Jordan DePaul: “I toured over 35,000 miles in 2016 with just me and my acoustic guitar. My favorite part by far was meeting new people after my set each night and hearing what they had to say about the show. I've met some pretty incredible people out on the road. Sometimes you forget what else the world has to offer, and I'm grateful I was able to rediscover it in 2016.”

Hear Jordan’s song, “Brighter Shade of Blue” on our Americanarama playlist.

Kingsbury: “2016 has been the official beginning for our band. We released our first single, and thanks to ONErpm we were placed on 6 Spotify playlists, and added to rotation at our local independent radio station. I think our favorite moment of the year is kind of a continual thing...we love waking up and seeing our song reaching new people all around the world. The moment is realizing that something you wrote in your pajamas is making people move beyond language barriers.” 

Listen to Kingsbury’s single, “Easy” on our Alternative / Indie playlist here.

James Droll: "2016 was the end of my hiatus from music and I was so terrified. I started the year by recording, for the first time, a record that was so honest and personal that I wasn't really sure if I wanted to have it open to public ridicule. It took me almost a full 8 months to release the music and had fully adjusted my expectations to prepare myself for the inevitable flop. The crazy thing is that it didn't flop, people were actually listening to the song, sharing it, and sharing with me that they could relate to what I went through. I released my song 'Wall' on November the 13th of this year and it has since opened more doors for me than I possibly could've imagined." 

Listen to James’ breakout track, “Wall” on our Alternative / Indie playlist here.

Caroline Glaser: "2016 has been a really special year... I released my first self titled album, headlined small tours around the country, started some really exciting projects with some reaaally inspiring people (standby ), but I think the most memorable moment(s) of 2016 was my little Midwest tour this summer. I was just about to release my self-titled album, but it wasn't quite ready yet so I was a little nervous to headline a tour with (what felt like) not much to offer. The amount of love at each show though was absolutely unreal. Each night the crowd was filled with new and familiar faces.. it's definitely been a huge highlight for me this year. Super stoked to see what 2017 has to offer." 

Listen to her song, “Wolves”, on our Americanarama playlist here.

Little Monarch: "2016 has been a epic year for our band. We released our freshman EP and within a month had over a million streams on the single thanks to our amazing distributors at ONErpm and of course our new fans. We ended the year strong with a great holiday show in LA, the vibe was high and reminded us exactly why we love playing and making music together."

Hear their song, “No Matter What” on our Alternative / Indie playlist here.

We're celebrating the end of the year with some of our artists' best moments from 2016! 

Carly Pearce: "My most memorable moment has been the journey that "Every Little Thing" has created. The week the song was debuted on Sirius XM as their final "Highway Find" of the year, I knew it was special. It has truly changed my life and I can't wait to see what 2017 brings!" 

You can hear her beautiful Bluegrass version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" on our Americanarama playlist here. 

See a mini-collection of some of the greatest Regional Mexicano, Urbano, y canciones románticas aqui!

Banda La Ejecutiva - Y es que tal vez

C-Kan - Yo Hago Rap

DonKalavera Ft. C-Kan

Mariana Seoane & Julio Camejo - "DE RODILLAS TE PIDO"

Alemán - Can't Tell Me Nada Ft. Schmidt, Bobby Bass & Chucho Ortega

We had the opportunity to talk to Tucker Rountree of Total Slacker about life, death, Parallels, and what not to do at a Warner Brothers audition. 

What does a typical day look like for a total slacker?

Oh, so you’re talking about the proverbial aesthetic image of the caricature of a Total Slacker type person? I think the whole band and the idea solicits a sense of wanting to explore your life in a creative way and do things you want to do. Not really live life by the constructs of normal western society and having to work a 9 to 5 job under florescent lights.

Have you had experiences like that or have you been able to avoid that kind of lifestyle?

Yeah man, I started working shitty jobs when I was 12 years old. I had my first real job when I was 13, working at dairy queen flipping hamburgers, but before that I’d been painting houses with my dad since I was 9. Fortunately I don’t really have to do that any more. I’m really happy about that.

Had you had a lot of odd jobs before?

Oh yeah. Countless. Countless odd jobs. I could tell you so many embarrassing stories. I worked for the parks and recreation office in Utah and it was just like the show, Parks and Rec. The oddest one was probably working at the dry cleaners, there’s one in Utah called the Red Hanger. I also did cold calls for the American Cancer Society. It was basically calling people up and asking for money. But that taught me some skills for later on, like for negotiations. That came in pretty handy.

You’re a former jazz musician, is that right?

I’m still a jazz musician. Total Slacker is like a medium for me, or a format. It’s kind of an outlet for me to make music. So I am a jazz musician, and I practice studying theory and harmony every day to keep my ear sharp and exercise my brain. I enjoy harmonic theory, jazz improv, modulations and things like that. I just enjoy studying those things and they totally come into play in pop writing.

When did you get into that? What was the genre that captivated you as a musician early on?

Well my dad was a singer-songwriter in the 70’s and 80’s and he was making a lot of demos. He was kind of like a jack of all trades. He could play bluegrass, jazz music, to really soft singer-songwriter acoustic music. If you were to hear my dad’s demos from the 70’s, he was like the Elliot Smith that know body had ever heard before, but that wasn’t really popular at the time.

