Genres

Alive with pulsing disco and house beats, Shamirs debut album Ratchet caused a sensation when XL Recordings released it in 2015. Many casual fans know him by the sparky electro-rap of the albums single “On the Regular.” Scintillating as the lights of his native Las Vegas and, at times, as brooding as the gloom on the edges of town, Ratchet deserved all the accolades it garnered. Still, as the pop phenom prepares to release his very different third album, Revelations, its worth noting that theres always been more to Shamir Bailey.He started his career in music singing country, while his first band Anorexia was a DIY punk affair, and his debut EP Northtown took a raw, minimal approach to dance-pop. Given all that, Shamir would seem impossible to pigeonhole, even before factoring in his genderless countertenor. Nevertheless, after the success of Ratchet, XL set him on a track to make something similar. Uninterested in repeating himself musically, the young singer-songwriter parted with his label and self-released a second album, Hope, a bundle of defiant, aching indie-pop that set the stage for his latest release.The real revelations on Revelations are more of the musical than personal variety. Its avant lo-fi pop betrays the influence of his confessed favorite artists such as Vivian Girls and Tegan and Sara, and even of Nina Simone (whom he has called his “beacon”). Seeing this stripped-down side of Shamir will be an adjustment for some, but Revelations songcraft and intense honesty is bound to win the 22-year-old some converts. Whether you are a new fan or old, let this playlist be your guide to the many dimensions of the Shamiriverse: the underground electro heroes, rockers, gender outlaws, and heartbroken divas who run through all of his music. Get up to speed now, because even though he claims “I reached my final form” on the haunting anthem “Float,” he almost certainly hasnt.

Within days of each other, CamRon and Kevin Gates released tracks with unlikely samples. CamRons romantic "10,000 Miles” has him singing "Lookin up out my Benz" over the familiar twinkling piano riff from Vanessa Carltons massive 2001 hit "A Thousand Miles," while Gates more reflective "What If" utilizes Joan Osbornes "One Of Us" to inquire if God is "Just a thug like one of us."Adult contemporary pop is no stranger to hip-hop and it often lends itself to a variety of mood-setting styles. Rappers utilize its piano ballads and campfire-ready acoustic guitar lines, either reworking the lyrics or topping off familiar strums with harsher beats. The final product can yield some surprising results that often are friendly to radio.Janet Jackson took advantage of the infectious guitar on Americas "Ventura Highway" to create the romantic pop jam "Someone To Call My Lover," and also brought on Carly Simon herself to rework her "Youre So Vain" into the sassy, slam poetry-filled "Son Of A Gun (I Betcha Think This Song Is About You)." Didos "Thank You" turns ominous in Eminems iconic and gorgeously dark "Stan," and Rihanna turned the dark and moody "Im with You" by pop-punk princess Avril Lavigne into party anthem "Cheers (Drink To That)."In some light-hearted, ridiculous moments, Elephant Man reimagines Nelly Furtados "I’m Like A Bird" for his single "Gal Bruk," Project Pat toys with the haunting, atmospheric sound of Alanis Morissettes "Uninvited" for his track "Sucks on Dick" featuring Juicy J, and Ice Cube reimagines the lyrics of No Doubts "Dont Speak" for his bleak "War And Peace."Some samples are more subtle: Adeles "Hometown Glory" just barely creeps up at the beginning of Childish Gambinos "Heartbeat," overshadowed by a rough, aggressive beat, and Nicki Minaj and Cassies reference to Train’s “Hey, Soul Sister” may go unnoticed because of how briefly they slip it into “The Boys.” No matter how small the contribution, the unlikely juxtaposition of adult contemporary pop and hip-hop can be enough to spark an unexpected musical idea.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

This post is part of our Disco 101 program, an in-depth series that looks at the far-reaching, decades-long impact of disco. Curious about disco and want to learn more? Go here to sign up. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out by sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or just sending your friends this link. They’ll thank you. We thank you.Thanks to a cadre of specialty imprints, as well as guerilla crate diggers like Awesome Tapes From Africa, music fanatics can now explore numerous reissues and compilations that chart the evolution of dance music in post ’60s Africa. It’s from this wealth of archival work that Resident Advisor has constructed “Afro Disco,” a collection of cuts that show how the scorching syncopation of mid-’70s Afrobeat gradually cooled into a purring, disco-inspired repetition by the dawn of the ’80s. Another key change is a heavier reliance on synthesizers and chunka-chunk guitars fed through the kind of coked-out effects that Chic’s Nile Rodgers pioneered. RA’s aesthetic is so tightly focused (big surprise there) that one could easily imagine these tracks being released as their own compilation.

