hip hop
Adam Sweeting
Trailing a string of Grammys and multi-platinum albums, and now a successful actress and purveyor of her own "My Life" perfume for good measure, you wouldn't think R&B legend Blige had much left to prove. However, she evidently sees it differently, and she ripped through this compressed and streamlined Roundhouse set as if lives were at stake.The show was handily timed to help stoke up anticipation for her forthcoming album The London Sessions, due in November and featuring contributions from Disclosure, Emeli Sandé, Sam Smith and more. This is evidently a talismanic project designed to Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
She may only be 23, but Iggy Azalea got off to a good start with those of us a good decade older last month when the video accompanying her single “Fancy” - an homage to 90s teen comedy Clueless - debuted online. Nostalgia sells, of course: any idiot with access to the nightwear department at Primark, where right now pyjamas featuring Alicia Silverstone and the rest share shelf space with My Little Pony, could tell you that. But fans of the film will know that its imagery, if not its heart, is the perfect accompaniment to the stylish swagger the Australian rapper brings to the verses, Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
It’s strange that probably most of the best-known Brazilian artists here are over 60 and from one state, Bahia - those being Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Maria Bethania and Tom Zé. Brazil is the size of Europe, though, and of course there are younger generations from other states. One of the leading new voices is Karol Conka, whose Brazilian electronica is as fresh as anything you are likely to hear this year. Her breakthrough hit “Boa Noite” kicks off and ends the album (see video, overleaf) in which she raps that she is “totalmente livre e leve ao mesmo tempo que ferve” (“totally free and Read more ...
joe.muggs
Trip-hop is much maligned as a genre, and understandably so. One of the worst names for a style this side of “folktronica”, it rapidly came to mean anything downtempo that wasn't a standard indie rock format – including plenty of the blandest music ever made. As the late Nineties drew on, it and other experimental electronica faded together into the even vaguer audio Prozac of the “chillout” section, all holiday show sound-beds and CDs on supermarket checkout displays for stressed shoppers to impulse-buy as their children pestered them for sweets.Think back, though, to the glories of Massive Read more ...
joe.muggs
Ever since becoming a parent – given that it's my job to look at how music connects to its audience – thoughts about what gets children engaged with it have rarely been far from my mind. It brings home a lot of questions about how much of our reactions to music are learned and how much instinctive, about the functions it serves in our lives, about whether old platitudes about music bringing people together carry any weight and so on. And occasionally it makes me listen with fresh ears too.In particular it's been fascinating to see how the visceral appeal of certain types of grassroots music Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
With that warm, slightly husky voice of hers - not unlike that of an old friend at the other end of the telephone - Suzanne Vega has always been one of those singers I’d happily listen to reading the Yellow Pages. To be honest, there are parts of the often mystical, always curious Tales From the Queen of Pentacles that would probably have been easier to understand if she had done, even if the names in Vega’s directory turned out to be as ill-fitting as Mother Teresa, the Knight of Wands and Macklemore.It’s an interesting one to unwrap, this first collection of new material in seven years, Read more ...
joe.muggs
In a world where everyone is expected to be a “brand”, Gilles Peterson sets some very interesting precedents. Probably best known as a radio DJ – currently on BBC 6 Music, plus his globally syndicated Worldwide show – he also remains as in demand to play in clubs as at any time in his 25-year career, he runs the Brownswood label, and has his own Worldwide Festival, currently with winter and summer editions in different locations in France plus four years running in Singapore and one in Shanghai. And somehow his individual personality remains at the heart of all of this.His annual award show Read more ...
joe.muggs
Oh dear, there it is – the career-plateau pot-shot at “journalists” and “critics”. It comes about halfway through the album, on the otherwise really good 1970s blues-rock-sampling “Looking Down the Barrel”, and it cements a sad feeling that's been growing throughout the record that here is an artist who's achieved some success and now has nothing to talk about except what it's like to be an artist who's achieved some success.See, the problem is not the pot-shot, but the fact that Tinie Tempah needs to make it. Having achieved big-time pay-day and proved his talent, he should be cutting loose Read more ...
joe.muggs
The hip hop music of California has always been deeply stoned, and the wave of instrumental beats that have emerged from LA in recent years have taken this to quite some extreme. The scene around the Brainfeeder collective and Low End Theory club have, in fact, produced some of the most deeply psychedelic music of the 21st century, and Sam Baker aka Samiyam is one of the key figures within that.Baker's profile is relatively low outside the scene but he is a foundational figure within it, and his influence is subtly felt more widely: key UK label Hyperdub released an EP in 2008, and electronic Read more ...
joe.muggs
A casual observer might know Atlanta-born CeeLo Green as the rotund soul man who struck commercial gold twice in the last decade, as half of Gnarls Barkley, and then with his own “Fuck You!” in 2010. But the 39-year-old has a long and rich musical life aside from these projects, including most of the 1990s with the rap group Goodie Mob, part of the Dungeon Family collective which also includes the world-conquering Outkast as members and was instrumental in the rise to dominance of the Southern States in the hip hop world.This is Goodie Mob's first album in eight years and their first since Read more ...
joe.muggs
When I used to work for the much-missed Face magazine, there was a phrase regularly used, only half in jest: “three things is a trend”. Which means that, unlikely though it might sound, hip hop marching bands are now a trend in leftfield club music. First came the Hot 8 Brass Band, then the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, both from the projects of New Orleans, and both bringing a hip hop and funk sensibility to the generations-old brass tradition of that city – and now come the “peace-lovin' aggro dance” Riot Jazz Brass Band from Manchester, who regularly perform on stage with popular local rap/ Read more ...
James Williams
Just how loyal is the average hip hop fan? This was the question on many lips after the fiasco that the previous Wu-Tang tour in 2011 turned out to be. Their last sojourn on these shores was marred by members dropping out at the last minute and a general lack of organisation. There was pressure this time for the band to deliver.Entitled “The Twentieth Anniversary Tour” – it has been two decades since the release of their career-defining debut Enter the Thirty-Six Chambers – there was an air of jubilance at the Brixton Academy as everyone’s favourite warm-up DJ, the ubiquitous DJ Semtex, ran Read more ...