Category Archives: Editor’s Pick

JusMoni x WD4D – Queen Feel

JusMoni x WD4D – “Queen Feel [Deluxe] **FREE DOWNLOAD** carepackage.bandcamp.com/album/queen-feel-deluxe

Queen Feel is the debut album from Seattle to Oakland transplant JusMoni and her producer / deejay WD4D.  A true collaborative effort, this album finds both artists pushing their boundaries and soaring to new heights. The EP was released at the end of last summer, garnering many great reviews and extensive radio support. The duo is now taking it a step further with the release of Queen Feel [Deluxe], packaging both the original album with 11 new remixes from a handful of talented producers. The 11 remixers are OCnotes, Sabzi, Kid Smpl, Benito, eLan, Keyboard Kid, The Flavr Blue, Suttikeeree, Introcut & WD4D, Kid P, and Benny Loco. Seattle’s OCnotes provides a beautiful, melancholy house version of “Take All Night,” while California heavy-hitters Benito and eLan each recreate “Here For You,” taking it to the next level of bass and beat music.  On the more mellow, night-bus vibe, Kid Smpl provides his signature “reverb-soaked-vocals-in-the-back” version of “Tattoo,” while Lil’ B’s producer, Keyboard Kid, takes it in the opposite direction with deep, hitting bass and bright synth work.  Everybody involved truly has a unique take on each remix.  Sure to hit home with a diverse crowd of listeners, this is a mission accomplished!

PRESS

NPR
“Jusmoni brings both wisdom and playfulness to her songs, and delivers them in a wily soprano reminiscent of Erykah Badu. Her recent work with producer WD4D has an experimental edge that’s tempered by her enthusiasm and warmth… ”

Seattle Weekly
“It thrives in spacious atmospherics: echoey vocal tracks; isolated drum sounds; you feel like you’re floating in an empty space, kept afloat only by the erotically-paced beat and waves of sexual tension.”

92 BPM
“Imagine Purity Rings meets TNGHT, meaning imagine the slow plodding cadence and vocals from Purity Rings and the bouncy elements heard coming out of the TNGHT camp… ”

The Stranger
Seattle vocalist JusMoni and producer WD4D have linked up for a great, stripped-down-to-its-birthday-suit slice of future R&B (it’s a distant relative of Ann Peebles’ “I Can’t Stand the Rain”)… Stellar work, everybody.”

MUSIC

JusMoni x WD4D – “Queen Feel [Deluxe] carepackage.bandcamp.com/album/queen-feel-deluxe (out 2/26/13)

JusMoni: jusmoni.bandcamp.com WD4D: wd4d.bandcamp.com | @wd4d

PHOTOS

dl.dropbox.com/u/12287741/JusMon…WD4D%20Photos.zip

@JusMoni | @WD4D
@CarePackageRecs

Next Collective – Cover Art

NEXT Collective is an ensemble recording by the next generation of jazz greats, including saxophonists Logan Richardson and Walter Smith III, guitarist Matthew Stevens, keyboardists Gerald Clayton and Kris Bowers, bassist Ben Williams, drummer Jamire Williams, and special guest trumpeter Christian Scott. The group explores their own interpretations of songs by such contemporary artists as Bon Iver, Drake, N.E.R.D, Little Dragon and more. From Jay Z and Kanye Westʼs “No Church In The Wild” to Pearl Jamʼs “Oceans” to Meshell Ndegeocelloʼs “Come Smoke My Herb,” to Drakeʼs “Marvins Room,” to Bon Iverʼs “Perth,” the album delivers a cohesive flow. Check how a tune like “Fly or Die”— a rock-fueled slice of R&B by N.E.R.D.—is recast by Ben Williams with the bounce and gear-shifts of a late ʼ70s fusion workout. Or how the metronomic beats and laconic lyricism of Little Dragonʼs “Twice” are faithfully recreated in an acoustic jazz setting, courtesy of Richardson; the reversed horn lines that kick off the tune (and the album) are a clear signal that this project is both as mindful of the studio-craft of its many musical sources as it is of the live interaction of the jazz tradition. Cover Art has its feet firmly planted in the overlap of as many styles as possible.

Boombox Saints – For The Moment

Consisting of Freeky P, Adlib, Huggy Fresh and DJ Relik, this multi-faceted quartet of sneaker fiends, street-wear enthusiasts and addicted to fresh junkies have an uncanny ability to capture the attention of anyone within earshot of their music, creating fans with their own brand of Hip Hop & R&B infused Pop. Boombox Saints has garnered considerable media attention for their quality of music and hyped performances alongside some of todayʼs most successful and respected acts — J. Cole, Kid Cudi, Big Sean, Mos Def, Jay Electronica, Talib Kweli, Souls of Mischief, Far East Movement, Danny Fernandes, Sean Paul and many more.

Aceyalone – Leanin’ on Slick

Aceyalone, the legendary emcee and founding member of seminal rap groups Freestyle Fellowship, Haiku D’Etat and Project Blowed, has announced the follow-up to 2009’s Aceyalone & The Lonely Ones, titled Leanin’ on Slick. Since his formative days of battling at the Good Life Cafe circa 1989, Aceyalone is a forefather of the West Coast underground rap scene that spawned the emergence and success of groups like The Pharcyde, Jurassic 5 and his own Freestyle Fellowship, whose 1993 record Innercity Griots is an undeniable classic of the genre. Leanin’ moves on from the doo-wop tones of Lonely Ones in favor of jazz and funk influenced beats to support his signature tight rhymes and bouncing-ball flow. Out May 28 on Decon, the album features 13 dynamic tracks with frequent collaborator BIONIK, as well as Daniel Merriweather, Treasure Davis and, most notably, singer Cee Lo Green.

