Our electro funk from last year grew so much we decided to break it up & section it into a few playlists. First up comes from the groovier side.
I wanted to call this Groovewit hits, but Lauren talked me out of it. Generally speaking it lies in the mid-range of electro music with heavy synth influence and a whole lotta funky bass.
Let us know how well the songs flowed together for you.
It’s important to us.
With our first VAPOR playlist, we wanted to figure out what this sound is called. We made up a few names of our own, but thought vapor fit best.
Turns out it’s called Kawaii, and Jersey Club. Kawaii actually means cute in Japanese, which makes most sense given its bubbly nature with anime and video game samples sprinkled in. Jersey Club seems to be more house-based, but still as bubbly.
We decided to still keep it called Vapor ’cause this is too funky to be that cutesy.
Can’t stand such hard styles as I use to, neither can most my age, but I hear something come up every once in a while.
Clay’s UO I’m pretty sure at this point samples Die Antwoord, but I still can’t match the lyrics to a song. It sure puts their sound into a whole new style. One I like a lot more.
A lotta hip hop I love right now is sounding like Kendrick and I haven’t been this exciting about it since our start. We built this blog on hip hop about five years back, but electronic took over up until a year ago when hip hop caught up — or more likely we caught up with it.
Most of it you’ll love, but most of you aren’t going to like the last track, understandably. Give it a couple years.
Touch Sensitive always helps make an entrance. Whether it was Le Youth at the Rickshaw last year or Flight Facilities at the Regency a week ago, I always walk in when he’s playing his best on the bass. And he always makes me feel like a badass while doing it (which doesn’t happen much).
I did wonder how much of his set was script and how much he winged it, but I don’t think I made that too clear on Twitter. Thanks Touch for indulging in my drunkin ramblings.
Of all the obnoxious, nonsensical electronic styles out there, how the hell didn’t ghetto funk get to be the biggest? Back in 2011, we so badly wanted it to be the next big thing, but didn’t happen. All the decent ghetto funk hits were remixes and the much more garish electronic styles owned the years up ’til now.
The reason I’m such an advocate for this style of electro funk is that like the thing it’s attached to most, remixes, ghetto funk is meant to be taken lightheartedly with a sound much more for mindless dancing – in the best sense of the word – than anything else. I’d actually say it’s my favorite style to dance to overall, though individual songs are a different story.
It kind of reminds me of what swing might have felt like back in the day.
There’s not a lot of rappers, let alone singers, that I connect with lyrically. Words are a whole other game in music and the sound is hard enough to connect universally, words are much harder.
A-1 is not only the person that’ll bring Bay Area hip hop into relevance yet again, but with lyrics and a character the bay should be proud of. He’s got plenty good producers, reminding me of Doja Cat and her Purrr EP lineup.
Like I’ve said with Doja and before, the biggest thing any talented vocalist has to worry about is the producers they line up with, and A-1 has stacked his bill so far.
This is the first playlist I’ve collaborated on. I gave up about half the songs for her, but she helped give this playlist more direction and make more sense. When I usually create playlists I tend to miss out on the obvious, and get called out for it later, but she kept me in check for this one. Plus she had a few good songs (more than me).
Here’s Lauren’s intro to our Valentine’s Day playlist, or anti-Valentine’s Day, “Hip Hop & Heartbreak.”
Our favorite female vocalists of 2014 had a part two and this was going to be it. But so many of them were downtempo electronic, so we decided to make something more specific out of it, and brought in some older tracks.
Our electro relaxations has been our most popular playlist to date, other than the beats to blaze to, and we always wanted to include female vocals over the relaxations. And here it finally is…
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Well, funk is back, at least for us. One T’s Audible took our interest in electro funk and pushed it into something more funk electro (emphasis on the funk).
Audible is actually a reinterpretation of One T’s collaboration with Kentaroxiii & Toma Love Child. One T pitched down his verse from the original and brought in Josh Jar’s guitar. And damn if that guitar don’t make this funk, on the highs & the lows.