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Staff Picks: Favorite Albums & Songs (so far) – Part 2

June 27, 2014

Today’s brings you round 2 of our staff picks for favorite songs and albums at 2014’s half way point. If you missed yesterday’s part 1 of submissions, you may read it here. Sarah Machajewski Album: Neil Young  – A Letter Home We should all be thanking Neil Young for putting out a new album. We should be thanking him doubly for making it an album of covers.  We should be thanking him three times as much for the album’s gritty phonographic sound that stands out in an age of digitized, computer-created music. But maybe that’s what Neil Young does best. His loner tendencies have led to some innovative, cutting-edge music. Yet this album doesn’t forge new paths, but revisits old ones. Young selected 12 songs that have meant something to him at some point in his career, taking from greats such as Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Bruce Springsteen, and The Everly Brothers. They[...]

New Music from SLPCLSDTH is Great for Sad Ears

June 25, 2014

If you want to listen to a happy song, “The book of plans were not doing,” is not the right choice for you. SLPCLSDTH talks of loneliness, disappointment, and suicide before letting the instrumental take over the conversation. His tone of despair while providing thoughtful lyricism is something we’ve seen in the past, and is a characteristic of his artistry. The beat also has a mystique to it, with swindling strings and nonsensical vocal samples. There’s music for every mood, and SLPCLSDTH continues to refine his conveyance of sadness. Check it out:

Cove Explores Humanity’s Strongest Emotion On love.gained/love.lost.too

June 20, 2014

The Essential Vitamins Crew (EVC) of Buffalo boasts “no additives or preservatives,” and that’s exactly what EVC member and hip hop producer Cove has testified to on his latest album love.gained/love.lost.too. The release is a follow up to Cove’s Love.Lost/Love.Gained. release of last February, and it follows a similar soundscape. Cove keeps the track name nearly as simple as possible. Most of the titles are just their number, with the exception of a few dates and the album’s closer. Track “two”begins with a quote from Love and Basketball, in which the main characters as children begin dating. Throughout the album Cove rips scenes depicting different stages of love from movies and uses them as interludes to further portray the album’s themes. “Apr.20” was hardly the pot-smokers anthem one would think considering it’s name. Cove chops up the same vocal sample we’ve heard on Black Hippy’s “Black Lip Bastard” remix, and combines[...]

Yung Lean – “Yoshi City”

June 18, 2014

Yung Lean videos come in two categories: Entertainingly low-quality (see my favorite vid ever, “Hurt“) or surprisingly high-quality (“Kyoto“). “Yoshi City” falls in the latter category, and that means we get to see the awesome things Lean got to waste his budget on. For “Kyoto,” it seemed all the money went to some outrageous alien special effects. On “Yoshi City,” the money goes into a pimped-out SmartCar, complete with the scissor doors that have become a staple of the elite. The video also features some melancholy scenes of Lean-Doer walking wretchedly through caves and parking garages and what looks like it could be an Egyptian Tomb. Over some fluttering synths from consistently dope SadBoys producer Yung Gud, Lean boasts some of his most emotional lines to date. Watch it here:

clipping. – CLPPNG

June 13, 2014

Before I start this review I just wanna touch on one thing real quick. The whole phenomenon of bands/music groups,  cutting out vowels in song/album/artist names or replacing them with Vs, is so played out. I can’t stand the name of this album, just make it a self-titled. It would’ve been cool like two years ago, but now it looks like the name of a random soundcloud artist. I digress. Clipping. is a trio consisting of rapper Daveed Diggs, and producers Wiliam Hutson and Jonathan Snipes. Hutson and Snipes both hold industrial-electronic roots with other bands and projects, and they craft the noisey in-your-face music that the band is known for. Diggs provides the raw, violent imagery to accompany the music, and he truly is a great technical rapper. Their Facebook page sums up their sound as “music for the club you wish you hadn’t gone to, the car you don’t[...]

Edwang Shines On Collaborative Effort With Duce

June 11, 2014

Buffalo born producer Edwang has honed his craft remixing and mashing up other rap songs, but he’s stepped in a new direction with this collaborative effort with rapper Duce. The Duce Bootlegs is a project full of poppy hip hop goodness that reasserts Edwang’s staying power. He’s crafted complex beats that still allow the freedom of an emcee to flow over. The bouncy keyboard on “True Hollywood Story” sets the tone for the rest of an album that never takes itself too seriously.  The beat in “Pirate Booty” is based around a upbeat west-coast guitar riff, and the rapping is basically Duce rattling off pirate references in each line. His best rapping probably comes in “Old Joe,” where Duce narrates the unfortunate experience of catching an STD. Edwang continuously impresses on the beats, and flashes his experiences in productions by including some pop culture bites for skits between songs. Aziz Ansari’s[...]

50 Cent – Animal Ambition

June 6, 2014

Animal Ambition works when 50 Cent understands that he’s worth 140 millions dollars. Sometimes 50 gets caught up with his life back when he was fresh off of being shot 9 times, straight off of the streets, and all the other details that made him one of the best crossover gangsta rappers of all time. Now though, 50 hasn’t been on the streets for a long time. In the same way that Jay-Z still gets grief for his coke selling subject matter 20 years after the fact, 50’s strengths and weaknesses are on this album are dependent on whether he’s living in the past or the present. In “Hold On,” we see 50 attempt one of his sing-songy catchy hooks that took him to the top of the music industry 11 years ago. It’s not going to be the last time he does it on this album, and it’s probably[...]

