Berklee and Essence have teamed up again this year to bring the best young talent out to compete in the Hip Hop Songwriting Contest. If you are, or know, an eligible teen (unsigned and between 15 and 18) the time is nigh. Deadline for submission is March 9. It's all for a good cause, helping to balance the message in hip hop music and giving young songwriters a stage and training, not to mention......

This short work week is long on music. The small show battles the bigger venue this week as the students invade the city. When they come back it seems the shows start up with vigor. Lots of 18+ hit the mark – and they've still got summer money in their pockets. What's this mean? Quite possibly there will be a few more sell outs than usual as the concert funds still run high. Fair......

Lent, what a time to give something up. Over here at Bostonist Headquarters we're thinking hard what we're going to drop come Wednesday. It won't be our MP3 player and it won't be live music. Maybe with this, week four of the now weekly music pick running on Monday we're going to be able to give up our lack of coverage of the local music scene. With fingers crossed we're raising a pint to forty......