Toussaint Morrison – Fast Times At Trillmont High

Overdosed on New Avengers, neon, and reports of police corruption, Toussaint Morrison’s flickering psychi has everyone questioning what name he’s answering to nowadays. It all caught up with him entering the Fall of 2012, when Morrison was hired to teach hip-hop and theatre to students at Roosevelt High School, a school on the precipice of being shut down due to racial disparity in Minneapolis. To boost attendance, the principal requested he enter each English classroom and give a clinic on the advent of hip-hop and slam poetry. Here, the situation gets almost interesting enough to ornament upon one sheet. Toussaint Morrison proceeded into each English class to rap and perform spoken word touching on Minneapolis holding the country’s #1 ranked racial disparity in education, death before graduation, and adversity of stratification in the city.

The result turned out the largest attendance to Morrison’s after-school hip-hop program that day, a re-invented vigor to make a go for the 2013 national poetry slam, and a pink slip from the Roosevelt High School principal the next morning. The poem performed in Roosevelt that day had incited a riot and surfaced enough underlying tension to squeeze the air out of a building… including Toussaint.

Disheveled, halfway through the mixtape before you and left to seek employment at the nearest Starbucks, Toussaint Morrison & Dr. Wylie steered the 80’s-pop-infused joyride into a socio-political themed high school beset in the Midwest. Wrought with Morrison’s experience working in Special Ed. as a paraprofessional and Wylie’s unhealthy, newfound addiction to what he calls “All Synth Everything”, the degenerative duo bring you Fast Times At Trillmont High.

The sixteen tracks of Fast Times comes in on the coat tails of their previous mixtape accruing 100,000+ downloads & a #1 ranking in RapReviews.com’s Hip-Hop Albums of 2012. Stay tuned for more pink slips, bonus tracks, and hints of a debut album before 2014.

Lizzo – T-Baby

Born in Detroit in the late 80’s, Lizzo spent much of her formative years in the church, where she was raised on the gospel sounds of The Winans, The Clark Sisters, and Fred Hammond, along with mainstay secular artists such as Stevie Wonder and Elton John. At the age of 10 her family moved to Houston, TX, and Lizzo was exposed to a wide array of emerging Southern musical styles, from the trademark chopped and screwed rap tracks of the underground, to the progressive and polished R&B sounds of groups like Destiny’s Child that were raising the city’s national profile to new heights. In fact, it was after she stumbled across a Destiny’s Child performance at Wal-Mart that Lizzo—then a 5th grader– was inspired to start writing music on her own. Over the next decade that decision would take her through the trenches of some of the most varied musical genres: R&B girl groups (I.N.I.T.I.A.L.S., Cornrow Clique), progressive rock bands (Elypseas), solo rap ventures, and electro-pop duos (Lizzo & The Larva Ink).

In 2011 she made the move to Minneapolis with Larva Ink in order to be a part of that city’s blossoming and collaborative musical community. Lizzo & The Larva Ink was well received there, and the group earned a few encouraging nods from the press. Lizzo was soon introduced to Sophia Eris and Claire de Lune, with whom she would form The Chalice, the three-piece all-female rap/R&B group that would elevate Lizzo’s profile and reputation. In 2012 The Chalice released We Are The Chalice, an album that would gain them instant local success amongst fans and critics alike, garnering City Pages’ prestigious Best New Band and Picked To Click accolades in the same year.

The success brought setbacks, though, and a falling out soon led to the demise of Lizzo & The Larva Ink. Feeling discontent with the loss of one group and the hurried blur of success of another, Lizzo was creatively drained from writing We Are The Chalice in two short months. She found herself in the throes of her first full-blown case of writer’s block. Unable to create music for herself, she began listening to several different local albums in hopes of finding inspiration. It was LAVA BANGERS, a 20-track instrumental mixtape from Doomtree producer and Minneapolis music vet Lazerbeak, that ultimately caught her ear. Beaks’ beats proved the fix for Lizzo’s problem. “I sat at home and listened to LAVA BANGERS, and when “Lift Every Voice” came on, my writer’s block was cured,” says Lizzo. “I think it revived my gospel roots. I wrote pages and pages of songs, and finally reached out to Lazerbeak, not thinking anything would come of it.”

Her timing could not have been better. Beak, impressed with Lizzo’s output with The Chalice, as well as her guest appearances on several other local releases, was looking for a change of pace from his daily Doomtree production and business responsibilities. He immediately signed on to work on some demos. Beat tapes were exchanged, songs were written, and mutual friend and musical collaborator Ryan Olson (Totally Gross National Product founder, Gayngs/Marijuana Deathsquads mastermind) was brought on board to creatively oversee the project. Olson recorded and edited all 15 tracks in his bedroom studio, bringing in laid back hype-man Cliff Rhymes along the way to add even more layers to Lizzo’s dynamic vocals.

LIZZOBANGERS is the culmination of that four-way collaboration, an album that manages to capture all of the varied musical influences of Lizzo’s upbringing and combine them with the forward-thinking experimental production style of Beak and Olson. The end result is a brave new project that encapsulates the best parts of both the familiar and the future.

Official Site – totallygrossnationalproduct.com/artists/lizzo
Facebook – www.facebook.com/LizzoMusic
Twitter – twitter.com/LizzoMusic
Instagram – instagram.com/lizzobeeating