A few shows are worthy of your attention on this last day in July. Breakdown below…
Curren$y He came up with 501 Boyz, then was taken under Lil Wayne’s Young Money wing and dropped a string of well-regarded solo mixtapes and studio albums before inking a deal with Warner Bros. and starting his own Jet Life imprint. He’s since released four more LPs featuring his smoke-hazed NOLA Southern drawl (the last was 2015’s Canal Street Confidential via Atlantic Records) as well as five collaborative outings. Despite pushing jamz since the early ‘00s, Curren$y hasn’t clocked any hits (“Bottom of the Bottle” with Lil Wayne and August Alsina was his highest peak, No. 30 on the Hip Hop/R&B Songs chart), but his rhyme game is solid and collabs strong; he’s teamed with The Alchemist, Kendrick Lamar, Talib Kweli, Snoop Dogg, Pusha T and Schoolboy Q to name a few. All advance tickets for his Florida shows came with a free physical copy of his new mixtape, Stoned on Ocean. So apropos. (Orpheum, Ybor City)
Jason Guy Smiley with Chris Fox, Tourist Season This free and early (8-10 p.m.) stripped-down punk show is headed up by Smiley, a crusty folk-punk dude from Gainesville who spent a dozen years in a band called Midget Fan Club before hitting the solo road. Now, he belts out covers of his favorite punk odes and original songs in a gritty booming warble to acoustic guitar strums, and he just released a comp of the three EPs he’s recorded to date: Run For Your Life, Fake It Till You Make It and Singing To The Sea ) paired with a bit of new fare. Chris Fox hails from Reno, Nevada, and does bearded howling right. Tourist Season rounds it out with coarse stomp direct from O-town. (New World Brewery, Ybor City)
ALSO TONIGHT
DieDra The Alabama Blues Queen and The Ruff Pro Band (Skipper’s Smokehouse, Tampa
Ol’ Dirty Sundays w/DJ Mega (Crowbar, Ybor City)
Mercy McCoy w/Ed Woltil (Crooked Thumb Brewing, Safety Harbor)
The Expendables (Jannus Live, St. Petersburg)
Dynohunter w/Bells & Robes (Dunedin Brewery, Dunedin)
Sunset Bridge (Ella’s Americana Folk Art Café, Tampa)
WasteLand Hip Hop Show w/Heavy J/Travis Parker/Mason Monroe/Doechii/Ocin/Kembe Scropz/YZM/Cloudmaster Price/Macibision Mc Kenna (The Venture Compound, St. Petersburg)
This article appears in Jul 21-28, 2016.