This post is part of our Psych 101 program, an in-depth, 14-part series that looks at the impact of psychedelia on modern music. Want to sign up to receive the other installments in your inbox? Go here. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out by sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or just sending your friends this link. Theyll thank you. We thank you.Probably the first exponent of what later became known as Afrofuturism was avant-jazz visionary Sun Ra, who began releasing cosmic-themed albums like Super-Sonic Jazz and Interstellar Low Ways in the late ’50s. Yet it truly exploded into popular consciousness when George Clinton’s mothership full of stardusted weirdos touched down over a decade later. Emerging from the intersection of mind-expanding psychedelia and Black Power consciousness, Parliament-Funkadelic’s science fiction-inspired funk introduced a stunningly new aesthetic, one that would eventually seep into the very fibers of hip-hop, techno, and R&B. That said, citing examples of Afrofuturism is significantly easier than actually trying to define a nebulous concept that blurs the edges between science fiction and magical realism, philosophy and spirituality, modern art and radical political critique. But let’s give it a try…First appearing in his 1994 essay “Black to the Future,” culture writer Mark Dery defines Afrofuturism as “speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of 20th century technoculture.” These concerns are, of course, racism, oppression, liberation and, over the last decade, Black feminism. Just as vital are issues of identity, in particular grappling with the alienness of a people removed from their homeland, stripped of their culture, and enslaved in a far-off continent. Again, from Dery’s essay, “African-Americans, in a very real sense, are the descendants of alien abductees; they inhabit a sci-fi nightmare in which unseen but no less unpassable force fields of intolerance frustrate their movements; official histories undo what has been done; and technology is too often brought to bear on black bodies (branding, forced sterilization, the Tuskegee experiment, and tasers come readily to mind.)” We can add to this miserable list the military-grade technology now being wielded by America’s police force.Dery’s primary focus is literature (including seminal sci-fi authors Octavia Butler and Samuel R. Delany). But perhaps the most fertile ground for the movement has always been music. It’s an impulse that incorporates an astonishing number of voices cutting across a slew of genres: jazz, hip-hop, soul, reggae, funk, electro, Miami bass, techno, and even modern classical. In addition to this rich sonic diversity, Afrofuturism in music boasts a unique intersection of technological innovation, high-art concept, and pop novelty. This matrix reaches back to the aforementioned Sun Ra and P-Funk mastermind George Clinton, the two most important Afrofuturists. Each in his own,unique way mixed up pulp fiction stories of flying saucers with African-American esoterica, deeply philosophical ideas of Black consciousness, and pioneering experiments in sound, including the incorporation of synthesizers. Echoes of their innovations ripple through modern mavericks like Flying Lotus, Erykah Badu, Jamal Moss (a.k.a. Hieroglyphic Being), Danny Brown, Janelle Monáe, and flutist Nicole Mitchell, all of whom have helped carry Afrofuturism into the 21st century.If our playlist’s sprawling mix of interstellar horns, rapping robots, futuristic synths, galactic funk, technoid grooves, and dub-drenched bass does inspire you to explore the literary side of Afrofuturism, then definitely check out the powerful work of both Butler and Delany. Also, the essays of Greg Tate and John Corbett respectively are central to understanding the movement’s deliciously eccentric evolution. Now press play and be prepared for a trip down the alleys of your mind.

