10 Artists to Watch 2006

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LUPE FIASCO
Chicago's young MC has a hit single, Kanye in his corner, a black belt and the fall's hottest debut

>> Listen: Hear tunes from Lupe Fiasco and other Artists to Watch.

Lupe Fiasco is backstage in Chicago, running from security guards. A few seconds earlier, he was goofing around with his friends in a competition he calls "Feats of Strength and Agility." Eventually the guards realize that the lithe twenty-four-year-old in the purple A Life sneakers is the same guy who just finished headlining the Vice Intonation Festival for an adoring crowd of his hometown fans. Fiasco laughs it off, and as he moseys past a group of fans toward the parking lot, one yells, "Listen to Lup'! He's the future of Chicago! He's the future of rap!" After perching on the roof of his Land Rover, Fiasco sets to analyzing the pressures associated with such a title. "No matter what happens, I'll still be the future," he says. "Nobody said if it would be good or bad. I'm just the future."

In September, Fiasco will release the year's most hotly anticipated hip-hop debut, Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor, which already has its first major hit in the form of the skate-rap anthem "Kick Push." But the full-length, executive-produced by Jay-Z and featuring collaborations with the Neptunes and Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda, isn't Lupe's first taste of the limelight. As a teenager, he was a member of Da Pak, who were briefly signed to Epic. More recently, he started his own production company, 1st and 15th, whose credits include BeyoncE's "Hip-Hop Star." And last year, fellow Chicagoan Kanye West invited Fiasco to guest on his single "Touch the Sky."

Offers from major labels started rolling in, but Fiasco insisted that the album be released on the 1st and 15th imprint, and he shopped around until he found a label, Atlantic, willing to accommodate his demands. "The music business is trash," says Fiasco. "I love music, I love business, but I hate the music business. I vowed I would never sign if I didn't have 100 percent creative control. Even though I was pretty much an unknown, I've been around for years. I didn't just pop out of nowhere."

Lupe was born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco and raised in a rough part of Chicago's West Side. His father, a martial-arts grandmaster who was on the U.S. Olympic judo team in 1980, wanted his son to be able to defend himself and had Lupe taking martial-arts classes from the age of three. "The thing about martial arts is that it disciplines you to recognize when a conflict is coming and evade it," says the rapper, who owns four black belts. "But, yes, I can kill a man with my bare hands if I have to."

As a kid, Fiasco says he didn't like hip-hop and considered it negative, obnoxious music that degraded women. But rappers like Nas convinced him he could use the genre to tell stories with social merit. On Food & Liquor's "American Terrorist," he examines the dark history of slavery and genocide in America. "I feel I have the responsibility - since I have this soapbox - to not only entertain but to educate," says Fiasco, a devout Muslim whose only admitted vice is a jones for cutting-edge streetwear. "The world is in a really terrible place, and you have to stand back and ask why we're in this situation."

It's a far cry from the catchy "Kick Push," which Fiasco dropped first to disarm listeners and open their ears to what he might do next. "I had a lady tell me she thought 'Kick Push' was about giving birth," he says with a chuckle. "A lot of my songs have double meanings, but that song is genuinely about skateboarding. I wanted to come out with a story, because stories have more longevity. They don't really pigeonhole you. I can reinvent myself on the next record. I want people to say, 'Lupe is always reinventing.' "

From the hood of his Land Rover, he gives a smirk and pushes his glasses back up his nose. "I've done everything in the music business," he says. "I've been on world tours, I was flooded in ice at nineteen. Now I'm good. I'm just hopping over fences and playing with skateboards." RUSSELL MORSE

>> Next: CUTE IS WHAT WE AIM FOR: Hyperliterate emo heartbreakers

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CUTE IS WHAT WE AIM FOR
Emo contenders revel in high school angst

>> Listen: Hear tunes from Cute Is What We Aim For and other Artists to Watch.

Barely more than a dozen shows into their career, the Buffalo, New York, emo band Cute Is What We Aim For knew they were on the right track. "We were in Baltimore, stuck in traffic, when [Fueled by Ramen head] John Janick called," says singer Shaant, noting that the band had received a positive response on MySpace and PureVolume. "Not many people knew of us, but we were starting to get some buzz, and John was paying attention." Today, with more than 50,000 copies sold of their debut, The Same Old Blood Rush With a New Touch, Cute are promising to follow in the platinum footsteps of Fueled by's Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco.

