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Hip-Hop | Kinetics & One Love – Still Dreamin’ Remix (Feat. Jadakiss & Termanology)
Posted by jeffwbaird on September 28, 2012
It’s been a long time coming for Kinetics & One Love, but with their latest album, You Are Not Alone, they are finally starting to get some of the respect they deserve. Here lies the proof: not only did they hit number eight on the iTunes hip-hop charts, but over the summer Kinetics rapped alongside (and consistently out-spit) RA the Rugged Man, Remedy from Wu-Tang Killa Bees, Unknown Prophets, Termanology, Nitty Scott MC, and now Jadakiss! This remix adds a strong Jada feature to a song already stacked with lyrical power, style, and precision — over one of One Love’s most fervent beats to date. Don’t forget to cop the album if you haven’t already, and check back for when they drop the video to “Sign Language” featuring Wynter Gordon on Thursday!
[soundcloud params=”auto_play=false&show_comments=false”]http://soundcloud.com/kineticsmusic/stilldreaminremix[/soundcloud]
Electro, Mainstream Remix | Hoodie Allen — Small Town (SmarterChild Remix)
Posted by jeffwbaird on September 27, 2012
I don’t generally dabble in anything outside of the hip-hop hemisphere, but SmarterChild hit me with this remix to one of the more ardent tracks from Hoodie Allen’s latest EP, “Small Town,” and he fantastically manipulates it into a electro jam. For Hoodie and EDM-heads alike, this is a sure crowd and party-pleaser, with a hearty dose of electronic riffs and yet still a strong residue of the original.
Hip-Hop, Videos | Tyler Thomas — Never [Music Video]
Posted by jeffwbaird on September 24, 2012
In celebration of his 21st birthday, Tyler Thomas just dropped off his latest single, “Never,” a stellar track from the Los Angeles emcee. Tyler has steadily been on the rise the past few years, and just recently linked up with the legendary No I.D.’s production company, All Out Entertainment. Until his new album drops early next year, he’ll be hosting a “Foreign Fridays” series, featuring new videos and freestyles every week.
Hip-Hop | In the Rubble of Hip-Hop…
Posted by jeffwbaird on September 23, 2012
In 2006 when Nas claimed, quite controversially, that “hip-hop is dead,” he was on to something. One of hip-hop’s purest lyricists, Nas grew to fame in the early ‘90s through his poetic rapping and political subject matter—qualities that had become largely extinct from popularized hip-hop in the early 2000s. Hip-hop grew to prominence as the voice of disadvantaged America, but had become dominated by label executives; tastemakers prioritizing simplistic lyricism and rhyme schemes (along with incorporating the catchy choruses of pop music), and simultaneously degrading the quality of an art form.
Over the past decade, I have watched hip-hop become increasingly saturated, as pop culture continues to endorse formulaic hip-hop, typically including repetitious and easily accessible hooks, and raps using simple A-B rhyme schemes that delve lightly into a number of prescribed topics, such as the desire for fame, women, braggadocio, and partying. This sub-genre of “party rap” became widely popular in college environments, and seemed to promise any student with an aptitude for parties and a junior-high vocabulary the opportunity to earn a remunerative career as a rapper.
Through the surplus of undergraduates-turned-rappers, a new sub-genre, often coined “college rap,” began inundating blogs and steadily saturating the industry. These upstarts idolized the popular artists of the time, basing their craft off the lackluster wordplay and superficiality that dominated college radio playlists. When Asher Roth’s single “I Love College” rose to prominence in 2009, this movement hit the limelight, and suddenly students stopped studying law and medicine to follow their newfound dreams of being the next Mac Miller or Sammy Adams.
