Snotty Nose Rez Kids has never shied away from dealing with difficult subjects, and their fourth album Life After is no exception. Released on Oct. 22, the album explores themes of quarantine depression, addiction, and racism, mixed with a musical complexity that includes elements of punk, hardcore, and R&B. Young[Read More…]
Tag: Hip Hop
38 Spesh holds back the potential of Benny the Butcher and 38 Spesh’s ‘Trust The Sopranos’
Riding a train powered by the gritty, imaginative imagery of street crime and new-age lyricism, Griselda Records member Benny the Butcher’s 2020 and 2021 albums have been consistently potent. 38 Spesh, one of Benny’s lesser-known yet widely accredited contemporaries, collaborates with Benny on Trust The Sopranos, an 11-track LP. To[Read More…]
First Impressions: ‘1992 Deluxe’ – Princess Nokia
Keira Seidenberg: While Princess Nokia (Destiny Frasqueri) is often thought to bring a feminist edge to the generally male dominated hip hop genre, 1992 Deluxe (2017) is not an album solely dedicated to deconstructing gender-based social stratification. In “Tomboy” and “Saggy Denim,” where Nokia tackles issues of femininity and gender stereotypes,[Read More…]
Pop Rhetoric: Drake wins the game of egos
In Dr. Dre’s 1993 tripartite diss track called “Fuck Wit Dre Day,” Dre delivered the ethos of rap beef: “You fucked with me, now it’s a must that I fuck with you.” Diss tracks historically do not get radio play—partially because of their violent content, and partially because rappers focus[Read More…]
Album Review: Atrocity Exhibition – Danny Brown
Danny Brown doesn’t make albums for the faint-of-heart. Throughout his career, Brown has pushed the limits of what one can say on a mainstream rap release, as well as the genre’s sonic boundaries. As he shifts rapidly between coked-out rampages, stoned relaxation, explicit sexual descriptions,[Read More…]
Album Review: EVOL – Future
A question that might come to mind when analyzing trap music is whether the lyrical content is in fact an accurate representation of the rapper's selves and their views. With this question in mind, what can one make of Future? As his life fell apart in recent years, his music[Read More…]
Staff Round-Up: Kanye West’s The Life Of Pablo (TLOP)
As a long-time Kanye West fan, I knew The Life of Pablo (TLOP) would deliver in terms of innovation, and considering Kanye’s career progression it was easy to guess that TLOP would feature heavily over-processed samples and gospel-esque backing beats with strong hooks and stronger guest artists. Admittedly, the best[Read More…]
Album Review: Anderson .Paak — Malibu
Anderson .Paak represents a new wave of artists that don’t fit neatly into one genre. Rather, he stands in the hazy divide between them. Featured on Dr Dre’s Compton, The Game’s The Documentary 2.5, and Goldlink’s And After that, We Didn’t Talk, .Paak seemed to be everywhere in 2015, primed[Read More…]
Album Review: Kodak Black – Institution
In his self-proclaimed 2015 summertime jam “Ran Up a Check,” Kodak Black playfully commands his listener to call him “butthead,” “cause his mind’s on your ass.” Observed in a vacuum, the lyric is juvenile and silly, yet paired with the track’s ebullient, DJ Mustard-evoking production, the lyric feels authentic—a snapshot[Read More…]
From the Viewpoint: Chance the Rapper, Family Matters Tour
There is definitely something strange about showing up alone to a tour titled “Family Matters.” Not that everyone had brought their grandparents to the Olympia—as I was secretly hoping they would—but the title of the show insisted on celebrating the purest and most complete type of love that, and as[Read More…]