SOUND Shaant says he's the kind of kid who lies awake at night thinking. But thinking too much has been a boon to Cute's music - particularly his lyrics, which tend toward verbose diatribes about girls, heartache and teenage hypocrisy. "If you ask anybody if they remember high school, they'll remember it vividly," he says. Musically, the band's debut ought to appeal to fans of labelmates the Academy Is . . ., one of the singer's favorite acts.

SUNBURNED EPIPHANY Shaant never even thought about putting together a band until after he attended the Warped Tour in 2003. "You go and see kids your own age up there onstage," he says. "I sat there on the way home with a sunburn, and my mind started racing. I turned to my friend and said, 'I'm going to be doing this one day.' " JENNY ELISCU

>> Next: ALEXI MURDOCH: L.A. song slinger via Scotland and The O.C.

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ALEXI MURDOCH
DIY singer-songwriter finds fame on television

>> Listen: Hear tunes from Alexi Murdoch and other Artists to Watch.

Since 2002, Alexi Murdoch has seen his debut EP, Four Songs, become an unlikely underground hit and has watched his song "Orange Sky" - a pretty ode to brotherly love that sounds like it could have been co-written by Bob Marley and James Taylor - end up on Dawson's Creek, The O.C. and Prison Break. Now thirty-three, the singer-songwriter has finally released a full-length debut, Time Without Consequence.

SOUND Capped off by "Orange Sky," Time Without Consequence indeed sounds like the product of a slow gestation: All winding, slightly rustic acoustic grooves, golden melodies and ruminative lyrics.

EASING INTO IT The son of a Greek father and Scottish-French mother, Murdoch spent his first ten years outside Athens before moving to rural Scotland. "For fun, we'd buy a half-liter of vodka and ten packs of cigarettes and hide in the woods," he says. After moving to the States to study philosophy at Duke, Murdoch dropped out to follow a girlfriend to L.A. "I didn't have a plan at all," he says. "But suddenly the songwriting thing kind of clicked and I knew it was what I was supposed to do."

DIY GUY After DJ Nic Harcourt at tastemaking L.A. station KCRW started playing Murdoch's EP, the songwriter sold 50,000 copies and received several major-label offers. Ultimately, he decided to release Time Without Consequence on his own label, Zero Summer. "A record deal wasn't something I was interested in," he says. "There was no way anyone would let me make the record I wanted to make."

TV STAR "I don't have a TV, so I never saw any of them," says Murdoch of the dozen or so appearances "Orange Sky" has made on the small screen. "Actually, I did see The O.C.," he says. "The song came at the end during one of those montage sequences with people staring out the window and tears welling up. I have no idea why it's so popular with the TV people - maybe because there aren't a lot of words. People tell me all the time, 'My kid was watching The O.C.' . . . A lot of people discovered me that way." CHRISTIAN HOARD

>> Next: THE NOISETTES: Blues-punk hell-raisers tear it up live

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THE NOISETTES
Rowdy Londoners mesh punk, funk and the blues

>> Listen: Hear tunes from the Noisettes and other Artists to Watch.

Shingai Shoniwa, the twenty-four-year-old lead singer and bassist for London blues-punk trio the Noisettes, didn't plan to become a rock star. While attending art college in 2000, she spent time in the fringe-theater scene. Fellow student Dan Smith, meanwhile, was immersing himself in music. "He'd play in these ridiculous jam sessions - too many people strumming broken guitars thinking they're Syd Barrett," Shoniwa recalls. "I'd never joined in, until one day Dan was playing and I started singing along."

SOUND On What's the Time Mister Wolf - the band's debut LP, due in early '07 - the Noisettes merge Smith's bluesy guitar, Jamie Morrison's glam-metal drums and Shoniwa's violent and soulful vocals into a thrilling hybrid. With its jungle beats and staccato guitar, the lead single, "Iwe," sounds like an unhinged Erykah Badu fronting the Bad Brains, while the jazzy, cabaret-ish "Wind Blows Hot" shows the band's quirkier, less intense side. "There's a balladeer underneath the icy exterior of every Noisette," notes Shoniwa.

