kevin gates

Kevin Gates: Jam [ft. Trey Songz, Ty Dolla $ign, and Jamie Foxx] 0 (0)

It’s February, and Valentine’s Day is fast approaching. For most couples, that means frantically trying to construct a playlist of Jamie Foxx videos on YouTube. Well, worry no more—Kevin Gates has you covered. “Jam,” a bonus track from the Baton Rouge rapper’s just-released Islah, is set in motion by Foxx’s half-smirking, half-all-too-real opening skit, lifted from a 2002 comedy special. The conceit isn’t unlike his turn on Kanye West’s “Slow Jamz”: crooning about crooning, sultry singing about the great love songs. Foxx tells you to take the phone and “hold it up to the speakers and you let Luther do your talking for you.” Of course, this is Gates, so instead of “If Only for One Night” we get, “Spit all in between both cheeks/ Now I spread ‘em.” Where the rest of Islah is completely devoid of features, Gates and Foxx are joined here by Trey Songz and Ty Dolla $ign in a bout of Atlantic Records Matchmaker. The “4:30 a.m.” star writes about sex with the same unsettled specificity he gives to murder scenes and trap houses, to the point where we all learn a bit too much about his tongue strategies. But for the most part, it’s too smooth to matter. View More Kevin Gates: Jam [ft. Trey Songz, Ty Dolla $ign, and Jamie Foxx] 0 (0)
Baybee

Matti Baybee – Mulaism 0 (0)

Capitalism? Nah. Socialism? Never. Mulaism? INDEED! Yes, today Matti ushers in a new way to live. A new way to go about life. A new political system. Yes, Mulaism is upon us, just in time for Matti’s 18th birthday, which is today. Celebrate Matti’s official man day with these 10 new tracks, all produced by ISM Beats. Ain’t nothin’ more important than the mula — and find out why below. View More Matti Baybee – Mulaism 0 (0)
doughboy freddy k

Doughboy Freddy K – Bag Drop 0 (0)

Directed by CT FilmsThis is too smooth. Yes, the BYLUG repper, Doughboy Freddy, has delivered yet another solid offering — this one he’s calling “Bag Drop.” Frequent readers of the site know my devout love for the #DBCORN posse, and this is exactly how I like my DBC. Grade A shit-talking over the classic soul samples. They can’t lose with that formula, and they hit pay dirt yet again.Keep an eye on Freddy, he’s been on a roll lately. Check the bag below. View More Doughboy Freddy K – Bag Drop 0 (0)
big quis

Big Quis – Off Me 0 (0)

Directed by Jerry ProductionSomething short, sweet and potent from the honorable Big Quis. He shuts your whole operation down in less than two minutes on this one. Simple as that.The best news of the night? Quis is planning to release My Turn 2 later this year. We’ve been patient, and it’ll be here soon enough. Put it on your mental calendar. View More Big Quis – Off Me 0 (0)
mark

Shahmen – Mark 0 (0)

Shahmen - Mark is a beautiful electronic music with some bass boost for you. Shahmen is a duo made of producer SENSE, from Amsterdam, and rapper B L S aka Bless, from Los Angeles. The Shahmen sound is a dance between moments of pure tonal bliss and dark, hard, banging beats with original narratives. View More Shahmen – Mark 0 (0)
radiohead

Radiohead – Spectre 0 (0)

Sam Smith wrote the actual theme to ;Spectre, the 24th James Bond film (and possibly the last to feature actor Daniel Craig in the lead role). Radiohead only wrote a prospective one—long the stuff of myths, or literal bets. Both are sinister, irresolute ballads for piano and orchestra, but Smith's tune is more overtly triumphant, with typical mini-climaxes that place it firmly in the tradition of healthily overwrought Bond anthems, like "Skyfall". Smith used ominous spy-thriller horns, weaved through instrumental vamps, and pithy, anti-heroic lyrics: "I'm prepared for this," he sings, "I never shoot to miss/But I feel like a storm is coming." Radiohead's discarded anthem has some of this soupiness. But the marks it hits are unexpected—it pulls back hastily from anthemic orchestral breaks—so in some sense, it's exactly what one would expect from a slow-burning Radiohead theme for a modern, self-serious Bond flick. There's a jerky, Yorke-ian piano chord pattern. The vamp is an open forum for the decaying orchestral swoops that are the stamp of a Jonny Greenwood soundtrack. Phil Selway's jazzy drum figures allow "Spectre" to come into its own—a welcome "Pyramid Song" sequel. It possesses all the melodrama of a good Bond song but only a hint of the kitsch. If it wasn't for Yorke's delicate, forlorn vocal—just a few angelic falsetto notes, gradually bent out of shape, embellishing a typically vague, pointillistic lyric—the song might risk sounding like a rote retread of previous work. Instead, "Spectre" turns out to be one of the finest Radiohead songs in some years, much more than a one-off curiosity. At this point, both Yorke and Greenwood have become interested in writing program music; if narrative limitations can yield something like "Spectre," a concept album might be Radiohead's best possible next act. View More Radiohead – Spectre 0 (0)
chelsea wolfe

Chelsea Wolfe – I Love You All the Time (Eagles of Death Metal Cover) 0 (0)

