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Bakar Is The Moment

April 29, 2022 by newhiphopnews

It’s hard to nail Bakar down — in terms of genre, style, and, in his early days, even by a name. With each of the London-bred singer’s songs, he wants the listener to cherish the moment in which they are hearing and feeling it. On Bakar’s debut album, February’s Nobody’s Home, each track unfolds like the pages of a book, detailing his most cherished moments, lining in Hampstead, Camden, and Chalk Hill.

We get a glimpse of Bakar’s day-to-day life in the video for “NW3,” the title of which refers to the postal code of London’s Hampstead district. Whether he’s alone on a rooftop, enjoying a meal with friends, or smoking in his flat, Bakar finds solace in each moment, often getting lost in time, dancing throughout.

But before Bakar, born Abubakar Baker Shariff-Farr, “found the answer” in “NW,” he released much of his music on Soundcloud beginning in 2015, anonymously. Oftentimes, he would upload vocal freestyles over samples of King Krule and Bombay Bicycle Club, many of his raw, unfiltered lyrics opening windows to his soul. One of these tracks is 2016’s “Sharing Is Caring,” on which, he reels over a love lost.

“Hope that you believe like how I believe / Gave you my love, you sold it back to me / Play with love too much, you might lose it / Smoked my last Camel but we can twos it,” Bakar sings, as adlibbed hums and coos give the song a forlorn and haunting element.

The influence of Kid Cudi and Dev Hynes is present in Bakar’s work, the latter of which Bakar has been a fan of since Hynes’ Lightspeed Champion days. Hynes released his most recent album as Lightspeed Champion in 2010, and Bakar says Hynes and Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke were among his favorite artists during his adolescence. As Bakar is wont to live in the moment, these are probably the closest hints we’ll ever get in regards to his actual age. In a 2018 interview with Wonderland, following the release of his debut mixtape, Badkid Bakar said his age was “infinity.”

A year after that interview, Bakar would release an EP called Will You Be My Yellow?, which contained the breakthrough hit, “Hell N Back.” Like Bakar himself, his music is ageless, as he remarks on a tumultuous relationship over jazzy horns and subtle drum patterns.

“Could you tell where my head was at when you found me? Me and you went to hell and back just to find peace,” he sings, delivering soft, silky vocals, with his soulful, British accent still audible throughout.

“Hell N Back” became a sleeper hit in the United States, reaching the top of the Adult Alternative Charts 27 weeks after its release, breaking the record for the longest climb to No. 1. Bakar had actually begun the process of writing Nobody’s Home before he wrote Will You Be My Yellow?, but the timing of the ideas he had conceived and the work he wanted to put out just wasn’t right.

“Will You be My Yellow? started picking up — you know, that song ‘Hell N Back’ started going crazy,” Bakar said in an interview with Document Journal. “It bought me some time, basically, to figure out the record. A couple songs [from my first try] were really potent. They stood the test of time. When I came back to Nobody’s Home in 2020, I was ready, long story short. I was so ready — the way the world was, all the topics, Palestine, this, that.”

On his proper debut, Bakar offers a collection of tracks that are both timely and timeless. He shares anecdotes of love and heartbreak, both romantic and familial. On a particular track, “Youthenasia,” he explores the dark parts of fame, and how his status has affected his role in his family.

“It’s like lately feel the pressure, I’ve been feelin’ nauseous / Lately like my mama has become my daughter / I wouldn’t change it for the world, man, this sh*t is awesome / I ain’t seen my dad in fifteen years, who would’ve thought it?,” he rap-sings over a thumping drum loop.

As the son of an immigrant mother from Tanzania, Bakar examines racial injustice on the track “The Mission,” while expressing a desire to create wealth for the generations of his family after him.

“All I ever hear is people talking about how bad nepotism is,” Bakar says in the song. “Do you know how badly I want some nepotism in my life?”

Since his breakthrough, Bakar has found fans in collaborators Dominic Fike, Kenny Beats, and Benee, as well as the late Virgil Abloh, the artistic creative director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear collection. Abloh even designed a special edition cover for Bakar’s Nobody’s Home. Though Bakar’s rise in the US may seem less rapid compared to that of the TikTok hitmakers of our time, his music, both old and new, still sounds fresh and timely, whether you were to have your first listen today, or months from now.

Tobi Lou, ‘Parrish Blue,’ And The Power Of Limitless Imagination

April 26, 2022 by newhiphopnews

It’s really rare that you meet a rapper’s mom before you meet the rapper himself. But that’s what happened for me with Tobi Lou, the effervescent Chicago rapper who is building an audience by being something like the antithesis of what rappers have always been. Okay, so technically, it was his girlfriend’s mom, but the point stands: The way I met Tobi is as counterintuitive as his approach to hip-hop – and if anything, his approach to music is even more successful.