I still have all of his old recordings and demos, and eventually I’m going to comprise them together and find a record label to release them as kind of a retrospective. I think that would be kind of fun.

His name is Bill Rountree. He’s a native Utahn.

Your guitar tone is wonderful and it comes up a lot in interviews. Can you indulge our gear heads and tell us what you're working with?

Well, for guitars I really like sounds from the early 80’s bands like The English Beat, the Police, Men at Work, Tears for Fears, the Smiths, or even early U2. All of those albums from like pre 1985 in England have really beautiful guitar sounds. So I use this vintage Roland chorus pedal from 1984 that’s really hard to find called a CE 2.

On the album I played a whole array of late 80’s Fender Stratocasters from America. I used two 87’s, an ’88, and a ’91. I used a 1995 Fender Jaguar that was really cool. It was from Japan and went on tour with Smashing Pumpkins at one point in its lifetime. I’m actually getting more into the Jaguar these days. More than Strats. Traditionally, I’ve always played Strats for my whole life. When I was opening up for Eric Johnson on the road for two years, those were the guitars that he used and it influenced me.

What does songwriting look like for you guys? Does one person lead the charge and you collectively build around it, or is it more collaborative?

I would say the premise is closer to a democracy where there’s one leader, but musically everyone shares their ideas and comes up with their own parts. I bring raw material to the band in a structure, like chord progressions and lyrics, and we all work on arrangements and individual parts. Everyone’s really creative in the band. Lydia Gammill, she’s in this other band called ONWE, and she comes up with some really cool ideas. She’s got a really sharp mind, you know? Mattie (Siegal) has been playing in a bunch of different bands, so she comes up with her own parts. She also works in film, so she has a producer’s mindset sometimes, so she’s able to see the big picture.

How do you feel like Parallels is different than your previous records?

It’s vastly different, because it’s the first real album that we’ve ever made. I think for the first two albums, we were still experimenting and trying to find our voice. I didn’t really put as much time and thought and energy in to the first two records because of the budgets that we had. The first album that we made was recorded for $500 in the basement of a Korean church on Coney Island.

I had this old Toyota van that my dad gave me. It was like an extra painting vehicle that he had and I drove it all the way from Salt Lake City to New York. I think it was like an 1987 and it was the only possession that I really had. I sold that to get the money to record the first album. We recorded in the basement of that church and Carlos Hernandez and Julian Fader of Ava Luna both engineered and produced the record.

Did this all happen when you were fresh from Utah?

Yeah, fresh from Utah. It was like about 2010 when we recorded it and Warner Brothers was already all over the record. We were already in negotiations with them at the time in L.A. Before the first album came out, we went on our first tour and Warner Brothers came out to one of our shows. My drummer was so scared that they were going to be there in the audience, listening at our “audition” that he self-medicated. He got wasted on whiskey. We tried to play the show, but he kept falling off his drum throne and he couldn’t really play. We lost the deal with Warner on the first album, so I ended up signing with a smaller independent label in London called Marshall Teller Records.

Oh my god! What did you do? Did you talk to the guys from WB afterward?

Yeah they were there, just like out a movie, wearing suits and stuff. They were all forty years old. One of the A & R men was from that band called Redd Kross, which is a vintage punk band from the late 80’s. Redd Kross toured with Nirvana and he was one of the guys that scouted my band. They were all there and they were really nice. They said, “Sorry man, we just don’t think it’s the right timing.” and like, “You need to get a new drummer.” So I did get a new drummer, but he died in a hit and run accident.

That was between the first and second album. Pitchfork actually wrote about it. He was a really cool person, and I loved him dearly. I wish he were still here today, his name is Terence Connor. We were just about to record the second album and he was killed. They never found the assailant. They never found the car or the guy. We just picked up the pieces and kept going. You can’t stop writing, you know? So here we are.

I’m so sorry, I can’t even imagine what that must have been like. What happened then? Was there sort of a turning point between the first and second record?

Well the first album got picked up by Marshall Teller, they were a bunch of really interesting kids. They were post college guys in their late twenties with family money to start a record label in London. One of the guys names is Leon Diaper. They have great taste and have released a lot of really cool music in the UK and for some reason they really championed our thing. That was an integral turn because when the record came out, I wasn’t really sure if I was going to stay in New York. They were pretty responsible for getting my first Rolling Stone review. So when that happened that kind of changed a lot of stuff. Suddenly here were more shows, and better shows, and more opportunities with the industry. That led me to the second album deal which was actually under a Warner Brothers subsidiary.

So how did that experience differ from recording in a church basement?

Well I feel like that was a good intermediary step from where I am now, from the first album. We had 5K to work with and we had Daniel Schlett (Bob Dylan,Yeasayer, Dive) producing. We were in the studio for like six days, a really minimal recording time. The recording kind of sounds like it too, but I’m happy with that album for what it is and the limited resources we had. ...And Daniel is an engineering genius, obviously.

And what was it like recording Parallels?

