To celebrate the release of his highly anticipated new album, The Dreamer / The Believer, Common took the stage to a sold out crowd at Highline Ballroom in NYC.  Backed by a live band, Com performed many new cuts as well as some of his classics.  One of the shows highlights was a surprise appearance by Nas to perform NY State of Mind and Ghetto Dreams.  For fans who could not attend in person, Spotify and Livestream webcasted the concert, and we have the mastered soundboard audio rip below.

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The 4th annual Roots Picnic was headlined this year by The Roots (of course) and Nas, who performed a special set backed by The Roots.  It was a great way to close out the festival, with The Roots digging up some gems from their catalog and flawlessly rockin’ the set with Nas.  The personal highlight for me was a surprising cover of The Bottle, to pay homage to the late great Gil Scott-Heron.  Check out the soundboard recording of the full set right here.

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If you aren’t lucky enough to be in Philly today for The Roots Picnic 2011, WXPN and Okayplayer have you covered with a webcast of the main stage.  Be sure to tune in at 1pm today, Saturday 6/4 to hear performances from Little Dragon, The Dismemberment Plan, Ariel Pink, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes, Esperanza Spalding (backed by The Roots), Wiz Khalifa, Nas (backed by The Roots) and of course, The Legendary Roots Crew.  Live stream after the jump!

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2010 was another great year for music and as the new year approaches, its time to look back at the best albums to come out in 2010.  As with last year, since the focus of this site is live music and we’re discussing studio albums, we will provide a new live song from each artist who made our list.

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Damian Marley and Nas have been touring all over the globe as of late in support of their Distant Relatives album.  Last weekend they touched down at the Mile High Festival in Denver to rock for a packed crowd.  Luckily for us, Cricket sponsored a live webcast of the show, so here is our full soundboard audio rip of the show.

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Nas & Damian Marley dropped by the Madia Vale studios at BBC radio for a live session for BBC 1xtra.  They performed five tracks for the session, backed by Damian’s band.  Their live show is definitely one of the better touring acts right now, so go see them if you have the chance.  Also, in case you missed it, here’s our exclusive live audio from their NYC show earlier this year.

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