To invest in Tobi Lou fanship is to embrace a thousand little quirky artifacts of the quasi fantasy world he’s building for himself. For instance, in 2018, Tobi was joined by St. Louis rapper Smino in his video for “Troop,” a dreamy ode to the cartoons of Tobi’s youth. The video features cameos from characters like the Rugrats and Kanye West’s Takashi Murakami-designed Dropout Bear mascot, spotlighting the colorful oeuvre he’s built over the past few years.

Tobi expanded that saturated fantasyland through singles such as the Adventure Time-inspired TikTok favorite “Buff Baby” and with projects like 2019’s Live On Ice. With each new release, a fervent fan base also grew around Tobi’s equally vibrant personality. Both kicked into overdrive with the recent release of his album Non-Perishable in March, which is part of a three-project suite that grew out of his original plan for a project called Parrish Blue. If his previous projects expanded the canon, Non-Perishable turned it on its head, drawing it into the realm of hyperreal live-action marked by the same cartoonish zany energy.

It also stretched the boundaries of his content, allowing him to delve more into the inner workings of his mind beyond candy-coated hooks and saccharine sing-alongs. “I think Live On Ice was a big show and tell,” he says via a mid-afternoon Zoom call to discuss Non-Perishable and its upcoming related projects. “Parrish Blue is an overwhelming defiant sadness like a really gigantic whole. It’s a lot of devastation and it’s just a lot of emotions and it’s really heavy. And then making Parrish Blue, I realized through the help of my sister that I need to just stop trying to fit all my toys into one box. And then I separated them for the first time. And now I had like three boxes of 10 to 12 tracks.”

Those three boxes are Non-Perishable, April Showers, which is set to release later this week, and Parrish Blue, each describing a different stage of the process of rebuilding and healing from the soul-shattering wounds of the past few years. “The second project, that’s just chaos at its height,” he explains. “That’s the heat of the battle. And then Parrish Blue is like the aftereffect of the battle, just the feeling of sorrow, the feeling of loss and just dealing with that. And the piece of it, knowing this is who I am and not being afraid to be that. And I think Non-Perishable just offered me the chance to get energy off and break out of this sad box that I kind of put myself into while making Parrish Blue.”

In true Tobi Lou fashion, his route into making music professionally was also roundabout and unconventional. Born in Nigeria and raised in Chicago, he originally pursued a career in baseball, even making it to the minor leagues before suffering a career-ending injury. From then on, he focused everything on making and releasing music independently – an arrangement that takes the same sort of commitment, energy, time, and money, but is every bit as rewarding.

Being independent affords him a level of control and freedom that is often out of reach for his contemporaries on major labels. For one thing, he’s shot 11 videos for Non-Perishable and released eight so far, all with the assistance of his longtime collaborator Glassface, who has been a critical component of the Tobi Lou experience so far. If Tobi’s striking visual presentation is the hook, Glassface is probably as integral to his success as anyone, designing Tobi’s cover art and shooting his videos, as well as contributing musically behind the scenes.

“There is beauty in independence,” Tobi says of his situation. “There’s definitely more for freedom, but at the end of the day, it’s a business. Everything’s a business. Whether you’re independent, or you’re with a major label, everything’s a business. You just get more authority over your art, as an independent…. I don’t really feel like anyone’s holding me back. If I’m not dropping, it’s because I don’t want to drop.”

Of course, competing in such a crowded marketplace without the assistance of a massive corporate machine means risking getting overshadowed and lost in the near-constant rush of new music. Fortunately for him, his natural personality and sense of humor provide the best tools to solve this potential problem. Days after the release of Non-Perishable, he joked that he would remove the album from DSPs after a week and that listeners should download it to ensure they wouldn’t lose access. Fans took that as a challenge, running up the album’s sales until it reached Apple Music’s number-one spot.

“I didn’t mean to hold the album hostage,” he laughs. “I think I woke up the day after it dropped and I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to say they got seven days.’ Because first-week [sales] matters so much to us, for artists – that’s what we’re judged by. I’m always trolling. And I didn’t really think much of it past that, until the day it started unfolding, and people were getting worried like, ‘Wait, is he serious?’ And I was just like, ‘Wait a minute. I’m actually causing a little disturbance here. People are getting worried.’ And what if things operated like that? We got to see the power of this fan base, and I think we could do some really crazy things down the line.”

For now, he hopes he doesn’t need to hold his albums hostage in the future, but he sees the value in seeking new outlets and avenues and approaches to promoting his art. For instance, outside of music, he’s spent the past year designing his own sneakers and is already working on a second pair. He’s excited to launch them because of all the artists who sell various merch like hoodies, shirts, bags, and so on, he may very well be the first to put out his own shoes independently.

