Photo Credit: Getty Images for The Recording Academy (All Photos) Award show attendance has been reliably falling year-on-year and this year, the Recording Academy seemed less concerned than ever about doing anything to revert that trend, with an overlong, self-indulgent ceremony that ran for a seemingly never-ending 2 hours and 33 minutes. Beyond making a… Read more
Photo Credit: Gregory Shamus/GI What happens when you put the Kings of Hip-Hop on the world’s biggest stage with the Queen of Hip-Hop and Soul? You get one of the best half-time shows in the NFL’s history, and this certainly was the case when it came to this year’s show. Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige,… Read more
*Honorable Mentions*: Lord Huron– ‘Long Lost’ // The Weather Station– ‘Ignorance’ // IDLES –‘CRAWLER’ // Arlo Parks – ‘Collapsed In Sunbeams‘ // Genesis Owusu – ‘Smiling With No Teeth’ // Mdou Moctar – ‘Afrique Victime‘ // Billie Eilish – ‘Happier Than Ever‘ & Doja Cat – ‘Planet Her‘ #10. Silk Sonic – ‘An Evening with… Read more
#10. H.E.R. – ‘Back of my Mind’ R&B vocalist, rapper, and guitar virtuoso are not a trio of hats which are typically worn on the same head, at least not until Back of My Mind, the spectacular twenty-track debut album by Gabriella Sarmiento Wilson, better known as H.E.R. (that’s pronounced “her” – make note of that, as… Read more
Photo Credit: Harper Smith After Silk Sonic (the super-duo of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak) released their debut album earlier this month, a Tweet went viral saying “Marvin Gaye’s family [are] listening to this silk sonic album looking for just one chord [to sue the duo for] ”. The tweet spoke, yes, to the infamous… Read more
R&B from its very beginning has been a genre that has never been a monolith. Its ever-evolving sounds and artists, from the smooth slow jams of Barry White to the powerhouse that is Alicia Keys, have proved that the genre is here to stay and will be until the end of time. There are very… Read more
Photo Credit: Collages via Billboard Most people will tell you that the only success that translates financially is “success.” In music, certainly, it’s thought to be almost entirely mathematical: the more records an artist has sold, the more “successful” they are (of course, in recent decades the number of downloads and streams would also have… Read more
Photo Credit: Getty Images for The Recording Academy (All Photos) The 2021 Grammy’s were one to remember. During the COVID-19 pandemic, award shows like the Oscars, Emmys, and Golden Globes were struggling to adapt to a blend of in-person and virtual acceptances, and pulled off their respective shows with varying degrees of success. The Grammys… Read more
Photo Credit: Myesha Evon Gardner They say hindsight is 20/20, and well, Philadelphia native Jazmine Sullivan is a shining example of that narrative. Heralded as a sensational raw talent when she was thrown in the music scene via her 2008 debut album Fearless, the soul singer-songwriter never seemed quite comfortable in the spotlight. Even then,… Read more
Photo Credit: Julian Klincewicz You can tell from the very beginning of Big Sean’s fifth number one album Detroit 2, that the Michigan native sounds more balanced and elevated as a person and as an artist than ever before. As a sequel to the 2012 mixtape titled Detroit, the project is stacked with a stout… Read more