What is highly underestimated, however, is the amount of skill required to be an emcee of Nas’ caliber. If you take the time to listen to his first album Illmatic, Eminem’s Infinite, The Roots’ Phrenology, or any number of ‘90s or early 2000s records, the sophistication of the lyricism, content, and rhyme schemes is staggering. Becoming a prominent emcee used to require being sufficiently educated on the English language, as rappers constructed multisyllabic rhymes infused with alliteration, internal rhyme, and other complex literary elements. Just listen to Kinetics in his recently featured song, “Chris Nolan,” where he raps, “I spit sinister symbolism that’s killing all these silly simile single syllable singing simpletons.” Eminem has said in interviews that he used to study the dictionary as a child. If you listen to “Lose Yourself” closely, you can note that there is not a single word in the song that doesn’t rhyme with another. The reason it’s problematic to equate him to Asher Roth (besides the fact that it’s just rooted in race), is because Em rose to fame because of his pure lyrical power, and Asher made it off of artificiality.
The “change in leadership” that Nas referred to in interviews surrounding “Hip-Hop is Dead” highlighted that as the preferences of record companies have shifted, the music has changed with it. Political, socially conscious hip-hop is no longer seen as profitable, and thus labels won’t promote it. The biggest controversy surrounding this power battle occurred in 2008, when Atlantic Records shelved Lupe Fiasco’s third album for almost a year because of his defiance when asked to make a “radio-ready” single. Unfortunately, our Lupes are few and far between, and the majority of my favorite emcees are a far cry now from the substance-driven music they initially created. It doesn’t take long in the industry to understand what type of music is advantageous for one’s career, and it seems all but a few choose money over message. In this sense, rapping has become quite like corporate law; individuals work exceptionally hard to excel at a practice they believe in only to abandon their values in pursuit of a more lucrative opportunity.
I have always loved hip-hop, and that passion will always persist. But I want to live in a world where I don’t have to search for underground rappers to convince a friend that all hip-hop isn’t violent, misogynistic, and devoid of content. The reason that it became such a red flag for white, suburban kids to listen to hip-hop is that our mainstream culture assumed we were only listening to the 2 Chainz and Chief Keef’s of the world. No wonder they didn’t understand. Most critics of hip-hop have never heard It Was Written, Midnight Marauders, or Like Water for Chocolate. They haven’t paid attention to Macklemore on the new XXL Freshman List. Instead, they have seen Machine Gun Kelly and Roscoe Dash.
I’m not asking for you to agree, or to all of a sudden change your preference, but I’m asking us to be conscious of what we consume and what type of hip-hop we’re promoting when we share it. Our choices ultimately get reflected in who’s in the magazines, who’s on the radio, and even who’s getting a record deal. I’m always careful to promote new artists who have something special to share (see Kendrick Lamar, Macklemore, Blue Scholars, Logic, Kinetics, Dylan Owen, Accent—just to name a few), and I’ll continue to do so. But many of hip-hop’s forefathers are on their way out, and it’s up to us to make sure the right artists of this new generation end up on top.
Albums | FNT Concert Giveaway — Accent/Dylan Owen/One Love Live in NYC!
Posted by jeffwbaird on August 29, 2012
NYC! Do you want to see Accent, Dylan Owen, and One Love tomorrow night? We have tickets to their show at DROM in the Lower East Side. To enter the contest, you must do the following:
1. “Like” all three artists at their Facebook pages: Accent, Dylan Owen, Kinetics & One Love, as well as Fresh New Tracks.
2. Share either Accent’s “The One I Need” or Kinetics & One Love’s “Still Dreamin'” on Facebook, tagging Fresh New Tracks and including the line, “Share this video to win free tickets to see Accent, Dylan Owen & One Love Live!” with a link to this post.
3. Two winners will be picked by 4pm tomorrow. Doors open at 8. You can find more info here.
Happy posting!
Albums, Hip-Hop | Kinetics & One Love — You Are Not Alone [Album Release]
Posted by jeffwbaird on August 29, 2012
When Kinetics & One Love released their first album in 2009, it was evident that they were still students in college (albeit extremely talented ones). Their debut, Fading Back to Normal, was crafted around an abrupt breakup, and the mood vacillated as Kinetics utilized the recording process to heal his wounds. While the album spawned many fan-favorites, blog-standouts, and even the quadruple-platinum single “Airplanes” (later recorded by B.o.B), it was the sense of potential that lingered after the release that drew them such a quick and organic following.
