Until today, Tory Lanez had remained largely silent about allegedly shooting Megan Thee Stallion in the foot back in July. Now, though, the rapper born Daystar Peterson has finally broken his silence on the matter, but not by publicly apologizing or even issuing a simple statement. No, instead the Canadian MC has released a whole damn album denying Megan’s claims and bemoaning their impact on his career. Quick recap: Tory Lanez was arrested in mid-July on concealed weapons charges. A few days later, Megan revealed she’d actually been shot in the foot prior to his arrest. About a month after that, the “WAP” rapper confirmed rumors that it was indeed Lanez behind the trigger. Which brings us to last night. After disappearing from social media following the arrest and shooting, Lanez ret...
Sufjan Stevens has unveiled The Ascension, one of the most anticipated albums of the season. Listen in below via Apple Music or Spotify. Out through his own Asthmatic Kitty Records, the album marks Stevens’ eighth full-length to date and first since 2015’s Carrie & Lowell. In the lead-up to today’s release, the indie songwriter shared three promising previews, including epic lead single “America”. Clocking in at a very generous 12 minutes, the track is a soaring “protest song against the sickness of American culture in particular,” Stevens described in a statement. The single was originally written prior to the 2016 Election, during the Carrie & Lowell sessions, but was shelved because its “vaguely mean-spirited” tone didn’t fit in with the rest of that record. Stevens later uneart...
Public Enemy have released their first new album in three years, What You Gonna Do When The Grid Goes Down?. Stream the star-studded LP below via Apple Music and Spotify. What You Gonna Do When The Grid Goes Down? sees Public Enemy’s original lineup of Chuck D, Flavor Flav, and DJ Lord returning to Def Jam Records for the first time in over 20 years. The label put out the trio’s first five studio albums including 1988’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and 1990’s Fear of a Black Planet, both of which went on to shape the history of hip-hop as we know it. The 17-track full-length sees Public Enemy linking up with rap royalty, like Beastie Boys’ Ad-Rock and Mike D alongside Run-DMC on the cut “Public Enemy Number One”. On the 2020 remix of “Fight the Power”, they team up with Na...
In our Track by Track feature, musicians guide listeners through each track on their latest record. Today, Sad13’s Sadie Dupuis draws us into her Haunted Painting. Speedy Ortiz’s Sadie Dupuis has today released her latest solo album under her Sad13 moniker, Haunted Painting. Stream the whole thing below via Bandcamp. The new record comes four years after Sad13’s last full-length, Slugger, and features a bevvy of indie guests. Contributors to the 11-song collection include Roberto Lange of Helado Negro, Deerhoof member Satomi Matsuzaki, tUnE-yArDs mastermind Merrill Garbus, and Rick Maguire of Pile. Studio sessions, which exclusively featured only women engineers, occurred throughout the US, including California’s New Monkey Studio, famously cons...
To mark the two-year anniversary of its release, Lil Wayne has shared the deluxe “original” version of Tha Carter V. Stream it below via Spotify. Tha Carter V originally arrived in 2018 after a massive delay caused by Lil Wayne’s contract feud with Cash Money Records. There was also considerable bad blood between the rapper and label head Birdman. Things began to settle in June 2018 when Cash Money’s parent company, Universal Music Group, settled a lawsuit for “well over $10 million” that simultaneously freed Wayne from his former label. Birdman and Lil Wayne also were able to bury the hatchet. The new deluxe edition expands upon the double-album’s 23 tracks with an additional 10. Three of the songs — a version of “What About Me” featuring Post Malone, a Gucci Mane collaboration called “In...
