Coming in hot after their stellar performance on the “Black Panther: The Album” track “Paramedic!” SOB x RBE are back with the release of their debut studio album, “GANGIN.” The album is a follow up to their eponymous 2017 mixtape, a release that showed promise but overall felt riddled with untapped potential. But that’s not the case with “GANGIN,”...
“Black Panther’”s official soundtrack was released through Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE), Aftermath Entertainment and Interscope records and executively produced by Kendrick Lamar and Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith. My initial reaction when the tracklist released was pretty reserved, with artists like Travis Scott and Swae Lee drawing my disinterest. But, there also were plenty of exciting artists such as Vince...
The digital dances of the internet — the soft block, the finsta, a deleted subtweet — distinguish the ways in which we tend to ourselves and each other online. The choreography is complex and mesmerizing, yet frail enough to crumble with a misstep; these steps are designed to upkeep a persona which, with time, hardens into a reputation. A...
Wiz Khalifa is a hotly-debated rapper whose brand of stoner rap has cultivated a dedicated fanbase as well as a fair show of critics who cannot identify with him. He tends to avoid anything outside of his comfort zone, rarely making much of an attempt to explore new frontiers in lyrical substance beyond his lavish, unequivocally cool lifestyle. However,...
In an unprecedented short amount of time, Metro Boomin has gone from unknown Morehouse College dropout to hip-hop’s most sought-after producer. This year alone, he produced one of the year’s biggest rap songs with Migos’ “Bad and Boujee,” dropped a mixtape with Gucci Mane, produced Nav’s debut project, “Perfect Timing,” produced most of 21 Savage’s “Issa Album” and launched...
Angel Olsen is human, and like any seasoned artist who’s been emotionally roughed up, she translates those experiences into verses that range from raw and languishing — like her 2016 album “My Woman’”s closer, “Pops” — to cheeky notwithstanding her heartache — as with “Hi-Five” off her 2014 album “Burn Your Fire For No Witness.” Her melancholic renown is...
There’s no denying that Kelly Clarkson’s name alone evokes a sense of nostalgia. She became the first winner of hit TV show “American Idol” before creating the iconic break-up song, “Since You’ve Been Gone.” Clarkson has effectively left her footprint on the landscape of pop music and culture. However, being in the music scene for as long as she...
Ty Dolla $ign is a singer, first and foremost, who is more than capable of dropping some bars on a track. What makes him such a pleasure to listen to is his strength in melody. Even when he’s rapping, he’s still singing. “There is not one time where I say a word without melody,” he once stated in an...
Discussing current trends in hip-hop inevitably comes around to highlighting the importance of Future and Young Thug, the Atlantan rap titans whose postverbal eccentricities elevated their auto-tuned slurs from the exception to the norm. As featured artists, their names are good indicators of songs with intoxicating, if sometimes oblique, flows (Ty Dolla $ign’s “Blase” or Drake’s “Sacrifices”), ad-libs a...
Brent Faiyaz is another name on the growing list of young R&B voices who have created noise on the charts in the past year. He sits in this position with other artists on the verge of major breakthroughs like Syd, Jorja Smith and Steve Lacy. Faiyaz hit a milestone in his career in 2017 with his feature on the...