Three years later, after constructing a new twelve-track LP that is immediately indicative of their growth—both as a collective and individually—Kinetics & One Love reached the top ten of the iTunes hip-hop charts, just two hours into the album’s release. The immediate popularity of the album has to do with the fact that while You Are Not Alone is not really a departure from their sound, it has been sincerely refined and developed, and the scope of their work has radically escalated. While Fading… had a heavy dose of impactful and conscious material in its own right, here Kinetics has made that the focus, pinning the album’s success on his fluency while speaking about global and personal issues, which he executes with astounding ease and eloquence. You Are Not Alone frequently veers beyond the local, which is part of what makes it such a striking release from artists so early in their careers. It is also uncharacteristic for its time given the strong album concept, which Kinetics described as its being told from “the perspective a futuristic alien society reflecting upon Earth’s mistakes in 2012 and pondering the future direction of mankind.” This theme tightly winds around the material in metaphors that gives it a true sense of unity—something almost entirely lost in an iTunes-dominated era of music.
While Kinetics has fine-tuned and sharpened his flows, One Love’s production game has elevated remarkably, weaving together elements of hip-hop, pop, and EDM to create a soundscape that is captivating and melodic all the way through—battling Kinetics’ lyrics and flow head-on as the most memorable and hypnotizing constituent of every song. His growing presence as a producer plays a prime role in the duo’s development, which—accompanied with Kinetics’ more dominant vocal presence and delivery—has given them the power to sustain the listener’s attention for a proper full-length and then some.
Over its twelve tracks Kinetics drops copious amounts of knowledge, touching upon domestic abuse in “Hideous,” teen suicide in “Sign Language” with Wynter Gordon, and struggling to fit it on “Sometimes I Feel Like A Robot,” a song that perfectly balances Kinetics’ ability to please hip-hop heads and lyrical enthusiasts as well as those with a pop ear. Kinetics & One Love were clearly selective in their pursuit of features, as everyone here serves a purpose, whether it’s Termanology starting off the triumphant “Still Dreamin'” with a precise and fierce flow, Yung Joey adding boast and posture to the club jam “In My Own World,” or Accent blazing through the most complex of rhyme constructions (“the heart of this artist harbors a harshness/from horrible hardships so heartily harnessed”) on the standout “This Too Shall Pass.” Other features include Nitty Scott, KGB, Paulina Goudieva, Mimoza, B.Love, Hunter Stout, and KTSB, as well as producer Kenna Okoye, who helped construct what are arguably two of the album’s liveliest instrumentals (“Hideous” and “In My Own World”). This album is well worth your $10 on iTunes, because beyond these twelve tracks you are supporting hip-hop with a soul and message, and proving that it can still be profitable for artists and labels.
DOWNLOAD ON ITUNES: Kinetics & One Love — You Are Not Alone
Hip-Hop | Accent — The One I Need (Prod. Kid Vision)
Posted by jeffwbaird on August 26, 2012
Here it is, world. The premiere of Accent’s new single, “The One I Need,” which will be included on his upcoming EP Sight & Sound, a collaboration with producer Kid Vision (who has gained some FNT notoriety for his production on Kinetics’ “Cosmic Consciousness” and “845”, as well as KAM Royal’s mixtape “Still Waters”). Over a beat infused with soulful sample-chops, Acc spits some of the most ornate rhymes you’ll ever hear from an unsigned artist, pairing together words you didn’t think were possible to rhyme with extraordinary ease. Accent, a gifted spoken-word poet from the L.E.S., has been steadily gaining popularity as an artist since his last mixtape (I Love Nujabes) and most recently from his four features on Kinetics’ With A Little Help From My Friends, including the standout “Make It Work” which also featured Missy Modell. This leak is certainly a testament to how seasoned the skills are of this upstart artist, and how anxious we should all be for Sight & Sound. You can also hear him this Tuesday on Kinetics & One Love’s new album You Are Not Alone, which is dropping on iTunes.