There’s a bedroom producer in every global superstar, and even the iconic Daft Punk are no exception.
It turns out that the legendary robots specifically may have been harbingers for the broader bedroom producer phenomenon. Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter recently confirmed that two of the duo’s groundbreaking albums, Homework and Discovery, were both recorded by humble means.
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Speaking with the BBC’s Matt Everitt on “The First Time…” podcast, Bangalter confirmed the longstanding rumor to be true.
“Homework and Discovery were done in the bedroom, in the same flat as I was watching [TV show] Modern Times and we had [Stevie Wonder’s album] Songs in the Key of Life constantly on the turntables,” Bangalter said. “This small bedroom, [and] my parents had given me this small boombox for my 11th birthday, a JVC boombox with a little graphic equalizer, and I kept this thing. One day when we plugged in a few keyboards and samplers, I found that boombox and I put it on the stack of machines. And that little boombox is what we mixed and recorded both Homework and Discovery on. That was the magic one.”
The unconventional move for the time saved Daft Punk and their label thousands on studio costs, engineering and more while still yielding two of electronic music’s most timeless works in the genre’s history.
Despite a star-studded 2023 Coachella festival, there’s hardly an artist who courted the conversation quite like Four Tet.
In a new interview with The Guardian, the influential electronic music producer revealed that his show-stealing moment dropping “Country Riddim” was the product of feeling immune to any unconventional song selection previously thrown his way.
He described a moment years earlier, when Skrillex dropped the Lion King soundtrack theme during one of their formative back-to-back sets. Since that time, Tet said, there’s been an unsaid tenant between the two that no song selection is off limits.
“Since then, we look at each other like: ‘Nothing you could play would be too chaotic to mix out of. Try me,'” he explained.
That was the better part of a decade ago. And as fate would have it, a similarly devilish inspiration struck Tet again in front of 100,000 Coachella attendees, where he dropped HOL!’s breakout track, “Country Riddim,” to a crowd all too eager to head-bang in unison.
“I actually had an out-of-body experience,” Tet recalled. “Absolutely lost my marbles. It was like knowing I’ve got the funniest joke in the world and 100,000 people are about to lose their minds. It’s one of the most powerful feelings I’ve experienced in my whole life.”
Clearly, despite the highest highs of that moment, Four Tet hasn’t let the newfound attention get to his head.
Making a lighthearted jab at the circumstances of it all, he added, “I did Coachella and the next gig was a three-and-a-half-hour set at my daughter’s 13th birthday party to 20 teenage girls, who I felt looked at me deeply unimpressed the whole time.”
The story of Billy McFarland is headed to Broadway, the Fyre Festival founder said.
It’s been nearly a year since McFarland finished his six-year prison sentence, and in that time he’s hardly been sitting on his hands. For starters, he is working to shore up $26 million in restitution owed to the victims of 2018’s ill-fated Fyre Festival, all without being able to act as an officer or director of a public company, as per the terms of his settlement agreement with the SEC.
All of that isn’t to say McFarland is left without a paddle. Since his release, he’s been teasing the idea of a redemption arc for the Fyre brand, expressing his long-term intentions to execute on the original vision for the endeavor with the right planning and partners.
In the meantime, however, McFarland has been exploring new avenues for monetizing the brand. Taking to Instagram, he revealed that he’s officially signed a deal to turn his life and experiences surrounding the Bahamian event into a Broadway musical.
McFarland first teased the idea back in May in a video interview with Adam Glyn, wherein he described it as, “Instead of like traditional Broadway actors, it’s going to be current music artists, combined with the Broadway format of the play—making fun of me, but also I think sharing some of the good sides as well.”
The working title for the Broadway show is said to be Fyre Festival 1.5.
J. Cole has revealed that 50 Cent‘s ‘Get Rich Or Die Tryin” is the “best album of all time” while on stage with the rap legend this week.
On August 9, the North Carolina rapper joined the New Yorker during his set at New York’s Barclays Center to perform his most popular track, ‘No Role Modelz’. The show kicked off the US leg of the ’50 Cent: The Final Lap’ tour, celebrating 20 years of 50 Cent’s 2003 debut album.
After performing the ‘2014 Forest Drive’ hit, J. Cole got the crowd to “make some noise for one of the greatest n****s to do this shit: 50 Cent, Curtis Jackson.” Before leaving the stage, he also added: “‘Get Rich Or Die Tryin’’ is the best album of all time. It’s ‘Get Rich Or Die Tryin’’ at number one and it’s ‘Thriller’ at number two, and I love Michael Jackson.”
