Fuck Yeah Underground Music

I feel like I’m always looking for a new way to do #MusicMonday because I can’t quite get it to go the same across all of the platforms I post on. I do it one way on TikTok, another on WhatsApp, a different on Facebook, and I gotta figure out another way for Instagram because the volume doesn’t work anymore. 

Returning to SoundCloud works for me because it allows me to make a playlist. I’m a bit stuck in my ways, but SoundCloud kind of forces you to try new people and a lot of them tend to not be mainstream. The decision to properly blog #MusicMonday also means that I’m reviving my Tumblr blog, F Yeah Underground Music, so the artist selection on SoundCloud works best for that vision. 

Just about all of the artists featured this week are all new to me and were chosen mostly by sound. I may not always catch the words, but your girl loves a melody.

MiLES. 

I don’t know too much about MiLES., but it looks like he’s from Atlanta and recently graduated high school. He may or may not have been valedictorian, but, from the pictures, he gave a speech at the ceremony. Congrats to the young man. 

As I said earlier, I really pick these things by sound. As long as I can groove to your music, I’m probably going to get into it. It take me about a month’s worth of listens really get into anyone’s lyrics, and I just don’t have the time for that in regards to this measure. 

What I like about MiLES’s “Oxygen” is the groove of it. I could see myself listening to this on a drive, or even playing this during a kickback. It gives me a very chill vibe, and that’s something I like on a normal day. 

I’ve given the rest of MiLES’s current project Everywhere and Nowhere At All a listen, and I think it’s a solid effort. If you think “Oxygen” is something you could get into, I suggest given the rest of it a try to. 

Oblé Reed

There’s probably a lot to know about Oblé Reed, but he doesn’t seem to have an About section on his website. That doesn’t work for me. I’m not bothering to listening to enough to become a fan, and I’m not invested enough to do a deep dive. 

So what do I know about Oblé Reed? He’s from Seattle, WA, he’s biracial, and he looks like he’s younger than me. 

So how did he get on this list? The same way everyone else did: I liked the sound. All things being fair, rap is not my genre, and Oblé Reed only found his way onto this list because I wasn’t paying attention to SoundCloud’s algorithm. It worked though. 

In my head, Seattle, WA had always been a music city because I remember Nirvana and I’m an Allen Stone fan. However, I wouldn’t consider Seattle a rap city, and, in my opinion, that probably helps Oblé Reed, not hinders him. 

Kanii

I feel like Gen Z is all over this list. Kanii is a 17-year-old, TikTok darling living his life on the Jersey Club scene. 

I really need these cats to get someone to write their “About” sections, because I’m way too lazy to do more than casually skim. 

I was put on to Jersey Club about the same time as I was made aware of Baltimore Club, which was about a decade ago. A former friend of mine was from Baltimore, and House music was having a small mainstream resurgence, so he felt like he needed to show me some things. I’ve been a casual fan ever since. 

As a TikTokker myself, I’d be lying if I said that I’d never heard “I Know”, but not enough that it clicked while I was listening to it on SoundCloud. I actually didn’t realize what was going on until I went to make my #MusicMonday posts for TikTok last night. I won’t say that Kanii has gotten big due to the virality of his songs, but he definitely knows how to market himself well. 

Kiana Ledé

I keep running into Kiana Ledé, either because I’m supposed to or because she’s just been around since forever. My first introduction to her was a cover of Drake’s “Hotline Bling” back in 2016, but I’ve heard that she may have been a Kidz Bop girlie back in the day. 

I have no idea what Kiana is about or has been about, but bless her for bothering to have a Facebook page. Bless her for writing anything in the “About”, and being around long enough for a proper Wikipedia page. Maybe it’s because I like her that I’m even bothering to look, but I don’t trust the previous three to have even that right now. Gen Z needs to have a little mystery, and people who can’t bother to write “About” sections are unlikely to have Wikis. What would be there to tell? 

In any case, “Bitter Bitch” is the first song on Kiana’s Grudges album, and I thought it was a great intro. Is it the best song on the album? Hell no, but I’m willing to hold those for another day and an official video. It’s cute though, and that’s really all I cared about. 

Hiroba

The addition of this song might raise some eyebrows, because it’s in Japanesse, but I have to remind everyone that I really be picking these songs off of vibes and sounds. 

“Futatabi” is the end theme for The End of the World With You, and I have been obsessed with it since the first episode. It is exactly what I want to hear while holding someone’s hand as we wait to die during a meteor strike. 