“I’m a wolf child, girl, howlin’ for you! Wild flower!” When these lines appeared 50 seconds into The Cult’s Electric, nothing would ever be the same—even if it sounded pretty much like it always had.Future historians may prefer a more phonetic rendering of the song’s title, which sounds more like “wiiillldd flllowww-ahh!” coming out of Ian Astbury’s mouth. Married to Billy Duffy’s crunchy riffage, the singer’s schtick was gloriously, even knowingly, dumb. But critics at the time were unkind to our hero. In a Spin review of the more absurd follow-up album, Sonic Temple, writer David Sprague pondered whether Astbury was indeed the Jerry Lee Lewis of rock, ridiculing the former goth band’s bald-faced lifts from Led Zeppelin, Queen, and The Doors (who were fronted by Astbury’s true god, Jim Morrison).Hard as it may be for present-day aficionados of cock rock to believe, all of the genre’s bands were largely treated as objects of ridicule when Electric was delivered into the greedy hands of teenagers 30 years ago this month. After all, classic rock radio was just becoming a thing, and with thrash and hardcore yet to go overground and Hüsker Dü and The Replacements left stuck on the dial, what passed for hard rock in the mainstream was hair metal’s limp glam pop pastiche. Machine-tooled to perfection by Rick Rubin, Electric did a lot to change that.So did Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite For Destruction, which arrived just a few months later. Soon, the scene on both sides of the Atlantic would be thick with Jack-swilling, bandana-clad he-men schooled in Zeppelin, Sabbath, Aerosmith, and the newly resurgent AC/DC. Even former hair metal lightweights like Cinderella did all they could to toughen up.Having set the gold standard first with Slayer and then The Cult, Rubin continued to put his Midas touch on bands like Masters of Reality and The Four Horsemen, two lesser lights who still churned out some monster jams. Meanwhile, the hip-hop/mega rock merger that Rubin first devised would soon reach maximum overdrive when Public Enemy sampled Slayer and teamed up with Anthrax. Deep in the Pacific Northwest, there were rumblings of the grunge to come, though back in the late ’80s, it took a discerning ear to hear any hard line between Soundgarden and German Zep wannabes Kingdom Come. Which is to say they were both awesome.Tragically, this period of magnificence came to an end, right around the same time Nevermind arrived alongside GnR’s bloated Use Your Illusion in September of 1991 (oddly, Ozzy Osbourne’s final solo masterpiece, No More Tears, came out the same month). To commentators at the time, Nirvana’s conquest signaled rock’s new relevance; a narrative that made sense, seeing as the genre’s popularity had sagged so much that not a single rock album topped the charts the year before.But that’s dead wrong now, what with the age of gods ushered in by Electric replaced by the lumpen likes of Creed, Staind, and Nickelback—if Astbury was hard rock’s Jerry Lee Lewis, surely Chad Kroeger is its Rob Schneider. Saddled in between the ass-end of hair metal and the rise of grunge, this era has rarely gotten its due. Hell, classic rock radio rarely touches the stuff—it’s too damn gnarly. But make no mistake: This wolf child is still howlin’ for you.