LIVE WIRES Self-described "gig sluts" who cut their teeth playing anywhere they could, the Noisettes quickly gained a reputation as one of Britain's rowdiest live bands. Shoniwa - in lame hot pants, fishnets and mismatched boots - flails around as shaggy giants Smith and Morrison bash away beside her. "The crowd might throw beer bottles at the chicken wire, like in The Blues Brothers," says Shoniwa. "But I'm only going to have this kind of audacity for so long. I might as well use it." ELIZABETH GOODMAN

>> Next: JIBBS: Teen rap prodigy wants to bring title back to St. Louis

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JIBBS
Fifteen-year-old whiz raps for the title

>> Listen: Hear tunes from Jibbs and other Artists to Watch.

At eight years old, Jovan Campbell, a.k.a. Jibbs, downloaded a beat and laid down an original rap about moving from Chicago to St. Louis. His brother, DJ Beats, an acclaimed producer who has crafted tracks for local superstars Nelly and Chingy, was so blown away that he rerecorded the song in his studio. By ten, Jibbs was battling aspiring rappers twice his age, beating them so badly that they wanted to knock the crap out of him. Luckily, Jibbs was also an acclaimed amateur boxer with two Golden Gloves titles. Now, at the ripe old age of fifteen, the precocious MC has a hit single, "Chain Hang Low," which appeared on this season's Entourage, and a debut album, Jibbs Feat. Jibbs, which the rapper hopes will bring the hip-pop title back to the St. Lou.

SOUND Jibbs' singsong rhymes and syncopated flow - cramming several words into one beat only to extend one syllable over the next two - recalls Nelly, while his penchant for boisterous overenunciated vowels smacks of Ludacris. "Chain Hang Low," a play on the schoolyard rhyme "Do Your Ears Hang Low?," includes a kid-chanted chorus: "Do your chain hang low?/Do it wobble to the flo'?/Do it shine in the light?/Is it platinum, is it gold?" Jibbs' spitfire wordplay puts the track over the top: "I got charms so heavy that my neck don't like me." His brother, who produced most of the debut album, keeps the beats spare and playful.

KID POWER Cranky grown folks might wonder how a fifteen-year-old has the inspiration to rap about anything interesting, but Jibbs says writing rhymes has never been a problem. "It's easier when you're a kid," says the rapper, who imagines grand lifestyles in his lyrics. "You're seeing a lot, plus your creativity is really, really big. Kids think big about the glamorous life." DJ Beats, 25, is still amazed at the things his little bro can do. "He shocks us every time he gets onto a record," says Beats, half of the production crew Da Beatstaz. "It really inspires me when we work together. We just be in the studio, screaming." EVAN SERPICK

>> Next: SILVERSUN PICKUPS: SoCal quartet busts out the fuzz

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SILVERSUN PICKUPS
Shoegazing Los Angeles foursome brings the fuzz

>> Listen: Hear tunes from Silversun Pickups and other Artists to Watch.

Silversun pickups - with their fuzzed-out My Bloody Valentine-meets-Smashing Pumpkins debut, Carnavas - could easily be mistaken for a gang of studio urchins. In reality, the L.A. foursome spent years gigging around the hipster-clogged Silver Lake neighborhood before approaching a studio. "I saw a guy at one of our shows passing around a bootleg CD, and I asked him what it was," recalls Pickups frontman Brian Aubert. "He said, 'It's you.' I was like, 'Wow, can I have one?' He gave me a copy, and I was horrified. It was awful. I thought, 'Oh, shit, I guess it's time to actually record - ready or not.' "

TAPES AND TAPES It wasn't the first time a shabby recording led to a breakthrough. About a month after forming the band in 2000 with bassist Nikki Monninger, her then-boyfriend and Aubert's ex-girlfriend ("People called us the Fleetwood Mac of Silver Lake," says Aubert; the exes have since left the band), the singer sent a song-free, boombox-recorded demo to New York's CMJ Festival. To the Pickups' shock, they were invited to play. After a chance encounter in New York with Mitchell Frank - owner of the Silver Lake club Spaceland - the Pickups were offered a gig. According to Aubert, Frank's offer was based solely on the fact that the band members were regulars at his bar.

SOUND The Pickups unabashedly worship at the altar of fuzz: In addition to the overt Valentines and Pumpkins influence, tracks like "Melatonin" recall the Pixies' guitar squall, and the band cribs the Velvet Underground's narcotic washes of noise on "Future Foe Scenarios" and "Lazy Eye." Carnavas' first single, "Well Thought Out Twinkles," has already become an indie-rock fave with its Dorothy-in-Oz switch from monochrome to Technicolor. "We like really big, loud, fuzzy, warm music," says Aubert. "So when people say we sound like My Bloody Valentine, we can't believe it." COLIN STUTZ

>> Next: ALICE SMITH: Chanteuse, more Nina Simone than Norah Jones

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ALICE SMITH
Sultry songstress channels Sade and Simone

>> Listen: Hear tunes from Alice Smith and other Artists to Watch.

