hip hop
Black Cab Sessions: music TV catches up with the net?Wednesday, 29 February 2012
Tonight on Channel 4, a new music series begins with a fantastic premise. A group of music obsessives drive around the USA in a London black cab, finding interesting musicians and recording them performing and talking in the back of the cab. Sounds... Read more... |
CD: Robert Glasper Experiment - Black RadioSunday, 26 February 2012
Where the creative interconnections between hip hop, jazz and soul are concerned, Robert Glasper proves himself a master on Black Radio. Featuring an impressive roll call of guest singers and rappers, the pianist has finally made the album... Read more... |
The Grammys: A Night of Surprises?Monday, 13 February 2012
Well, who could have predicted that? For once the Grammys proved that the US recording industry establishment is up for the challenge of reflecting the sense of a world in social and cultural flux by throwing surprise after surprise, bombshell after... Read more... |
Naturally 7, BarbicanWednesday, 08 February 2012
Naturally 7 represent the point where close-harmony singing, beatboxing and spookily accurate instrumental imitation meet. The US septet call it "vocal play" - the voice as instrument - and last night they sent dopamine levels soaring in the... Read more... |
CD: Lana Del Rey – Born to DieWednesday, 01 February 2012
The dust will eventually settle around the flapdoodle about withdrawn albums, whether Lana Del Rey is authentic, a fabulist construct or rubbish live. And when it does, this, the debut album, will be left. There’s no doubt that “Video Games” and its... Read more... |
Manchester Rising: Celebrating the City's Vibrant Club SceneFriday, 27 January 2012
I first heard Zed Bias's Biasonic Hot Sauce – Birth of the Nanocloud last autumn. He may have been one of the key players in the London-centric sound of UK garage, but he was never of that scene. Based in Milton Keynes through the first phase of his... Read more... |
Download: VersA Beatz - ImogenSunday, 22 January 2012
I've seen some genre intersections in my time, but gangsta ambient takes the biscuit. Baghdad born South Londoner VersA Beatz began as a grime producer, but like many has moved from that genre's hyped-up energy into the slower, more menacing... Read more... |
CD: Gonjasufi - Mu.zz.leWednesday, 18 January 2012
Debut albums often set the bar high. How are you going to top a Psychocandy or a Piper At The Gates of Dawn? The answer is, not easily and, with rare exceptions, not at once. All those ideas that had been growing forever splurge out in those first... Read more... |
The Correspondents, Café de ParisSaturday, 14 January 2012
“He’s a praying mantis,” said the girl next to me, “but sexy.” True enough, even if Mr Bruce is a gangly long-limbed performer rather than an actual insect. I’ve seen him twice this year already, and he’s completely compelling on stage and as a... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Musician GonjasufiSaturday, 14 January 2012
Gonjasufi, AKA Sumach Ecks (b 1978) was raised in San Diego by a Mexican mother and an American-Ethiopian father. His musical ability first came to more than local prominence when he appeared on the Flying Lotus album Los Angeles in 2008. His own... Read more... |
CD: Wiley - Evolve or be ExtinctWednesday, 11 January 2012
It's become a fairly common trope for herbally enhanced rappers to hype up their individuality by referring to themselves as an “alien”, but with Wiley you could believe it. In “Can I Get a Taxi”, the odd extended skit that forms the centrepiece of... Read more... |
CD of the Year: Rustie - Glass SwordsMonday, 19 December 2011
If 2011 was the year when dance music's natural tendency to fragmentation was taken to extremes, this album was the one that bound those fragments together into one demented but scintillating vision. Russell Whyte – Rustie – comes from a very... Read more... |