Be sure to subscribe to our playlist, The 40 Best Nas Tracks Not on Illmatic, right here.Nas’ 1994 debut Illmatic is not only considered his best album, but is regarded as the best hip-hop album ever, full stop. And with good reason: that album revolutionized the genre. Nas captured the ruinous glory of post-crack N.Y.C.. By suggesting that drugs were both empowering and destructive, his lyrics alternately embraced and rejected the idea of ghetto glamour, etching out bits of hard-won wisdom amongst Nas’ piercing observational storytelling. His word-drunk, casual cadences redefined how emcees could rap. And this was all done over peak boom bap production from DJ Premier, Pete Rock, and Q-Tip, among others.But, at this point, it’s boring to talk about Illmatic, or to say that Nas lives it its shadow. It’s a boilerplate narrative, and a lazy, rote mythologization. To be honest, many of the ideas and even a few of the observations I made in the first paragraph were recycled from the various times in my career when I’ve been tasked with paying homage to that particular lodestar. But what happened after Illmatic, and the various ways that his fans and critics have reacted to that output, is a lot more interesting.In the ensuing years (and decades), Nas continued to evolve and experiment, cycling through different personas and tackling difficult concepts, both personal and political. He wasn’t always successful; there are peaks and valleys, and he failed as often as he succeeded. At times, his work has been baffling and self-annihilating, full of contradictions and strange discursions. For every blazingly brilliant observational detail, there’s a weird sex rap or a confounding historical inaccuracy. And Nas, himself, is frequently unlovable. He’s aloof and enigmatic. He’s flirted with messianic imagery and has been accused of abusing his ex-wife. Sometimes it seemed that his fans -- and I count myself among them -- spent as much time apologizing for him as listening to his music. But, the truth is, we’ve hung on. We’ve bought into the idea of his brilliance; we’ve subscribed to his narrative. Sure, it’s a messy and uneven journey, and it’s frequently hard to stomach him, much less listen to his music, but, in a way, that makes him feel more human. He’s not a face on Mt. Rushmore, and he doesn’t carry the extra-human weight of aDylan or B.I.G., but his flaws ground him, and bring his flashes of otherworldly brilliance into stark relief.There has effectively been five distinct Nas periods. The first is Illmatic, which is a deeply autobiographical work that captures key parts of Nas’ childhood. By the time that he re-entered the studio to record 1996’s It Was Written, he had largely abandoned this direct approach. Taking a cue from Raekwon and Ghostface -- who had, the year before, released Only Built for Cuban Linx -- Nas took on the persona of drug lord Nas Escobar. His cadences seem were more calculated and precise, alternately more accomplished and less poetic, and though some of the imagery from that album was still culled from Nas’ childhood in the Queensbridge projects, tracks such as “Live Nigga Rap” and “Street Dreams” were conscious fictions -- Miami-sized coke rap fantasies that were cinematic in scope. He would continue mining this persona over his next two albums, Nastradamus and I Am. The artistic failure of those two albums has been widely overstated -- it’s hard to entirely dismiss albums that produced tracks like “Project Windows,” “Nas is Like,” and “NY State of Mind, Pt. II” -- but by the turn of the millennium, there was little doubt that the Nas’ Escobar persona had run out of steam, so Nas switched it up, beginning with 2001’s comeback album Stillmatic and continuing with 2002’s mid-period high-water-mark God’s Son. His narrative strategy here was more straightforward and reflective, which many took to be a return to the autobiographical raps of Illmatic, but tracks like “Get Down” and “2nd Childhood” were older, wiser, and less nihilistic. They were the stories of a survivor, and not a soldier. And though the role of the “street prophet” was always part of Nas’ persona -- see “Black Girl Lost” from It Was Written -- this period also saw him increasingly turning to socio-political themes. It felt that Nas had reclaimed his glory, and, for at least a minute, his fans reemerged from their closets and re-appointed Nas as the GOAT.This particular stylistic era reached a climax on 2004’s Street’s Disciple. There were moments of greatness on that album, but it was a messy, sprawling double album, and was a relative commercial disappointment. When, in a 2011 interview between Nas and Tyler, The Creator for XXL magazine, the Odd Future frontman admitted that Street’s Disciple was his favorite album, Nas seemed shocked. But Tyler’s reaction is understandable. The album contains some genuinely brilliant material, and the fact that it’s been overlooked makes it seem more personal to his fans. It’s something that we, and we alone, own. Still, the lukewarm reception caused Nas to recalibrate. To put it bluntly, Nas was aging. He was a wealthy, veteran rapper who, at that point, was over 10 years removed from the street life and struggling to adopt a credible public persona. In lieu of this, he withdrew himself from his music, and released a string of high-concept albums that were oriented around a series of thematic conceits. Hip-Hop Is Dead, from 2006, looked at the supposed-demise of hip-hop. It was a moody album that mourned the genre’s childhood innocence and the inondation of commercialism. It was by no means brilliant, and I can’t imagine anyone putting it in their top 3 Nas albums, but its melancholy made it compelling. The follow-up, 2008’s Untitled, looked at race relations in America. The album was originally called Nigger, which, as you can imagine, garnered a sharply mixed response. Nas was still considered a commercial and cultural force, and the title drew criticism from camps as disparate as Al Sharpton and Bill O’Reilly. Eventually, Nas conceded to the pressure, and named it simply Untitled. Putting the controversy aside, it wasn’t a particularly great album, but there are some crucial tracks, including the spare lyrical workout “Queens Get the Money,” and the crunchy, aggressive “Money Over Bullshit.” But it’s legacy was tainted by allegations that Jay Electronica had ghostwritten some of the tracks. Though never proven, it put Nas fans in a familiar space, making excuses and equivocating.Regardless of the album’s authorship, at this point, in his career and in his life, it’s fair to say that Nas had lost his narrative. He was no longer at forefront of hip-hop, either culturally or commercially, and his marriage to R&B singer Kelis had produced a child but ended in a divorce (years later, Kelis would claim that Nas had abused her; and regardless of whether or not that is true, at the very least, it pointed towards a tumultuous relationship). He did what many of us would in his situation: he took some time off. 2012’s comeback album Life is Good was Nas’ most personal work to date, and one of his most compelling. It’s a deeply ambiguous work -- the cover finds him clutching Kelis’ wedding dress, and the entire album is coated in ennuie and disappointment. The opening track, “No Introduction,” is a biography-in-miniature and directly tackles the dissolution of his marriage. Over a lush production from Miami production unit (and frequent Rick Ross collaborators) J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, the song begins with Nas embarrassed, standing in line for a free lunch at elementary school, and ends with the admission that he’s aging and seeking an ever-elusive closure. This sense of melancholy is present throughout that album. The track “Bye Baby” tackles his divorce head-on, while “A Queens Story” traces the arcs of his friendships, and ends with the starkly ambivalent image of Nas the “only black in a club of rich yuppie kids,” getting hammered as he recalls the images of his dead friends.Life is Good would’ve made an appropriate swan song, and he could’ve rode out in the sunset at this point with his legacy intact, but, of course, this didn’t happen, and the follow up, 2018’s Nasir, felt like a retreat of sorts. It was billed as a collaborative album with Kanye West, which seems like every hip-hop fans wet dream (at least in 2005). And while there are certainly flashes of greatness (most notably on “Adam and Eve,” where Nas wrestles with his legacy, both to his public and his children), the emcee sounds strangely detached. He’s abandoned his narrative raps, and his ability to twist the details of his life into poetic imagery fail him. “Not for Radio” more-or-less recycles the vibe and themes of “N.I.*.*.E.R” from Untitled wholesale, except with much-diminished returns, while the seven-minute-long “everything” feels maudlin, and strangely anchors itself around an anti-vaccination rant. But most of all, it's what's missing that's important. Considering that Nas has always been such an honest and forthcoming emcee, it's odd that he didn’t address Kelis’ allegations of domestic abuse. Nas is far from the only pop culture figure to suffer from such allegations, and there has been no supporting evidence, but his silence reads as guilt. Nas fans have defended him many times over the years for a variety of transgressions, but this is probably the most troubling.But, like I said in the beginning, it’s not easy being a Nas fan. At times, he seems god-like and invisible, while at others, he's impossibly bitter and even loathsome. But you take the good with the bad, and hope the former outweighs the latter, as it frequently does. If he would’ve ended his career after It Was Written, he would’ve left the hip-hop with two concise, blazingly brilliant albums, and would’ve been talked about in the same breath as Biggie or Pac, but his subsequent material has revealed him as being merely human, but, in the end, we’re still here, for better and worse.