Growing up, Alice Smith divided her time between Washington, D.C., and her grandmother's farm in rural Georgia, soaking up her family's eclectic musical tastes. "My mother's got eight brothers and sisters, and we're a very close family," she says. "Everybody had their own music. My uncle played me Bob Marley. I have an aunt who loved Sade. Another uncle was big on James Brown - well, they were all big on James Brown. I was listening to Bon Jovi, Wham! and New Edition, and my mother had me playing the piano, so I was listening to Tchaikovsky and Chopin - basically it was just everything." The Tchaikovsky and Chopin are hard to hear, but otherwise those influences - plus country, Broadway and gospel - come through on her stellar, soulful debut, For Lovers, Dreamers, and Me.

SOUND Smith could easily be lumped in with expressive chanteuses like Norah Jones and Alicia Keys, but she has a broader palette than either. On the soulful torch song "Dream," which Smith wrote, she conveys a sophisticated allure that would seem well beyond her twenty-seven years. Rock-cabaret tunes like "Gary Song" and "New Religion" show off Smith's four-octave range, and her reggae-loving uncle gets props on the dub-influenced "Do I." In concert, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, she effortlessly fills the room with her booming alto, channeling Nina Simone one minute, Mick Jagger the next.

SHOP AROUND For Lovers, released on indie label BBE, has earned Smith attention from major labels eager to cash in on her next album, but she says the process is frustrating. "A lot of people at these labels treat audiences like they're stupid," she says. "Like, 'You should focus your style or people won't get it.' I don't think that's true. Who only listens to country music? I mean, I'm sure there are people out there, but not the normal ones." EVAN SERPICK

>> Next: PAOLO NUTINI: Soul-inspired Scotsman goes beyond Blunt

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PAOLO NUTINI
Scottish singer hits big and chills with the Stones

>> Listen: Hear tunes from Paolo Nutini and other Artists to Watch.

As a child growing up in an apartment above his parents' fish-and-chips shop in Paisley, Scotland, nineteen-year-old Paolo Nutini never imagined a career as a singer-songwriter - let alone that he'd be rubbing elbows with his heroes while barely out of high school. Nutini has already performed with Ben E. King, whom he cites as his biggest musical influence, and he even opened for the Rolling Stones in Vienna. "I met the guys afterwards, and we had a chat," he says. "Mick thought I was Italian. When I told him I was Scottish, he laughed and said, 'If I'd known you were Scottish, I wouldn't have booked ya here!' "

SOUND Nutini says his debut album, These Streets - which has already sold 250,000 copies in the U.K. - tells the story of "three years of some teenage Scottish kid's life." His throaty, heavily accented singing voice has earned frequent comparisons to Joe Cocker and Faces-era Rod Stewart, though the ballads he sings have more in common with James Blunt and Daniel Powter. "My music has quite an eclectic mix," says Nutini. "It has elements of rock, soul, folk and even some electro."

HASTY EX "Jenny Don't Be Hasty," the lead-off track on These Streets, tells the story of a particularly nasty breakup with a girl he met in London a year ago. The then-eighteen-year-old Nutini told the twenty-three-year-old Jenny that he was twenty-two. "Soon as I told her the truth, she slapped me and sent me packing," he says. "Made me feel like an eight-year-old-boy. I haven't heard from her since." ANDY GREENE

>> Next: AMY MILLAN: Songstress from up north heads out on her own

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AMY MILLAN
Indie-rock chanteuse strikes out on her own

>> Listen: Hear tunes from Amy Millan and other Artists to Watch.

A product of the same fertile Toronto-Montreal alt-rock scene that female singers Feist and Metric's Emily Haines call home, Amy Millan has spent the past six years as a full-time member of chamber-pop band Stars and a part-time member of indie collective Broken Social Scene. The songs on her solo debut, Honey From the Tombs, were actually written before those bands took off, during a lonesome period in the mid to late Nineties when she spent most of her days "by myself, in a bedroom, on a bed," she says. "Sitting alone in the bedroom is what you do in your twenties. I'm just glad I got into bands after that. On the tour bus, there's not a lot of room to feel sorry for yourself."

