I first heard about DRAMA through their Fuck Dave track, featured on our with Soul playlist from 2017, but I didn’t realize what the duo had to offer up otherwise until now. It’s gonna help define the beginning of my 2019.
Via Rosa, the singing half of DRAMA, sings with ease in sound and heartbreak in story. She reminds me of Madelyn Grant. The inflection in her voice. A raspy whisper you hear even when she’s just talking.
Na’el Shehade, the producing half of DRAMA, gives Via some sexy four on the floor tracks and at times brightens up her sad songs.
JID’s hit, Never, reminded me of Anderson .Paak, but the Atlanta-based rapper gets compared to Kendrick more often. His rap style may not be as pioneering as the two yet, but he has a finesse with words just as good.
With rap and other forms of rhetoric, I’ve always been less about what you say and more about how you say it. I have to know a rapper’s style intimately before I try to understand what they’re saying. I still may not be getting the knowledge in rap that I do in longer forms of written word – mostly audiobooks & podcasts – but wordplay like JID’s is just as inspiring.
In the wake of the tropical house bubble, back in the time of Kygo, came something much better. This ethereal style of house, popularized by ODESZA, will be appreciated far longer than its tropical house counterpart. Although the depths of it, beyond ODESZA, isn’t appreciated enough. That’s what this playlist is for.
Remixes get a bad rap. They’ve got a famous song to compete with and the production value probably isn’t as good. That said, you gotta appreciate what they give us.
Remixes are meant to take the songs we love and make them something for the club. Give it groove. The production might not be 100% on all these, but for some they’re better than their original.
Sadly, this is the first playlist out of our latest that won’t be available on Spotify or Apple Music. Usually, the two music services have at least 50% of what YouTube Music and SoundCloud have, but this time it’s close to zero. I don’t know if one of these remixes are on Spotify or Apple. Thankfully, Dubset is changing that.
This style all started for me with the quirky, anime & classic video-game sampling kawaii music. It’s grown into all sorts of future bass and trap offshoots. And I love it so much for its experimentation.
I first wanna here melodies and rhythms I’ve never heard before. It resonating is second, albeit more important.
Loose Control, BURN DISCO, and Four on the Floor are playlists for dancing, and Jack Your Body is the latest to add. A different style of house than the four on the floor it’s known for, tech house & g house are a different rhythm to dance to. Along with trap, which makes a few appearances on here.
Jack is the first playlist we’ve had that has the full catalog on Spotify. YouTube Music is the one missing a track for once.
There are two types of music people. Ones who care about the lyrics and ones who care about the sound. Ya, you can be for both, but you’re also for one. I’m about the sound. Even with rap, it’s not so much about what they say, but how they say it.
I was listening to a Del a few years back and in one of his tracks I always thought he was saying “phonetical finesse.” Turns out he wasn’t, but those two words since have summed up what I love so much about hip-hop: wordplay.
Rap Finesse is a special playlist because a lot of the artists on here (towards the bottom) are the reason I started caring about underground, independent, and locally-known music. There wouldn’t be a Silence Nogood without ’em.
What I respect so much about Majestic Casual is their focus on curation. Unlike editorial outlets like Pitchfork, it’s not about music news or witty reviews. It’s about finding what’s next in music.
Never before have I gone through another curator’s full catalog. It took about 10 days to go through all 1,932 tracks (and counting) on Majestic Casual’s YouTube channel and another week to whittle it down to 130 selected. Mind you, I only spent a minute or so on each track initially, which still comes out to over 32 hours of listening. Not including the hours it took to refine them down.
I was shooting to playlist less than 6% of their total catalog but ended up with just under 7%. And it wasn’t easy. I never realized how many tracks Majestic put on my radar over the years. Not to mention the ones I swiped up in the last few weeks, which are about 44% of this list. They promote a variety of music styles and are going beyond simply curating music.
Majestic is going on tour in the US over the next few weeks – I’ll be at the SF show. They’ve released a print and online journal. They’ve got merch, a record label, and are doing more with video and photography. There is one thing though they need help with.
It’s not just about promoting music partnerships. Uploads and even closer relationships Majestic has with artists are the bedrock from which they’ve become so successful – something we lack – but shouldn’t be the entire game. There is so much more good music out there that fits Majestic’s aesthetic and deserves to be in their collection, uploaded or not.
I love and hate house music most. With anything taken mainstream, we’re all bombarded with bloodsuckers making a buck off of it, but beneath all that is an underground of creators making something fresh. My favorite, like all other things in life, is with soul.
And even in this soulful house playlist, there are many different styles. From horizontal disco to deep house, there are so many shades of sexuality, and it’s only gettin better.
Not only do I listen to music actively more than passively, but it’s usually for a purpose. I constantly think about how the song playing fits in with the rest of the music I collect. And how I conceptualize it as a whole.
I’ve created about a half dozen playlists for relaxing. They’re all primarily beat-driven, but I think they’re even more jazz inspired. Quite a few people have taken issue with me classifying these playlists as jazz, but I hear the inspiration more than ever.
I’d go as far to say many jazz legends would appreciate it, if not be actively involved in creating this beat culture if they were here today. The variance and experimentation these beats makers play around with deserves respect.