After Eagles of Death Metal's November 13 show at Le Bataclan in Paris became the site of a horrific terrorist attack, it’s been impossible to think of the band without conjuring thoughts of that previously unthinkable violence. Since then, the group's done interviews about that night and been included in countless news stories. They were nominated for a Brit award. They're likely haunted by ghosts. They've also been asking musicians to cover "I Love You All the Time," a song from their last album Zipper Down, with proceeds going to the Sweet Stuff Foundation's "Play It Forward" campaign, which aids victims of the attacks. It was likely chosen because the song includes a few lines of French ("Ce soir c'est le soir et toi avec moi/ Et tu viens me voir, tu viens ouh la la,"etc.), but also because its themes are universal, and easily adaptable (such as the song's title). So far the people who've tackled it include Florence and the Machine, Savages, My Morning Jacks, Kings of Leon, Jimmy Eat World, Pearl Jam's Matt Cameron, and Nada Surf. Nobody has so thoroughly transformed "I Love You All the Time" as successfully as Chelsea Wolfe. Her deep, eerie half-speed version loses the original’s party-time feel; instead, we’re offered a gorgeous, melancholic late-night incantation. (In a way, it's reminiscent of "The Waves Have Come," Wolfe's Pain Is Beauty ballad inspired by the 2011 magnitude-9 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that devastated Japan, which she wrote from the perspective of someone surviving a disaster.) In Wolfe's "I Love You All the Time," the lines "I'm never alone, I look at my phone/ If I call you up, you're never at home" become especially heartbreaking. The repeated "I would beg if I thought it would make you stay" take on an entirely new meaning, a last grasp at life in the face of an inevitable, unexpected death. In remaking of the track, she found a way to own it. View More Chelsea Wolfe – I Love You All the Time (Eagles of Death Metal Cover) 0 (0)
the range

The Range – Florida 0 (0)

The electronic musician James Hinton, who peforms music as the Range, has worn the same hat and buttoned-up shirt combo each time I’ve seen him perform. There’s something comfortably consistent about it, and that can be said of his music, too. For instance, his new album, Potential, feels very much like a refined continuation of 2013’s Nonfiction. In some ways, it comes off like its second part, more than an entirely new entity. This is praise. Nonfiction found a way to make moving, emotionally resonant electronic music from seemingly not much more than YouTube samples and a great sense of dynamics and melody. Like Nonfiction, Potential features YouTube clips of anonymous people who bolster and humanize Hinton's compositions. Hinton explains: "I found each person by using a small set of search terms on YouTube... I endeavored to tie the songs of Potential together by telling my own story alongside the stories of the people I sampled." The words are sometimes moving, sometimes textural, and they can often bloom as amazing hooks—even if they didn't sound polished in their original form. On "Florida," for example, a shaky a cappella cover of Ariana Grande's "You'll Never Know" becomes a star turn in Hinton's hands. He threads the woman's voice through a mix of spritely electronics that bring to mind Nobukazu Takemura, twinkling steel drums, and an infectious dynamic upswing to create a dance-floor anthem. Listening to her in this new context, you begin to see what she heard inside her head when she decided to upload her clip to the internet. And it's beautiful. View More The Range – Florida 0 (0)
pj-harvey

PJ Harvey – The Wheel 0 (0)

PJ Harvey - The Wheel is rock song to emerge from her long-awaited ninth LP might illuminate the intention. In "The Wheel," some 28,000 children have disappeared, and all we do is watch. We see them play and die violent deaths, witness their public memorial, and "watch them fade out," as Harvey sings over 20 times at the end. The figure has no attribution: a crass search of "28,000 children disappear" brings up figures pertaining to gun crime, child street labor in Kabul, or the number of NATO troops initially sent to Kosovo in the late 1990s. The wheel turns and one tragedy swiftly replaces another, seizing air-time and attention. View More PJ Harvey – The Wheel 0 (0)
HD-Rihanna-Wallpapers

Rihanna – Higher 0 (0)

Rihanna - Higher is a song about the desire for late-night sex and companionship so urgent that it actually feels like a song about how much it hurts to have a Humvee back over your leg. And that is because Rihanna gives so much of herself in the vocal booth that it feels like she might pass out. The song is yet another masterful piece of work from No I.D., whose late-career résumé at Def Jam is threatening to eclipse his golden-age rap bona fides at this point. He builds a track that sounds like a soul revue sliding off a collapsing stage, a wandering violin doodling random shit in the background. This song is two minutes long, but it is a complete transmission from someplace more louche and heartbroken and painful than our world. View More Rihanna – Higher 0 (0)
placebo

Placebo – Every You, Every Me 0 (0)

Placebo is an English alternative rock band, formed in London in 1994 by singer-guitarist Brian Molko and guitarist-bassist Stefan Olsdal. The band were soon joined by drummer Robert Schultzberg, who was replaced in 1996 by Steve Hewitt. Hewitt was fired from the band in 2007 and was replaced the following year by Steve Forrest, who left in 2015. View More Placebo – Every You, Every Me 0 (0)
placebo

Placebo – Where is my mind 0 (0)

Placebo is an English alternative rock band, formed in London in 1994 by singer-guitarist Brian Molko and guitarist-bassist Stefan Olsdal. The band were soon joined by drummer Robert Schultzberg, who was replaced in 1996 by Steve Hewitt. Hewitt was fired from the band in 2007 and was replaced the following year by Steve Forrest, who left in 2015. View More Placebo – Where is my mind 0 (0)