Pizza Pizza Drops His 25th Slice

June 4, 2014

Continuing his stretch of high quality free releases, Buffalo trap artist, Pizza Pizza, has dropped his latest in “Slice 25.” Its uplifting, summer-y synths make this track a great instrumental for the season. In fact, Yung Zza himself has declared the song to be the best that he’s ever made. He’s created a swirl of trap and EDM that still manages to be soothing and low-key. Considering his latest song is also perhaps his best, it’s become apparent that Pizza Pizza is only growing and getting better as an artist. Check out “Slice 25” below.

Meyhem Lauren & Buckwild – Silk Pyramids

May 30, 2014

“So Queens that you could feel me, so dope that you could deal me.” That’s what NYC rapper Meyhem Lauren asserts on the opener of his latest album Silk Pyramids with producer Buckwild, and that’s the script that he sticks to for the length of this impressive project. Lauren doesn’t break any ground with his subject matter on this, but he does a great job rapping about rap stuff. Action Bronson, a past collaborator with Lauren, assists him on the album’s intro, and he really kills it. The beat Buckwild crafts is straight up Bronsolino’s alley, a female vocal loop that sounds like it’d fit right in with with Bronson’s “9.24.11” and “9.24.13” series. Action always comes through with the ridiculous braggadocio bars. He provides the album’s first rewindable moment with the line “Cross your motherfuckin ass in basketball wearing sandals.” Murked. One of the album highlights for me, and I[...]

KOOL A.D. – “Word”

May 29, 2014

It’s not often that you see a rapper release a kind-of X-rated cartoon music video, but that’s exactly what we got from former Das Racist rapper KOOL A.D. this week. The video accompanies the song “Word” off of A.D.’s free project Word O.K. from a couple months back, and is directed by him and animator Teddy O’Connor. It features a dog and his rabbit (maybe?) girlfriend committing lewd acts, running over cops, and watching Guy Fieri freestyles, among many other things. Yeah, it’s probably something you have to watch at least once.  It’s definitely NSFW if you haven’t gathered that, check it out below.

Deniro Farrar – Rebirth

May 23, 2014

2014 looks to be a pretty big year for Charlotte rapper Deniro Farrar. Last year saw the release of two mixtapes (Patriarch and Patriarch II), which helped him to a selection to the illustrious XXL Freshman Cover for 2014. Signed with Vice Records and Warner Bros, Farrar released his major label debut this week, a six track EP titled Rebirth. Farrar keeps a low, calmly rough flow throughout the project, but each song has a distinctly different flavor to it. Lunice of the electronic hip hop duo TNGHT provides an eerie landscape for Farrar on the second track “Burning Bills.” Smattering vocal samples (similar to the ones he and other TNGHT member Hudson Mohawke helped contribute to Kanye’s Yeezus)are worked in with  graveyard synths. It’s the perfect compliment to the lo-fi, gritty raspiness of Farrar’s voice as he raps about the almighty dollar.  The hook has some pretty cool, demonic imagery to it, leading[...]

RiFF RAFF – “How To Be The Man”

May 21, 2014

It’s Versace season everybody! Fresh off the announcement that his long-delayed debut album, Neon Icon, will be dropping June 24th, Mad Decent rapper RiFF RAFF provided us with the visuals for “How To Be The Man.” RiFF first dropped this track about 5 months ago, and comparing the size of his dog (Jody Husky) in this video to recent pictures, it looks like this video was recorded a while back as well. Filled with ridiculous pop-up neon graphics, random celebrity shout-outs, and models wearing one-piece bathing suits, it is a uniquely RiFF RAFF experience. Riff Raff: How to Be the Man from RiFF RAFF on Myspace.

Mac Miller – Faces

May 16, 2014

Mac Miller has taken an unconventional path as an artist. He gained notoriety as pseudo-frat rapper after a couple mixtapes as a late teen, then released an independent that was number 1 on Billboard. With a style that appealed to the mainstream, and a debut album that was panned and looked at as cheesy, a legitimate future in the rap game is something that didn’t seem to be in the stars for Mac. And yet here we are, Mac’s almost a year removed from a critically acclaimed album and on the cusp of a critically acclaimed mixtape. He has scored collaborations with the likes of UGK legend Bun B, kind of-legend/anomaly Jay Electronica, and consensus top 2 rapper on the planet Kendrick Lamar. He’s befriended Kendrick, has a significant friendship with ScHoolboy Q and Ab-Soul, frequently collaborates with rap messiah Earl Sweatshirt, and is becoming one of the most reliable[...]

Pizza Pizza Dishes Out a New Slice

May 14, 2014

Slice 19 is the latest track from versatile Buffalo electronic artist Pizza Pizza. In the past we’ve heard a fusion of trap, electronic, and moombahton from Yung Zza. Here, he takes the route of a trap banger. It’s got the air-horn synths, the hard-hitting snares, and the repeatedly cocked gun, essential to a great trap track. Slice 19 is a testament to the consistent quality that Pizza Pizza should be recognized for. This is his 19th song in the last two months alone, and we can only expect more coming. Listen to it here:

Anteek Recipes Release B-Sides Collection From Upcoming Debut

May 9, 2014

Self-described “jazzy hip hop heads,” Anteek Recipes, have released The EP, a collection of 11 B-sides that did not make the cut for their forthcoming debut album. The album stays true to the group’s namesake, as the project is littered with the components of traditional, Golden Age-era hip hop music. Mr. Dirty Hairy handles the production for the duration of the project. Each beat appears to be a nod to the early-mid 90s production of artists like A Tribe Called Quest and DJ Premier, complete with the jazz samples and the DJ scratches. Dirty Hairy, all the way from Zagreb, Croatia, continuously demonstrates his understanding of the New York hip hop sound. Buffalo’s own Shuteyes takes care of the vocals on the EP. His deep, gritty voice compliments the production of Dirty and really helps capture that golden age aura that they’re all about. Shuteyes’ lyrics also circle around  the theme[...]