| LET’S DO THIS | t Music The controversial Machine Gun Kelly will be playing American Airlines Center on Saturday. UPCOMING SHOWS Rachel Parker Lupe Fiasco 7 P.M. FRIDAY, JUNE 10, AT WILD ACRE LIVE, 1734 E. EL PASO ST., $42+ AT DEFYTICKETS.COM Fifteen years ago, progressive hip-hop artist Lupe Fiasco released his sophomore album The Cool. Fiasco had already made quite the impres- sion on the indie music scene the previous year with Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor and its break- through hit single about a skater romance, “Kick, Push.” The Cool picked up on the story line Fi- asco had started on Food & Liquor’s 10th track, the Kanye West-produced single of the same name. A darker album than its predecessor, The Cool offered up meditations on life and death as the rapper struggled with the loss of his father and his close friend Stack Bundles. The album also showed the rapper’s sociopolitical focus with songs on topics like immigration and child soldiers in Africa. In celebration of the album that defined his career, Lupe Fiasco makes a stop at the new Wild Acre Live venue in Fort Worth on Friday night. DAVID FLETCHER Machine Gun Kelly 8 p.m. Saturday, June 11, at American Airlines Center, 2500 Victory Ave., $29.50+ at ticketmaster.com Machine Gun Kelly won the “fuck around and find out” award for 2018 when he released a diss record aimed at the king of rap battles, Eminem. It has been said that MGK lost the diss battle with Eminem so badly that he had to switch genres, embracing pop-punk in 2020 with Tick- ets to My Demise and its follow-up, this year’s Mainstream Sellout. MGK has been a lightning rod for controversy since the infamous rap bat- tle, finding himself in the crosshairs of Slipknot’s Corey Taylor when he made fun of the band’s trademark masks and claimed Taylor was mad about not being featured on the Mainstream Sellout album — a claim Taylor proved was false by revealing an email exchange in which he re- spectfully declined the offer. Despite all the con- troversy that has surrounded MGK, critics agree that he can still write a hook. And while it may be somewhat formulaic, the music is still solid, especially with Travis Barker on drums. DF Calexico 7 p.m. Monday, June 13, at Granada Theater, 3524 Greenville Ave., $30+ at prekindle.com Since 1996, Calexico has been using a wide mix of sounds to create its signature indie-rock. In- fluenced by traditional Latin styles of mariachi, conjunto, cumbia and tejano, Calexico brings in additional elements of country, jazz and post- rock into a microgenre that has been dubbed “desert noir.” Throughout the band’s near-30- year history, Calexico has centered around the duo of John Convertino and Joey Burns, but it has slowly incorporated influences from a host of collaborators such as Neko Case and Iron & Wine. The band has also grown to include multi- instrumentalists to fill in the space with horns, woodwinds and various kinds of percussion. The band’s most recent album, El Mirador, mixes Spanish and English throughout its 12 songs, ex- ploring Southwestern landscapes in its music and its lyrics. Calexico will have opening support from soul-pop singer Molly Parden. DF Joe Jackson 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 14, at Majestic Theatre, 1925 Elm St., $45+ at axs.com English singer-songwriter Joe Jackson has never allowed himself to be confined to a single genre of music. Jackson spent his early years in music with proto-punk band Arms and Legs be- fore taking bass player Graham Maby with him to form his solo project. Jackson’s first three al- bums as a solo artist showed the singer sticking closely to his roots, flirting with new wave, punk rock and ska in crafting catchy pop tunes. It was on his fourth album, Joe Jackson’s Jumpin’ Jive, that Jackson showed his love of jazz music and his desire to avoid being pigeon-holed into a single genre. Jackson continued to explore jazz, classical and experimental music between his rock albums until he abandoned rock altogether in 1991 not to return to the genre that made him until 2003’s Volume 4. Jackson released his 20th studio album, Fool, in 2019, showing that he can still rock with the best of them. DF Backstreet Boys 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 15, at The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory, 300 W. Las Colinas Blvd., $129.50+ at livenation.com Nick, Howie, AJ, Brian and Kevin return to North Texas next week on the second leg of Backstreet Boys’ DNA World Tour supporting the group’s ninth studio album DNA. Along with NSYNC and an innumerable amount of copycat acts, Backstreet Boys dominated the charts in the late ’90s and early ’00s turning out over a dozen top-10 hits before fading into the background as hip-hop came to dominate the pop charts. As the Backstreet Boys and their fanbase age, the group maintains its fol- lowing by embracing a more adult contempo- rary to pop music. In 2005, BSB took a deliberate step away from their teen pop past by releasing Never Gone, which featured live instruments and more introspective lyrics. Though the former teen pop sensations are of- ten seen as a thing of the past, it’s worth noting that every album the group has released since 1997 has debuted in a Top 10 spot. DF 214-350-1904 11AM TO CLOSE WEDNESDAY-SUNDAY 10261 Technology Blvd E, Dallas, TX CHECK OUT OUR WEBSITE FOR THE MOST UP-TO-DATE INFO! www.amplified-live.com @AMPLIVETX @AMPLIVETX @AMPLIFIEDLIVETX 1 21 dallasobserver.com dallasobserver.com CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS | CONTENTS | UNFAIR PARK | SCHUTZE | FEATURE | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | MOVIES | DISH | MUSIC | CLASSIFIED | DALLAS OBSERVER DALLAS OBSERVER JUNE 9–15, 2022 MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2014
