Wassup y'all!
I'm very proud to introduce "R&B Diamondz" to you, a new playlist I'm lead curating for French rap/R&B website BackPackerz with the help of an A-Team of curators (s/o Elodie Sophie, Antoine Bosque, Simon Da Silva and Christophe Freitas).
We're hand-picking new urban R&B and soulful music gems, primary focus being on up & coming US/Canada/UK artists, but of course more established and/or French/International artists will have their fair share.
Playlist is available on most streaming platforms ( Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, YouTube, etc.) and will be updated every 2 weeks with 10 new entries, 69 total songs. If you wonder why 69, do I really need to spell it out, lol?
Feel free to subscribe, share, like, etc. Well, the usual ;)
Let me know your favorite songs or if you have any suggestions.
For those of you who can read French, here's more info:
http://thebackpackerz.com/radio/rnb-diamondz-playlist
Also, don't forget about the #FakeGangstaRapCoversChallenge! I did receive a few hilarious visuals, but I'd like to get more before sharing the best ones with you. So please send them to contact@kicksgroove.com.
In the meantime, here's the music I've been listening to this week.
Hope you'll enjoy it! |
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Payroll Giovanni - January 30th
Temperatures went as low as -12°F (-24°C) this week in Detroit. I wouldn't be surprised if Payroll Giovanni's frozen mobb music had something to do with it. Boss Yo Life Up Gang is coming *Jon Snow's voice*.
Favorite tracks: "Boss Shit", "On Her Own", "Keep Count", "Do What I Do"
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Droop-E - Droopiter
E-40's eldest son is back with a short yet cohesive self-produced EP. Only featured artists are Sick Wid It labelmates Cousin Fik, Stresmatic and Jame$TooCold. His signature space age function music would be the perfect soundtrack to any flying saucers sideshow out there.
Favorite tracks: "Own Zone", "Carina Nebula", "Goin' Up"
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KD - Tuxedo Junction
Who still does 110 minute long double albums in 2019, seriously? Birmingham, Alabama rapper KD does. As a clearance of 12 years of previously unreleased material before moving on to the next chapter under a new moniker, Daniel Payne. A crossroads in his career, sort of, therefore the Tuxedo Junction title referring a local streetcar station by Tuxedo Park (and the famous 1940 song by jazzman Glen Miller). Obviously, there's a few fillers among the 30 tracks, but overall this is honest and well-crafted country rap tunes. Let's be thankful, this is getting rarer and rarer.
Favorite tracks: "Everywhere We Go", "Young, Black & Dangerous", "When You See", "Just Me"
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38 Spesh - 5 Shots
Who said grimey New York rap was dead? Certainly not 38 Spesh! Eastcoast Renaissance coming from upstate, Rochester to be exact. Check out the album he released last year with Kool G Rap, you'll know what I'm talking about... His dope 5 Shots EP serves as a warm-up for his new album 38 Strategies Of Raw released yesterday. Haven't listened to this one yet, but I guess you can expect the same type of raw delivery over cold soulful samples and hard concrete beats.
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If you believe in those love songs, then you believed in James Ingram.
The '80s R&B singer with the signature werewolf-at-midnight falsetto howl (to quote this eulogy by Jason King, a great read if you're not familiar with his music) passed away on Wednesday after a long battle with brain cancer. He was only 66. Aside from a few exceptions (most notably the first half of his 1989 album It's Real, which was nothing but new jack swing, produced by Teddy Riley, Gene Griffin, Gerald Levert and Bernard Taylor), his repertoire mostly consisted of love ballads, pretty cheesy ones to be honest, but the cheesy kind you always come back to when your Netflix and chill strategy needs an extra push.
Despite his success, he never really achieved true international stardom. His most famous hits are in fact duets: "Baby, Come To Me" with Patti Austin (brilliantly interpolated by Lil Keke on his 2001 stoner anthem "Come And Smoke With Me") and "Yah Mo B There" with Michael McDonald (you MUST watch this cult version with Alfonso "Carlon Banks" Ribeiro!). Not to mention his juggernaut posse cut (if there's such thing as R&B posse cuts...) "Secret Garden (Sweet Seduction Suite)" with no less than Quincy Jones, Barry White, Al B. Sure! and El DeBarge. But of course he also had timeless songs on his own, including the 2 in the video above, here recorded live on NBC's The Tonight Show: "One Hundred Ways" (off his mentor Quincy Jones' 1981 album The Dude that launched his solo career and earned him his first Grammy Award for best male R&B performance) and "I Don't Have The Heart" (the only time he reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 as a solo act).
To my knowledge, he never collaborated with rappers, unless that's really him on "Players Haters", a 1997 track by obscure Merced, CA chicano rap group Felony off their only album Hustlers Ball. It kinda sounds like him, but it's so odd, isn't it? If anyone has more info about this, I'm all ears!
The following fun facts are verified tho: he had a cameo with his first group Revelation Funk in the 1975 blaxploitation movie Dolemite (that's him at 0:33), he co-wrote one of my favorite Michael Jackson's songs and he played the legendary bass line and keyboards on Shalamar's "A Night To Remember".
You never know what you got until it's over.
RIP James Ingram.