So I worked with a producer named Dave Weingarten, who’s like the real deal pop producer. He really understands taking a raw artists’ compositions and putting it into a radio world. It was a really interesting transformation to see a raw song that’s in your head or in a tape demo go into multiple studios. We recorded in three different studios, three different locations, and then we spent a month just mixing, and we spent a month just tracking vocals and guitars. So we spent months and months developing that record with him. I’m really pleased with the way it turned out, but I’m already writing a fourth album now, so I’m kind of not really paying attention to that stuff.

How do you find inspiration?

That’s a really tricky question because there’s no definite way to capture inspiration. You just have to be open to it all the time, which is annoying for everyone else around you. You never know when a song hits you and you need to scribble down some idea and people think you’re obsessed. That’s really the only way though. You have to have your antenna up and just receive information when it comes. You mix that with your mind, with theory, and you can come up with something really cool. The inspiration part is just the raw medium, like when you’re cooking in a kitchen. You’ve got all these ingredients but they don’t taste good unless you mix them together the right way and that’s where harmonic theory comes in, because you have to understand structure. You have to understand at least a general level of theory so you’re able to communicate through the language. Music is a syntax. I don’t want to get too heady here, but there’s also like a psychological level to the lyricism and the writing. That’s just as important on the verbatim level of what’s happening linguistically. So all of those things come together and create a piece of music, you know?

Is there anything that you’re trying to convey with the new record?

I think the songs speak for themselves. If you take a listen you’ll hear it in the lyrics, what’s going on. The music will speak to your heart and that’s really what they’re designed to do, to make people happy and take them on a voyage to another place. Some of the songs are even spiritual in nature and kind of raise some questions in a general sense and hopefully get people thinking about their life. That’s ultimately what I want to do.

One of the last questions that I like to ask in interviews is “If you could impart one thing to people to make our lives better as a species, what do you think that would be?”

No one’s above being honest. Honestly, truth, knowledge, and true love are the things that always prevail. Help people through any kind of circumstances in their life and if you’re an honest person, and your kind, and you give people the same kind of latitude that they give you in any of life’s circumstances, then you’re going to have a happy life. You’re going to make the people around you happy too. Isn’t that what it’s all about? We’re only down here for like 80 years, if we’re lucky. And it’s all just going to burn anyways. So you might as well be a good person and enjoy your life. I’m 35 years old, and I’ve made some mistakes along the way in trying to find myself in the world but I can say now as an adult, I try to make the best decisions that I can, and help people when I can, and be a positive influence. Especially to younger kids.

When we’re on tour and a kid comes up, he’s like sixteen and actually knows the lyrics to our songs, and wants to buy our record. That’s just a really special thing, and you want to communicate somehow to never give up on your dreams. Those things really happen, and you want to make sure that everyone’s all right. All my favorite bands that I’ve gotten to see growing up, it’s really important for me that you can have one moment to connect with someone in the band and find out if they’re a real human.

From watching some of Brooklyn MC, Latasha Alcindors’, videos and listening to her lyrics, it’s easy to hear that she has a lot of truth to tell. Knowing this, I didn't want to delve too much into the superficial. So with her permission we went from zero to sixty real quick. Check out her video and make sure to pre-order her upcoming release, “Headraps” below. 

You are in a predominantly male dominated industry and genre. Can you tell me what it’s like to be a female MC?

“When I first came into making music, I tried not to focus on that. I just tried to focus on me and make my art, and not really think about the marginalization that I’m in. Life comes and hits you like a ton of bricks and sometimes you have those moments where exactly what society was telling you is exactly what’s happening to you. You deal with feeling like you haven’t been listened to in certain environments or feeling like men are scared to tell you certain things because of that. Also just dealing with sexuality, beauty, and all the dumb shit that women have to deal with.

I’ve probably dealt with all of it, but how I keep my stance is just focusing on my craft, and not really focusing on the dynamics of the industry. I feel like the industry is changing so often, and at this point women kind of control the taste of music. So I feel like that’s what I try to focus on and just try to focus on where the love is and forget all the calamity dealing with male or female energy. Just focus on my own stuff.

I saw that you included a clip from Nina Simone, one of my all time favorite artists and humans in general, talking about "blackness" on your video for "Talk My Shit". I know it's just as relevant today as it was when she spoke those words. So, for one, I want to know how you got into Nina Simone, and two I want to hear your take and your perspective on everything that's going on in this country in the recent weeks and really the entirety of its history. I know it’s a lot to unpack, but I’d love it if you could give it a shot.

Yeah sure, I’ll start with Nina Simone. I’ve always heard her music from friend’s families, because my family is Caribbean. I have an Afro-Latina background and my family didn’t play a lot of Nina Simone. They played a lot of salsa, merengue, reggae, stuff like that. I found Nina Simone while I was at Wesleyan University. I studied black performance art and I was really digging into music. She actually popped up as one of the women I studied when I was focusing on lyricism. I just fell in love with her story and saw a lot of myself in her, or a lot of her in me. Her focus in the beginning was on the industry, but with the times that sort of transformed to a more political stance. I always admired her for being honest, seeking truth in her music on many levels, and inspiring others to do the same. Kind of being the music for the times.

