Recent posts: Interviews

As July draws to a close, it’s time to reflect on a great music festing year thus far. Blessed to travel into the mountains, desert, city and country for the love of live music, there’s nothing like it. Putting my list of fav fests together in my head, The Art of Cool (AOC) Fest in Durham, NC automatically gets a spot. Even while experiencing opposite spectrums of weather during the weekend, I enjoyed every minute. Checking out Anthony Hamilton’s latest video with Teedra Moses released this week, I fondly remembered my group chat with Grammy Award-winning AOC headliner Anthony earlier this year who graciously chatted with us, press folk, in the pouring rain (when I say pouring rain, I mean POURING RAIN). Warm, down-to-earth and talented for days, our talk cemented my genuine fandom.

For any experimental soul music lover, these two past weeks have felt like Christmas in the summertime. Among the incredible releases dropping, Bilal’s ‘In Another Life’ puts an exclamation point on a broad, bold discography and provides the perfect holiday traveling soundtrack. I stopped by Red Bull’s monthly Sound Select show last week which drew enthusiastic soul and hip-hop fans to The Echo for $3 (can never beat that) for a dope line-up featuring Bilal, which drew the likes of Queen Latifah and Adrian Younge, the album producer joining him onstage, offering a rare live experience, bringing the new album to another level. The night mixed the right amount of chill and hype.

In a crowded field of hip-hop MCs and music producer hybrids, the one who’s equally talented in both arenas, keeps audiences guessing with collabos showing range, all while putting on a dope live show, gets my respect AND hard earned money nowadays. One such rarity consistently meeting all my criteria is Black Milk. Dropping quality project after another including 2014’s brilliant “If There’s A Hell Below” and 2013’s “No Poison No Paradise”, his trademark sound’s unmistakable. Resuming his Play Like Hell Tour this week, hitting the East Coast, Midwest and Europe, his live band Nat Turner experience bumps hard.

After a long work week, nothing’s better than dancing the stress away. Para vivir, necesitamos bailar. Bomba Estéreo’s intimate session at Red Bull Studios in Santa Monica last week proved the ideal hype venue to do so. The Latin Grammy nominated group Bomba Estéreo returned to Southern Cali with cuts including the perfect summer song “Fiesta”, off their new fourth album ‘Amanecer’. With assistance from Wallpaper artist and producer Ricky Reed, the album blends the trademark B.E. fusion cumbia, Afro-Caribbean folk sound with a harder electro edge. With plans to play multiple continents the rest of the year, they’ll be seeing sunrises all over the U.S., Europe and Latin America pronto.

As a frequent listener of new music, I’m quite familiar with the venn diagram that outlines dope music on one end and critical acclaim on the other. Not often do we see show awards overlap within that dope music component but it’s a blessing when voters/academies get it right. When I heard Brooklyn based Snarky Puppy’s collaboration with Lalah Hathaway “Something” off their CD/live DVD ‘Family Dinner-Volume One’, sonic amazing filled my headphones and it garnered the worldwide media attention it deserved winning 2014’s Grammy for “Best R&B Performance”.

More often than not, on any given night like most creative types, insomnia and I are besties. When I saw K. Flay’s video “Can’t Sleep” released this week off her 2014 album ‘Life As A Dog’, the idea of a kindred restless spirit reveals itself vividly. That frenetic energy also transfers well onstage as anyone who’s seen her live can attest. Wrapping up the Austin rollercoaster that is SXSW, I connected with K.Flay after her last show of the week to chat about a series of random and not so random items before we left the Lone Star state.

As we head into May and Star Wars fans all over the world yell “May the 4th be with you”, one of my top anticipated releases of the year drops TODAY, beginning the month with a bang. Grammy nominated foursome Hiatus Kaiyote’s  sophomore album ‘Choose Your Weapon’ is available everywhere in the U.S., providing more airport dancing jams for all (including me who’s previously danced in several terminals to ‘The World It Softly Lulls’ blasting from my headphones). Stumbling upon this Melbourne, Australia based group when they were scheduled to open for D’Angelo and Busta Rhymes at The Summer Spirit Festival in 2013, I’ve loved their unique blend of electro future soul/ jazz with world music influences ever since.