After a long and gruelling court case which essentially left Kesha bound to her alleged abuser, Lukasz Gottwald AKA Dr. Luke , people all around the world stood up against the decision. The #FreeKesha petition received over 225,000 signatures to date and artists such as Adele, Lady Gaga, Lily Allen, Grimes and Lorde all publicly voicing their support.
This week Kelly Clarkson also came out against the label, saying to Kyle and Jackie O on KIIS FM that the Sony forced her to work with Gottwald. “I only worked with him because literally I got blackmailed by my label. They were like, ‘we will not put your album out if you don’t do this.’”
Now, thanks to this horror of bad press, Sony Music has come to their senses and is expected to drop their hit-making producer Dr. Luke from the label, a year before his contact’s expiration.
An ‘Upper Management Sony figure’ broke the story to The Wrap, saying, “There is no contest. Kesha has no case in regards to her contract but they can’t afford the Adeles of the world out in the streets calling the label unsupportive.”
It’s not yet been revealed how Sony will end the relationship. Due to the fact Dr. Luke has never been convicted in court, the legal grounds to simply terminate the contract are shaky and a mutual decision may have to be made.
Signers of the #FreeKesha petition had planned a third protest rally for Friday afternoon, but due to this recent news will instead hold it to say thank you to Sony.
Kesha has yet to publicly speak on the good news but fingers crossed this works out she can get back into the studio to make some long awaited tunes.
Image Rolling Stone
City Cypher is a new series by Complex, which aims to showcase a city’s talent and bring back the simple cypher formula. In this first edition we are treated to a plethora of New York talent, with vocal performances from A$AP Ferg, Wiki, and Your Old Droog, with live instrumental performances featuring players assembled by Grammy-nominated jazz musician Christian Scott.
The first instrumental is a simple but modern beat, and with his nasal voice and rhythmic flow, Wiki of Ratking is up first. His humble, down to earth lines relating to integrity and truth blend perfectly with the sorrowful backing and lays a strong base for the cypher.
Next is Your Old Droog, who channels a strong vintage and blunt sound, his newest track Hip-Hop Head reflects this well. The stabbing 808 snare changes and we get a much rawer, gritty sounding break beat where Droog really prospers.
In the lead up to his soon-to-be-released album, A$AP Ferg steps up for the final verse with a powerful conscious, social and political calling which combines effortlessly with the now emotional and moving instrumentation.
And to top it all of we get a solid improvisational session with Christian Scott belting his trumpet to new extremes while bouncing off his fellow members Devonne Harris (keys), Burniss Travis II (bass), Gabe Schnider (guitar) and especially Corey Fonville (drums).
Overall this is an amazing cypher that you have to check out.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm38BpDahNs]
Image via Scoopnest
Hailed as “the priest of the sax,” critically acclaimed Jazz genius Kamasi Washington recently revealed that he is working on new music and a graphic novel, among other projects.
In an interview with Rolling Stone after winning the American Music Prize, Washington stated that he hopes to head back into the studio “in the next couple of months,” with plans for “more large ensemble stuff, doing some brass ensembles and not just things with the choir.” He’s also been experimenting by looping himself to create compositions. “Like a 32 piece saxophone thing… I’m like, ‘Hey that sounds cool. Maybe it’s something I want to do for real.”
Washington also spoke about his other projects in the works. “I have this graphic novel I’m working on…This story that inspired me to put out my album in its entirety instead of reducing it down to a single CD. I had a dream [with] a story that encompassed all the songs [on The Epic], which really led me to have the conviction that I was really going to put it out. So I’m creating a graphic novel for that.”
Kamasi hinted at this release in the physical version of his legendary three hour album entitled The Epic. If this is anything to go by, I think it’s safe to say the artwork in this novel is going to be truly amazing.
Make sure you catch Kamasi on his Australian tour:
Tue, March 22: The Prince, Melbourne
Tickets
Wed, March 23: Metro Theatre, Sydney
Tickets
Thur & Sat, March 24 & 26: Byron Bay Bluesfest
Tickets
Read more: Most people do like jazz, they just don’t realise it: in conversation with Kamasi Washington
Image: Radio Milwuakee / Fatbeats
After quite some wait, the highly anticipated biopic trailer which follows the singer, songwriter and political activist Nina Simone and the relationship between her and her assistant turned manager Clifton Henderson has now been released.
