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Rap Song of the Week: J.I.D Goes Toe-to-Toe with 21 Savage on “Surround Sound”
Every Friday, our new music feature Rap Song of the Week breaks down the essential hip-hop tracks you need to hear. Check out the full playlist here. This week, J.I.D recruits 21 Savage and Baby Tate for “Surround Sound.” For the past several years, it’s felt like Dreamville’s J.I.D has been on the precipice of stardom. His last album, 2018’s DiCaprio 2, spawned a pair of Gold singles, and his performances on “Down Bad” and “Costa Rica” (from the compilation Revenge of the Dreamers III) exhibited his knack for crafting a catchy hook while still being an explosive, technically gifted rapper. Among a stacked roster of MCs, J.I.D stands tall. 2022 is shaping up to be the kind of year that will bring the Atlanta spitter to the next level. J.I.D’s on the easily visible third line of the po...
How to Experience European Nightlife: Party Bar or Club?
Nightlife holds a special place in our hearts. There’s something remarkable about going out with your friends, connecting with new people, dancing, and laughing while (responsibly) enjoying your favorite alcoholic beverage—a feeling that is universal among countless cultures around the world. Belushi’s London. Jarett Lopez/EDM.com A vast number of different nightlife establishments are out there, but most loosely fit into either of these two categories: bar and club. Bars, or pubs as they are commonly referred to in Anglo-Saxon countries, usually offer a much more relaxed atmosphere in comparison to clubs. Whereas club crowds are rather focused on dancing and actively enjoying the music, bar patrons are there to grab a bite, share drinks with friends and engage in exciting conversati...
Earl Sweatshirt’s SICK!: Flawless Rapping That Doesn’t Overstay Its Welcome
How does one find the perfect words to describe life-changing events, the oppressiveness of living in a constant state of stress caused by a pandemic, and reflections of the past? Nobody pays me enough to answer that question. Luckily, I don’t have to, because Earl Sweatshirt discovered the cheat code. SICK!, his fourth album, is inspired by this moment in time. But it’s not just the COVID in the air on his mind. Since the last time we heard him in 2019, Earl said “hi” to fatherhood, cut back on his alcohol, and rediscovered his religion. Any one of those things is enough to pen something the size of a Greek epic poem. But all three? And in the face of, well, all of this? That’s a lot to process. The mere fact Earl only took 25 minutes to say it all with his chest is a testament to his tal...
Best New Tracks: Cordae, Earl Sweatshirt, Saba x Krazyie Bone and More
As the week in music comes to a close, HYPEBEAST has rounded up the best projects for the latest installment of Best New Tracks. This week’s list is led by highly-anticipated full-length releases from Cordae and Earl Sweatshirt, who both dropped off From A Birds Eye View and SICK! respectively. Also joining this selection are offerings from Saba and Krayzie Bone of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Bonobo, J.I.D with 21 Savage and Baby Tate, EARTHGANG, Murda Beatz with Blxst and Wale, Mitski, Cautious Clay and Robert Glasper with Killer Mike, BJ the Chicago Kid and Big K.R.I.T. Cordae – From A Birds Eye View [embedded content] Cordae is finally following up his GRAMMY-nominated debut album The Lost Boy with From A Bird’s Eye View. His first full-...
Buzzing Label FIVE Music Is Providing the Soundtrack to Dubai’s Hottest Parties
Aiming to curate the soundtrack to Dubai’s hottest parties events and parties—and represent the dance music community on a global scale—FIVE Music is the city’s most exciting new music imprint. A lifestyle and hospitality conglomerate, FIVE Hotels and Resorts holds multiple luxurious estates in Dubai, most notably the impressive FIVE Palm Jumeirah, which houses 470 rooms and suites in addition to multiple restaurants, event spaces and The Penthouse, one of the emirate’s most coveted rooftop lounges. FIVE Palm Jumeirah FIVE Palm Jumeirah hosts weekly parties at The Penthouse with an astonishing lineup of resident DJs, while also providing an experience of international standards at Beach by FIVE. The outdoor venue regularly books some of the world’s most acclaime...
How I Met Your Father Review: Hulu’s Sequel Series Has Some Scraps of Potential
The Pitch: Somewhere in the vast wide multiverse, there is a planet Earth where, in the year 2022, the How I Met Your Mother spin-off series How I Met Your Dad is just now reaching its eighth season, with star Greta Gerwig thinking longingly about the indie film about growing up in Sacramento that she always wished she’d have a chance to direct. That planet Earth is not our planet Earth, where, in the year 2022, How I Met Your Dad ended as a 2014 CBS pilot that never made it to series, Greta Gerwig’s 2018 film Lady Bird received five Oscar nominations, and Hilary Duff is now starring in How I Met Your Father, a spiritual and literal sequel to the long-running CBS sitcom about the world’s most long-winded parent giving his kids way too much information about his past dating life. Does Sophi...