Which sums up his whole approach, really. “I like the fact that people are starting to think in that language,” he says. “It’s really cool to start thinking, yo don’t wait for Nike, you are Nike. We can be Adidas. We can be all these things, and we can just start somewhere. So it’s been cool to see.” The only limit is imagination, and as Tobi’s work so far has shown, his imagination is limitless.

Kali Is Turning The Tables On Rap’s Toxic Men

April 21, 2022 by newhiphopnews

In recent years, it has seemed that musical content in hip-hop and R&B has been firmly divided by genre – and gender. Hip-hop gets to be the sole domain of men with toxic narratives driven by rappers like Drake and Future. They play aloof and apathetic toward the women in their lives, gaslighting them for being hoes while loudly proclaiming they’ll never settle down themselves. Meanwhile, it’s the women in R&B, like Grammy winner Jazmine Sullivan and Summer Walker, who have to play the fed-up victims of men’s mind games. Seemingly every song sounds wounded — or barring that, encouraging women to recover from the wounds inflicted on them by destructive relationships.

Kali, the 21-year-old Atlanta rapper who won viral fame thanks to beloved clips of her songs on TikTok, is dead set on upending this particular convention in Black music. In March, she unleashed her major-label debut EP, Toxic Chocolate, pointedly reversing the dynamic and staking a claim on space for women in the toxicity conversation in hip-hop. “If somebody think they going to play games with me,” she explains of the EP’s contrarian philosophy, “I’m going to show you, look, I’m competitive, and you’re going to lose this game, sir, ma’am, anybody. It’s just, like, put your foot down. The girls need to get their power back.”

That’s what she does on the EP with songs like “UonU,” a role reversal anthem that would make Michael Scott proud – oh, how the turntables… etc. There’s also “Standards,” which finds the young rapper drawing her line in the sand and demanding consistency from the men she deals with. And on the EP’s title track, she offers the following flippant missive: “I’m really in love, I ain’t really toxic / Just playin’, I’m lying / Fuck on the side, oh he throwing up crying.” Kali’s debut is what would happen if Megan Thee Stallion got stuck in the Brundle teleporter with Future while Destiny’s Child’s “Independent Women” played in the background.

Of course, she doesn’t see it that way. For her, it’s just about flipping those sad songs into veritable bangers, slathered with a greasy layer of Southern crunk. “I always hear girls, even myself… We’d be like, ‘Oh, I would never, I wouldn’t do him like that.’ But, we got enough music telling us that, enough sad music to cry about. It’s time to just be like, ‘You know what? He did it to you, why you can’t do it to him?’ Summer Walker’s stuff had just came out. Everybody sliding down walls, and crying. It was just like, ‘No, that’s not the vibes anymore.’ Do that man how he did you. Let’s see who can really take it.”

If this seems like a prescient outlook for someone who just reached drinking age, well, it is. But Kali has always been precocious, starting her rap career at the age of just 12 years old after writing down her pre-teen feelings in a journal and earning the right to her own bedroom by meeting her father’s challenge of writing a full album’s worth of rap songs to the beats he made at home. Through high school, she pursued soccer to avoid her parents’ scrutiny over her subject matter, but upon graduation returned to her first love: rapping. After a brush with early stardom thanks to an audition on Netflix’s Rhythm + Flow, Kali overcame a few more early career setbacks to achieve viral fame when she uploaded her song “Do A Bitch” to TikTok in late 2020.

That song, which she later remixed with Rico Nasty, laid the groundwork for her next viral single, “MMM MMM,” to truly take off. “My first reaction [to the song going viral] was, ‘I did it again,’” she recalls. “‘I’m doing it again, y’all.’ I can say, ‘I got the plan, I just need the platform.’” The platform came just a few weeks later when fellow Atlanta rapper Latto reached out to her to jump on the remix. There likely couldn’t be a better candidate; aside from sharing a hometown, the two rappers both started their rap careers young, both garnered a bit of initial attention thanks to a reality TV rap competition, and both were given the co-sign of an older, more established artist – the very epitome of paying it forward.

Latto continued to pay it forward, recruiting Kali to her first-ever headlining tour. At the stop in Los Angeles, I got to see the impact of Kali’s music firsthand as the sold-out crowd at the Novo recited back her lyrics bar-for-impressively-witty-bar. “A lot of people have been telling me, ‘Kali, your tape is no-skips, straight through,’” she humblebrags. “‘I’ve listened to this every day straight through.’ Even being on tour, people knowing the words already – and it hasn’t even been that long, and I’ve only had like five shows – is super crazy to me, it makes me so happy. Every show, I see that one person that knows every song, word for word, and even a crowd singing along by the second hook, I’m like, ‘Oh, well y’all really is tuned in.’”

