Cole takes shots throughout the album that don’t directly seem related or to be addressing Kendrick (until the end) but instead address us as a whole: there is no one better than him. First track in and you can already tell he’s HUNGRY.
That’s the first time The Afros come to mind, and it vanished just as quickly
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Almost two years ago, when underground Hip Hop rappers 88thKey and Súle released “Retrogrades”, their
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I suppose it’s a little odd that I prefer an artist because of a remix
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From South East London, upcoming artist Ashley Stacey has just dropped his newest single “Do
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This is Toronto emcee Saipher Soze’s fourth full-length album. When he first started out, he
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Angelically, Lauryn Hill opens this gut-wrencher with quite lonely vocals – a refreshing yet gloomy follow-up to “The Beast.” This back-and-forth presents as a theme throughout the album, exhibiting the musical range of not only Hill but the trio as a whole.
On August 3rd, 1995 everything changed for hip-hop outcasts – Andre and Big Boy aside – Black Thought and Amir Thompson aka Questlove. The Roots are a creative achievement.
With his poetic social commentary, Kendrick Lamar never fails to engage us politically, and DAMN was similar to his previous release. Some of the most insightful and thought-provoking quotes are “XXX.” (police brutality), “FEER.” (who is praying for Kendrick Lamar), and “YAH.” (religion). However, “FEAR” is the album’s most significant track—not any of the three above tracks.
It’s always been so amazing to me that you can listen to just a few seconds of a song, and it can bring up so much emotion and memories. The 9th track off of Kanye West’s “My Dark Twisted Fantasy” may not be the most popular, and calling it his best would only create a war.
Jimi Hendrix was one of the best rock influences to ever live. After he died, Margo Jefferson even dreamed that this was the plot point to “eliminate blacks from rock music so that it may be recorded in history as a creation of whites.”
The band Green Day has been around for what seems like forever, creating fresh and exhilarating music. They play(ed) an essential role in almost all of our Rock N’ Roll obsessions and fancies. Green Day has sold about 75 million records worldwide, securing them as one of the best-selling artists of all time.
The Allman Brothers Band was a 70s blues-rock group formed in Florida. They were made up of brothers Gregg Allman (vocals, keyboard, songwriting) and Duane (leader, slide guitar, lead guitar), and various other artists that ended up leaving the band like Dickey Betts, Berry Oakley, Butch Trucks, and Jai Johanny “Jaimore” Johanson. Keep Reading
Bad Brains is a punk band originally from South East Washington, D.C. They got together in 1978 as nothing but a few teenagers into music. Throughout the years, Bad Brains has been solely about their music and how they can make it inspire; after all, that’s “the highest purpose of art.”
Fugazi is an alternative rock band from Washington, D.C., built of artists arising from short-lived bands. They were established in 1987 and since then have performed over 800 concerts.
Every Mother’s Nightmare (EMN) is a hard rock/metal band from Memphis, Tennessee. Since 1987 they have released six albums that profoundly differ from one another. Each album tells a distinguished story of good times, wounded pasts, and overall life encounters. It has been recognized that the band simply writes what they live. My point is proved by their album ‘RESURRECT THE FAITHFUL,’ released in October of 2020.
Bob Dylan is broadly deemed as one of the greatest songwriters of all time. He’s been a significant factor of pop-culture for over fifty years. His work included a variety of political, philosophical, social, and literary influences. Dylan was American music. Keep Reading
Z.Z. Top is a 70’s blues-rock band formed in Houston, Texas. They created spine chilling songs that crossed over a sort of groggy blues feel to a heavy rock feel. They adopted hipsters, punkers, and metal-heads as fans, even though they sang of highway succubuses, greyhounds abound, and supernatural mingling between Jesus and ghost boys.
The Swedish hard rock band by the name of “Graveyard” was established in 2006, Gothenberg. They take quite a few types of rock for inspiration, creating a perfect blend of music in general. While some of the bandmates came from growly blues backgrounds, others stem from doomy metal folk backgrounds.
On Wednesday, the 13th, Sylvain Mizrahi’s long battle with cancer came to an end. He is now far from pain’s reach; he’s now at peace. His body is buried in New York City, though his music and soul will forever live.
As Mrs. Mizrahi said, “Thank you, Sylvain, x2 for your heart, belief, and the way you whacked that E chord. Sleep, baby doll.”