It was in the summertime half a century ago that the world first met one of the great American bands, a group that would reach sky-high success while retaining a resolutely rootsy, earthbound sound. Creedence Clearwater Revivals 1968 debut album introduced guitar-playing brothers John and Tom Fogerty, drummer Doug Clifford, and bassist Stu Cook, four young men out of El Cerrito in the San Francisco Bay Area. But while they emerged in a place and time where trippy psychedelic visions where the order of the day, CCR bucked the trends and instead tapped into a rich, traditional seam of American music that connected to blues, country, rockabilly, gospel, folk, and R&B.When their contemporaries were unfurling mind-bending musical excursions with elaborate productions that included everything but the proverbial kitchen sink, Creedence crashed into the upper rungs of the album and singles charts with songs that wasted nary a note or word, overflowing with raw soul and unbridled energy. They cranked out 10 Top 40 singles, six Platinum albums, and one Gold in just four intensely prolific years, all powered by John Fogertys gut-level growl, with the rest of the band providing just the right kind of gritty, in-the-pocket punch to propel CCRs vision.

After her 2015 single “Waiting Around” racked up 10,000,000-plus Spotify plays on the strength of a Volkswagen-ad placement, New York folk-soul phenom Aisha Badru recently released the first teaser from her upcoming full-length solo debut. The aching ballad “Bridges” is currently available in two forms—a deeply atmospheric, beat-driven take, and a “stripped” version where her voice is accompanied only by somber strings. Collectively, they set the goal posts for the intimate and experimental sounds she’s collected on her Dowsers playlist.“This playlist features a mix of some of my all-time favorite songs, along with some newer songs that I’m loving right now. Over the years, Ive grown to love artists across many genres. I think I subconsciously picked up elements from all ofl the style of music that Ive enjoyed and crafted a unique sound that I can call my own.”—Aisha Badru

Throughout the fall of 2017, San Diego ambient post-rock architect Jimmy LaValle has overseen deluxe vinyl reissues of his back catalog on his own imprint, Eastern Glow Recordings. In the same industrious, self-sufficient spirit, he’s created a Dowsers playlist to celebrate fellow musical loners (and the partners with whom they commiserate). “Here’s a playlist of some of my favorite solo artists and duos. As a solo artist myself, I truly love discovering new (to me) music not made by a band. Multi-instrumentalists are kind of a musician’s musician at times, making music because it’s something we have to do. There’s a ton of material I’ve recorded over the years that’s never been released and it’s because I’m constantly creating. I admire these artists and songs, and it also reflects what I’m really currently into instrumentation-wise.”—Jimmy LaValle a.k.a. The Album Leaf

Tidel does a lot with their playlists that are annoying. Theyre frequently too long, awkwardly titled and unattributed. But they do have interesting themes, and this is a good example. Even their descriptions are too long. This looks back at the past five years of post-punk and has some real jewels by The Soft Moon, Parquet Courts, Viet Cong and others. I only included the first 20 of these 50 songs (there are only so many hours in the day)