21stcenturyschi

Considering how much I love the first four Arcade Fire albums, I am still kind of baffled to this day at the blatantly quality drop on their last album, Everything Now which lacked in about every way it could have, from the vocals to the lyrics and the electronics, despite the band proving they could make great dance music on Reflektor. And as much as I like Reflektor, it was nice to see them return to the indie rock of their earliest days and the heartland rock of The Suburbs on the thrilling ... read more

One of the cool parts about the internet is that if you show you have some talent for songwriting, you could get picked up by even Tyler, the Creator, and earn a major label this way. So with his essential additions to Flower Boy, and the album Apricot, which turned out well despite the home recordings, Rex's major label debut Pony should have been great, but that was absolutely not the case and the very basic synthpop and indie pop tunes, as well as the occasional cringey vocals and lyrics ... read more

It's Almost Dry is Pusha T doing what he always does best, not much more or less. This album is in large parts produced by Ye and Pharell, two essential producers in Pusha T's catalogue, and both are in peak form here. Ye's instrumentals have uplifting chopped up soul samples straight out of his College Dropout era. Pharell's beats are some of his best in a while too, especially on "Let The Smokers Shine The Coupes" where the grand horn samples almost have a glitch effect. The two ... read more

If you want to hear the inspiration for Man Plays the Horn, listen to the intro track monologue, which describes jazz once being the dominant genre of music amongst black Americans, but then hip-hop becoming the zeitgeist, due to jazz no longer being affordable in urban communities while anyone with a microphone could rap. I can't say this is really an album topic I've heard done before and it can also be found in the instrumentals with how perfectly the worlds of jazz and hip-hop are blended. ... read more