I’ve been making music for about five / six years and I’ve always tackled this conversation about blackness even before everything that’s been going on recently. It’s always been something that I’ve felt really tied to. No matter what the current events are, I’ve always felt like I needed to talk about it. I’ve been talking about this since 2011 and its so interesting now to see everything coming to the forefront now and to know that my words are really important for my peeps.

So, I don’t like to say I’m an activist or a political artist. I just try to speak for humans and try to speak for people that are trying to understand what the hell is going on. I haven’t felt the need to speak out on every issue, I’ll speak about different topics, but because I am a woman of color, and I’ve lived in such a difficult society, I have to say something. I have to speak on it. I think that’s why hip hop is so important to me in general, because it’s a space to tell truth. It’s a space to really be the history for people of color in a way. Text books don’t tell our story. Hip hop is a space for us to do that, so I try to tell what my eyes are seeing as well as possible in my music and hope that it resonates with people, and not become this political rapper. That’s not who I’m trying to be, I’m just trying to tell the truth.

So you say that you don’t consider yourself and activist, but I feel like I’ve seen some involvement with you in the Black Lives Matter Movement. Can you touch on that?

I support the BLM movement, and I believe in it, and I’m always a speaker for it. That’s a movement that was going on before the hashtag. You know what I mean? Black lives have always mattered, no matter what. So for me, when I say I’m not an activist, that’s not my face. I know a lot of amazing activists that are constantly on the front lines. If we changed the definition of an activist to a human being that just speaks out on things that they’re feeling about society, then I would be an activist. But because our society has triggered activism in this connotation that’s constantly in revolution, or a fight, I don’t feel like I would find myself in those spaces. I would find myself always speaking for my people, but I don’t want to be coined an “activist rapper”. I want to be coined as a rapper who speaks for the people, and really speaks for people of color. Where those people feel like they didn’t have a voice, I could do that for them. I just want to be a human. I feel like because I’m a woman of color, people feel the need to put me in that kind of box, and I don’t believe in those boxes.

I believe my living is a protest,  I don’t have a choice. My breathing is a protest. You know?

Absolutely. Switching gears here, I'd like to talk about more about your artistry. Your lyrics have a wit about them, and there's no syllable out of step. You can just tell by listening to them that you're a really smart human, and I love that. Tell me about when you started writing and what you started writing about.

I actually started poetry way, way back when I was younger. It was like stupid little girl poetry about love, of course. Me and my cousin thought were the shit, writing our poems and trading them off to each other and never sending them out to anybody. But I’ve always had a passion for writing. I’m such a nerd. I used to tell my mom, “Buy me stationery for Christmas” and you know like, a bunch of notebooks and pens and markers and stupid shit. I used to take journals all the time when I was younger and just fabricate a bunch of stories that weren’t true and funny stuff like that. When I got to college, Wesleyan University was very hard for me. I came from an under privileged school. I went to Sheepshead Bay High School, which was like an impact school. It’s basically a target school for violence and kids that weren’t seen to be achieving, but I was always in the advances classes. I think they thought that I was really smart, but I think I just knew how to work the system well at high school (laughter). I got to Wesleyan and it was really difficult for me. I didn’t really feel like I belonged there. I was like one of forty black students in the class. Those students went to these really amazing high schools and were very much prepped for college. I didn’t feel like I was, completely. So when I got there I would try to write college essays and my teachers would tell me that it wasn’t enough.

I always had this passion for hip hop since I was a little girl. I used to call hip hop my cousin because my family didn’t really listen to it. Hip hop was like my secret cousin that I would go and buy mix tapes of and listen to in my headphones while my parents listened to all their shit. And I swore I was Left Eye, or Lil Kim, or Foxy, and I would just be in the mirror, pretending to be them like a little girl. I finally made my family listen to (NY Hip Hop Station) Hot 97 at that time. I’ve always just had a crazy relationship with hip hop. I’ve been so in love with the world of it, because it was my world. I always thought hip hop came from the roots of dance hall, and came from the roots from salsa and jazz and all these other roots. I felt like me and the music were kind of one and the same. So at Wesleyan, I used hip hop a lot to write my essays. I like, would quote Biggie and then that would start my essay. That was how I got by because I utilized what I was passionate about, and I would feel passionate about writing.

For my senior thesis, I did a play called “The Memoirs of Hip Hop” which was a spoken word piece that included theater, music, and dance. I kind of personified hip hop as a human being. I was Hip Hop, and there was Mama Jazz and Papa Blues. And then there was Mama Africa, which was Hip Hop’s grandmother. There were all these people that Hip Hop would connect with like Electronica and Gangsta Rap. Then I told this whole story about Hip Hop meeting the industry and how that affected her. It was a really full production and a performance art piece. I was like ‘Wow I really love this! I want to go back to New York and take this with me, and be on Broadway, and blah blah blah” and I got back to New York and none of that happened, of course (laughter). But it was still on my mind, always. Because this meant something to me.