FKA twigs’ 10 Best Songs
FKA twigs, born Tahliah Barnett, made a name for herself as a proponent of the avant garde. She’s a true multi-hyphenate — she’s a vocalist, she writes her music, she’s an incredible dancer, and a large part of her music video repertoire is self-directed. Regardless of the type of track she releases, FKA twigs has managed to find a way to ensure that a listener can immediately identify a piece of her work. She’s not afraid to explore genres and sounds, and her discography so far could be described as R&B, electronic, hyperpop, and trippy — and all of those categorizations would be true. This Friday (January 14th), she’ll be releasing a new collection of music in the form of a mixtape called CAPRISONGS. To celebrate, we’ve rounded up ten of her best tracks so far. Advertisement Check ou...
Naomi Review: Ava DuVernay Brings a New Type of Superhero Story to the CW
The Pitch: Naomi lives inside the difference between an origin story and a coming-of-age story. The CW’s newest superhero story features Kaci Walfall as the titular teenager, who was already living a pretty interesting life before the possibility that she might have superpowers became a possibility. Based on the first two episodes, the first season (which won’t be crossing over with the rest of the Arrow-verse) is set up to offer an extended look at Naomi’s dawning realization of her own abilities, while also contending with the day-to-day realities of being a modern-day teenager. The show’s success is dependent on how much you want to see both of those elements play out, but thanks to Walfall’s charismatic performance, Naomi’s story proves easy to connect with. Not Your Ordinary Teen Supe...
Wolf Like Me Review: Josh Gad and Isla Fisher’s Quirky Genre Romance Feels a Little Too Forgettable
The Pitch: The new Peacock series Wolf Like Me is a sweet and quirky dramedy that makes great use of the talents of Isla Fisher and Josh Gad. It also, however, happens to fall into too many of the traps which doom the original series being made today for streaming. Again, the show itself is fine. But it can’t escape the category of being just forgettable enough to potentially doom it to obscurity; lingering forever in the corners of streaming services, joining its spiritual sisters Gypsy, Homecoming, Maniac, and countless others. The Reason Why This Review Isn’t Very Long: The central twist of Wolf Like Me is one that Peacock would prefer not get spoiled prior to premiere — in fact, the screeners were sent out with this note from creator Abe Forsythe: “I’d love for audiences to go into wat...
Tool’s 10 Best Songs
No one crafts equally perverse and philosophical slices of prog metal quite like Tool. Indeed, the quartet (drummer Danny Carey, vocalist Maynard James Keenan, bassist Justin Chancellor, and guitarist Adam Jones) have spent the last 30-odd years fusing the industrial salaciousness of Nine Inch Nails with the mesmeric sophistication of Pink Floyd and King Crimson, yielding a beloved sound all their own. The acclaimed band, set to launch a 2022 US tour (get tickets via Ticketmaster), has evolved significantly without losing sight of its most vital trademarks, ensuring that all of its work feels at home within the same catalog. In a nutshell, 1993’s Undertow and 1995’s Ænima perpetuated rougher and more risqué syntheses of progressive and alternative metal. Then, 2001’s landmark Lateralus off...
Saying Goodbye to Both Bob Sagets
In the public eye, for a few decades there, there were two Bob Sagets. There was the Saget known and beloved by an entire generation of kids as Danny Tanner of Full House, the kind and cleaning-obsessed widower raising his three daughters with some help from his closest male friends. And then there was Saget on stage — the real Saget, it could be argued — known for filthy jokes and, at a later point in his career, making fun of his literally squeaky-clean image. This is the sort of dichotomy that frankly doesn’t exist too much these days, and Saget deliberately played with these expectations over the years. Three years after Full House ended (and only a year after his eight-year stint hosting America’s Funniest Home Videos came to a close) came his film-stealing delivery of the line “You e...
YouTube’s Head of Hip-Hop Music Discusses How Streaming Services Changed the Genre Forever
Prior to the introduction of streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music, hip-hop was mostly shared between people on urban streets through physical mixtapes and CDs. Beginning in the mid-1970s in New York City, homemade cassettes launched the careers of artists like Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa — two Bronx-based DJs who are credited with influencing the development of the now-worldwide genre. Years later, the same tools helped foster the early careers of rappers like 50 Cent, T.I., Young Jeezy and more. While hip-hop undoubtedly bred a new subculture during that time period through the introduction of rap, new dance forms, graffiti art and distinct style codes, it wasn’t until the evolution of the internet in the 1990s and early 2000s that the genre received widespre...