Kali admits that there’s been an adjustment to the newfound fame, but she’s already ready for more. “I want to do my own tour,” she muses. “I would love to do that. That’s why I’m putting in so much work on this one… I leave the show with a goal every day: Hopefully, someone left the show like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know Kali, but I’m going to look up more of her music.’ I just want to be super big. So whatever I got to do to be big, that’s what I’m going to do.” When I ask whether or not she accepts the claims that she’s rap’s women’s answer to Future, she demures.

“No, no, this is a toxic phase,” she laughs. “I’m just letting you all know, I don’t play games. This is not that. So, if you ever trying to shoot your shot, just make sure you listen to the tape first. Before you show me your A-S-S, I got you. But as soon as you do that, Toxic Chocolate will appear. And I would throw a toxic tantrum.”

Kali is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Zack Fox Isn’t Giving Up At Rap

April 20, 2022 by newhiphopnews

Zack Fox doesn’t give up – except when it involves Elden Ring. And that’s why he’s one of rap’s most exciting new lyricists, even if he’s hesitant to consider himself a contender for rap’s throne.

But more on that later. Back to Elden Ring — the notoriously difficult role-playing game that’s become the best-selling release of 2022 since it dropped in February. Playing the part of a banished person that’s coming back to become a king, gamers around the world have been getting their asses kicked at every turn by the RPG’s many bosses.

Fox is one of those players who, up until a few weeks ago, was tweeting about the progress that he was making in the game. Once he made it to its first boss, Margit, the Fell Omen, he shared a video of him getting pulverized. When I ask him about it over a phone call, he first sighs, then reveals a decidedly un-Zack Fox-like philosophy.

“Sometimes, it’s about quitting,” he says with a genuine, sheepish laugh. “Shouts out to the n****s who built like that. It ain’t me. I play Animal Crossing, f*cking Katamari Dynasty, and Pokemon. I had no business and that’s totally on me. I’ll take that L.”

As far as stories go, Fox’s is one of perseverance — and genuinely being the funniest person in the room. The 31-year-old, Atlanta-born comedian found an early Twitter audience for his unique brand of deadpan-through-tweets jokes under the alias of “Bootymath” back in 2013 and, years later, joined the Father-led and Playboi Carti-featuring collective, Awful Records, where he often contributed a unique brand of illustrations to its projects.

As his popularity grew through both his tweets and other projects like stand-up comedy and the Bruh podcast for Red Bull Radio, Fox made the jump to music in 2018 with the release of “Square Up” with producer Kenny Beats. The track, which sounds like it’s about to steal your lunch money, is built around Fox’s unique humor through ridiculously funny punchlines. It immediately found favor with fans of his jokes as well as, surprisingly, fans of rap. While its release may have seemed like a spur-of-the-moment drop with a rising producer, Fox says now that it was an organic step into the next phase of his “creative wheelhouse.”

“I think [rap] has always been right there, on the table,’ he says. “I grew up basically with musicians, and I was a part of Awful, and being in proximity to it for so long, music never felt like a drastic departure from anything else. It was time to step out into that creative wheelhouse of what I’m building.”

Fox’s decision to keep going musically didn’t just stem from fans who showered him with praise, admitting that he “hates everything after I put it out.” Instead, it came from some of his favorite artists. “Seeing Lil Jon and Mike Will Made IT [give their approval]made me push further because it gave me a little boost due to the fact that some of my heroes were taking notice of it,” says Fox. “I wanted to just dig further into it.”

The following year, Fox broke through the mainstream when he appeared on Kenny Beats’ freestyle series The Cave in which the producer invites artists to his studio to rap on the spot. In an episode where Fox pulls up to have fun, the two hopped into the booth and gave birth to “Jesus Is The One (I Got Depression).”

What can be said about “Jesus Is The One (I Got Depression)” that would make sense from a strictly descriptive sense? It’s “What The F*ck” flavored ice cream, sprinkled with bits of truth that make it a delicate dance between absurdity and a breathing diary. Fox does everything on the track from drinking his own semen, crashing into white-owned businesses, and making the claim that his show was canceled because “white folks don’t trust me” (he’s probably referring to Vice Live, which aired for two months in 2019 before being discontinued). He rants and screams, but it never delves into ridiculous territory. It’s an intoxicating listen — one that shot to the top of Spotify’s Viral chart soon after its release.

Hearing the track leads the listener to ask one thing: how the hell does he record something like that with a straight face? There has to be a writer’s room in the same way that Jimmy Kimmel and other late-night hosts develop content to air on a daily basis. But, it’s actually quite the opposite. Fox doesn’t even really believe in getting to the studio, instead describing what he does as being “just a n**** with back pain in his house talking about germs.”

“When I’m with my guys Jak and Alex, we throw basketballs at each other in the studio,” he says. “Music is like drawing and doodling, and that’s like a big thing that I’m into. I treat both the same by sitting at a desk because I don’t really need to be in a studio with n****s ashing out backwoods on me.”