In that piece i was doing so much spoken word and so much poetry. I started to take some of the spoken word that I wrote in the piece and go and do open mics in New York. A lot of people were responding to it and loving it. One time this guy was like “Yo, do you wanna do a cypher? I saw your poetry, I thought you were really dope!” This was back in 2010, and I was like “Aight…” You know? I didn’t really know what I was doing. I didn’t know how to rap a bar, i didn’t know what a bar WAS. I thought “I’m just gonna write some stanza’s and pretend like I’m Jeezy right now.” So I got there and everybody was like “Oh fuck. You’re a rapper and you don’t know it!” And I was like, “Really?” I was so not believing it. I had just gotten out of school and I was working in the corporate office for a big scary bank. And I was like “Nah, nah, nah. I don’t want to do this. I don’t know if rap’s the thing. I always wanted to be a journalist. And everyone was like “Nah, you actually rap. You should try.” So I started doing cover raps and free styling, and did some Drake shit. That song went all over viral and it was almost scary. I did a couple of shows in 2011, and then one day I told my homeboy that I was just going to make a mixtape and hope people liked it. I was a huge fanatic of Kanye. I loved Kanye back in the day, and I still do, but back in the day Kanye and I, had like, a spiritual relationship and he just doesn’t know that yet (laugher).

So I did this project called The Presentation, which was like all ripping Kanye’s beats and I just went off. We did a short film for it and that went SUPER viral. Then all of the sudden I’m getting a call from BK Hip Hop Fest, like I’m opening up for Q-Tip and Kanye! And all this crazy shit just started happening and kind of just coming up in my life out of nowhere! And that’s my career. It’s always been this crazy thing. I didn’t know that I would be here. But I’m grateful for the magic. I just live off of my magic and what I love doing, and reconstructing that and evolving that. I know I’m here for a reason. I think I’m just a vessel sometimes. I don’t really know where any of this comes from honestly, I just have to do it.

So in short, I’ve been writing for probably forever, and rapping for about 5 years.

So now I want to talk about your branding, because it’s FIRE. The "Boss Bitch" candle you have on your website is amazing. I love that you have merch that’s a little bit left of center. On top of being an artist, do you consider yourself a businesswoman?

Oh hell yes! Yeah. It’s a 24/7 business that I’m running right now and it’s tough. I have managers and stuff like that but a lot of what I do is by myself. To the point where I am literally walking to the post office to mail stuff out myself and writing thank you letters to people and stuff like that (laughter). So this is like a 24 hour business and I’m just learning that. I didn’t think that this would be my life at all so I’m always learning new ways to do things, and learning how to get the best out of what I’m doing. I’m just really grateful. Even to the point when I started working with ONErpm, I was like “Oh my god thank you, because this is exactly what I needed and I had no clue!” And that is really important. It’s really important for artists to know the business, to know how to brand themselves. I’m STILL learning how to brand myself completely. You know, people are always like “Wow this is really dope” and I’m like “Really? I have so much more I need to do” (laughter). You know?

And my manager Bria Brown is freaking phenomenal. It’s all about teamwork really and seeing eye to eye with each other on all fronts. For a long time, I didn’t feel like I had a good, solid team. And now I feel like I’m finally making that happen and I’m very excited about it. A lot of my team is women! Which is so phenomenal to me. It keeps me inspired and honest. We can say whatever we want to each other because nobody’s going to be worried about feelings or anything like that. It’s a real relationship with the people that I’m with right now, and I’m so grateful to be working with them.

I always like to end my interviews with a more broad-strokes question. I always ask artists, if there’s one thing that you could express to the human population that could help to make our existence better on this earth, what would it be?

Hmm. One thing that we could do… I mean. I don’t have one thing. I think at the root, is listening, communicating (which is a form of listening I think), and really absorbing the information we’re taking in from each other. Not from like the media, or society, but just from each other and learning how to be honest with each other. Like, I live in a really dynamic house with four women. Two are white and two are women of color, and sometimes we just sit there and we’re really honest to the fullest extent with one another about what’s going on. They learn from me, I learn from them, and we find an inner peace from that. It’s helped us go outside and talk to other people and find strength to talk to people about things. And really just stand on your own too, with what you believe in and not get pushed aside. So at the root, it’s honesty and really saying what’s going on within ourselves  and what we’re trying to figure out. It’s communication and listening, and not telling people of color that their lives don’t matter. So yeah. That’s how I think the world will be a better place. At the root of it, once we all start communicating our lives to each other, that’s forming history. Music is so important because it’s a form of history. It’s a telling of the times. I just want people to tell their times.

       Check out Latasha’s Video For “Talk My Shit” and                                        Pre-Order “Headraps” Here

Many of you know the Olympic Games will be taking place next week in Rio de Janeiro.

A quick image search of the city displays its misty mountains, the statue of “Christ the Redeemer”, and beaches that stretch across the Brazilian coast. It’s a beautiful city, not without its hardships. There’s been a lot of attention on the difficulties that the Olympic organization has been dealing with and has imposed on the city itself. From environmental and financial concerns to its athlete’s restrooms, there has been no shortage of headlines in the weeks leading up to the games.

