Tag: Diddy

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Royce da 5’9″ Performs “Thou Shall” and “Overcomer” on Vevo’s Ctrl

Born Ryan Daniel Montgomery, Royce da 5’9″ is a Detroit, MI-born and-based emcee, best known for his longtime association with Eminem, with whom he’s one half of duo, Bad Meets Evil, a critically applauded solo career, primarily collaborating with Carlos “6 July” Broady and DJ Premier, as well as ghostwriting for the likes of Diddy and Dr. Dre. He’s also a member of Slaughterhouse, an All-Star hip-hop act that also features Joe Budden, Joell Ortiz and Crooked I, and one half of PRhyme with the legendary (and aforementioned) DJ Premier.

As the story goes, Royce da 5’9″ signed his first deal with Tommy Boy Records, who offered him $1 million while Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment offered him $250,000 and unlimited beats, a decision that he described as one of his biggest regrets in a 2016 Complex interview. After Tommy Boy Records closed, the Detroit-based emcee signed a deal with Columbia and Game Recordings, with whom he began recording an album then titled Rock City, a title which referred to Detroit being the former (and best known) home of Motown Records. When the album wound up being heavily bootlegged, the Detroit-based emcee left that label for Koch to re-record the album, eventually releasing it 2002 as Rock City (Version 2.0). And although the album didn’t sell well, the DJ Premier-produced single “Boom” helped Royce achieve some underground recognition and lead to the two working more closely with PRhyme.

Their 2014 debut album together featured both artists going out of their comfort zones, and expanding upon their familiar sounds; in fact, Premier enlisted the compositional skills of Adrian Younge, whose work he sampled throughout the album’s production while Royce da 5’9″ traded bars with the likes of MF Doom and Little Brother‘s Phonte on the initial release, and with The Roots‘ Black Thought, Joey Bada$$ and Logic on the deluxe edition released the following year. 2014 also saw Royce da 5’9″ team up with Eminem on the posse cut “Detroit vs. Everybody.” 

Since then, the Detroit-based emcee released 2016’s solo album Layers, 2018’s Book of Ryan, which featured another ongoing collaboration with Eminem “Caterpillar,” that year’s second PRhyme album Phyme 2 and a guest spot of Eminem’s surprise release Kamikaze. 2020 continues a recent period of incredible prolificacy with the release of his eighth album, the 22 track The Allegory, which features guest spots from Westside Gunn, YBN Cordae, Benny the Butcher, and a boatload of others. 

Vevo’s Ctrl series highlights the work of hard-hitting, cutting-edge artists making an impact in today’s music scene with a focus on both emerging and established artists. The artists Vevo’s Ctrl series features are artists that the video platform believes demand attention, and the series is a way of shining a deserving spotlight on those artists. Recently, Vevo’s Ctrl invited the acclaimed Detroit-based emcee to their Brooklyn studios to perform two tracks off the album — “Overcomer” and “Thou Shall.” “Thou Shall” is centered around an eerie, RZA-like production: stuttering beats, a sinuous bass line and a looping string sample and eerie atmospherics while Royce da 5’9″ of bold and swaggering pronouncement of being doper than anyone else out there, full of pop cultural references with Kid Vishis slamming the door on anyone who may challenge them. “Overcomer” is centered around a looped and seemingly ancient soul sample and thumping beats while Royce da 5’9″ rhymes about blessings, the wisdom he’s earned, sociopolitical observations and more.

The performances that Vevo’s Ctrl captured are swaggering, passionate within an intimate yet minimalist setting.  

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Tei Shi and Blood Orange Team Up on a Shimmering and Slow Burning 80s Synth Funk-Inspired Ballad

With the release of her critically applauded full-length debut, Crawl Space, the Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, electronic music artist and electronic music producer Valerie Teicher, a.k.a Tei Shi quickly established her sound — slow-burning and shimmering, ethereal pop.

Since the release of her debut, Teicher has been rather busy — she’s collaborated with Blood Orange and Diddy on the viral hit song “Hope,” which has amassed over 10 million stream and appears in the accompanying video along with Diddy, A$AP Rocky, Tyler the Creator and Empress Of. And early this year, she joined Blood Orange in a performance of the song at this year’s Coachella Festival. She’s also been busy working on her highly-anticipated and long-awaited sophomore album La Linda, which is slated for a November 15, 2019 release through Downtown Records.

