Photo by George Martinez

Ultra Music Festival cofounder Russell Faibisch.

Electronic dance music has conquered Miami. And America. And the world.

For more than three decades, it had remained a mostly underground phenomenon, epitomized by illegal raves held beneath highway overpasses in the UK or after-hours parties thrown in downtown Detroit's abandoned warehouses. But over the past few years, EDM has exploded, morphing into a massive, worldwide pop-culture movement that's seeped into every nook of Internet-connected civilization, from Bayfront Park to Boise, Idaho, to South Korea.

See also:
-Ultra 2013: Ten Acts We're Excited to See
-Ten Best EDM Cruises During WMC and MMW 2013
-Ten Best Pool Parties During WMC and MMW 2013
-Twenty Best Club Parties During WMC and MMW 2013
-Ten Best Free Parties During WMC and MMW 2013
-Ultra Music Festival 2013's Lineup and Set Times
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Via facebook.com/KendrickLamarMusic

If Planet Earth had testicles, they'd belong to Kendrick Lamar. Because, proverbially, homie's got the world by the balls.

With five critically acclaimed mixtapes and an independent release already under his belt, it's easy to forget that the Compton MC's first major-label LP hasn't even dropped yet. The much-blogged about Good Kid, Mad City (stylized good kid, m.A.A.d city) isn't due until October 22, but Lamar's already generating more media attention than a Mitt Romney gaffe.

At a recent Good Kid, Mad City preview listening party, Rolling Stone called the record -- what they'd heard, at least -- "precious," citing Lamar's "double-time barrages of syllables" and the album's "fierce drumbreak loops that screw your face up."

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Via facebook.com/JenniferLopez

See also "Jennifer Lopez and Enrique Iglesias Announce Summer Tour -- plus "Essential Enrique: From 1995 to 'Tonight (I'm F#$%in' You).'"

Who is the real Jennifer Lopez?

Well, earlier this month, the Australian edition of 60 Minutes praised the entertainer's seemingly grounded, surprisingly un-diva-like demeanor during a recent interview.

"I'd expected to sit down with a prima donna," reporter Allison Langdon said during the segment. "But the 43 year old is warm and engaging."

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Sander Kleinenberg gives WMC 2012 a boost.

​In October 2011, good news came early for beat freaks when Winter Music Conference announced the 27-year-old event would be growing -- not only with new events but also with an expanded ten-day itinerary. Even better, organizers also eliminated the Sophie's Choice they'd created last year by squabbling with Ultra Music Festival and shifting the affair back to the third week in March.

If we had to call a winner in last year's battle, Ultra seems the obvious victor. Redubbed Miami Music Week, it boasted attendance that was noticeably higher than WMC's.

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Neil Young zaps MP3 technology with his best death stare.

​Neil Young's extreme audiophilia -- that is, his obsession with acoustics -- sometimes borders on insanity.

For example, every minute of his 2010 album, Le Noise, produced with acclaimed rock technician Daniel Lanois, was recorded live, exclusively during full moons and using Lanois's pipe organ as an organically reverberating amplifier.

And wasn't it just last year that he posted a weirdly apocalyptic message on his website about high-resolution audio in the Age of Aquarius or something?

Anyway, Shakey is back at it again, shouting at clouds, telling everyone to put down the ear buds and pick up the gramophones you have to crank. Only this time, ol' Neil's audio-related tantrum involves late Apple founder Steve Jobs.

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​There are some artists who can't escape their past, no matter how hard they try.

Paul Simon is inextricably linked to Simon & Garfunkel. Robert Plant will always be the tousle-haired, bare-chested vocalist of Led Zeppelin. John Fogerty will never fully put Credence Clearwater Revival behind him. And Sting, despite a prolific 30-year solo career, will always be compelled by certain diehard devotees to replay the Police.

Of all those artists, though, Sting (born Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner) may be doing his best to distance himself from his early successes.

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What exactly was grunge? We know the early-'90s trend was some kind of rock 'n' roll. But were its adherents just the latest batch of unwashed punks or hippies? They kind of looked like both. And the music kind of sounded like both too.

Grunge -- both the dirge-y guitar tunes and the flannel-clad slacker aesthetic -- germinated from an incredibly brackish confluence of influences and circumstances.

In many ways, the genre signified a neoclassical rock revival that dared to Get the Led Out and wrap it in the raw innovations of punk and hardcore.

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​Sometime toward the end of the second Dubya Bush term, we found ourselves on the back patio of a Downtown Miami nightclub in full-throttle Friday night mode.

Inside the club, sweaty bodies writhed and wiggled all over each other like an overturned bucket of earthworms. Rightfully so, as the tunes cranking out of the soundsystem were bonafide party jams.

We were staning in line to grab some grub from the club's official griller when a friend ran up, pointed to a nearby speaker, which was vibrating to the beat of the four-on-the-floor electro-house pumping out of the cabinet. And cupping a hand to my ear, he yelled: "Can you believe it?! This is Chinese Democracy."

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​Remember when Madrid-born, Miami-raised pop star Enrique Iglesias broke onto the American music scene in the early 2000s?

He had those sensitively angled brows, tastefully pumped-up muscles, and beautiful skin tanned to perfection by the South Florida sun. And that mole ... Oh, the mole! He was a handsome young buck, ready to be loved, and admired by the world.

Of course, Iglesias comes from Spanish crooner crossover royalty. And he has always seemed to channel his father Julio's continental mix of chivalry and class with an added dose of Miami mischievousness. However, in recent years, it seems Enrique has put his crotch before that lovely muscle beating in his chest.

He used to melt hearts. But now he's on a mission to melt panties.

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Photo by Bek Andersen

​In the hot-as-balls summer of 2009, three dudes from New York City -- rappers Himanshu "Heems" Suri and Victor "Kool A.D." Vazquez, and hype guy Ashok "Dapwell" Kondabolu -- banded together under the vaguely ominous moniker Das Racist, made some beats, spit some rhymes, smoked way too much weed, and contracted a seriously nasty case of the munchies.

The result: A novelty hipster-hop track called "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell" that earned them almost instant internet fame.

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