Brooklyn

Sure, these days it seems like every new band's got to have a practice space with a Brooklyn zip code before being deemed "buzzworthy," but the borough's been a musical hotspot since before today's movers and shakers were born. Popular music as we know it would've sounded very different if swaying, tuxedo-time tunes like "'S Wonderful" hadn't flowed from Brooklynite George Gershwin's pen. The sleepless sorrow of "Tears On My Pillow" serves as a reminder that rock 'n' roll history was made on the area's street corners by doo-wop wonder boys Little Anthony and the Imperials. And Neil Diamond's ascension to pop's Mt. Olympus didn't stop him from looking back with longing at the "Brooklyn Roads" of his boyhood.

Follow the leaders, as punk-funkin', world-beat-bumpin' Brooklyn bands lead the way, in Next Steps.

For most of the '00s, you couldn't swing a Stratocaster more than six feet in any direction on the streets of Williamsburg, or Brooklyn's other artistic hubs, without hitting a hot new band. The Rapture led the charge of '80s-loving punk-funkateers with their dance-floor anthem "House of Jealous Lovers." Post-everything trio Black Dice set the rock rulebook on fire and fling it from a brownstone rooftop with avant-electro no-wave fantasias like "Glazin." And from their very name to the all-inclusive stew of world beat, psychedelia, ambient, and dance on the sensuously swirling "2080," Yeasayer stands at the forefront of a yes-wave of Brooklyn bands for whom everything is possible.

New York may be a state of mind, but Brooklyn is a feeling. Find out why from soul shakers and hip-hop heroes in Deep Cuts.

If Manhattan is the commerce capital of New York, Brooklyn is undeniably the city's soul, even if the artists it's nurtured all have their own definition of what that soul sounds like. J.J. Jackson beat the '60s Southern R&B belters at their own game with his Stax-like shouter "But It's Alright." Global groove machine Antibalas takes the churning, Fela Kuti-pioneered power of Afrobeat and adds a blast of urgent, urban funk on "Beaten Metal." But don't sit down just yet, because the Brooklyn hip-hop dream team of Foxy Brown and Jay-Z rolls up nice 'n' nasty with the raunchy rap battle of the sexes to end 'em all — "I'll Be."

Now more than ever, Brooklyn's the place to be for musicians — if they're not from New York's most populous borough, they journey there — but it's always been a place for keeping things close to the bone. Every beat on the street is welcome, as long as it comes from the heart. Over the years, that's been the way the world was introduced to everything from the soul-slathered folk of Richie Havens to the jazz-schooled hip-hop of Gang Starr and the geeks-gone-wild pop of the hardest-quirking-band-in-show-business, They Might Be Giants. We've gone on a sonic expedition across Coney Island, Bed-Stuy, and beyond, to bring you the biggest, the boldest, the best of the artists who have called Brooklyn their home. And you don't even have to wait around for the F train.