Mizrahi was born in Cairo, Egypt, and moved to France in the 1950s. However, his family later settled near Rego Park, Queens, in New York. Before joining the band New York Dolls, Mizrahi was a member of the band Actress that featured people like Billy Murcia, Johnny Thunders, and Arthur Kane. Shortly after, the last standing members of the band, Mizrahi and Billy, created the New York Dolls.
The band was practically created from their mother’s lame pants, their girlfriend’s makeup, their brother’s leather jackets, and their profound obsession – and talent- for rock and roll. Their name had even come from a toy repair shop in NY called New York Doll Hospital.
Mizrahi loved rock and roll; he was an icon joining the canyon between punk and glam. And he was inspired by artists like the Stooges, David Bowie, and the Rolling Stones. Mizrahi was an absolute outrage on stage; his talent and love for the music was unbelievable. He was the guitarist for the first albums titled New York Dolls and Too Much Too Soon though he later went on to play piano and assist while writing lyrics.
The New York Dolls were practically the core of rock and roll, they were a landmark; they were glammed-out punkers with masses of character and musical ability.
“A group is made up of people who start out there in some basement,” Mizrahi told the Quietus. “They’re bored of what life is, and then all of a sudden, someone says, ‘Let’s have a show!’ ‘What are we going to do for a stage curtain?’ ‘I’ll use my mother’s bedsheet.’ … I think it comes down to performance. Performance is what all these musicians are about.”
When the band first went to Jack Douglas with their song Personality Crisis, he had said, “it was already an important song. It was Sly who decided to add the piano- even then, he was a very decent player. It definitely gave the song more edge. “
However, the band later broke up. During that time, Mizrahi worked on an immense amount of solo projects teaming with Bobby Blain, Michael Page, and even Tony Machine. He debuted his works, Syl Sylvain and the Teardrops and Sleep Baby Doll. The band later reunited in 2004. In the “reunion,” we saw Mizrahi co-write and play guitar for One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This, Cause I Sez So, and Dancing Backwards in High Heels.
After living in Atlanta for numerous years, Sylvain relocated to Nashville in 2015. On April 27, 2019, Sylvain proclaimed that he had been fighting cancer and published a GoFundMe to gather money to help pay for treatment. He passed of cancer in his home on Wednesday, at age 69.
To see both Billy and Mizrahi pass away was devastating, but knowing he is no longer battling cancer is comforting. The two will never never be forgotten. As O’Kelly Mizrahi said, “please crank up his music, light a candle, say a prayer, and let’s send this beautiful doll on his way.”
Pearls and Brass is a 70s inspired rock band from Nazareth, Pennsylvania, established in 2001. They released their first album in 2003, titled LP, and their somewhat relevant album, The Indian Tower, in 2006.
The record label Doppelganger Records published the band’s first album and gained an insane amount of recognition when they opened for Sint at England’s All Tomorrow’s Parties festival. They had been scouted by Drag City records specializing in indie rock, noise rock, alternative country, experimental music, and psychedelic folk.
Here are my thoughts on the album The Indian Tower: I first heard the band while searching on youtube for music that I enjoyed and could write about in further posts. It was around one in the morning, and I was trying to find artists similar to WitchCraft, which I have been silently enjoying for a while now. It was then that I heard the song The Face of God, and it felt entirely unholy and righteous at the same time. I think I listened to the whole album in one sitting, and I was mesmerized.
The music sounded complex yet perceived as remarkably smooth. It felt rigid and rugged, dark and profound, rebellious, and authoritative. I was roped in when I had heard the song “I learn the Hard Way.” It sounded different and dark but made me happy. The music itself felt quite disgusting or disturbing in the most brilliant way possible. It was beautiful in the same manner, the song “Away the Mirrors” is. Both played on an acoustic guitar rather than an electric, making something about the music feel creepy yet stunning. They blew my mind.
I’d recommend this album to any heavy metal and rock guitar fans—anyone who enjoys bands like WitchCraft, Earthless, and Pentagram.
Josh Martin’s backbeat was full of energy and blew me away. I dug the album. They’re doing something that hasn’t been regularly done before or in a long time. Some songs felt like sunshine blues-rock. It was an odd mix that I think ended up in the benefit of a great album.
