New Music Tuesday #133

Fresh Daily, Homeboy Sandman and the BET Awards Episode of AOR

It’s 1:30am Tuesday morning and I have a dentist appointment at 11am followed by recording an interview with REDACTED for my podcast and then running home to prep questions for the interview I have with REDACTED on Wednesday and REDACTED on Thursday. I’m tired as hell.

Feel free to guess who I’m interviewing in the comments below. I’m scared to say their names or give clues cus sometimes folks cancel.

SHOWS

July 24 - I’m back at Friends & Lovers with Meka for Toast & Jams. The Juneteenth edition was an absolute VIBE. If you’re into late night parties this is the one for. you!

July 28 - New Music Tuesday on Twitch.tv/Donwill - 4p - 6p EST!

Aug 6 - I’ll be back at Milly’s holding it down with my guy Parle for CLOSED FORMAT. If you’re in the hood drop by. We’re on set from 7p - 11p so it’s a good time for folk that like to be in bed early

THE ALMANAC OF RAP

Oh look, my BET Awards episode finally dropped! I try to get to the bottom of if winning awards even matters. I also try and help a few new artists manifest winning their first award. It’s a fun episode and it’s not a long one either.

It took a while to finish because I had to write a few other episodes and then figure out what the edit for this one looked like. It’s got a LOT of really cool guests and at least one person in the video is something that i REDACTED from the opening paragraph of the newsletter.

You can listen to the episode here or at the youtube link above.

NEWS

Let’s see… The lettuce gives you explosive diarrhea, wild fires blew smoke to the city that made breathing the air over the weekend was the equivalent of smoking like 10 packs of cigarettes a day, we rain with had flash floods and tornado warnings, the museum is giving people legionnaires and when that’s not happening there is a heatwave. And that’s just the local news….

Nationally things are eveb worse!

VIDEOS

Fresh Daily dropped some new visuals for his project. He’s been really on a tear as of late and doesn’t seem to be letting up any time soon.

Coco Jones is being very open and vulnerable about her current career crisis. Long story short she doesn’t feel like her new single feels authentic to her story and her label and managent (all dudes) are like yes it does! lol

Wether we agree or disagree you gotta admit this is some pretty brilliant marketing. The conversation around her has always been ‘pretty girl, great voice, songs don’t connect’ and she’s just tackling it head on by showing us why the songs don’t connect.

The song sounds kinda like word soup. It feels like those Swedish dudes who write all the nonsense hits made an R&B song.

A group that has a very clear vision of who they are is Die Antwoord. This video is the continuaiton of a story they have been writing for decades and it’s pretty fascinating to see how far they have taken this version of the group.

You probably don’t know who this group is but they are a morbid curiosity that I often rabbit hole and instead of going in depth about them I will try to speed run their shit to give you an overview.

(apologies in advance for forcing you to tolerate this explanation. I can’t say that I like their music as much as I like getting to the bottom of why it works)

The group has two members named Ninja (the dude) and Yolandi (the woman) and this is their first album in a while. In the interim they have been marred by controversy for something relating to adopting a teenage kid with a medical condition who was in a lot of their videos and using it as content. Danny Brown also accused Ninja of sexually assaulting him and let’s just say it’s not the first time he’s been accused of that. Early into this iteration of their career Yolandi did some weird ass black face adjacent body paint shit that it seems like nobody batted an eye at and well… here just look at it

yeah…

I think they are Afrikaans and they rep this thing called ‘Zef’ culture. I a bit unclear about exactly what Zef culture is and wether or not they made it up or it’s something they appropriated and bastardized. I can’t find it now but at one point i did find a reddit message board with a bunch of young black South African artists who’s style they had apparently jacked because this is how Ninja and Yolandi started out…

His first group was Max Normal. It was pretty standard of hip hop that was like a hybrid of performance art and rap. I think they were pretending to be motivational speakers or some sort of white collar corporate outfit. The performances looked pretty interesting.

This was another project he did before Die Antwoord and again. Fairly normal stuff. The through line was always these sort of well constructed long form music videos that were kinda high concept.

And then this happened….

Which is how i found them in around 2010 in the early days of Youtube. It was jarring and weird and pretty enticing.

There were weird characters and pet rats and vibrant colors and odd storylines and rapping that you could tell was rooted in technical ability but purposely off kilter.

I think i lost my point in trying to explain these weird MF’s but they’ve had several iterations until they found one that works and in a weird way this is kinda what Coco Jones’ dilemma is about.

Trying to find yourself as an artist is hard and I hope she figures it out because her voice is too amazing to just be making music for tik tok sounds.

One dude who don’t need to find his voice is Homeboy Sandman. He popped up on Rosenberg’s show and went INSANE over the thought at work beat.

ALBUMS

Better Than McDonalds - Gangrene

Who Coppy - Larry June

Set In Stone - Rick Ross

Happiness Anytime - Leon Bridges

Fix Your Face - Masego

Beard - Syd

Oh Yeah? - Steve Lacy

timepass. - Sy

SONGS

Dorchester feat Quelle Chris - Sonnyjim

If It Ain’t Broke Don’t Fix It - Dinner Party

24/25 - Trinidad James

Jumpupw!nya - Chad Hugo