Fox’s approach can be heard across his debut album, Shut The F*ck Up Talking To Me, released in 2021. It’s a battalion of punchlines, insults, and missiles in the shape of dick jokes. It’s not made for critics — just the fervent fanbase that devours his jokes like the first meal after a day of fasting. “I was a poor-ass kid who had all this time to be imaginative, f*ck around, draw, and make beats on my mom’s furniture and be silly as a kid so I don’t try to force myself out of that now,” he says about the LP. “I’m a big-ass kid.”

Now, it’s 2022. With Fox’s debut album firmly in the rearview mirror, the world’s getting that itch for new music from Fox now that he’s firmly in the running for rap’s throne. Except, that’s just the thing — he firmly makes it clear that he’s not purposely running for anything. “I don’t put out music to be a contender,” he says. “I’m not making music to get anything out of it aside from this just being fun to me.” Besides, he’s been plenty busy with other aspects of his multifaceted career, including his recurring appearance on Quinta Brunson’s sensational sitcom Abbott Elementary, and writing on the Peacock original comedy Bust Down.

With that being said, there’s hope for the future for Fox’s 2022, he’s just not putting a timetable on when something else is coming. “I have no idea when I’m dropping a new project,” he says. “I’m always working on stuff, but I’m never going to burden myself by saying ‘this is the time when you’ll get this.’ I think it’s important for artists to go into their dungeon and then when I’m ready to drop something, I’m just going to put it out.”

While he’s locked in the dungeon, Fox is being inspired by classic shows like Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack, and Ren And Stimpy for his music. “I’m making songs from the perspective of a cartoon character, but also just being myself and finding the balance between those things,” he says. “I like to make sh*t that’s kind of silly, but I also want to be able to listen to it in the car for long-ass drives.”

Judging by his own checklist for good music, Fox has found success in his musical endeavors and will continue to do so. And when he thinks about his younger self and his goals, it looks like everything’s going according to plan. Well, almost.

“I didn’t succeed with having sex with Vanessa Williams like I wanted to when I was a kid,” Fox admits. “But I think that the other stuff, especially the music, is working out really well.”

Saya Gray Is Pulling Music From Her Bones

April 19, 2022 by newhiphopnews

Saya Gray has, for years, worked as a bassist to the stars — Daniel Caesar, Willow, and Liam Payne all among them. But more than 45 minutes pass on her imaginative and immersive debut LP, 19 Masters, before she takes the record’s first and last true bass solo.

It arrives near the end of “Leeches On My Thesis!,” a guarded bit of confessional pop about navigating others’ expectations of her own success and relevance. Just as the breezy acoustic tune seems to dissolve into a comedown of swirling electronics and shivering static, Gray steps forward on electric bass, gliding up and down the neck with the sort of rolling melodic licks Tony Levin might add. It lasts a little more than 30 seconds, teasing what Gray can do and has done but not necessarily what she ever wants to do again.

“I can’t really learn other people’s songs anymore without doing my own thing first,” says Gray from her hometown, Toronto. “They’re like, ‘Can you not just play bass chords over this, just play the part?’ That isn’t for me anymore.”

Gray, now 26, worked as a session and touring bassist for more than a decade, drawn to the teenage novelty of making 100 quick bucks by showing up at a festival, instrument in hand. “Chick on bass? Gets gig immediately,” she says, noting that her Japanese-Canadian heritage only amplified that allure. The shows and tours grew, alongside the paychecks. But those around her, like Payne’s manager Steve Finan O’Connor or her peers in Caesar’s band, recognized that Gray had more to offer than root notes and rhythms. On the road, she began capturing song ideas with her cell phone or in whatever nearby studio she could access.

19 Masters is a captivating and provocative introduction to Gray, a magnetic singer-songwriter with the restless mind of an expert improviser. The sweeping hooks of “Empathy 4 Bethany” slide into a warped jazz duet for piano and trumpet, while “S.H.T.” flits between a fetching folk tune and electroacoustic abstraction while making space for a Hodgy verse. “Little Palm” is an elegiac country beauty, while “Saving Grace” is a minimalist soul manifesto about uncertainty. Though Gray shies from social media herself, 19 Masters feels like New Weird (North) America updated for the TikTok generation. As tuneful and accessible as it is idiosyncratic and experimental, the record reflects Gray’s acceptance that she’s more than a bass player, even if she’s been one most of her life.

“I was self-conforming, turning into the gig because that’s what it takes to be a session musician. You have to turn into what you’re playing,” she says. “It took me a long time to be like, ‘I’m just going to be my weirdo self — whoever likes it can come.”

That sense of autonomy is so strong now that Gray actually doesn’t remember writing many of the tracks on 19 Masters, and not only because some of them are five-year-old voice memos. When Gray writes, she nearly blacks out, she says, slipping into what she calls “a flow state” that often allows her to go from initial idea to recorded track in about an hour.