I can’t tell you anything about Hiroba beyond the fact that he’s a Japanese man. He has all of the right music accounts, but nothing that will tell me what I need to know in English. Again, I’m also being lazy about this, but #MusicMonday is really a labor of love for me, and I’m not looking to do work. 

Ai Otsuka is featured on the song, and, to may understanding, she is also a Japanese artist and actually has a Wikipedia page. 

If you’ve made it this far, I really appreciate it. As I’ve said before, #MusicMondays is a labor of love. It’s also a good reason to restart F Yeah Underground Music over on Tumblr. So while I can’t promise that this will be an every Monday thing, I at least can promise that I’ll do my best with it when I do. 

I wanted to upload the SoundCloud playlist in full, but neither WordPress nor Tumblr is embedding it right. However, if you’re interested, it’s the post directly under this one. 

I know it’s been years, but would anyone be interested in my return?

Kenya Wright’s Mine and No Ordinary Love

As I continue to make my way through Kenya Wright’s works, I’ve come across two that I feel are distinctive in their own way. In Mine, Wright takes a crack at the “white boy raised by black family” archetype, and, in No Ordinary Love, we finally meet the Dragon. 

I know I said “‘Til Next Week” in my last few posts, but I don’t think I understood how tiring that next week would be. I mean,…

#FridayReads – Kevin Kwan’s Sex & Vanity

If you’ve been with me since somewhere around 2015-ish, you’ll know I’ve reviewed two-thirds of Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asiansseries. I’ve read the third, but I had intended on doing a comparison piece with another novel that covered life in Singapore, and never got around to finishing it nor posting individual reviews. Never fear, I intend to still at least do the separate reviews, but I…

#MusicMonday – Jesus Christ Superstar

There’s a high chance that this will be a late post –  as I’m always writing these last minute – because the inspiration generally strikes me pretty late on a Monday. Chopping up 30 second snippets and posting them on my WhatsApp status can take about 10 minutes at most, but actually putting together a blog entry requires me to actually think about what I want to say in the rough draft, and then…

#MusicMonday – Romeo + Juliet

My absolute favorite version of Romeo & Juliet is the Baz Luhrman film from 1996 with Leonardo DiCaprio, Harold Perrineau, and John Leguizamo.Claire Danes wasn’t a standout for me, so it’s only thanks to IMDb that she’s getting a shoutout. 

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#MusicMonday – April 6, 2020

To be quite honest, I do Music Monday on WhatsApp. I screen-record YouTube videos of songs I like, crop them the way I want, and post them on my WhatsApp status using the #MusicMonday hashtag. I’ve been meaning to get back to doing actual write ups, but the last two weeks of my life have been an absolute whirlwind. So I apologize for how late this post is.

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#MusicMonday Brent Faiyaz’s “Rehab (Winter in Paris)”

I had intended to skip #MusicMonday this week because I knew I wouldn’t be able to review Brent Faiyaz’s album in time. I’m really starting to see the sense in letting things marinate in your playlist.

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Your Soulmate’s Name is Written on Your Hand

A big trope in fanfiction is the idea of people having soul mates. I’m not going to lie, it’s the perfect plot piece because it allows you to have your One True Pairing without actually having to explain how the hell they could possibly end up together. Plus, it can be done in so many different ways that it will probably never go out of style. Almost like the Marriage Law that seems extremely…

#MusicMonday NAO’s Saturn

I think the first time that I ever heard NAO was maybe five or six years ago, when one of her songs was featured in a tech commercial that had a sci-fi feel about it. I remember really feeling the song, but I never bought the single or went any further into looking into the artist.The next time I came across NAO was while watching the second season of Netflix’s On My Blocklast year. This show is…

This #MusicMonday I talk about MNEK's Language, because it's grown on me in the two years since it's release.

Something like half a decade ago, Chris Brown was beefing with Frank Ocean. This was during the height of Chris Brown beefing with just about everyone but he hadn’t gone to jail yet, so I would say this was around 2013. In any case, Chris is backhand complimenting Frank by comparing him to James Fauntleroy. I didn’t understand it immediately, but someone on Twitter then explained that Fauntleroy…

In a way, I’ve built a brand on Allen Stone. As early as 2012, I was covering his concerts for my  personal Tumblr as a way to practice my blogging skills. As late as 2016, I was posting my review of Radius on my music blog on Tumblr that had started out as an Allen Stone fan site. 

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