However, to stop the investigation there would be a travesty to a culture that has given the world some of its most beautiful music and art. Breathtaking street art covers the walls and buildings of São Paulo, another coastal Brazilian city.

Artwork by Zéh Palito

Artwork by Lelo**

Bossa Nova, a now classic genre of music originating in the 1950’s was born in Brazil. It’s fusion of jazz and samba with an emphasis on lyrics has delighted listeners world wide for a generation and like any modern country, it’s host to a large swath of musical genres. Bone Thugs N Harmony recently recorded a collaboration with one of the country’s most prominent hip hop groups, RZO.

We want our readers to have a more holistic view of the culture at large, and we invite you to discover and celebrate all of the amazing works of art it has to offer. We’ve created a playlist that’s gathered the very best of our artists in Brazil to start your journey to Rio, and the country at large.

Vida longa ao Brasil!

                                 Click Below to Listen to Our Playlist

TiDUS: PSYCHIC KOSMONAUT / HIP HOP EXTRAORDINAIRE

From time to time we’re able to ask the artists we work with a few questions about who they are and what makes them tick before the release of their new projects. In the following questions it’s easy to see why our interest was piqued here at ONErpm. TiDUS is on a whole other level. Maybe it’s because he’s an inter-dimensional hip hop artist sent down to our measly 3rd to help wake people up? Could be. However far you dare to wander down the rabbit hole, this artist’s talent is undeniable and is definitely worth your investigation. 

*Caps & Italics left in for full effect.  

You like a lot of psych and alternative music. Pink Floyd, Bjork, Radiohead. How does that play into the music that you're creating? (I could almost hear a little 15 Step or Weird Fishes in the beat from Gone Face. Mash-up please? Ha)

YOU WOULD HAVE TO ASK MY SUBCONSCIOUS MIND THIS QUESTION BECAUSE I DON’T THINK ABOUT ANYTHING WHEN CREATING , ITS ALL INTUITIVE. IT ALL COMES FROM THE SOURCE , THAT PLACE THAT A CHILD CREATES FROM WITH NO HESITATION JUST AN OPEN FLOW OF WHATEVER FEELINGS ARE GRASPABLE DEEP DOWN INSIDE WITHIN THAT MOMENT. AN HONEST PLACE; AN EFFORTLESS PLACE. YOU FEEL IT. THATS WHY IT’LL LIVE FOREVER. INTERESTING YOU SAY [15 STEP] THATS A GREAT SONG , IN RAINBOWS IS A GREAT ALBUM ONE OF MY FAVORITES. RADIOHEAD , BJORK , THEY TAUGHT ME THERE ARE NO RULES. LIKE WHO SAID THERE ARE RULES ? AND WHO TOLD THEM THAT THEIR RULES OF ART GOVERN MY OWN PHILOSOPHY ? LOL. YOU ARE HEAR TO FREELY EXPRESS HOWEVER YOU WANT. GO!

It seems for you, music is an expression for a larger concept or movement for what you call "Binnagod". Can you to tell me more about that? Would you call it a movement?

BINNAGOD IS NOT A MOVEMENT , UNFORTUNATELY TOO MANY PEOPLE ARE AFRAID OF THOSE. BINNAGOD IS NOT A PHILOSOPHY , FORTUNATELY PEOPLE ARE MOVING AWAY FROM OLD WORLD SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT. FINALLY , BINNAGOD IS NOT A RELIGION , THE YOUTH ARE QUESTIONING THE SOLIDITY BEHIND MANY OF THOSE. BINNAGOD IS A WAY OF LIFE. THAT IS ALL I WILL SAY FOR NOW..

The video you did with Ruffmercy seemed to align perfectly with the universe in which your music exists. The animation was all done in post, but did you find him a kindred spirit while working together? He seems to favor artists that are a bit left of center.

ABSOLUTELY. SHOUT OUT TO RUFFMERCY , HE UNDERSTOOD THE UNIVERSE I’M CREATING IMMEDIATELY AND WE VIBED ON A LEVEL IN SPIRIT FROM 2 DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE GLOBE TO CREATE A PIECE OF HISTORY. YES HES GREAT , THANK YOU RUFF !

Do you write more than rhymes? Poetry, prose, epic journal entries about the cosmos?

I DON’T EVEN WRITE. BUT TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION , YES. I DOCUMENT MY THOUGHTS ITS LIKE TIME TRAVELING , LOOKING BACK TO AN IDEA OR STREAM OF THOUGHT I WROTE DOWN YEARS AGO AND HOW IT CAN MAKE SENSE OR BE RELEVANT AT THE MOMNET I REVISIT IT ? AMAZING. YOU YOU SHOULD TRY IT , I MEAN WE WOULDN’T HAVE HISTORY IF WE DIDN’T RIGHT ?

I could easily imagine you levitating above your apartment building in half lotus before sitting down to track an idea. What does your creative routine or process actually entail?

IT REALLY VARIES. LIKE ON AN INFINITE  LEVEL. THE ROUTINE IS ROUTINE-LESS HA. ITS COMFORTING TO BELIEVE THERES A FORMULA FOR EVERYTHING. I FIND IT QUITE COMFORTABLE TO DISCARD THAT BELIEF. I DO WHAT I FEEL IN THAT MOMENT, THE REST IS ALREADY HAPPENING.

