Potholes In My Blog: Listen to Rome Fortune and Jacques Greene’s Ethereal New Song “Pure” | ![]() |
- Listen to Rome Fortune and Jacques Greene’s Ethereal New Song “Pure”
- Potholes Premiere: Listen to Blockhead’s Stunning “Fire Is Warm”
- Listen: Gordy Michael Gives Us a Tour of His ‘Sketchbook’
- Ghostface Killah Announces New Concept Album, Streams Lead Single “Love Don’t Live Here No More”
- Potholes Premiere: BK Beats & Aaron Moreno Flip Kirby, Khia and More On New Track “Shine”
- R.I.P. Big Bank Hank of The Sugarhill Gang
- Potholes Premiere: Eric Lau Serves Up The Sonically Rich “Rise Up” Instrumental
- Listen: Eminem Enlists Danny Brown, Royce Da 5’9″, Big Sean & More For “Detroit Vs. Everybody”
- The Stuyvesants – Fine
Posted: 11 Nov 2014 10:52 AM PST
I still don’t know where I fall on the Rome Fortune fan spectrum. I’m aware of his work, but I’ve yet to find that one song that does it for me. In spite of that I can say one thing: Fortune has a great ear for beats. Jacques Greene laces him with an ethereal dream-pop soundscape that is the real star of the show on “Pure,” the latest cut from the ATL artist. Across the choice production, Rome spits personal bars like, “I appreciated the pain it makes me relevant.” Between the airy instrumental and Fortune’s gravel vocals, there’s a nice dichotomy to the whole affair. You can listen to “Pure” below. |
Potholes Premiere: Listen to Blockhead’s Stunning “Fire Is Warm”
Posted: 11 Nov 2014 09:13 AM PST
That sentiment remains true on “Fire Is Warm,” the latest single off Bells & Whistles. We’re proud to premiere it to y’all today, both as longtime fans of Blockhead and as lovers of instrumental music in general. In addition to featuring absolutely flooring drums, the track throws so many samples and sounds at you that it’s easy to get lost—in a good way, of course. There’s just so much to dig into here, from the opening folksy vocals to the growing layers of instruments and everything in between. And that’s not even including the stunning second half and its “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”-esque breakdown! You can listen to “Fire is Warm” below. You can pre-order Bells and Whistles here. |
Posted: 11 Nov 2014 09:10 AM PST
If you’d like to hear more of Gordy Michael’s sketches make sure to peep the stream below. Cop it the project here. [ |
Posted: 11 Nov 2014 08:39 AM PST
36 Seasons is apparently a concept album that finds GFK portraying “a Staten Island vigilante inspired by a quest for personal retribution and bent on saving his community from the grips of crooked authority and urban decay.” And he’ll do so with some help from the likes of AZ, Kool G. Rap, and Pharoahe Monch, among others. In addition to the music, the record will feature 20 pages of artwork from comic book artists, which was packaged by the same guy (Matthew Rosenberg) who worked on the art for GFK’s Twelve Reasons to Die.
You can hear the single and peep the 36 Seasons track list below. [via]
Track list:
- The Battlefield [ft. Kool G Rap, AZ, Tre Williams]
- Love Don't Live Here No More [ft. Kandace Springs]
- Here I Go Again [ft. AZ, Rell]
- Loyalty [ft. Kool G Rap, Nems]
- It's a Thin Line Between Love and Hate [ft. The Revelations]
- The Dog's of War [ft. Shawn Wigs, Kool G Rap]
- Emergency Procedure [ft. Pharoahe Monch]
- Double Cross [ft. AZ]
- Bamboo's Lament [ft. Kandace Springs]
- Pieces of the Puzzle [ft. AZ]
- Homicide [ft. Nems, Shawn Wigs]
- Blood in the Streets [ft. AZ]
- Call My Name
- I Love You For All Seasons [ft. The Revelations]
Posted: 11 Nov 2014 07:37 AM PST
You can hear “Shine” below.
Posted: 11 Nov 2014 07:30 AM PST
Below, you can hear “Rapper’s Delight” and watch some videos of the Sugarhill Gang. R.I.P. Big Bank Hank.
Posted: 11 Nov 2014 06:30 AM PST
You can hear the instrumental below and buy the album here.
Posted: 11 Nov 2014 05:50 AM PST
You can hear “Detroit Vs. Everybody” below and pre-order Shady XV here.
Posted: 11 Nov 2014 04:15 AM PST
The Stuyvesants – Fine
Self-released: 2014
The Stuyvesants deserve more recognition. Ripped off by Jaden Smith's track "The Coolest" without attribution for their beat, they responded gracefully with a simple request for credit. Surrounded by industry figures using their stacks of cash as bragging rights, they made each album free to stream on their website. Living in a world where musical genres constantly accelerate forward at the speed of sound, they found their niche and therein settled snugly.The fact that Fine draws its title from past Stuyvesants projects The Finer Things and Refined demonstrates this duo's tendency to stick to their guns. In this case, those pistols entail instrumental hip-hop constructed from carefully selected samples, the only vocals present being the chopped singing from performers of the past. There are no guest features, autotuned ballads, explosive verses, or other modern trappings of hip-hop to be found here. This record is dedicated exclusively to the smooth, simple sound of soulful beats made from a reverence for the past. Listen to the title track, "Ice Breaker," or "Come To Me," and you'll know exactly where these guys are coming from.
An adherence to their own tradition also finds the Stuyvesants satiating Fine with a fat selection of lean cuts. Only two of the 20 tracks on Fine go past two minutes and thirty seconds, and even those stay well away from the three-minute mark. This less-is-more approach to pacing is one of the album's greatest strengths; if a particular beat isn't giving you the fever, it won't be long before it's escorted away and replaced with the next offering. It also helps that many of these songs rely on loops that would become excessively tedious if stretched for too long. Structuring behest the duo’s vision, rather than conforming to standard song lengths, kept most all these records as fresh as green produce.
Still, despite the snappy cadence, Fine can feel a little stale if you're listening for the long haul. The Stuyvesants have made significant progress over previous efforts in their sample selection techniques, but the core tenants of their music remain largely the same. If you've heard either volume of The Finer Things or Refined, you probably possess a reasonable idea of what you're in for. Sample-based hip-hop that consistently draws from a particular era has a tendency to stick to some familiar sonic textures, to the point in which you could probably sneakily place songs from Remixes or Brooklyn's Finest in this record's tracklist and successfully convince someone they belong there. To some, that familiarity may be the album's saving grace, a nostalgic trip down the memory lane of hip-hop's roots. To others, it may project a feeling of complacency, a lazy rehash of past ideas that fail to push the genre forward in any interesting ways. I stand in the center of these two extremes; these beats feel like classics down to their very core, but a larger presence of defining elements like the chugging percussion in "Shakers & Movers" would have gone a long way in making each track memorable.
The phenomenon of fantastic beats losing their appeal when played back-to-back-to-back isn't exclusive to Fine, however, and the proof of its quality can be found in the way each song sounds divine in isolation. "Synthetica" sulks along the lit path of a smoky groove, "Come To Me" sounds like the echoes of a night long gone, and "Sounds Like The Sun" closes out the proceedings with an ear-meltingly gorgeous groove. The Stuveysants might not have an abundance of new ideas, but the ideas they're using still work just as fine as they need to.
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