Written in Drag City’s words, “Listen close, and you can hear the world’s collective neck snapping as it bangs its head to this powerful trio. Riff-heavy rock from Pennsylvania.”
Death From Above is a Canadian rock duo established in 2001. The first time Jesse F. Keeler (bassist) and Sebastien Grainger (vocalist and drummer) got together, they hardly lasted. However, they made several comebacks throughout the years as an impossibly brilliant duo.
The Black Keys are a rock band established in 2001, Ohio. The group comprises Dan Auerbach (guitarist and vocalist) and Patrick Carney (drummer). They began recording in basements and self-producing their records to several record labels. But with their sheer talent, they were quickly noticed.
“Someone Saved My Life Tonight” was released on the 23rd of June in 1975 as a part of the album “Captin Fantastic And The Dirty Brown Cowboy.”
I hadn’t really realized the lyrics much when I first heard it, nor the story behind it. I simply liked the way it sounded. But the song is so much more than something lovely.
Elton John was allegedly soon to marry Linda Woodrow, whom he had known for two years. Even though he felt trapped in the relationship, they were to get married, even Woodrow’s family was expecting it. Sometime in 1968 (before he had been famous), Elton, Linda, and Bernie Taupin were sharing a flat in Furlong Road in Highbury, London. The opening lyrics (written by Taupin) refer to this, “When I see those East End lights.” The wedding was less than a month away.
“We went, and we found a flat in Mill Hill. We bought furniture for it,” Linda said in 2019, just a while after the movie Rocket Man was released. “I went off to the antique store and bought myself an engagement ring because neither he nor Bernie [Taupin] had any money. So I was kind of having to support them.”
After a long night of drinking with blues singer Long John Baldry and Bernie, they had convinced him not to go through with it. The relationship was dry and loveless, leaving Elton feeling incredibly trapped and confused. He came home around four o’clock in the morning, quite intoxicated, and called the whole thing off.
Leaving Linda didn’t only take a dangerous toll on Elton but also on Linda herself. “Yes. I was kind of devastated because we’d planned so much for the wedding, and then suddenly he comes in and says, ‘sorry it’s all over,'” she said in an interview.
Linda had also said she was upset she wasn’t in the movie and, “I hope he hasn’t forgotten about me.”
In the lyrics, Bernie wrote, “And someone saved my life tonight, sugar bear (sugar bear) / You almost had your hooks in me, didn’t you, dear?” quite literally set out Elton’s emotions into the open.
However, the lyrics, “Someone saved my life tonight,” refer to his suicide attempt. “I never realized the passin’ hours of evening showers / A slip noose hangin’ in my darkest dreams / I’m strangled by your haunted social scene.“
Elton tried to kill himself (i imagine before he had come clean and ended things) with a gas oven. Bernie had found him lying on the floor after he allegedly stuck his head into it.
“I really had staged a completely ridiculous suicide bid that involved sticking my head in a gas oven. Rather than tell my fiancée I’d made a mistake, that was my brilliant plan to try and get out of the wedding,” Elton wrote for a piece in The Guardian.
“For the most part, most of the things I write are an amalgam of several subjects or feelings that I then cut and paste to create one entity,” Taupin once stated. “Not always, but a lot of the time, I guess you could even say that with this song, the crux of its meaning is sort of surrounded with visual props that are intended to help set the scene for the main event.”
The emotional single was published in 1975, recorded in 1974, and rose to number 4 on Billboard Hot 100. The song is a rollercoaster of emotions, the situation casting shadows on both Elton and Linda (though she went on to say in 2019, “I mean, it was a long time ago and he’s such a superstar now, I was way, way back in his past.”)
With much ease, I can say Elton John is my all-time favorite artist. Everything about him is bloody magnificent, from his heartfelt lyrics to his big glasses- that only match about a third of how big his personality. Here are 9 things you probably didn’t know about Sir Elton John. Keep Reading
Some of the world’s best music was created in the 70s. Not everything was disco, sequins, and cocaine. We were introduced to glam – and punk – rock and roll, funk, smooth jazz, and heavy metal in this decade. With great honor of music from the 70s, here are 15 albums from the best decade of all time. There will be a lot of Elton John; I couldn’t help myself. Keep Reading