You're based in New York. I'm not sure if you've always lived there because you're history has been kept pretty private. Would you say that the vibe of the city has had an impact on you creatively?

YES. NEW YORK WILL ALWAYS MAKE AN IMPRESSION ON ME WHEN IM HERE. THE PEOPLE THE PEOPLE THE PEOPLE. WE’RE ALL SHARING AN IMMEDIATE EXPERIENCE HERE. NOT THAT MUCH SPACE AROUND IT TO DO OTHERWISE HA. THAT RIGHT THERE , THAT CONNECTION THATS HAPPENING HERE IS ONE OF A KIND.

Mind altering substances seem to be something you've maybe tried once or twice. Any hallmark experiences or epiphanies to speak of?

ENERGY AND VIBRATION IS EVERYTHING. LITERALLY. YOUR WORDS YOUR THOUGHTS YOUR ACTIONS AND REACTIONS ALL EMIT A VIBRATION OR COLOR. YOU ME ALIENS , GOD IF YOU WANT TO CALL IT THAT ALL EXIST ON A FREQUENCY, A WAVE TOGETHER. LOVE IS THE STRONGEST. BE POSITIVE AND IT WILL ALL MAKE SENSE TO YOU I PROMISE.

In the past few weeks there's been a lot of turmoil in the forefront of national attention, and really all over the world. If you could tell mankind one thing that would make their lives better, what would it be?

STOP BEING AFRAID. START LOVING. KEEP LOVING. ITS REALLY THAT SIMPLE.

Bonus question: Bjork. Alien, or nah?

TOTAL ALIEN GODDESS.

Check out the video for “See U There” below and make sure to buy the track right here.

Blackout Balter : A Misnomer and Let Me Tell You Why

To balter (for those of you who were satisfied with the alliteration in the the band’s name and didn’t bother to seek its meaning) is to “dance or tread clumsily”. Let me assure you that there is absolutely nothing clumsy about this particular act.

When I first had the opportunity to speak with Phil Cohen, the group’s frontman and songwriter, I was expecting to send him a list of questions. It included the general ‘describe the band’, ‘what are your influences’ etc: a brief and breezy interlude for readers to skim between their quest for cat videos and Buzzfeed lists. Instead, shortly after answering the call, I spent the following forty-five minutes trying to keep my jaw off of the ground.

Phil is a gregarious dude. We built rapport almost immediately. He wasn’t shy, smug, or subscribed to the belief that the entirety of our known universe revolved around him, as is such the case with many artistic temperaments. But that’s the kicker! While he is definitely an artist, he’s also a hyper-focused, task-mastering completion-ist. So much so, that I had to go and make up a word to describe the guy (trademark pending).

The band is self described as ‘The Pixies meets The Blue Album/ Pinkerton era Wheezer with a 70’s punk edge’. That may incense the imagination to conjure up thoughts of a group of alt rockers sleeping in until noon, consuming PBR by the barrel, and vehemently committing to not much more than a laissez faire attitude. Instead, Blackout Balter is comprised of a group of astoundingly educated individuals with degrees from MIT and Brown University, military service, and software entrepreneurship.

Phil Cohen, the aforementioned gracious guy, was actually an officer in the United States Air Force. He attended the academy for undergrad in Colorado Springs and was commissioned to the Persian Gulf shortly thereafter. While most kids in their early twenties are just beginning to figure out how to boil a pot of water on their own, he was leading conventional Air Force operations and running the flight lines there for Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was then deployed to Afghanistan with the army as the only coalition mentor and director to the Afghan Minister of Defense. The only one. Right out of college. In his early twenties.

All the while, he was writing songs and solo material heavily influenced by what he experienced in the military. After being stationed over seas, he was then moved to Boston, still with the Air Force. Now on familiar soil and in lock step with the local scene, he became aware of a drummer, Chris Dorsey, that was garnering a buzz in the neighborhood. They met at a block party, exchanged demo’s, and became half of the band as it’s known today.

After the Air Force and between Phil’s first and second year at MIT (see hyper-focused completion-ist) he met Misha Kostandov. Misha had just graduated from Brown University and was participating in the biggest startup accelerator the school had ever had at the time. In Phil’s role of helping to coordinate MIT’s project, the two met, discussed their love of music, and eventually the musical duo became a trio.

Amelia Gormley, the band’s bass player, was recruited from an act named The New Highway Hymnal, a Boston area favorite. Upon hearing that the group had disbanded, Phil had reached out to Amelia and Blackout Balter was then complete.

Hearing that a band has members with the collective brain power to potentially solve world hunger begs a specific question. Why music? Why not cloister yourselves away on top of a mountain somewhere and achieve things we mere mortals couldn’t even begin to comprehend? Phil’s answer is that music has “always been another challenge”. He’s been writing songs seriously since he was fourteen years old and has always felt that artistic expression and the act of creation are the most rewarding challenge he has as a human.

