Baltimore rapper JPEGMAFIA or Peggy for short, is back with a new studio album that is despondent, self-aware, darkly humorous, all while showcasing the off the wall, glitchy and hard-hitting production fans adored on Peggy’s sophomore project ‘Veteran’. Although ‘Veteran’ received widespread critical acclaim and boosted the MC from relatively unknown underground industrial hip-hop obscurity,…
It might be counterintuitive, but I think you have to be pretty damn confident to call yourself Theleastimportant. Most rappers’ egos wouldn’t let them dare undersell themselves right up front like that. Bravado and being braggadocious are pivotal characteristics of most create-a-character rappers so just by his name alone, Theleastimportant is telling you that he’s…
Singing and writing have always been a part of Witney Stander’s life, but it wasn’t until 2018, her last year at university, that she decided to take music seriously and began releasing music as Witney. “Once I left high school I couldn’t write. In my last year of varsity, I started writing again but I…
September 7th marked the one-year anniversary of rapper and producer Mac Miller’s passing. Miller’s death, due to drug overdose, stirred up the emotions of hip-hop fans across the spectrum. For those who listened to him, his death was both unexpected and felt too close to home. Since his tragic passing, music listeners have been largely unable…
EPs have become the standard way for musicians to get their music out there these days. Some might decry it because it appeals to our ever-decreasing attention spans, but I think it allows great artists to cut the fat attached to many albums and rather just give us their best work with no filler. Dua…
African music has come out on top in 2019. Afrobeats has become one of the defining genres of the year, with Burna Boys “African Giant” leaping up charts across the globe. The AfroNation festival, held in Lisbon this year, achieved what other fraud-ridden, Netflix-documented destination festivals couldn’t. Beyoncé’s seminal ‘Homecoming’ performance paid homage to the…
Hailing from Durban but based in Cape Town, Aryu Jassika is a producer with a deep house background that, more recently, has found sonic freedom and is pushing himself and his sound beyond established genres and into a space of self-expression, creating what he feels sounds good. Getting his start in the early 2000s, it…
Joya Mooi is a 28 year-old songbird whose music flew into our playlists all the way from Amsterdam. The South African-born Dutch-bred singer has managed to sustain an almost 10-year career with a sound that is plush and subdued but still carries a cool, diasporic and global appeal. Her compilation of alternative, new wave funk…
For future reference, if you’d like me to write about your music, include lines like “I wanted it to feel like the end of ‘Apocalypse Now’,” in your press release. That’s one of the ways that Jumping Back Slash describes his ‘Animals’ EP and fuck me, he delivers. ‘Animals’ is a constantly evolving fever dream…
Young Om is a project by Paris-based, South African born producer and instrumentalist Dominick Pettersson. His debut EP ‘Myths‘ was made in southern France, Chicago and Paris and is now available on Wet Dreams Recordings. With a sound that is dreamy and nostalgic, the guitar-driven melodies pay homage to the uniquely South African tones of…
In the late 1980s, in a recorded interview with the Jamaica Observer, Delores ‘Cherry’ Prince, mother of dancehall/reggae artist Tenor Saw speaks of her son, his career and his untimely death in 1988. At the time, Saw was touring and spending months away from his home in Jamaica while on the road. Of her son,…
While Naye Ayla’s “Mercury” might not be about the planet, your emotions will still be affected by listening to and watching the latest music video for the Joburg-based singer/songwriter. The song is named after the element, Mercury, a unique, malleable, liquid metal, that, if you’re not careful, just might drive you mad as a hatter….
