De La Soul – Exodus
De La Soul’s contributions to hip-hop over the past three decades are mighty, but the Long Island trio has often been challenged by its own creativity. In an era where music is becoming increasingly accessible, De La’s catalogue has been noticeably absent from iTunes, Spotify, and other free and subscription-based platforms due to issues with sample clearances. It’s a war Posdnuos, Dave, and Maseo have been waging for years: How do we make music on our own terms without interference from lawyers, labels, and other industry gatekeepers?
It’s an unfortunate position for one of hip-hop’s most innovative acts to find itself in, but the group has made strides toward reclaiming control of its own destiny in recent years. De La gave away its entire catalog via download in 2014, an act it followed by raising more than $600,000 through Kickstarter to record its long-awaited eighth album, And The Anonymous Nobody…. Fortunately, the final product sweats for every last cent. An eclectic genre mashup with an enviable roster of guests, And The Anonymous Nobody… bristles with creative rebirth and more than a touch of hard-earned, “we’re back” braggadocio.
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Wu-Tang Clan – Don’t Stop
Raekwon opens the song with a nod to the Wu’s famous cut “C.R.E.A.M.,” spitting, “Talking ’bout that cream, leaning in the tower/ Pisa, seven Visas, got condos in the jungle.” Method Man also uses “C.R.E.A.M.” as a jumping off point, but throws in some casual references to the Lion King and offers this hilarious boast, “You players try to ball from the sidelines/ While I’m aging like fine wine/ You internet thugging somebody’s timeline.”
Along with “Don’t Stop,” the Silicon Valley soundtrack features a new song from Danny Brown, “Kool Aid,” as well as offerings from DJ Shadow and Nas, Hudson Mohawke and Remy Banks, Too $hort and more.
Read the rest of this article at RollingStone
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Oliver ( Featuring De La Soul ) – Heart Attack
“Heart Attack” is the second single to be released from the L.A.-based dance duo’s upcoming debut album titled “Full Circle”, which will be released by Interscope Records on August 25th. The previous single, “Electrify,” has racked up over 1.6 million Spotify streams and was included on the soundtrack to the EA Sports’ FIFA 17.
Oliver, which is Vaughn Oliver and Oliver “Oligee” Goldstein, have also announced new upcoming tour dates in September, in addition to two previous announced shows in July. All upcoming dates are listed below.
Drawn together in 2010 by a shared love of production, vinyl, vintage music gear, and modern art and design, Oliver established their sonic prowess on EPs Dirty Talk (2012) Mechanical (2013), and Light Years Away (2014). Their music — sleek, smart, and relentlessly propulsive — was embraced by Busy P, Justice, Destructo, French house legend Lifelike, and A-Trak, who dropped Mechanical and Light Years Away plus a collaborative 2013 track, “Zamboni” on his venerable Fool’s Gold label. While Oliver’s reputation rose with the surging force of the international EDM scene, the duo played mega-festivals with such titans as Zedd, Dillon Francis, and Chromeo, while their tracks became dancefloor weapons in the underground venues of their home base of Los Angeles and beyond.
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Arcade Fire – Creature Comfort
In 2007, the New Yorker ran an essay about how white indie rock had come to ignore the black musical tradition, as exemplified through Arcade Fire’s culturally dominant yet completely grooveless songs. “If there is a trace of soul, blues, reggae, or funk in Arcade Fire, it must be philosophical; it certainly isn’t audible,” Sasha Frere-Jones wrote.
At the time, Arcade Fire were one of—if not the best—contemporary arena rock bands in the world. Still, the notion that they were kind of huffy and puffy and altogether very white must’ve lodged deeply in their creative consciousness, because a decade later they seem like a different band completely. 2013’s Reflektor was overstuffed with messy ideas about how to make people dance, while comeback single “Everything Now” was a fun listen but a clear put-on—like the band had asked itself, “What if we made an ABBA song?”
“Creature Comfort,” their newest song from upcoming record Everything Now, is the mature culmination of this Arcade Fire 2.0 project—a more appropriate integration of their former arena rock appeal, and their dance floor ambitions. The hypnotic, chugging synthesizer pacing the song sounds like a car cruising down a highway at night—the sonic realization of the band’s decade-old dream about the dark mystery of the city. Win Butler’s speak-songy vocal about boys and girls who hate themselves makes him sound like James Murphy, who also regurgitated a thousand rock influences onto the dance floor; Regine Chassagne is ecstatic and wild as she sings about the interior debate caused by craving suicide. (There’s a deliciously macabre little detail when Butler sings of a friend who claims she almost killed herself: “Filled up the bathtub and put on our first record.”)
The song, which came with a campy cereal-based promotion suggesting we were overloaded on Ritalin, addresses the same ideas of materialism and bourgeoise that have always interested the band. “Creature comfort, make it painless,” Butler and Chassagne sing, and that comfort could mean a thousand things to a thousand people. But they’re not lecturing about the shallowness of modern life, a rare but welcome shift in their narrative perspective. Instead they’re consumed by the eerie textures of the music, which builds to a hysteric release, and more appropriately scores their unsettling concern that something isn’t quite right with the human experience. (The influence of song collaborators, Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter and Portishead’s Geoff Barrow, are deeply felt.) You can dance if you want, but it doesn’t sound like they’ll be bothered if you don’t, because there’s bigger things going on.
Read the rest of this article at Spin
Dizzee Rascal – Space
Haters will say Dizzee Rascal’s new album announcement is him jumping on the bandwagon. A rap album after years of dance anthems? He’s realised grime pays and hip hop’s going multi-platinum, so he’s heading back to his roots. But the haters are those who turned their noses up at “Hype”, Dizzee’s last single with Calvin Harris, maintaining he’d ditched grime for good, and tactically forgot about Pagans, Dizzee’s EP from 2014, and “Nutcrackerz”, his track with Giggs.
So Dizzee Rascal is back with his first album in four years. Raskit, riffing on his “rascal” moniker, will be a 16-track rap album, out 23 July. “It’s a real rap-based album at the moment, there ain’t really no dance music on there,” Dizzee previously said, and thank god.
“Space”, the third track on the album, and the album single, out today, is closer to Pagans than any of the rapper’s earlier work. Like “Couple Of Stacks”, in which he beheads and chops people up in his hilariously repulsive accompanying video, the lyrics are more abstract than gritty, more gruesome than playful.”Can’t find enough time to dine on rappers, all of these MCs are looking like tapas/ F*** all the swine and their bodily gases, roll with the rastas,” he raps on “Space”‘s second verse. Sadly, the video, of Dizzee outlined in silver and bobbing up in space, is an impossibly limp follow-up to “Couple Of Stacks”.
The song itself however, is a promising start for Raskit, and lyrically hits Pagans out of the park. Like Boy In Da Corner’s “Sittin’ Here” evoked a lonely boy, “Space” evokes a lonely man. His big, empty yellow corner has been replaced by empty black matter. His lyrics are angry too. He’s tired of MCs berating him for quitting grime and selling out: “Why do they make me feel guilty for gettin’ this money like my soul’s in tatters?”
And he’s tired of past enemies still gnawing on calcified old arguments: “All of my enemies broken and shattered, sprinkling hate, they’re all over the shop and they’re scattered/ Chatting my name till this day and I’m flattered, I am not easily rattled.” Wiley, we’re looking at you.
Read the rest of this article at GQ
