Miguel - “The Thrill”
Miguel’s upcoming record is shaping up to be a solid album of the year contender.
In the United States R&B has been hopelessly conjoined to hip-hop, suffocated at its center trying to serve a nonnative constituency. (That’s not counting R&B’s middle-age-aimed adult-contemporary wing, which mostly aims to remind listeners of the music they grew up on by polishing up its rough edges.) Generally the genre has come to live in hip-hop’s shadow; most singers choose to stand close to it in hopes of catching some refracted glare.
An especially loaded Jon Caramanica paragraph.
thenext2shine asked: looking for an email from you. would like to send you a project of ours.
Best way to reach me is to message me on Twitter @evanryt and link me to any music you’ve got. I listen to everything I’m sent and always appreciate the submissions.
Dwele - “What Profit”
Hot damn the new Dwele album is good. What’s it going to take to get this guy a fraction of Frank Ocean’s press?
grumpnbind asked: hahahaha way to call pitchfork out. much love<3
Thanks for the love.
I should clarify that I’ve got nothing against Pitchfork. Actually, I’m a huge fan: Some of my absolute favorite music writers contribute to it, and I’ve been reading it almost daily for the last 11 years. I can’t imagine what I would have listened to in college without it.
I think the People’s List project, though, revealed a disconnect between the site’s readership, which apparently listens to indie-rock to the exclusion of just about everything else, and the site’s ambitions of being a fairly comprehensive music recommendation resource.
I’ve had variations of this conversation a lot with friends who write or edit for publications with a very specific (or niche) readership. Like it or not, that readership begins to dictate (and limit) your coverage.
strictlyalright asked: Have you listened to Elle Varner's album yet?
Yes, but only in small doses. It’s a solid album, but the aggressive tics in Varner’s voice make it impossible for me to get through it in one sitting. Maybe she should, I dunno, take it down a notch or two on the next one.
live-love-libra asked: There is NOTHING wrong with Jhene Aikos music and to put her in a sentence with a "runway model" that doesnt make a bit of sense. but of course you like Beyonce so I wouldn't expect you to understand what is sounds like when someone write their own music. I guess you're not used to genuine emotions.
Tumblr doesn’t notify me when I get these messages, so I’m responding to some pretty old letters today. This one is referring to a comment I made in early June about Jhene Aiko’s air of runway-model detachment.
Thanks for the feedback. I’ve come around to Jhene a bit, and have posted favorable-ish writeups about a couple of her recent tracks.
Lloyd ft. Wale - “All of Me”
This is pretty good, but just imagine if that Wale verse was an Andre verse. What could have been…
I haven’t written anything about the new Trey Songz album yet
because it is really bad. I had high hopes for this one, too.
