Photo by Kristian Dowling

Tireless entertainer Kanye West brings his bright and bold live show to Atlantic City’s Revel Ovation Hall for the final night of a three-night stand. Though West did not have a proper solo release this year, he appeared on Cruel Summer, a compilation showcasing the roster of his G.O.O.D. Music label; plus, he’s still riding high on Watch The Throne, the outstanding collaborative album he released with Jay-Z last year. More information on the show can be found here. Friday’s opening night show made some headlines when West appeared onstage in a diamond-encrusted mask, later swapping it out for a mask-and-powered-wig combo that Fuse compared to a Yeti. Check out a video below and decide for yourself.

New Orleans musical institution Rebirth Brass Band brings the party to the World Cafe Live stage tonight. Active for close to 30 years, the group released its 15th album, Rebirth of New Orleans, last year. Information on the show can be found here. Below, check out a clip of RBB playing Philadelphia Folk Festival in 2009.

After headlining a show with Toy Soldiers here in Philadelphia, Kalob Griffin Band heads out west to Lancaster to perform tonight at the Chameleon Club, opening the show for Brethren and Gary Miller. Tickets to the 18+ show are $10, more information is available here. Read The Key’s interview with Kalob Griffin Band here, and check out the fan favorite track “IPA” from their LP June Found a Gun below.

“MERCY” – Gang feat. Chill Moody from Skout Media on Vimeo.

Kanye and Jay-Z’s tour will be stopping at the Wells Fargo Center on November 2nd. Tickets range from $59.50 – $250 and can be found here.

Below, stream “Otis,” the first track from the new album.

Otis feat. Otis Redding by watchthethrone

Otis feat. Otis Redding by watchthethrone

Heads are gonna roll for this one, West

Top-serious accusations are a-flyin’: Zach Baron of The Village Voice straight-up wants to know, “Did Kanye West Rip Off Dr. Dog For His ‘Monster’ Video?”

Just hours before New Year’s Eve, an unfinished but largely coherent cut of the video for Kanye West’s “Monster” leaked. It was…unsettling. West’s use of the severed heads of dead women as props–and their lifeless bodies as vaguely sexual marionettes–in the clip was the apotheoses of a year’s worth of model corpse photos (before now published as art for West’s various G.O.O.D. Friday singles), and will do nothing to blunt the growing chorus of critics pointing out what an asshole misogynist West was in 2010. It’s a charge to which we’re sympathetic. But never in a million years did we imagine the “Monster” video as being anything but the original product of West and director Jake Nava’s sick imagination. As it turns out, however, Kanye might not just be an extremely public model killer; he may well be a plagiarist, too. Of Philadelphia indie-rock band Dr. Dog, no less.

Baron goes on to detail the many similarities between West’s video and Dr. Dog’s video for “The Ark,” including “[d]isembodied heads,” [s]tray body parts,” a “weird fixation on bodyless hands,” and the “muted color palette”—as well as the fact that “Kanye definitely noticed the Dr. Dog video the first time around, posting stills from the clip on his blog.” Baron then got in touch with director Adam Kurland, who was behind the Dr. Dog video, to get his thoughts. (For his part, Kurland noted the “eerie similarity,” but charitably conceded that “It could have been any number of things.”)

You can read the rest of Baron’s article (including West’s NSFW video) here.