Ugh, Those Feels Again
I’ve been listening to this album pretty much daily since it came out. From start to finish, it’s a really good energy project. I love Whoa, Situationship and Find Someone Like You! I find Snoh’s sound to be very nostalgic. It gives you that like ‘90s, that Prince-sounding influence but still very modern. It’s very now. It’s like when our parents used to throw on jazz or some B.B. King or MJ in the morning and it just woke you up. It’s like that. This is THE project to start the morning with.
Painted
Lucky Daye is an incredible songwriter. It’s like listening to poetry, when I listen to him. He’s just consistently been releasing so much fire and his artistry is so authentic. His voice is so, so, so smooth, which for me, makes his music the perfect music for driving. I love Roll Some Mo and his introspective songs like Love You Too Much. He’s just amazing and this album inspires me. Songwriters who pursue their artistry as he does always come across as so poetic.
So Much Fun
When I am trying to get amped up, I listen to So Much Fun by Young Thug. This album is so fire. His choices of melodies always perplex me because he’s a rapper but he uses such intricate melodies, almost like a singer. He’s very intentional with his choices. Like even the first song on the project, which is called Just How It Is, is him rap-singing over a guitar. It’s so interesting and it caught me from the beginning. He likes to blend genres a bit, like, I would say that that song and some of the others on the project almost sound country-influenced. He can go from an acoustic song right to the hip-hop hitting 808s and it feels like a smooth transition. I can just put this project on play and I don’t have to skip anything. There’s something about the way Young Thug does what he does, it’s just so sick.
Pulp
Ambré killed this project. First of all, a lot of what gripped me about this was the artwork. There are like Alphagetti letters floating in orange juice with orange slices in it. I was like, okay, I’ve got to hear this. I’m very visual so seeing that art direction, was like “Woah! This is sick! Let me listen to this!” And Ambré is an incredible songwriter – she’s written for H.E.R., Kehlani, a bunch of different people - and I love a singer-songwriter. She takes you to a different world with it. It has a lot of bounce, but it’s very smooth. You can just put it on and listen, start to finish. Her tracklisting and the unique spellings, like ENTERLUDE and innermission, I pay attention to those things. She put a lot of thought into it and that makes me want to engage with it because I know that it means something to her.
Heaux Tales
I am a HUGE Jazmine Sullivan fan! I think she has the best voice in the game, period. No one is topping Jazmine Sullivan vocally. She’s an alien. This is her first project in six years, she kind of took a break, so I’m just grateful to have new Jazmine music. I didn’t know what to expect with the project being called Heaux Tales, you know what I mean? I didn’t know what she was going to sing about but she explores a bunch of different women’s stories, so each “tale” is a different woman talking about her experience followed by a song about what the woman in the interlude said. I just thought that was so cool, it’s so conceptually thought out. My favourite song is On It featuring Ari Lennox.
I love a good conceptual project. I don’t like when the concept overpowers the artistry, you don’t want to overthink the concept and underthink the music, but when they marry perfectly I’m just in heaven because it speaks to all of your senses – the visuals, the music, the art, and the story.