The process is less about her head and toiling through a song than viscerally feeling it and giving it room and time to appear. Though she’s struggled with depression and anxiety her whole life, her songs actually arrive when she feels good, when she’s already worked through her struggles. They are artifacts of what she’s endured. It’s so personal and intuitive, she says, that writing with other people in the same room is almost impossible.

“As soon as I start thinking, there’s nothing that will come through of any substance,” she offers. “There are months where I won’t create songs at all because they have to move through my body.”

19 Masters is as musically diverse as it is texturally rich, with kotos and singing bowls and bells all suspended inside spans of noisy squelch or bits of Signal chats of Gray’s friends talking about Asian exploitation or general malaise. True to her isolated approach, Gray plays nearly every instrument on it, allowing her to find unexpected sounds.

Her heritage has been key to the process, too. Gray’s father, Charlie, is a Berklee-trained trumpeter, composer, and audio engineer who has written television themes and performed with the likes of Aretha Franklin, Tony Bennett, and Ella Fitzgerald. Meanwhile, her mother, Madoka Murata, founded the Canadian music school Discovery Through the Arts more than 40 years ago.

Gray began playing piano before she could speak, even earning her allowance from her technical progression at one point. She tried every instrument she saw around her before she finally got serious about bass around the age of 10. “My brain barely thinks about music. It’s just in my body,” she says. “It was bred into my subconscious, you know? ‘This is what we do as a family.’”

And though 19 Masters wasn’t made as a family, it was at least made with her family. Just before the album was finished, Gray thrust a phone into her mom’s face and asked her to say “welcome to my world” in Japanese; the sample is the entire first track. After all the paintings Murata had done of Gray over the years, including one where she’s a bass-playing alien, she felt like the favor was the least she could ask. “That’s not something weird for my mom,” she says, laughing.

Gray also recorded several of these tracks in her mother’s basement or father’s closet, using instruments she pilfered from the family music school. Her father plays trumpet on a pair of songs, having diligently written out charts and recorded his parts after the tunes were finished. (“He’s so old-school,” jokes Gray.) These were poignant additions for Gray, as her father retired from performance in the wake of Covid-19 lockdowns.

Her guitar-playing brother, Lucian, appears, too; he’s one of the few people she can stand having in the room while she writes or records. She wants to collaborate more, she admits, but it’s an unsteady learning process. “We have very similar upbringings and influences,” she says of Lucian, “So I know I can trust him if he’s like, ‘That’s sick,’ even if I can’t hear it today.”

Though 19 Masters is Gray’s first full album, it represents an ending as much as a beginning. It closes a period of self-doubt, when she wondered whether or not her ideas were good enough to stand alone. It closes her era of prioritizing other people’s songs. And it collects so many of the tunes she imagined while making money from music that wasn’t her own. “We have these transitions, and we change. We have relationships that end, jobs that end. We just jump timelines and become a different person,” she says. “This is the end of me self-conforming.”

19 Masters is out 6/2 via Dirty Hit.

Omah Lay Is Primed To Be A Big Contributor Towards Another Successful Year For Afrobeats

April 12, 2022 by newhiphopnews

Omah Lay Uproxx Next — Getty Image/Ralph Ordaz

If you had to pull up a starting point for the rise of Nigerian singer Omah Lay, born Stanley Omah Didia, you’d have to go back to 2020. That year, he began work on his debut EP Get Layd and one of the initial songs he recorded from that project was “Bad Influence.” On the surface, the gloomy record, which features haunting piano keys and a dance-friendly bass, is Omah Lay’s account of a relationship he had with a woman he labels as a bad influence. However, in an interview with OkayAfrica, Lay described the song as much more than that. “It was inspired by a whole lot of things,” he said. “It was me coming to Lagos, being exposed to a new type of life, a lot of things around me, and putting all that experience together.”

Omah Lay, who is only 24 years old, is native to Ikwerre, a city in Nigeria’s Rivers State. He was born into a musical family as his grandfather, who died in 1977, played instruments for the singer Celestine Ukwu. Lay’s father also played the drums. When the afrobeats scene was beginning its worldwide rise in the mid-2010s, Lay began pursuing a true career in music. However, his initial goals weren’t to be an artist. “I wanted to be a rapper,” he says in a 2020 interview with NotJustOk. “I was part of a rap group, my name was Lil King. I really liked Drake and his flows so I wanted to be like that.” That dream didn’t last too long as Lay would eventually pivot into afrobeats and begin songwriting and producing for a number of artists in Nigeria before releasing Get Layd.

