Chicago’s Tensei produces “Alright!”, a funky hip hop jam featuring vocals from ADAD. We’ve known about Tensei for a while now. The Chicago-based production crew is made up of Simple X and Midas Wells and they have collaborated with the likes of Brandee Younger and a wide range of musicians. For Alright, the pair have offered …
T.N.T. Jackson is our feature presentation this week, starring former Playboy model Jean Bell as TNT, a black woman who wages war with Hong Kong gangs to find her missing brother. Blaxploitation movies don’t get much better/worse than this, plotwise. T.N.T. Jackson tells the tale of TNT (played by former Playmate Of The Month Jean …
Before the danceries and the chicken commercials, Mary J Blige had a stronger message for the general public. Here is her anti-drugs commercial for this week’s Throwback Thursday. Rolling Stone may well have erroneously given Nicki Minaj the title of New Queen of Hip Hop but Mary J Blige was one of the OGs when …
British soul star Omar releases The Man off his upcoming album. “When I grow up, I wanna be like Omar” – Stevie Wonder A lot of musicians would live off that endorsement for the rest of their careers but for a soul veteran like Omar, that just adds fuel to the fire. The British music …
Pragmatic Theory are back with another free compilation, this time centred around soul flips. Soul music has been a common feature in sampling for decades and has become the bread and butter for many producers, with J Dilla’s Donuts showcasing a large body of soul music from the 60s and 70s. Once again, in conjunction …
DJ Spinna has put his 2001 Stevie Wonder mix up on Soundcloud for your listening pleasure and it’s free to download. We wished Stevie Wonder a happy birthday earlier today, but that needn’t be the end of proceedings as DJ Spinna has been generous enough to upload his Stevie mix from 2001 to Soundcloud. Containing …
UK group Hawk House finally release their mixtape, A Little More Elbow Room. So far, we’ve had a few tracks, a name change and a few videos but at long last, Hawk House has dropped a full release. A Little More Elbow Room full to the brim with soulful synthy hip hop wonders and production …
Music blog Rappamelo have put together a mini playlist of some of the samples used by A Tribe Called Quest. A Tribe Called Quest were known for their lyricism and choice of samples and Rappamelo have clearly thought about the latter as they have put together a playlist of some of their samples. The likes …
Soulection’s Atu releases his latest album, Pictures on Silence. Alt-R&B has taken hold of the masses of late, with brilliant debuts from Frank Ocean, Miguel and Jarell Perry as we mentioned yesterday. Well, following on from those vibes is Atu, a 20-year-old producer from Ann Arbor, Michigan (home of Dan Henig, Yoshi and Dabrye) via …
Detroit beatmaker All These Fingers brings that Detroit sound with Circles Vol. 2. All These Fingers calls himself “an electric wizard / cave dweller” and we can see why. The Michigan producer has waved his magic fingers over his hip hop cauldron and conjured up the second installment of his Circles beat tape series. The …
Crillmatic drops the third instalment of his NSFW: Set The Mood mixes.
RKZ has kindly provided us with some “making of” footage of his session with Gifted The Great. Do these guys ever stop working?* As part of RKZTV, RKZ has uploaded his first episode of “February Sessions”, which was filmed all through this week at Gifted’s studio. It shows the pair hard at work, getting tracks …
The wonderful Georgia Anne Muldrow is offering a free track as part of Mello Music Group’s 7″ Series. Georgia Anne Muldrow’s Seeds was one of my favourite albums of last year and not wanting to slow things down, she is contributing to Mello Music Group’s 7″ Series with 2 brand spanking new tracks. Entitled Akosua and In My Heart, …
RKZ’s offering for Valentine’s Day is the sultry Wander/Lust.
Cali beat fanatic Ahwlee drops an impressive beat mix called V A L L E Y S. West coast hip hop reigns supreme once more thanks to Long Beach resident Ahwlee. Fusing smooth vocal chops with bumping yet mellow beats, he’s put together a really dope beat mix called V A L L E Y …
Marvin Gaye’s amazing performance of Let’s Get It On in Montreux is our Throwback Thursday this week.
Some hip hop warmth coming from the UK and the US in the form of Mecca:83’s Nightshift. It seems criminal that I didn’t mention this track when it came out on Christmas Eve last year, but them’s the breaks. Manchester’s Mecca:83, with electric piano help from Philly’s Buscrates 16-Bit Ensemble and cuts from Dj Ivan6 …
Filipino beatmaster Suhnraw shows us why he’s a Beat Addict with a brand new beat tape. It’s weird how we perceive the times between album releases nowadays. Back in the 80s and 90s, Michael Jackson would go about four years between albums but with the way things are now, if you go more than two …
We watch Jamiroquai keeping it live and funky in 1995 on this week’s Throwback Thursday. It was Jamiroquai front man Jay Kay’s birthday a couple of weeks ago and at the age of 43, he’s still going strong with the band who are currently working on a new album. For this week’s Throwback Thursday, we …
Cheesy TV album commercials are the best is but it’s our Throwback Thursday this week. If you have cable, you may have seen a really long commercial with some black couples talking about their favourite love songs and selling this love songs box set (if anyone remembers it and can find the video somewhere, I …