Mike Isberto is one of those under-stated gems that seems to always be around but just below the radar. The acoustic soul artist has developed a fair following on Youtube and now has a few EPs under his belt. That’s … Continue reading
To say Jane Lui is a gem of creativity in a music scene saturated with sound-a-likes is an understatement. That’s why we were extremely excited to check out her latest body of work – Goodnight Company. Lui chose to forego the traditional marketing & busines models with this release, opting to distribute the album for free via digital download and concurrently sell physical copies that include a bonus DVD. This release was more about getting her music into as many ipods and hands as possible rather than trying to rake in profit. So the question remains whether Goodnight Company is collection of quick freebies or a quality piece of work; and that’s what we aim to find out.
It’s been years since we’ve seen a full-length LP from Philadelphia rapper Decipher. Sure, we’ve seen a couple mixtapes from him along with a plethora of feature spots on other artists’ songs but those aren’t enough to truly gauge how an artist has evolved over time compared to an actual, conceptualized album. But this changed at the top of 2011, when Decipher dropped his long awaited return, The Effect. The MUzO artist did a good job of building anticipation for the album, but does it live up to the hype? We’re gonna find out.
Yes, we know this album is 5 months old. But we’re still digging ourselves out of the perpetual backlog of album reviews and we definitely couldn’t leave out one of the most significant releases in years for the AA music scene. Free Wired is the album that helped propel the Far East Movement from the “up and coming” stage they have been at for years to the “they’ve made it big” stage where you can hardly go a day in public without hearing one of their songs. So is Free Wired the result of great marketing and luck? Or is it truly worth the mass exposure and recognition that it’s gotten?
It’s been quite some time since our last Critic’s Corner album review, and quite frankly there are a number of reasons this is so but today marks the return of the feature. This is our 30th album review since a-Tunes started and we’ve decided to switch things up a little bit and change the format. We’ll dive more into this in our next post.
One of our first reviews was of Oak & Gorski’s debut album Good Advice, Bad Advice. Here we are two years later and they have a new EP that dropped at the end of 2010 called Love Destroyer. Being an EP, it clocks in at just under 20 minutes long, totaling 5 tracks. So how does it fair in comparison? Let’s find out.
Bambu dropped this EP earlier this year as something of a prelude to his upcoming exit album which he has been stating to be his last. He’s been in the game a long time now, both as part of Native Guns and now as a solo artist – choosing not only to use his mic to make music but speak and organize the communities he grew up in as well. It’s on that note that he continues to interweave the two worlds, regularly incorporating some type of socially concious theme into his music. So with the formal collections of his music as albums coming to a supposed end, how did this EP fare?
Back in February, Virginian MC Manifest dropped his 3rd mixtape entitled Open Bars. The title is less an allusion to alcohol but rather more towards his lyrical content and at 20 tracks deep it’s clear that Mani has a lot to say. His last release was about two years ago but he’s stayed active performing, touring, interviewing, and dropping singles here and there, often with his partner in rhyme Lyricks. Whenever an artist drops a mixtape of this length, it’s often a question of whether we are getting the quality to match the quantity. If you want to find out if Open Bars is worth it, read on!
JR Aquino, who often goes by simply JRA, hasn’t been on my radar for too long but upon hearing some of his work and album previews on Youtube at the early part of this year I was impressed enough to support the guy and pick up his album. That also means we get to take a closer look at it and put it under the microscope to see how it holds up to scrutiny as a complete body of work. JRA is no stranger to talent and always seems to be in good company, frequently singing with AJ Rafael, Erika David, and the like but his debut album is just him going at it solo. There’s no question the kid has skills but can he hold his own for an entire debut LP? Continue after the break to see how Exposure fared.
It’s been quite some time since this album dropped towards the end of 2009, but we’re still playing catch up on these album reviews. Violinist and singer Paul Dateh frequently collabs with guitarist Ken Belcher, so it was only natural that they would join forces and put out an album together. With a heavy emphasis on their instrumental abilities, the duo released this concept acoustic project EP entitled The Good Life for which the MV of the title track dropped back in October of 09. We already know the two make a good team from all their youtube performance clips but how did they fare on a 7 track EP? Read on to find out.
Although Johnnyphlo debuted with a mini-album last year entitled The Notebook, he is making his first feature length album debut with his latest release, Basic Strategy. His mini-album was a very strong, albeit short, collection of songs that showed a lot of potential and promise for the relatively new artist. Though he’s spent a lot of time behind the scenes in music, only in more recent years has he stepped into the spotlight and he’s really had a strong start to his career since then. With the release of this album, the biggest question to be answered was whether he could sustain the quick pace of his artistic growth and development or would his progression stagnate? Looking at the track listing it’s clear that Johnny’s enlisted the help of a lot of other artists so let’s jump right in and see if all the work and collaboration paid off. Note: The album includes a couple re-releases from The Notebook, which I will not include in this review since I commented on them in the last one.