After spending several years in New York, Teicher relocated to Los Angeles last year, and as a result she quickly shifted course on her path as an artist. “I felt like I was closing a chapter in my life that was tied up in a lot of negativity, and reconnecting with open space and my own creativity in a way that I hadn’t in a very long time,” she says. “I wanted this whole project to reflect the feeling of stepping into another world that’s almost surreal or fantastical in its beauty.”

The album’s material reflects that change in artistic path with the album thematically and tone-wise is a purposeful departure. While her full-length debut was centered around emotional claustrophobia and confusion, the material off La Linda was written in the yard outside of her Elysian Park home — a sun-drenched space with roes bushes and berry patches, a herb garden and apple tree. Unsurprisingly, the album, which is Spanish for “the beautiful” also finds Teicher connecting to her Latin roots and cultural identity, with the acclaimed singer/songwriter writing and singing lyrics in her native Spanish. “Moving to L.A. made me feel much more connected to my Latin roots and my cultural identity, in a way that feels really loving,” says Tei Shi, who grew up between Colombia and Vancouver.

While creating La Linda, Teicher took on the role one executive producer and assembled an all-star team of producers that included Blood Orange, who has also worked with Sky Ferreira, Solange Knowles and FKA Twigs; Stint, who has worked with Santigold, HEALTH and Gallant; TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek; Noah Breakfast, who has worked with Christine and the Queens, Carly Rae Jepsen and Ty Dolla $ign, among a list of others. For Teicher, working with such an eclectic array of musicians and producers helped to shake her free from creative stagnation. “Part of the motivation to move to L.A. was wanting to be a part of a community of people who were excited to collaborate,” Teicher says in press notes. “I felt like I’d gotten to the point where I wasn’t learning as much or picking up new things, so I wanted to work with lots of different people and take in as much as I could from their processes.”

Sonically, the album was also influenced by a disparate array of artists including German choreographer Pina Bausch and acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. “With Kurosawa, I was so inspired by how each frame is so well-composed that it almost looks like a painting, and how he used these very simple things like rain or a gust of wind to create emotion,” the acclaimed Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter explains in press notes. Interestingly, she also found nature inspiring the album’s material as well. I think I took nature for granted for a long time, but making this album I was so drawn to the mountains and trees and water—I realized how much nature is another form of art,” Teicher says. ““For me this album is about letting go of the past and moving willingly into the future,” Teicher continues. “I hope it can give people a glimpse of something beautiful, and help them look out into the world in a more loving and intuitive way.”

La Linda’s latest single is the slow-burning, 80s synth soul-inspired, Noah Breakfast-produced single “Even If It Hurts.” Continuing Teicher’s ongoing collaboration with acclaimed synth pop artist and producer Blood Orange, the track is centered around thumping 808-like beats, shimmering and arpeggiated synths and Teicher’s and Hynes plaintive vocals trading verses on love — particularly how pain in some way or another is always part of love.  And while being a soulful synthesis of Teicher’s and Hynes work, the song also manages to sound as though it were drew from the likes of Cherelle’s “Saturday Love” and Mtume’s “Juicy Fruit”

“I made this song with two of my closest collaborators — Dev Hynes (Blood Orange) and Noah Breakfast,” Teicher shares in press notes. ” It came together in pieces between LA and New York but sprouted from the lyrics Dev and I kept on singing – ‘even if it hurts…I just don’t mind’. The concept is really the realization and acceptance that pain is a natural consequence of love. It’s a duet about the ways in which we make ourselves vulnerable to those we love, sometimes at a high cost. The video was directed by Cara Stricker and with an incredible and almost exclusively female creative crew. It features a multitude of amazing designers like Collina Strada, Vaquera, Christopher John Rogers, Mugler, Maryam Nassir Zadeh . I wanted to capture the romantic and melancholic elements of the song but put them in a world that feels removed from the every day, its own little odd paradise where Dev and I existed parallel to one another but never really together.”

