Label

When the biggest rap tour of the season stops by 1st Mariner Arena on Saturday, opening act Machine Gun Kelly will provide a stark contrast to the flashy, dipped-in-gold Maybach Music Group trio of Wale, Meek Mill and headliner Rick Ross. While the MMG clique presents a cool, almost icy demeanor in its songs, the 22-year-old Cleveland rapper, born Richard Colson Baker, takes the opposite approach, fearlessly spitting double-time flows in the face of the audience. When his rapid-fire delivery fails to spark the crowd, MGK keeps a battering ram of a single in his back pocket.

As JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound took the stage for WTMD's First Thursday concert in Mount Vernon this past June, the rain came. But instead of allowing the dark clouds to damper the mood, lead singer Jayson Brooks saw an opportunity to make an impression. The magnetic frontman worked every inch of the stage, encouraging the crowd to clap along as he cleanly hit falsetto notes. When the rain stopped and a rainbow emerged, it almost felt as if Brooks had willed the clouds away.

James R. Adams, a giant on Madison Avenue during the years immediately after World War II, once said that advertising is the "principal reason why the business man has come to inherit the Earth. " Surely, the three weeks prior to an election give further reason why modern "Mad Men" still have a lot to say about how people behave at the polls, let alone the marketplace. Those ads for Question 7 that have flooded Maryland's airwaves in recent weeks aren't detached, dry recitations of why expanded gambling is good or bad for Maryland.

You see jam; Geoffrey Pullum sees syntax.  Professor Pullum is teaching at Brown this year, and heading off to the store to buy some organic preserves, he picked up a jar of Nature's Promise Organic Raspberry Fruit Spread. Then he discovered that the product is not purely organic, and his analysis of the syntax of the label  at Lingua Franca explains some of the treacherous aspects of English. English, you will have noticed, is given to transvestism.

About six years ago, the Baltimore rock band Arbouretum played at a club in Chicago for an audience of almost no one. You could count the members of the crowd on one hand, singer/guitarist David Heumann recalled, but one of them happened to be Bettina Richards, the founder of indie record label Thrill Jockey. She liked what she heard. "There literally was nobody there but me," Richards said. "It was great. I totally was hooked. " Richards signed Arbouretum to Thrill Jockey.

Not so long ago, only "health food nuts" preferred organically grown fresh fruits, vegetables and meats over their industrial agriculture equivalents. Nowadays, lots of people look for the words "organically grown" when they want to eat healthy. But what if turns out those little labels don't actually mean what people think, and that the foods they feel so good about eating aren't that different from the store brand - except for the price tag at checkout? That's the question raised by researchers at Stanford University in a study published this week, which found that the health benefits of organically grown produce, meats, eggs and cheeses are negligible when compared to their non-organic counterparts.

Label 56, the Baltimore-based record label that released music by End Apathy - the band fronted by alleged Sikh temple shooter Wade Michael Page - released a statement Monday afternoon, regarding Page's relationship with the label. It reads: Label 56 is very sorry to hear about the tragedy in Wisconsin and our thoughts are with the families and friends of those who are affected. We have worked hard over the years to promote a positive image and have posted many articles encouraging people to take a positive path in life, to abstain from drugs, alcohol, and just general behavior that can affect ones life negatively.

I was not downtown during the recent disturbances, but I will take Del. Pat McDonough's word that the groups of young thugs were, in fact, black ("Baltimore and bigotry," May 18). Here is the point I want to make: The fact that they were black had nothing to do with their despicable behavior. In recent coverage of the meth lab bust, did anyone refer to the accused as a group of white drug peddlers? How about Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, or serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, did their "whiteness" have something to do with their behavior?

In the past two years, Mac Miller, a 20-year-old rapper from Pittsburgh, could have signed a number of deals from major labels. Instead, Miller stayed loyal to his hometown independent label, Rostrum Records. The payoff came in November, when Miller's first album, "Blue Slide Park," debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, the first independent album to do so in more than 15 years. In Miller's world, a major label simply isn't necessary, not when he can continue to release free mixtapes (such as last month's "Macadelic")

For Gary "Pappy" Boward, the prospect of the tread stripping off an aging tire on his van or car is scary enough. The possibility of it happening on his motorcycle is downright terrifying. Boward, chairman of the motorcycle rights group ABATE, came to Annapolis Tuesday to call on the General Assembly to pass a bill that would require tire dealers in Maryland to inform consumers of research showing that tires deteriorate with age and that a federal agency recommends they be replaced after six years even if the tread depth is adequate.