Nina stars Zoe Saldana (Avatar, Guardians of the Galaxy) as Simone and David Oyelowo (Selma) as Henderson, which has been cause for controversy since 2010 due to the dissimilarity between her and the late singer. Now with this trailer, viewers have criticised her further for wearing dark makeup and a prosthetic nose, as it extends discrimination based on colour and goes against the themes in Simone’s music.
In 2010, singer Mary J. Blige was set to play the singer but was unable to due to scheduling conflicts. Nina Simone’s daughter, Lisa Simone (executive producer on the Oscar nominated Netflix documentary What Happened, Miss Simone) has already voiced concerns with this casting choice saying, “My mother was raised at a time when she was told her nose was too wide, her skin was too dark. Appearance-wise this is not the best choice.”
She later went on to say that the tone of the script was also a problem, as it seems to give Henderson credit for Simone’s achievements in her later life.
Nina is set to be released on the 22nd of April, the day after the anniversary of the singer’s death.
Image via Today
In an ongoing battle between free speech and rap music, it has now been revealed that the Supreme Court will not hear Taylor Bell AKA T Bizzle’s case, therefore leaving the 2010 high school suspension in place and causing the line between art and reality to become worryingly crooked. This comes soon after Atlanta greats Killer Mike, Big Boi and T.I. all called for a re-ruling on his early case, providing a 34-page brief on the issue.
The suspension was placed in relation to Bell’s song, which condemned two coaches over allegations of misconduct towards female students; an allegation yet to be refuted. Despite recording the track in a studio outside of school over the 2010 Winter break, they claimed that the vulgar content threatened the coaches and therefore was linked back and deemed unreasonable.
In The New York Times’ original article T Bizzle defended his free speech saying, “These coaches are basically assaulting the children, even if it’s verbally.”
Killer Mike touched on this in his op-ed Free Speech – Unless It’s Rap?, saying, “If your child attended a school where male athletic coaches were accused of sexually harassing female students, would you want school administrators to investigate the allegations or punish the young man who made them public?”
Where is the line between art and reality, free speech and persecution? Using Killer Mike’s example, no one questions songs like Bob Marley’s I Shot The Sheriff, but when the same lyrical content is reflected in hip-hop it is somehow a problem. What gives someone the right to say that an artist can be punished for his or her work? Without this Supreme Court case, we’ve just been left hanging.
We are yet to hear responses from Killer Mike, T.I. and Big Boi, but no doubt they will be disappointed on the verdict.
Image via Rolling Stone
After performing with Rihanna at the Brit Awards, Drake linked up with past collaborator and close friend Skepta, and headed straight to the Underground Village venue where they made a surprise appearance at the Section Boyz headline show. Skepta came on and performed It Ain’t Safe and Shutdown, the crowd still gassed despite having no idea what was about to happen. Jumpman drops and Drake comes onto the stage, and things go absolutely mental. The energy that the crowd of 1000 gives is absolutely unbelievable. He then goes onto say, “I don’t know if you watched the Brits, but I just took a bubble on behalf of the whole UK tonight.” Yeah son.
Drake, just like one of the crew, then raps along to the Section Boyz huge tune Trapping Ain’t Dead onstage. At only £10 a ticket, the audience sure was lucky. Check out the videos below:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO6DxYzB5ZE]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIw6_v5y3aw]
Since the show, we’ve now got word that Drake has apparently signed to the Boy Better Know label and collective, with Skepta (co-founder), Drake, Lady Leshurr and Wiley all taking to social media to confirm this. Skepta’s picture on Instagram of the BBK shirt with the OVO owl hints at some sort of label deal between the two, but details have not yet been released.
With Drake’s next album Views From The 6 set for release in April, who knows what the OVO BBK team have in store.
A photo posted by SKEPTA (@skeptagram) on
Image: SBTV
The BRIT Awards, Britain’s biggest pop music award ceremony, has blown everyone away once again. Adele came away as the talk of the show, winning four awards including the Global Success Award and Best British Female, where she publicly voiced her support for Kesha. If it wasn’t for One Direction‘s music video win, Adele could have become the most awarded artist in a single Brit Awards ceremony.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMGr3N6KoTQ]
Above: Adele Wins Global Success Award
Performing their single Hymn For The Weekend, the ceremony was opened by Coldplay, who later went on to win best British group, making them the most successful band in the award’s history.
