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Pleasant Grove Returns, ThatKidCam Spits and Plano Gets Back In The Fest Game.

Two years ago, the City of Plano invested $500,000 of taxpayer dollars to throw the inaugural Suburbia Music Festival with a little help from Live Nation.

Even with a pretty decent lineup featuring David Guetta, Alabama Shakes, J. Cole, Yelawolf, Run the Jewels and a few dozen more spread out across a two-day run, the fest only drew about 20,000 folks or so, causing Live Nation to take the Suburbia name and run.

Now, after taking some time off, Plano's Oak Point Park is looking to get back into the festival game — only this time with much lower expectations.

As reported by the Dallas Morning News, the City of Plano will team up with KHYI-FM The Range and its Metro Broadcasters-Texas Inc. parent company to relocate the long-running Texas Music Revolution festival to the park from its previous home at Southfork Ranch. Starting with its 20th annual Texas country and Americana fest, which is tentatively scheduled this year for Easter weekend, TMR will expand to a two-day event on the old Suburbia grounds.

But that's certainly not the biggest local music story of the week. That would have to be the it's-not-Drake firestorm created by Erykah Badu's latest mixtape, her first new release in four years. The release of that cellphone-themed “tape” was well-timed, too, coinciding with the broadcast of her hosting stint at this weekend's Soul Train Awards a few days later. There, she used a cellphone to cause a stir as well, pretending to take a call from Iggy Azalea, who she proceeded to openly diss by saying, “What you're doing is definitely not rap.”

Badu this week also extended some of her shine to the next generation of Dallas musicians by sharing a clip of Cameron “ThatKidCam” Smith freestyling to her backstage at The Bomb Factory back in October — a clip that's since gone on to rack up tens of thousands of views and around 500 shares on Facebook.

Another local Cameron Smith, meanwhile, released a new single with his Fort Worth rock outfit War Party. Garage rock number “Stoned Not Stupid” represents the lead single from a new Britt Robisheaux-produced, Jordan Richardson-mastered full-length, To Love and Fear It, which is due out sometime in January.

Also stoned out in the Fort was The Longshots frontman Joey Gorman when he wrote and recorded the vocals to the band's new single, “Screen Watchers.” As he told High Times, which recently premiered the track: “Last year brought a pretty intense winter, so the months leading up to actually recording the album involved lots of 'screen watching.' Even though we are mammals, our evolved society does not allow or leave room for hibernation, so humans go insane instead. With the support of the overgrown population of agenda-based blogs, my side of the argument became an easy Google search. So, just like everyone else, I ended up watching/reading up on the rise of meta-knowledge via smart phone and the realization that 'sanity' is fucking insane and maybe the telescreen is the real gateway drug.”

The Outfit, TX's national media campaign seems to be getting stronger. After having the trio had third studio album, Down By the Trinity premiered by Complex, and an earlier video premiered by the a Vice blog, The Outfit, TX had its video for “Cut For Me” premiered on Mass Appeal. Also, there's a quick interview to go along with it.

Then there was Maren Morris, who was pretty high, too — up on Billboard's “Heatseekers New Albums” chart, anyway. There, her self-titled EP took the top spot last week. Hear that collection's lead “My Church” single below, ahead of a full-length set to come sometime next year.

Then there's These Machines Are Winning, which this past weekend released its second LP of the year and celebrated that fact with a headlining show over at Granada Theater. Just a week before, the band also celebrated the 52nd anniversary of the Kennedy assassination with a new music video composed of footage from the president's fateful trip to Dallas.

Another band that's released a Kennedy-centered tune this year, Nervous Curtains, was also back this week, this time pairing with Lord Byron and providing some haunting synth and keys work to his new “Nerveux” single. Still trying to figure out where he got that title from, though.

Other new rap recordings to check out this week include Tunk's new No Defeat II (We Gone Make It) LP, an 18-track follow-up to 2011's No Defeat EP, which was released earlier today. Find it streaming in full below.

Likewise, Fort Worth's Lou Charle$ dropped his new six-song EP, In Transit, which was produced entirely by J. Rhodes. That one, too, is streaming in full below.

Then there was $kaduf “I Want to be the Biggest Rapper in Dallas” Français, who began streaming “What They Know Now” from his forthcoming Unpleasant Grove project that earns its release in January.

Meanwhile, for those who prefer their groves a bit more amiable, the band Pleasant Grove is finally set to release its third LP. After breaking up while recording the follow-up to 2004's The Art of Leaving, the band got back together in 2012 and is now set to put out The Heart Contortionists this coming February. Here's the first taste.

Before that, Pleasant Grove's drummer, Jeff Ryan, will next week release the latest under his Myopic project, a minimal, electronic-influenced collection called Two Pieces. The recently debuted first single features players like Scott Danbom (Centro-Matic) and was recorded outdoors at the playground of the school that Ryan's children attend.

Elsewhere: Just in time for the holidays, Pantera is reissuing its entire catalog as a vinyl box set; Lil Wayne misidentifies Post Malone's “White Iverson” as “Too Young” on his new mixtape; and The Relatives lost its second member in 10 months when Tony Corbitt died Sunday morning of a heart attack.

Suburbia Festival cover photo by Kathy Tran. Got a tip for White Noise? Email us!