March 26, 2013 – Ask Newark's Stacey White, a.k.a., DJ Sliink, about the fist-pumping, spiked-hair nightclubs where the cast members of MTV reality series Jersey Shore go to “beat up the beat” and he'll laugh out loud. "I’m born and raised New Jersey and I've never even heard about the clubs those drunk clowns go to," he says. While the young DJ just turned 22 years old, the party venues he's grown up on are YMCAs, Boys & Girls Clubs, and block parties — local, community-sponsored gatherings.

March 13, 2013 – The outrageous trailer for director Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers plays out as a Girls Gone Wild episode turned street war, where drugs and territory are marked by city blocks and thugs with guns. Or, in this case, babes with guns. The story's four leading ladies — played by Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Rachel Korine, and Ashley Benson — wear neon bikinis throughout, toting Uzis and sucking face while goaded on by a drug dealing creep of a rapper named Alien, played by James Franco. Just for good measure, Gucci Mane makes a cameo. In a brilliant move, Korine brought on Skrillex and Cliff Martinez to score the film.

March 4, 2013 – Last summer, after five years of producing, touring, and festival-headlining as Swedish House Mafia, the group's three members — Axwell, Sebastian Ingrosso, and Steve Angello — announced their beloved trio was calling it quits. Their time together spawned six Dance-charting singles, two Grammys, and collaborations with both Coldplay and Usher. But most importantly, it opened a new lane for Euro-house producers to move from mega-clubs like Pacha to the more lucrative arena concert circuit. As DJs who might have once been considered "big room house guys," Swedish House Mafia are the best example of musicians who have transcended their own self-imposed aesthetics to go on to pioneer within the larger, vaguer, and more popular contemporary EDM circuit. It seems only right that they celebrate being on top (and in pop) with One Last Tour.No, really, that is the name of their tour.

February 21, 2013 – Seven glitter-adorned women turned to stare blankly at me when I arrived at Glass, a warehouse that serves as a green room next door to New York City’s Marquee nightclub on Saturday night. Dressed in the kind of alien fantasy get-up that is almost exclusively reserved for sexy sci-fi role play and bottle-service go-go dancers — metallic leotards, studded geometric bras, coned and sequined shoulder pads, scaly stilettos — they, like the rest of us waiting, were anxious for Tiësto to arrive.Once it was revealed that, despite my boots and weather-appropriate jacket, I was a writer who also belonged in this backstage lounge, they resumed primping and chatting in their thick Eastern European accents.

December 10, 2012 – Friday night once again brought Z100's annual Jingle Ball pop summit to NYC, making Madison Square Garden's sold-out arena a spectacle before the doors even opened. Thousands upon thousands of pre-teens piled onto each other outside of the venue eager to get a glipse of any of the chart-topping heartthrobs that were scheduled to perform inside. Bieber was the name that we heard screamed the most, of course. But the headliner shared the night with Taylor Swift, One Direction, the Wanted, Ne-Yo, Jason Mraz, B.o.B., Cher Lloyd, Ed Sheeran, and Olly Murs as well, making it a ticket that also served as a revue of radio pop circa 2012. As parents chaperoned their wild-eyed, heart-clenching, shrilly screaming kids, we feigned sympathy while embracing the pop glory right alongside 'em.

June 25, 2012 – When Swedish singers Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo decided to make music together, they had no idea what they were going to do. Literally. Though they attended the same music school in Stockholm, the duo's electro-pop outfit Icona Pop was born out of a chance meeting at a party — Jawo had come out of a particularly grueling breakup and Hjelt was in a bout of artistic malaise, and the two felt an instant creative connection. Eager to work together, they decided to start writing and figured their musical direction would eventually come to them just as naturally as friendship had. They finished writing their first song exactly one day later.

May 17, 2012 – In 2009, sassy Baltimore Club MC Rye Rye, a then-recent addition to M.I.A.'s N.E.E.T. Recordings entourage, was set to release her debut album to an eagerly awaiting audience. Her work with Blaqstarr on earlier tracks like "Shake It to the Ground" and "Hands Up, Thumbs Down" (a version of which eventually morphed into M.I.A.'s "World Town") promised witty dance-floor provocations, hometown pride, and off-the-cuff jokes set to the tune of sweaty, fast club music. But then, after an unexpected pregnancy, Rye Rye told her fans that they would have to wait just a little big longer. Three years longer as it turns out. She's spent the time well. Released on May 15, Go! Bang! Pop! (Interscope) has benefited from the rapper's growing musical tastes, an arsenal of heavy-hitting producers, and the music scene's current embrace of melting-pot, rap-meets-pop open-mindedness.

April 9, 2012 – On Friday night, three days after the postponed release of her sophomore album Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, Nicki Minaj performed a surprise three-song show in Manhattan's Times Square. For an album that went straight to the top of the charts, it's been interestingly polarizing in both content and reception; inside Minaj is a thespian, a sugary pop goddess, and a fierce rapper, all while repping for the girls in her home-borough of Queens and cutting down claims of selling out. The latter made the night's show that much more surreal, as her small stage stood bathing in the glow of Manhattan's brightest LCD screens. The massive, looming constructions flashed advertisements for Broadway shows, The New Girl, tourist packages and a screaming, logo-emblazoned backdrop courtesy of the night's sponsor, Nokia.

January 30, 2012 – Wednesday night, moviegoers at 200 theaters in the U.S. will get a look at Chemical Brothers: Don't Think, a documentary directed by the Chemical Brothers' longtime visual collaborator Adam Smith that captures the massive chaos of the big beat duo's live show — specifically, an appearance at Japan's Fuji Rock festival through the lenses of 20 cameras amid 50,000 party-goers. The music from this particular live set is fantastic, though that's kind of a given. As for what's captured onscreen during the 80-minute ride through strobe-lit delirium, the truly great moments are found when you look past Smith's trippy visuals and into the crowd, where you'll spot pockets of people having very different reactions to the same bombardment of sound.

September 14, 2011 – "I'm feeling very emotional," Katy B confessed Tuesday night from the cramped Studio at Webster Hall in NYC, where the 22-year-old U.K. native and burgeoning queen of dubstep celebrated the U.S. release of her debut album On A Mission with her first stateside concert. The feeling was also transmitted loud and clear in her music. Katy's presence is much like her art: unassumingly powerful. She's a small girl with wavy auburn hair, dressed Tuesday night in a Rinse FM t-shirt in solidarity with her producers at the London pirate radio station, huge gold hoop earrings, and an engagingly playful half-smile. A graduate of the BRIT School, a prestigious performing-arts institution located in the South London suburb of Croydon that shaped leading ladies from the U.K. pop circuit including Amy Winehouse, Adele, Leona Lewis, and Jessie J, Katy's alma mater almost works to her detriment.