Rihanna soon came out performing two tracks from her latest album ANTI. She first performed Consideration with the help of the wonderful SZA, before smoothly transitioning to her newest single Work, during which the track’s featured guest, Drake, graced the stage to make this one steamy performance echoing their recent music video.
[vimeo 156616730 w=574 h=320]
The BRIT Awards also gave special tribute to the late, great David Bowie. Bowie’s band delivered a gorgeous medley of some of his most famous tunes, including Space Oddity, Rebel Rebel, Let’s Dance, Ziggy Stardust, Under Pressure and Heroes before Lorde took to the stage for a stunning and emotional performance of Life on Mars, in a tribute far more beautiful and real than Lady Gaga’s clunky tribute at the Grammys. Later on, the Icon Award was awarded to the man himself.
Other notable performances included The Weeknd singing The Hills, Justin Bieber with James Bay and of course Adele singing When We Were Young.
The international awards showcased talent from all around the world, with Justin Bieber and Icelandic singer Björk taking the solo awards and Perth Psych-Rock band Tame Impala taking their first Brit award for international group.
Favourite moment tonight….freakin @tameimpala winning best international act!!!
— Mark Ronson (@MarkRonson) February 24, 2016
https://twitter.com/brits/status/702595566417514496?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Watch the whole ceremony in it’s entirety here.
Full List of Winners for the night included:
British Male: James Bay
British Female: Adele
British Group: Coldplay
British Breakthrough: Catfish and the Bottlemen
British Producer: Charlie Andrew
British Single: Adele
British Album: Adele
British Video: One Direction
International Male: Justin Bieber
International Female: Björk
International Group: Tame Impala
Critics Choice: Jack Garratt
Global Success: Adele
Image: The Brit Awards/YouTube
After announcing that his new album Warlords will be released this week and teasing new tracks through Instagram, everyone’s favourite Swedish sad boy Jonatan Leandoer Håstad, AKA Yung Lean, has now released his second full-length studio album.
The album is 13 tracks long, with each track containing Lean’s signature emotional, cloud rapping, along with hard hitting, dark, wavy beats. The album is well balanced and manages to easily transition between smooth relaxing songs such as Stay Down to the intense and heavy tracks such as Hoover. Featuring production from fellow Sadboys Yung Gud and Yung Sherman as well as Whitearmor, and verses from Bladee, Lil Flash and Ecco2k, it wouldn’t be crazy to say that this is his best project to date.
Despite starting a world tour this March, Australian and New Zealand audiences have already been treated to Lean and his crew during his December – January tour where he played Beyond the Valley, Origin and a number of sideshows all around the country.
Despite Yung Lean tweeting that the album isn’t available until tomorrow, due to time zone differences, we Australians luckily get to listen to the album now instead. Stream on Spotify here, or below:
Read our review of the single track Hoover here
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jDiAcqbO0c]
Image: Handsome Tours
Arguably the king of the East Coast at the moment, Joey Bada$$ has once again linked up with producer, DJ and friend Statik Selektah for the new track Ready, which may or may not be released on his up and coming LP, now announced to be coming out later this year.
The track definitely has a different feel to how we’ve heard Joey on his past projects. Similar to the Glass Animals feature, he is demonstrating a new flow and vibe, pushing the boundaries of his past styles. In the first verse we hear this newfound conflict:
“Niggas think because we conscious we don’t really get it popping”
“They got me mistaken.
Critics try to box me.”
In an interview with Noisey a while back, Joey touched on this further, saying, “You know what the biggest misconception about me is. How I can only make 90’s sounding music”.
“Cause I do real shit, that’s it. I do what I feel in my heart. I can do anything,” He said.
With this in mind, despite what may seem like a different pathway, Joey still maintains the high quality of lyricism that he has shown before. He discusses how the media restrains him and how his path to independent success will cement him in the game for a ‘real long time’. He just hopes you’re ready for what he’s about to do next.
With this hard, boom bap beat and several nods to his crew Pro Era, Joey also manages to bring up old beef and slip in a little diss towards Troy Ave, saying, “My nigga Kirk just outsold Troy Ave”
Recently, in parallel to his conscious music, Joey has now begun a university lecture tour speaking to students about his life and career as an upcoming, independent hip-hop artist.
He’s definitely having a good start to the year.
Image: RapGenius