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Homelessness, gun violence, poverty, drugs, robberies, depression, prison, death, losing his best friend, ex-girlfriend losing their unborn child, you name it, Koran Streets been through it all. You can see his pain on his face. Literally. His scars are a vivid memory of when the East Bay rapper almost died when he was 12 years old. He spent 6 months in a coma after suffering horrible burns due to an unbelievably stupid domestic accident: his mother tried to rid him of lice using kerosene (wtf?!) and his dreadlocks caught fire as he was standing by the stove in the kitchen. Multiple skin grafts, finger amputations and, incidentally, jail stints later, Koran started rapping seriously with his siblings back when hyphy was fading away. His older brother is Stunnaman of The Pack (Lil B's group). His younger one, Doe Boy, is an actor/rapper like Koran. They both played in the 2013 movie Licks, while Koran also played in another indie ghetto movie, 2016's Kicks. Doe barely survived after getting shot during an attempted car-jacking on the set of their "I Must Be Ballin" music video, in which you can see Koran's coveted flashy Oldsmobile Delta 88 he had to sell afterwards to avoid any further trouble. A decade later, he's finally able to recreate his beloved first whip in the "2800" music video (a reference to the 2800 block of Sacramento Street in South Berkeley where he grew up). What could look like any other random music video of a rapper fronting in front of an old school car is actually a way for Koran to make peace with his past. Check out his You.Know.I.Got.It and Late 20s albums: real life shit, struggles and tribulations turned into raw unfiltered rap music used as a therapy, that's what they're all about!
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The Mo City Don putting his best Nate Dogg pimp suit on with the matching cane totally makes sense to me. That funky ass beat by Houston production duo Beanz N Kornbread (aka the haters!) is quite unfamiliar feel good territory for him tho, especially considering the fact that the song is from his latest album titled Sadism, with him wearing a straitjacket over a blood splatter on the cover. But hey, it's Z-Ro, whatever he does totally makes sense anyway.
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Life can be as simple as rollin' in a convertible BMW with a dime piece by your side, a couple Shaquille O'Neal jerseys and some laidback neo G-funk. Ask L.A. rapper Enimal.
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83 Babies' "Lurkin" is 2019 Mobb Deep's Juvenile Hell boosted with a whole bunch of uzis, choppers and AK-47's instead of a lame single scynth. Lil Tony, Yung Boss Tevo and Setitoff83 are from Durham, North Carolina and they released a self-titled mixtape last year that caught Rich The Kid's attention to the point he signed them to his label. Definitely looking forward to what comes out of that.
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I'm still wondering if this collab between Retro X and Gizo Evoracci (who rep Toulouse and Grigny respectively) off the latter's 2018 album Drug Designer is hypnotic in a bad way or oppressive in a good way. Or maybe it's the other way around. I'm confused, like a sneakerhead after spilling blood on his brand new Air Force 1's. While you at it, check out the side short documentary to learn more on how the 2 French rappers met in the first place.
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I didn't know you could be a Brooklyn-based duo and coin your music as "surf R&B". Well, singer-songwriter Devin Hobdy and guitarist-producer Corey Smith-West seem to like paradoxes. Their first single "Sure Shot" is both joyful and wistful at the same time, resonating somewhere between the sunny nostalgia of Beach Boys tunes and the umbrageous reality of Black Lives Matter chants. Its beautiful music video relies on the same subtle contrast effect, starting as an innocent depiction of kids playing in a park to end up as a troubling "Hands up, don't shoot!" metaphor. Bathe's debut EP I'll Miss You is due out this summer. Needless to say I have high expectations!
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Stendhal wrote The Red And The Black. Yseult is singing it. Money, Power, Fame, Payback. R&B GAME JULIEN SOREL. "Rien à prouver" sounds a lot darker and less pop-ish than anything on her 2015 self-titled debut album. What a comeback!
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"Eyes" reminds me of Jorja Smith's "Beautiful Little Fools" as if it was sung by a still fresh and sober 18 year-old Amy Winehouse for the soundtrack of a dreamy and actually carefree remake of Larry Clark's Kids. Let's be lucid, Ambar's voice is ear and soul candy. 2019 definitely looks bright for the young New Jersey Mexican-Dominican singer-songwriter.
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Élodie Rama has the longest braid I've ever seen. And definitely one of the smoothest grooves too! She's of West Indies descent (Martinique to be exact), originally from Nantes on the Westcoast of France and after traveling all over the place, she currently lives in Marseille by the Mediterranean Sea. No wonder why her new single "Home" is an ode to people like her who feel they belong everywhere. She has worked with famous French hip hop acts 20syl, Fonky Family and Sly Johnson (of Saïan Supa Crew) among others, including beatmakers/DJ's Creestal and Blanka who produce the song. I don't really know why she hasn't put out any music since her 2003 debut EP Strange Island until now, but let's hope she drops a follow-up project sometime this year.
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Talking about Blanka, when he's not busy working and touring with his group La Fine Équipe, he's laying the foundations for his brand new label Kawaa Records in the form of a forthcoming EP by fellow Parisian singer Rose Kid (fka Charlie Rose). Sorry for the lame pun, but it's really hard to resist its first single "Résiste". Dreamy R&B at its finest, which is pretty uncommon in French to be honest and makes it all the more enjoyable.
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Electric blue wig, Wheel of (Love) Fortune and velvet voice. That could pretty well sum up Njomza's new single "Me & You" off her sophomore EP Vacation released last November. From Kosovo to Los Angeles, via Germany, the Bronx and Chicago, her life journey is already the frequent flyer miles type. From getting her breakthrough in 2016 with Mac Miller and Scrillex to co-writing her BFF Ariana Grande's latest #1 hit, via another great EP (her 2017 debut Sad For You) and signing to Motown Records and Since The 80s (21 Savage's management team), her career is just about to take off.
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It's all for now!
If you read everything, listened to and shared the R&B Diamondz playlist and also signed Keak Da Sneak's petition, then:
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Don't forget to tell your friends to subscribe!
See you next week ;)
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