ASAP Ferg has released Floor Seats II, his new studio album and the follow-up to his 2019 Floor Seats EP. Stream it below via Spotify. Floor Seats II spans 10 tracks in total, including the previously released singles “No Ceilings” featuring Lil Wayne and Jay Gwuapo and “Move Ya Hips” with Nicki Minaj and MadeinTYO. The album also boasts collaborations with Marilyn Manson (who appears on a track called… “Marilyn Manson”), Diddy, and Fivio Foreign. Rappers Mulatto, Antha Panth, and ONEFOUR make appearances on the LP as well. Earlier this week, ASAP Ferg announced the impending release of Floor Seats II by linking up with NBA legend Dennis Rodman for a video. In it, the basketball player hypes up Ferg before he outlines the guest features on his new album and reveal...
John Coltrane’s classic 1960 album Giant Steps has been reissued in a new super deluxe edition. Stream it below via Apple Music and Spotify. Before his untimely death at the age of 40, Coltrane established a reputation as, if not the very best saxophone player in the world, then certainly the flashiest. His virtuosic collaborations with Miles Davis produced some of the most beloved jazz music of any era, including Cookin’, Relaxin’, Workin’, Steamin’. and a strong contender for the most perfect piece of art ever created, Kind of Blue. Giant Steps came one year after Blue, and it established Trane as a ferocious solo artist in his own right. Giant Steps: 60th Anniversary Deluxe Edition is available as either a double-CD or double-vinyl package, a...
Country artist Tyler Childers has dropped a surprise new album titled Long Violent History. Stream it below through Apple Music and Spotify. Childers announced the follow-up to 2019’s Country Squire in a six-minute video essay on YouTube. The first eight tracks are traditional fiddle instrumentals “intended to create a sonic soundscape for the listener, to set the tone to reflect on the last track, which is my own observational piece on the times we are in.” That final statement, “Long Violent History”, is an explicit appeal to rural white voters on behalf of the Black Lives Matter movement. Childers asks his listeners how they would behave if their friends and families were treated the way that Black Americans have been treated. He sings, “How many boys could they haul off this mount...
Kamaiyah kicked off 2020 with Got It Made, her first project in over three years. Fans thankfully won’t have to nearly wait as long for a follow-up, as the rapper has just dropped off a new mixtape. Titled Oakland Nights, it’s a collaborative effort with fellow Bay Area local Capolow. Spanning 10 tracks, today’s collection finds the two artists proudly repping their favorite coast. Not unlike Kamaiyah’s past releases, Oakland Nights is peppered with bits of West Coast funk flavor, such as on opener “Finer Things” and closing track “So Much Money”. Other songs, meanwhile, are more geared toward the R&B/rap-singer in Kamaiyah and Capolow, including the suave “Digits” and “Undercover”. As Stereogum points out, the release might just be a reference to Kamaiyah’s debut mixtape, A Good ...
A previously unreleased Thelonious Monk live recording from October 1968 is finally seeing light today through Impulse! Records and Legacy Recordings. The album captures Monk and his all-star quartet — Charlie Rouse (tenor sax), Larry Gales (bass), and Ben Riley (drums) — performing a concert at a local high school in Palo Alto, California. According to a press release, the concert was organized by 16-year-old student named Danny Scher, and was recorded by the school’s janitor. The tape was stowed away in Scher’s attic for years and was only recently rediscovered. T.S. Monk, the son of Thelonious and founder of the Thelonious Monk Institute, called the performance “one of the best live recordings I’ve ever heard by Thelonious.” He added, “I wasn’t even aware of my dad playing a high school...
Neil Young has released his new live acoustic EP The Times. To ensure the best audio experience possible (as Young is wont to do), it’s only available to stream on the Neil Young Archives website or Amazon Music HD. Sign up for AMHD here or listen via the embedded player below. The seven-track collection captures the “Porch Episode” of Young’s Fireside Sessions series from back in July. That performance introduced fans to the updated version of “Lookin’ for a Leader 2020”, which reworks the lyrics to specifically target Trump and the current US political climate in 2020. The EP takes its name from another featured track: a cover of Bob Dylan’s classic “The Times They Are A-Changin’”. The Times is rounded out by five cuts from various stages in Young’s catalog, all of which are particularly...