Lil B
I'm Gay (I'm Happy)
Tyler the Creator, frontman of L.A. hip-hop convoy OFWGKTA (Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All), won’t admit to it but I’m sure he understands his audience to be predominantly white, suburban, indie-teens-in-training. Let’s try to keep that in mind here, now that there seems to be a somewhat recognizable consensus on Tyler the Creator’s second full-length album and first major label release, Goblin on XL Records. From where I’m standing it seems like folks are a bit dissatisfied. Granted there hasn’t been too many local hip-hop acts with this kind of trajectory since the astronomical rise of Lupe Fiasco, the quizzical introduction of Wiz Khalifa and others, this record leaves a lot to be desired. The album is choppy, draining, and quite lengthy. Some of the standout tracks (“Yonkers” and “Sandwitches”) on the record feel somewhat superfluous since they’ve …
While the “critics” have been “lauding” the “visionary” effort by Kanye West in his directorial debut film that serves as an accompaniment to his upcoming new record, Runaway, the film, when treated as either a short or an extended music video—leaves much to be desired. Being a decidedly arthouse film, Kanye West takes poetic license and shows us some of the twisted images coming from the mind of a self-named genius, a creative polymath capable of combining disparate elements like those exemplified by the cunning of a Picasso, the deconstruction of a Derrida, the creativity of a Warhol, or the glam avant-garde of David Bowie. Kanye is, at the moment, none of these (my apologies).
His music video/film hybrid reads like an incoherent montage of sequences with only the most basic of connections being made, through what seems to …
From Euro’s extremely slept-on Gold Rush mixtape. Here he delivers some purple thoughts over-top The Heath Brother’s much-sampled “Smiling Billy Suite Pt. 2″ (you may remember it from such classics as Nas’ “One Love” or Redman’s “Soopaman Lova 3″). Visuals courtesy of Bryon Summers.
Ignore the generic title and imagine a world where making good R&B music was still important. This guy has written for and collaborated with Ruben Studdard, Elliot Yamin, Nappy Roots, Angie Stone and Mos Def, to name a few. His debut album, Acoustic Love is in stores now.
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