Is Gunna a rapper or an Avenger? On Spotify’s amazing poster promoting his new album Wunna, a computerized Gunna stands in reverse-V formation with his musical godfather Young Thug and the album’s principal producers: Wheezy, Turbo, Taurus, and Aviator Keyz. They all wear matching iridescent black vinyl bodysuits. A burning …
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Country trio Midland sparked a lot of unnecessarily heated debates back when they first arrived. Their throwback aesthetic and sound — a playful, scuffed-up nod to the oft-derided Urban Cowboy era in country and its characteristic softness — drew suspicion from anyone who shaped their idea of masculinity around Waylon …
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For his first LP since 22, A Million, Justin Vernon dials back the avant-pop extremes a bit, giving human larynxes and other acoustic instruments more room to flex amidst a landscape of synths and vocal-processing veils. You wouldn’t guess it from opening minute or so of the similarly-comma-smitten i, i …
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In the decade or so since Steven Ellison released his breakout Los Angeles LP, he’s established himself as hip-hop’s headiest auteur, a maximalist Brian Eno for the medical marijuana age whose meteor-storm productions triangulate funk, electronica, and assorted jazz fusions, and are attached to out-there film projects and a live …
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If last year’s Oxnard was Anderson .Paak’s version of Outkast’s Speakerboxxx – a shape-shifting hip-hop LP steeped in eccentric R&B — its sister LP, Ventura, is his The Love Below, an eccentric R&B record tilting towards hip-hop. Ventura even begins with an André 3000 cameo, a memorable one at that, …
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