SOUND Fans of Millan's work with Stars will find her sweet chirp instantly recognizable on sparsely arranged alt-country tunes such as "Losin' You" and "He Brings Out the Whiskey in Me." But the pared-down context, she acknowledges, might catch people off guard. "It's interesting to have this record come out after having people know me as something else," she says. "It's hilarious, actually, because this is the girl I know. This music isn't a departure - it's the root of everything I'm doing now."

THIRTY AND DIRTY Millan notes that, though she missed playing these songs during her years on the road with Stars and BSS, she's glad she waited until she was a bit older to actually record them. "I'm thirty-two now, and you get your bitch card at thirty," she says with a laugh. "In your twenties, if you get in a studio with a couple guys turning knobs, it's easy to feel intimidated. Once I turned thirty, it was like, 'Turn the knob the other way - do it!' "

ON THE ROAD Millan will take Honey From the Tombs on the road this fall with a backing band that features members of Toronto's the Silts. "These guys play trombone and banjo and saw and balloon," she says. "Let's throw some balloon on there! The point was to get out of the bedroom. I want to turn the songs around and make them better with age." JENNY ELISCU

>> Next: COMETS ON FIRE: Anthemic psychedelia from Cali quintet

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COMETS ON FIRE
NoCal quintet churns out drug-free psychedelia

>> Listen: Hear tunes from Comets on Fire and other Artists to Watch.

Psychedelia is something that comes naturally to us," says guitarist Ethan Miller of the LSD-free Northern California quintet Comets on Fire. He describes the original idea for the band, which he started in 1999 with bassist Ben Flashman, as "come up with a few riffs, crack a bottle of whiskey and bang out high-energy anthemic rock." As for Comets on Fire's hair-raising tangle of spiraling guitars, hellbent drumming and whooping-synth effects, Miller says, "Frankly, I couldn't imagine even attempting any of that shit on acid."

SOUND Comets on Fire's new album, Avatar, swings between extremes - the rolling thunder of "Dogwood Rust," the spidery-guitar dance of "Jaybird," the piano-ballad om of "Lucifer's Memory" - with an attention to detail that brings out the group's less obvious inspirations. Drummer-keyboardist Utrillo Kushner "has always had an obsession with Procol Harum," says Miller, also citing the band's interest in the post-blues Fleetwood Mac and acoustic guitarist Leo Kottke. "We're influenced by energies, not riffs."

COMET TAILS A lot of moonlighting goes on between records and tours. Miller has a bluesier side combo, Howlin Rain. Kushner unleashes his inner prog-rock under the solo alter ego Colossal Yes. And Chasny has Six Organs of Admittance. "Comets on Fire are a communal democracy," says Miller. "It's a release for us to be the kings of our small islands, outside the band. Then everyone brings good stuff back from their canoe trips." DAVID FRICKE

>> MORE: Listen to songs by the 10 Artists to Watch!

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Listen to a playlist of must-hear tracks from our artists to watch

Lupe Fiasco "I Gotcha"
Lupe celebrates going from "musty to musky" over a hyperhappy top-shelf beat from the Neptunes.

Cute Is What We Aim For "The Curse of Curves"
A cynical emo barnburner about teenage romance from Fueled by Ramen's newest stars.

Alexi Murdoch "Dream About Flying"
A rolling acoustic gem: Think a bluesier version of Nick Drake, circa Pink Moon.

The Noisettes "Iwe" (RealPlayer required).
Screaming guitars, funky bass lines and the irresistible purr-shriek of Shingai Shoniwa.

Jibbs "Chain Hang Low"
Sharp St. Louis rhymes over children chanting a schoolyard chorus.

Silversun Pickups "Well Thought Out Twinkles"
A distorto-jam that's the best song Billy Corgan never wrote.

Alice Smith "Dream"
A shape-shifting tune that finds the sweet spot between Nina Simone, Jill Scott, and Elton John.

Paolo Nutini "Jenny Don't Be Hasty" (RealPlayer required)
Nutini begs for his girl not to leave him, with folk-rock guitars and a hook that makes the case.

Amy Millan "Skinny Boy" (RealPlayer required)
Millan's soprano floats over a gauzy melody on this tart heartbreaker.

Comets On Fire "Hatched Upon the Age"
An epic tune with sunlit guitar that recalls Syd Barrett-era Floyd.

Listen to a playlist of must-hear tracks from our artists to watch