These days, South Broadway is a thriving nightlife district that has undergone a cavalcade of changes in the past few years. As much of a makeover as the strip has had, though, not everybody's stoked with the changes. If you've logged on to Facebook, you've no doubt seen posts from some people expressing their displeasure, or if you've been to the area recently, you might've seen how some have taken an even more direct approach to making their point (see the "Keep Lodo Off Broadway" stickers hanging around the Baker neighborhood).

See also:
- Nightlife Scenes From South Broadway
- Midnight on South Broadway
- Ten best pre/post-show eats on South Broadway

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Eric Gruneisen

Drug culture isn't relegated exclusively to rock, obviously. For its part, the rap game is equally loaded with drug references of all kinds, from Promethazine and DMT to LSD and PCP, and likewise addled with its own cautionary tales and fatalities. While there's nothing as concrete to suggest that drugs are integral to making rap music, if nothing else, they have certainly served as one of the many muses. Keep reading for a compendium of drugs and rap and a rundown of where the two converge.

See also:
- Is an addled mind essential to making great music?
- The ten best dis tracks of all time
- The fifty greatest rap groups of all time

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Do drugs fuel creativity? Is an addled mind essential to making great music? Does sobriety cause creative impotence? What if Jimi Hendrix had suddenly decided to enter a twelve-step program? Would Are You Experienced? have sucked? To answer these nagging questions, you have to take a look at rock's red-eyed history and examine both the music made under the dizzy spell of artificial chemistry and the sober work that followed.

See also:
- The Jimi Hendrix Experience's Are You Experienced turns 45
- Elvis meets Nixon to fight drugs
- After Whitney died, pundits got out the soapboxes in record time

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See Also:
- Five worst moments in musical plagiarism
- #ShitRappersSay on stage in Denver

Hip-hop's perennial debate topic "old school versus new school" got literal recently when legendary D.I.T.C. crew producer/rapper Lord Finesse swung a $10 million law suit at Mac Miller, his record label and the mixtape website DatPiff for Miller's use of Finesse's beat for his 1995 song "Hip 2 tha Game." Although hip-hop artists hopping on other people's beats is as old as the genre itself, from "Rapper's Delight" to, well, infinity -- especially on mixtapes -- Finesse contends that Miller's version of the tune, titled "Kool-Aid & Frozen Pizza," launched the kid's career (it did), and that it transcends the normal boundaries of borrowing in hip-hop.

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South By Southwest is the place where you can run into damn near every artist under the sun doing their thing across these here United States all within a week. There are tons of performances, copious amounts of booze and good vibes aplenty. Austin has everything you can imagine to ensure the grandest of times. One thing we were wondering, though, particularly since this is the Mile High City, what about the kind bud? We chopped it up with several artists, who each took different modes of transportation to SXSW, and we put this question to them. The answers are hilarious.

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Taylor Swift's shocked! Again! As seen in the Hollywood Reporter

Sunday was a good day for Taylor Swift. A glowing profile by 60 Minutes' Leslie Stahl, followed by her cleaning up at the American Music Awards; she took home the awards for Favorite Country Female Artist, Artist of The Year, Favorite Country Female Artist, and Speak Now won Favorite Country Album. This, of course, follows a career that's been as consistently incredible as anyone's in music. So is Taylor used to, blase or even jaded about the success? OH, HELL NO.

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Yesterday, while I was doing the dishes, I inexplicably got the theme song from Jurassic Park stuck in my head. This wasn't the first time. It happens all the time, in fact, no matter what I'm doing, and it's just the main "catchy" part, not the rest of the song. I don't have a special affinity for the film -- well, other than the fact that robotic dinosaurs are incredibly awesome. But there is something deeper there, probably something even psychological, that causes this to happen.

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Morrissey has a big mouth.

Morrissey's vocal chords are good for two things: singing awesome tunes and spewing controversial word vomit. Who could forget last week's quote in which Morrissey compared the Norway killings to McDonald's and "Kentucky Fried Shit"?

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I heart DJs. Always have. Always will. I'm one of those people who believe that what they do requires as much skill, dexterity and creativity as any musician I've ever known. And I'm not referring solely to prodigious turntablists like Vajra and Cysko Rokwell when I say that. I'm also talking about party-rocking DJs, who, although not nearly as dexterous on decks, put just as much thought and consideration into what they do.

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I've seen probably upwards of seven million shows in my lifetime, give or take five or six. In all that time, there's been a ton that I'm grateful for having the chance to have seen -- Mars Volta at Tulagi, the Killers at the Larimer Lounge, an unreal triple bill at the Coliseum featuring Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Smashing Pumpkins. The list goes on and on and on.

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