Yes Lawd! is pure instrumental bliss! The way Knxwledge layers old funk/soul samples over sharp percussions and smooth chords would make J Dilla proud. While Anderson .Paak's smooth, raspy vocals leave you with no choice but to get lost in the groove. Phenomenal.
Alison Wonderland's sophomore effort is a crazy mix of wide ranging sounds that kept me on my toes throughout, not really knowing what to expect next. I'm not the biggest EDM fan but I really enjoyed her brand of music and I never would have guessed that someone could make me like a Chief Keef EDM song as much as I did.
For six years now, Britain has organizing its National Album Day, and in October 2023, that event will celebrate the classic albums of the 1990s.
If Sept. 5th was all about love and finding it, then Morning After is all about heartbreak and losing it, and in a time when R&B is becoming increasingly more alternative it's almost refreshing to hear a more traditional approach to the genre. Morning After is a moody, emotional affair that, in my book, solidifies dvsn as one of the top new R&B acts to be on the lookout for.
All in all, Sango's "In the Comfort Of" is a really thoughtful and lush album that does a great job of blending hip-hop, R&B, and electronic sounds, while contemplating spirituality, life, and love.
"If the cops saw a busker playing music on the street they would make us go away or even beat us. Busking used to be seen as just a kind of begging. It was a low-class, haram thing to do. If you played music on the street people would assume you were very poor, maybe homeless..."
The Easy Truth is hip-hop in it's purest form with Apollo Brown taking us through a master class of producing and sampling, and Skyzoo taking each track through a lyrical exercise. It's a beautiful, refreshing album that shows exactly why Apollo Brown is one of my all-time favorites.
Check out some of this weeks most talked about and interesting music videos from Jay-Z, Linkin Park, Tyga, Demi Lovato, Vic Mensa, and more.
Superorganism's music is about as youthful, happy, and oddball as I'd expect from a group clearly born of the internet age and has an almost infectious quality to it that you can't help but vibe to. It's definitely one of the most inventive albums I've heard in a while and they clearly speak directly to this generation of teens.
Northern Lights is a wide ranging album, employing sounds from pop, hip-hop, drum and bass, dubstep, and more. They sacrificed cohesiveness for diversity but it results in having just too many disparate parts and the album starts to lose momentum halfway through.
Yes, there was an actual football game played at Super Bowl, but you may now know it from all the chatter about Rihanna. But that's nothing new, music has always had an immense impact in sports.
There are times when art makes us experience emotions and ideas that we might not have even experienced in real life. At other times, it becomes a dreamcatcher, bringing to the surface the subtle thoughts from the depths of our minds and the nuanced feelings from the bottom of our hearts, and capturing them for us to understand. There is hardly any other art form where this beautiful power is as palpable as it is in music, and more specifically - sad music.
Majid Jordan's latest is accentuated by some incredible synth work and a retro futuristic feel that does enough to create an infectious, almost dream like project with some serious grooves. It's good, clean, feel good music.
After an already strong go around with Her EP, SiR follows it up with the even stronger Her Too. Smooth, sultry, neo-soul R&B with some great live instrumentation and great vocals. He's quickly becoming one of my favorites on TDE.
Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight really shows off Travi$'s immense diversity and ability to create vibe upon vibe. It might be a little light on substance but the sheer style more than makes up for it.
We kick off the first volume of Compilation 2 of our Musicphiles podcast by taking a quick look back at some of our favorite projects to drop in 2016 and giving our overall rating for the year. Then we list our top 10 most anticipated albums of 2017 from artists like Andre 3000, Lorde, Kendrick Lamar, Japandroids, Drake, Kanye West, and many more. We finish things off with a discussion about the latest release from Run the Jewels, Tory Lanez, and others.
FUTURE feels like a by the numbers project from the rapper that ironically lacks a lot of the emotion and feeling that he often claims of others' music. Easily one of the more forgettable ones from his now extensive catalog.
This system encodes music from all 20 types of amino acids found in proteins as individual notes on a 20-tone scale, rendering them audible.
Toro y Moi has returned with yet another super enjoyable album that shows off his incredible breadth as an artist. His brand of indie electronic lo-fi pop is always unexpected but usually in the good way, like this here.
Check out some of this weeks most talked about and interesting music videos from J. Cole, Coldplay, Ab-Soul, and more.
Four years is a long time to wait for the complete waste of film that was Endless. The music's the only saving grace here, otherwise I wish I could get my time back.
If anybody in modern music is taken as a stereotype of the genius/weirdness combination it is late Roger Keith “Syd” Barrett, a founder and brief mailman of Pink Floyd, solo artist, painter, and recluse - often most of these things at the same time.
Blue & Lonesome is a passion project for the legendary and it shows. They don't subvert the songs they cover and stick to the traditions of blues rock but they sound so good together and Jagger's voice sounds so at home, that it leaves you wondering what took so long.
We had a blast shooting our next video in our PRESENTS series with up and coming hip-hop artist, Axcess and we wanted to share a few shots from the sit down. Be on the look out for the video and article dropping soon.