By the end of 2020, “Bad Influence” became more than a breakout hit for Omah Lay. It was one of the biggest afrobeats songs in Nigeria. The song was the most-streamed Nigerian song on Apple Music that year, and it gave Lay the launching pad to increase his popularity and prove that he was far from a one-hit-wonder, and that same year, he released his second EP What Have We Done. Lay exhibited great growth and artistic improvement on that project, and it was one that arrived just six months after Get Layd. What Have We Done is propelled by the very catchy “Confession” and the equally addictive “Damn” which was later remixed by 6lack.

Propelled by the success of What Have We Done and the records on it, Lay’s popularity would only increase in 2021. He entered his name into the afrobeats song of the summer conversation by releasing “Understand” that summer. At this point, Lay had established himself as one of the members of afrobeats’ newest class. While names like Wizkid, Davido, and Burna Boy helped to elevate afrobeats to a point where artists all over the world sought to work with them and even put their own spin on the genre, new and younger acts arrived to show how wide the sonics of afrobeats could be stretch. Now, Lay finds himself besides names like Tems, Buju, Rema, CKay, Fireboy DML, Joeboy, Ayra Starr, and more in a class that’s full of life, color, diversity, and above all, potential.

Lay’s 2021 was fairly quiet. Outside of “Understand,” he stayed low in a year that was truly remarkable for afrobeats. Wizkid’s “Essence” became the highest-charting Nigerian song while CKay’s “Love Nwantiti” trailed not too far behind. It’s not to say that Lay missed his opportunity to have a part in the monstrous 2021 year. In fact, Lay might be checking back into the game right on time where much of the confetti has cleared, giving himself a chance to once again shine and relish in his own spotlight. Additionally, there’s no doubt that an equally-successful year is in store for the genre in 2022, just take a look at Rema’s excellent debut album Rave & Roses album as confirmation.

It’s probable that Omah Lay will grace the world with a new project this year, and he’s off to a good start so far. Last month, he teamed up with Justin Bieber for “Attention,” his first record since 2021’s “Understand.” The song arrived after Lay contributed to a remix of Bieber’s Grammy-nominated song “Peaches.” While connecting with Bieber for a song is a moment that few artists would experience, Lay didn’t allow the moment to change his approach to the record and he made sure to stay true to himself on it. “It’s basically about sometime in everybody’s life, you’re lonely,” he said about the song to Billboard. “You can’t just always have somebody all the time. Especially as an adult. That was actually the headspace that I was in when I made this song, a little lonely.” He added, “I want the people that are going through the same thing to feel like I was talking to them. I’m human. I’m just like them. I feel exactly the same way they feel.” So far, the song is making a splash in the US as it currently sits at No. 5 on Billboard’s newly-launched U.S. Afrobeats Songs chart.

We’ll have to wait and see what Omah Lay’s next move is, but if one thing is guaranteed, it’s that it will surely leave us satisfied and appreciative of his artistry. He’s given us music to dance to and that to connect with emotionally, both of which he’ll continue to do through the countless records he releases in the near and far future.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Up Next: The Artists Who Are Shaping Music’s Future

April 4, 2022 by newhiphopnews

A big part of being a music fan is keeping up with the music of the moment; There’s a reason popular artists have gotten to where they are, after all. Another equally important aspect of being an informed consumer of music, though, is maintaining an awareness of the up-and-coming artists who are primed to shape the industry in their own ways.

That’s what Uproxx’s new Next Up series is all about.

Over the course of ten feature profiles, you’ll learn about artists currently laying the foundation for some major things to come, things that will both establish themselves as forces and influence those who come after them. Before those features start rolling in, keep reading for a rundown of who we decided needs to be a part of this conversation.

Dove Cameron

The pipeline from Disney Channel star to music icon has been fruitful over the years, as folks like Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, and Ariana Grande have started on the network and gone on to tremendous musical success (also Olivia Rodrigo if you count her High School Musical series on Disney+). Now it’s looking like Dove Cameron, whose lengthy acting resume includes the lead role in the Disney Channel series Liv And Maddie, could very well be next. Her debut EP, Bloodshot / Waste, arrived in 2019 and she just recently had her biggest hit yet in February with the dramatic single “Boyfriend,” which was her first, and likely not last, song to grace the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Saya Gray

With her recent signing to Dirty Hit, Canadian-Japanese singer-songwriter Saya Gray finds herself in great company: The label’s esteemed artists include The 1975, Beabadoobee, Wolf Alice, and Rina Sawayama. Her first album for the label, 19 Masters, is on the way in June and based on songs like the recent single “If There’s No Seat In The Sky (Will You Forgive Me???),” it’s easy to see why Dirty Hit brought the innovative young artist on board, who’s adept at switching genres not just between songs, but sometimes right in the middle of them.