The video’s director Cara Stricker adds, “I wanted to explore the iconography of love in art history through a modern yet romantic lens. Creating stillness and emotive movement to reflect the physical or emotional space in love… vulnerability, numbing immersion, knowing the truth, becoming closer, fighting for it, letting them in…even if it hurts. It’s a conversation between opposing perspectives in a relationship.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: Acclaimed Indie Electro Pop Artist Tei Shi Releases a Slow-Burning and Ethereal New Single

With the release of a critically applauded batch of material — 2013’s Saudade EP, 2015’s Verde EP, 2017’s full-lenght debut, Crawl Space, a cover of Beyonce’s “No Angel” and a guest spot on Glass Animals’ “Holiest,” the Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, electronic music artist and electronic music producer Valerie Teicher, best known as the creative mastermind behind Tei Shi has developed a reputation for crafting slow-burning, shimmering, ethereal pop. 

Teicher has spent the past couple of years working on her forthcoming sophomore album — but she’s also managed to find some time to collaborate with Blood Orange and Diddy on the viral hit song “Hope,” which has amassed over 10 million streams. Also, she appeared in the video for the song alongside Diddy, A$AP Rocky, Tyler the Creator and Empress Of — and she joined Blood Orange in a performance of the song at this year’s Coachella Festival. Interestingly, the album’s slow-burning and gorgeous first single “A Kiss Goodbye” is reportedly a tonal departure from her moodier, darker debut as it finds Teicher, who’s a Colombian-Canadian reconnecting with her Latin roots and influences with the material also reflecting her relocation from New York to Los Angeles. Interestingly enough, while superficially recalling Sade, the song has a subtle Brazilian tropicalia lilt — until the trap beat driven bridge, which gives the song an unexpected, urgency. 

“This song is about intuition—following my gut and my body more than my head,” Teicher explains press notes. “It’s about learning from love and from giving so much of myself to other people, and coming out of it with a more selfish mindset, to save my love and my nurturing for myself. It’s about figuring out who you are on your own and without someone else defining that for you, through trusting yourself and allowing for the universe, the supernatural, the unexpected to take hold.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Born Ryan Daniel Montgomery, Royce da 5’9″ is a Detroit, MI-born and-based emcee, best known for his longtime association with Eminem, with whom he’s one half of duo, Bad Meets Evil, a critically applauded solo career, primarily collaborating with Carlos “6 July” Broady and DJ Premier, as well as ghostwriting for the likes of Diddy and Dr. Dre. He’s also a member of Slaughterhouse, an All-Star hip-hop act that also features Joe Budden, Joell Ortiz and Crooked I, and one half of PRhyme with the legendary DJ Premier.

As the story goes, Royce da 5’9″ signed his first deal with Tommy Boy Records, who offered him $1 million while Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment offered him $250,000 and unlimited beats, a decision that he described as one of his biggest regrets in a 2016 Complex interview. After Tommy Boy Records closed, the Detroit-based emcee signed a deal with Columbia and Game Recordings, with whom he began recording an album then titled Rock City, a title which referred to Detroit being the former (and best known) home of Motown Records. When the album wound up being heavily bootlegged, the Detroit-based emcee left that label for Koch to re-record the album, eventually releasing it 2002 as Rock City (Version 2.0). And although the album didn’t sell well, the DJ Premier-produced single “Boom” helped Royce achieve some underground recognition and lead to the two working more closely with PRhyme.

Their 2014 debut album together featured both artists going out of their comfort zones, and expanding upon their familiar sounds; in fact, Premier enlisted the compositional skills of Adrian Younge, whose work he sampled throughout the album’s production while Royce da 5’9″ traded bars with the likes of MF Doom and Little Brother‘s Phonte on the initial release, and with The Roots‘ Black Thought, Joey Bada$$ and Logic on the deluxe edition released the following year. PRhyme 2, the duo’s long-awaited sophomore effort is slated for a March 16, 2018 and the album’s latest single “Rock It” features a swaggering production consisting of shimmering synths, twinkling keys, boom bap beats, some of Premier’s classic sampling and scratching which Royce da 5’9″ waxes nostalgic over some of his favorite artists, while reminding listeners that he’s one of contemporary hip-hop’s sadly under-appreciated emcees; but perhaps more important, in an age in which most mainstream artists increasingly sound the same, real hip-hop that I remember  — dope emcees spitting bars over slick and thumping production still exists and is still absolutely necessary.