilbert, Ariz.-based “scene metal” band made The Boardwalk in Orangevale a stop on its farewell tour. Being a transplant to Sacramento from Arizona, I have had the opportunity to watch these musicians grow from playing local shows in their hometown to seeing them tour with music festivals and eventually pick up a record deal with Immortal/RCA in 2005 and go on to headline their own tours. Scary Kids is a very talented and very diverse-sounding band with an eclectic style and a set list ranging from high energy to soft and melodic. I think that this is why it has such a bro

Over the last few years, the term "hip hop is dead," has been thrown around more than the neighborhood football. In an age of technology where making a simple beat with a bootlegged audio production application and altering your voice with Auto-Tune in order to sound like T-Pain is enough to get "bedroom rappers/producers/djs" signed, it's no wonder people are beginning to feel like the art is lost. While most people are tossing around this insult to hip hop, few are offering any sort of solution. I say few, because there are some purists out there who are putting in the effort, energy and time to study where hip hop started, where it has been and where it is going. He calls for somethin