PinkPantheress

TikTok has become a real proving ground for up-and-coming artists as the young generation gets exposed to a lot of new music on the platform. PinkPantheress managed to stand out above all the noise and earn herself a record deal with Parlophone. Her music definitely embraces the fast-paced nature of TikTok: Most of the songs on her 2021 debut mixtape To Hell With It are shorter than two minutes. That didn’t stop the multi-genre project from performing particularly well, as it landed in the top 20 of the charts in PinkPantheress’ native UK.

Kali

Speaking of TikTok, Atlanta rapper Kali also found success on the platform and now she’s breaking new ground beyond it. As Uproxx’s Aaron Williams notes, she’s moving into a space traditionally dominated by male rappers, one that is “marked by passive aggression, avoidant attachment, and audio gaslighting, with rappers and singers delighting in keeping their significant others guessing in the narratives of their songs.” Kali parlayed her breakout single “Mmm Mmm” into a debut EP, Toxic Chocolate. The Yung Bleu-featuring “UonU” is a highlight, on which she turns the tables and asserts dominance, rapping, “It’s a two-way street, we in the same lane / Play you ‘fore you play me, that’s just my mind-frame / But you still mine, babe.”

Tobi Lou

Odds are you’ve already heard Tobi Lou working with one of your favorites, as the Chicago-via-Nigeria rapper has collaborated with some of his biggest hometown peers, like Chance The Rapper, Dreezy, and Saba. He was on the ballot for the 2020 XXL Freshmen list and while he didn’t make the cut, he’s on to bigger and better things, like his recently released new album Non-Perishable, which mostly features Lou shining on his own but also alongside guests like T-Pain and Chika. All the name-drops are to illustrate that Lou has support from folks in high places, co-signs that show Lou is worth consideration.

Omah Lay

A lot of things have been going right for the 24-year-old Nigerian afrobeats star lately. Since landing a record deal a couple years ago, Omah Lay’s ascent has been quick, as he had a social media hit with “Bad Influence,” dropped some EPs that landed on Apple Music’s charts in Nigeria, and caught the attention of Justin Bieber, with whom he recently released the collaborative single “Attention.” Furthermore, Lay’s status as an afrobeats favorite was cemented with the launch of Billboard’s new US Afrobeats Songs chart in March. On the inaugural ranks, he had two songs in the top 30, including “Attention,” which graced the top five. Basically, Lay’s on an upward trend, so if you haven’t been paying attention so far, now’s a good time to start.

Bakar

Like many artists before him, Bakar got his start uploading songs on SoundCloud. That’s really one of the few ways the experimental UK indie rocker is like other artists, though. He gradually worked on his craft, forged a distinct aesthetic identity, and had himself a bit of a hit in 2019 with “Hell N Back,” which popped up on multiple rock and alternative Billboard charts, including a No. 1 placement on Adult Alternative Airplay. Things have only gotten better since then, as he had a feature on one of 2020’s most esteemed indie/pop albums in Benee’s Hey U X and released his debut album, Nobody’s Home, in February. He got some hometown love for that one, as it was a top-40 album in the UK. Now it feels like just a matter of time before the rest of the world catches up.

Horsegirl

Chicago trio Horsegirl formed in 2019, when its members were all teens. While many teenage endeavors are best left forgotten, Horsegirl has built on their start in a major way. They’ve since signed to Matador Records and so far released two singles for the label: 2021’s “Billy” and this year’s “Anti-Glory.” As for the sound, the group falls somewhere between post-punk and shoegaze, a zone that has clearly worked for them given the aforementioned examples of their success. It’s the kind of music that begs to be heard live, so there’s good news there, as one of the year’s buzziest bands has a slew of tour dates set for this summer.

Caracara

The 2019 EP Better was big for Caracara, as the rocking effort landed them on many people’s radars. That includes renowned producer Will Yip, who has worked with everybody from Lauryn Hill to Keane to The Wonder Years. He also linked up with Caracara on their recently released album New Preoccupations (As The Gods Descend), which is highlighted by the single “Colorglut,” which features Circa Survive’s Anthony Green. The company a band keeps can say a lot about them, and so far, a lot of top-tier folks have found their way to Caracara’s corner. Now that the new album is out and music fans have something fresh to sink their teeth into, the Caracara corner is about to get even more crowded.

Zack Fox

As social media has become a primary method of fan interaction for celebrities, a lot of musicians have emerged as legitimately hilarious social media personalities. Then there’s Zack Fox, who’s approaching things from the opposite direction: He was a comedian first, but in recent years, he’s found some solid footing in hip-hop: His debut album, Shut The F*ck Up Talking To Me, came out last year and he’s touring with Freddie Gibbs this year. On top of all that, he’s still acting and has a recurring role in one of the most acclaimed comedies of the moment, Abbott Elementary. He’s even an accomplished visual artist, as he illustrated the album sleeve of Thundercat’s Drunk. Basically, Fox has done something you’d probably enjoy in just about every artistic medium, which is something very few people can say.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.