Tag: Outkast

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

With the release of his 2016 self-produced, debut EP Dreamhouse, the Los Angeles, CA-based electronic, garage pop artist DENM quickly saw a rapidly growing national and international profile as the material off his debut EP received over 1o million combined streams across Spotify, Soundcloud, Apple Music and YouTube.  And although he’s currently in the studio recording his much-anticipated follow up EP, the Los Angeles, CA-based electronic music artist released a swooning, slow-burning, piano-based R&B take on Outkast‘s smash hit “Hey Ya,” which was recently featured as the number 1 single in Spotify’s Friday Cratediggers playlist. Certainly, by turning the dance floor friendly tune into a slow-burning piano ballad DENM manages to craft a rather inventive reinterpretation of a song you’ve likely heard 400 million times by now, and it pulls out the song’s bittersweet and uncertain sentiment at the heart of the song.

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Introducing the Noisy, Alt-Rock-Inspired Sounds of Amsterdam’s Canshaker Pi

With the release of the “Shaniqua” and “Looking For Love On Ibiza” 7 inch single and their Boomslang and For Ed EPs, the Amsterdam-based indie rock quartet Canshaker Pi — comprised of Willem Smit (vocals, guitar), Boris de Klerk (vocals, guitars), Ruben van Weegberg (bass) and Nick Bolland (drums) — have received a reputation across the Netherlands and elsewhere fro a frenzied live show consisting of swaggering and noisy rock that mischievously draws from a variety of sources. Their For Ed EP is a tongue in cheek references to survival-expert Ed Stafford, while “Shaniqua” references a line in Outkast’s smash-hit single “Hey Ya!” — and as a result of their rapidly growing profile, the Dutch quartet caught the attention of Pavement’s and Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks’ Steven Malkmus, who co-produced the Dutch’s quartet soon-to-be-releaed full-length debut Naked Flowers.

Naked Flowers’ latest single “Bonox” finds the band pairing anthemic hooks with shimmering yet tense and angular guitar chords, four-on-the-floor-like drumming, a propulsive bass line and Smit’s ironically detached vocals to craft a song that manages to sound as though it were indebted to 90s alt rock, post-punk and Brit Pop simultaneously — but with a mischievousness at its core.

The recently released music video features time-lapse footage of a painter creating a painting to the song — including brief moments to smoke cigarettes and daydream, a lot of precise mixing of pigments and actual painting and making sure that every little detail was precise to how he had initially envisioned and what he envisioned what it was supposed to be.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Stunning and Surreal Visuals for Kristoffer and the Harbour Heads’ “When You Say Stay”

  Gothenburg, Sweden-based electro-pop trio Kristoffer and the Harbour Heads have developed a profile across Scandinavia and elsewhere for crafting expansive, experimental electro pop that’s been compared favorably to the likes of Menomena. Woods and […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

As the story goes, back in 2000 Ice-T, Pimp Rex, Kool Keith, Marc Live and Black Silver teamed up for a project that they dubbed Analog Brothers, and they recorded an extremely rare album together Pimp to Eat; in fact, the album is so rare to me at least, that I didn’t know it existed — and I bet that you didn’t know it did either. According to Ice-T, the original masters of Pimp To Eat were delayed when Kool Keith’s vocals were stolen during the melee that followed the Indiana Pacers vs. Los Angeles Lakers NBA Finals game on June 19, 2000. Of course, no one actually knows if that’s some insanely true and legendary story or if it’s something someone just made up.

In any case, Mello Music Group will be re-releasing Pimp to Eat on June 10, and the re-release’s first single “We Sleep Days” feat. Jacky Jasper possesses a acid-tinged and futuristic production that paris shimmering and oscillating synths and stuttering boom-bap beats with some of the most talented emcees out there trading fiery bars about pimping, hustling and drug dealing. Sonically, the song sounds as though it evokes a hip-hop alternate universe in which Outkast and Too Short managed to collaborate together.

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

F.Y.I,’s musical career began in the middle part of this past decade as the co-founder of Los Angeles-based rap act Those Chosen, with whom he recorded over 100 songs, a number of mixtapes and a critically praised EP, 5IVE, which was produced by Grammy winner IZ Avila best known for his work with Usher, Janet Jackson, and Gwen Stefani. And with the release of his debut solo effort, Yo! The Places You’ll Go, which featured a collaboration with Rass Kass and Ab-Soul, the Los Angeles-based emcee’s album landed at #1 on WPTS, which won an MTVu Woodie Award for Best College Radio Station. And as a result of sharing stages with renowned artists including The Game, B.O.B., Big Sean, Curren$y, Slick Rick, De La Soul, Pac Div, Dead Prez, Little Brother, Black Milk, Pete Rock and CL Smooth and Boot Camp Clik and playing at music festivals such as CMJ, A3C and the Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival, F.Y.I. has quietly developed a national reputation as an emcee to pay attention to.

The Los Angeles-based emcee’s debut sophomore effort, Age/Sex/Location was released earlier today and the EP’s latest single, EP opening track “One Thang” pairs F.Y.I.’s confident and dexterous flow, rhyming lyrics about looking bravely forward and striving and accomplishing your goals without fear and without doubt. And he does so over
over a glitchy and soulful production consisting of boom bap beats, distorted vocal samples, whirring electronics. It’s swaggering yet upbeat hip-hop which shows how influential Kanye West, Outkast and Common have been to contemporary hip-hop.