After answering that question over the phone he allowed me to wax a little poetic and we spoke more about what constitutes the human experience and how we can make the most of our time here on the pale blue dot. The Aquarian in me was doing cartwheels. For him it’s all about “living life on your own terms’ and moving forward toward one’s passions. He went on to warn that societal constructs are manufactured and inherently fallible. That it’s so easy for us as people to “just jump into it” and go along with the regime of the 9-5. If you’re happy with that, that’s great, but if you have those moments where you’re searching for purpose in an existential crises, if you’re spending 90% of your cognitive waking moments in an office surrounded by tasks and people that carry no emotional weight for you, you have to get out. You have to run. No matter the hardship or sacrifices you will inevitably have to make, because living life on your own terms and pursuing your passions, whatever they may be, is where “life is really at”.

He then illustrates a scenario that left me with goosebumps. “When your life is over and you’re standing before whoever’s “upstairs”, only able to answer truthfully, and you’re asked, ‘So. How’d you do?”, how are you going to be able to answer?”  Personally, I’m going to try and live every day with my response in mind.

Below are the written interview questions answered by Phil Cohen himself. Mark July 8th on your calendar and be absolutely sure to purchase their upcoming release, Twist and Bend, for yourself.

Before we start there's one question that I need to get out of the way. Your upcoming July 8th release, Twist and Bend was recorded at Battle Born with Dave Keuning (of The Killers) and produced by Robert Root. I think every musician reading this is wondering how the heck you got a demo into Dave's hands. Can you give us the scoop on how that happened?

Dave and I met through a mutual friend.  We first met at one of the Killers' after parties and we hit it off.  When I was in LA a few weeks later, I shot Dave a text and let him know I was in the area.  That night, we hung out at his place and he showed me a number of new Killers' tunes he was working on.  The band and I had rented some studio time in the Boston area a couple weeks prior to my visit, so I had some fresh demo tracks on my phone.  This was total luck, as this West Coast visit was a last-minute thing and I had no idea at all that I'd be hanging with Dave.  After we listened to Dave's stuff, I told him that I had just recorded a few demos too.  He told me to connect my phone to his stereo system, and we started listening to the music.  I really thought that we'd listen to 30 seconds or so of one song, then he'd be bored; but, Dave was digging it, so we listened to the rest of the songs together.  I was just happy to be catching up with Dave--I never thought we'd be listening to demos together; and I certainly never thought we'd be working in the studio together.  It all still feels a bit like a dream to me.  

You guys are from Cambridge, MA. Was that just where the band formed or did you all grow up there? Give me some of the highlights of your personal history as a group.

We're actually a pretty new group.  Chris and Amelia are from the area.  Misha and I are transplants.  Chris and I met at a neighborhood block-party shortly after I moved to the Boston area.  I had heard there was a drummer in the neighborhood; and, when we met at this party, I told Chris that I was a songwriter and musician.  He told me to send him some music, so I did.  Within a couple weeks, Chris and I started playing music together--just he and I in his basement, working on a few very non-Blackout Balter-sounding songs [laughs].  This was right around the time I was starting grad school at MIT, and while I was at school, I met Misha.  Misha had just finished grad school at Brown and was heading to Cambridge to start a software company with one of his friends--a classmate of mine at MIT.  We hit it off, and after we started hanging out, I found out he was an amazing piano player, so I introduced him to Chris and we started playing music together.  I met Amelia through the local scene.  I loved an old band of hers called New Highway Hymnal, and loved the way she played bass.  She and I hit it off, I introduced her to the guys, we started playing music together, and I guess the rest is history.

Bands are a lot like relationships. You don't really know when you first start working with people if it's going to be a forever kind of thing. Was there a crowning moment where you knew, 'This is my BAND"?

This is a really good question.  I think this moment was when Amelia started playing music with us.  Chris, Misha, and I had been playing music together for a bit; but when Amelia started hanging with us, I knew we had something special.  

Favorite guilty pleasure song?

I'm a big '70s underground rock guy, '80s hard-core punk guy, and '90s alternative guy.  The band and I have a wide range of influences within this realm.  But, if we're talking about guilty pleasures, my biggest may be Miley Cyrus' Party in the USA [laughs].  Should we make that one off the record? [laughs].  

I believe you guys are about 2 years old now. What has been the biggest hurdle for you as a band to overcome?

We're actually less than 2 years old, though Chris, Misha, and I have known each other for more than 2 years.  The Music Industry is a tough place, and--generally speaking--it's lost its way.  It may be easier than ever to record music and release it; but, because of this reality, it's actually harder than ever to get discovered, as there's just so much noise out there.  Let's be honest--I'd still call us an undiscovered band.  With this said, I'm really happy with the songs we've written, the direction we're heading artistically, and the traction we're beginning to receive.  And I just want to mention how much we care about the people who care about us.  I like to call these people "early adopters," as they've found us early.  It's easy to like a band when it's selling out stadiums and being played on every radio station, but it's a lot harder to care about a band when it's lesser known.  We feel a deep connection to our fans, and we really care about them.  We know their names, we know where they're from, and we love them like family.  

To close, it seems as though you guys are making great strides. What's one piece of advice for your fellow hard working artists out there?