50’s debut is now a rap classic. The album was released on February 6, 2003, debuting at Number One on the Billboard 200, selling 872,000 units in its first week and is now nine times platinum. Michael Jackson‘s ‘Thriller’ is one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed albums of all time. Released in 1982, it has sold over 70 million copies worldwide and earned eight Grammy Awards.
Recently, in place of 21 Savage, the Dreamville Records co-founder stepped in and opened up for Drake during the Montreal stop of the ‘It’s All A Blur’ tour. As a nod to his absent past collaborator, Cole performed his and Savage’s Grammy Award-winning song ‘A Lot’ as well as other tracks.
The 38-year-old also appeared on Summer Walker’s latest EP ‘Clear 2: Soft Life’, where he featured on the “audio hug” ‘To Summer, From Cole’. He penned a message to “Ms Walker”, referring to the R&B singer, about getting through the hard times over a sombre and subdued beat.
In March, rapper-turned-media personality Joe Budden said J. Cole was “pandering” to fans when talking about how the latter’s song ‘Procrastination (Broke)’ came about. Cole told fans that he was inspired by a “J. Cole type beat” on Youtube, which was produced by Bvtman, to write the single. However, Budden claimed “[He] found out that the guy who just so happened to do the ‘J. Cole type beat’ – that was the first one to pop up – is like the most popular producer on YouTube.
“And it’s pandering,” Budden continued. “There’s nothing wrong… Y’all swear I hate people, and I don’t. I love J. Cole, so don’t spread that. But the story that they put out versus what the fuck was really happening, like stop y’all. I’m just not stupid.”
The ‘Pump It Up’ rapper also took issue with J. Cole’s collaboration with BTS member J-hope, believing that it was all a ploy to push Cole’s music back out there. “I can see through what your publicist is pumping in you,” Budden said, “what your lawyer is pumping, your label, A&R is pumping in you… This is why people pander, by the way, because it works. Let’s land the K-pop star-J. Cole merger.”
In a four-star review of J. Cole and J-hope’s ‘On The Streets’, NME wrote, “For the most part, ‘On The Street’ caps this leg of J-hope’s voyage on a bright note – one where he can proudly look back on as he prepares to move forward. When he returns post-military, he’ll be coming back to strong foundations ready for him to build even more exciting new blocks on.” J. Cole said working on the single was a “blessing” and J-hope was “so happy” to work with his long-term idol.
‘The Final Lap’ tour continues to tour around the US with the next stop being in Hartford, Connecticut on August 11. The North American leg of the tour will end on September 17 at Detroit’s Pine Knob Music Theatre. Fans can look and buy any available tickets here.
COBRAH has lost her mind—and all we can do at this point is hold on for dear life.
An experimental electronic artist with the sort of bravado to paint our emotions for us—albeit with a razor for a paintbrush—COBRAH has a bright future ahead. After debuting on Big Beat Records earlier this summer, she’s now returned with “MANIC,” a sultry track inviting fans to explore their own perceptions of sexuality and self-expression.
Here, COBRAH’s badassery shines through her unapologetic lyricism: “I just get a little drastic, want to blow things up with matchsticks / Let it out with holy godspeed, I’m so nice if it wasn’t for my kink.”
The cover of COBRAH’s new single, “MANIC.”
Atlantic Records
Electronic music fans will recognize COBRAH from her seductive vocal performance in Chris Lorenzo’s global house hit, “MAMI.” She twists the knife into that style in “MANIC,” where her come-hither, slithering sound melts into a four-on-the-floor club beat.
“I loved making this record but if anything, it really brought out the manic in me,” COBRAH said in a statement.
She’s not kidding. COBRAH today also released the official “MANIC” music video, a madcap audiovisual that shows her heart is as black as her signature latex. The video finds her embracing her desires without inhibition in a noir world where sensuality and dominance are canon.
COBRAH is now gearing up for a big run of North American live dates, including a landmark performance at the 2023 Portola Festival in the Bay Area, where Eric Prydz and Skrillex will headline. She’s also poised for a series of shows alongside Brazilian drag queen and dance music star Pabllo Vittar.
These shows follow COBRAH’s breakout “THE ICON TOUR,” her first-ever U.S. live run, which saw her tear up Los Angeles’ famed El Rey Theatre, Brooklyn’s Elsewhere and Boiler Room’s Toronto offshoot, among other high-profile shows.
YouTube has announced that they will celebrate the 50th anniversary of hip-hop this year by launching the FIFTY DEEP campaign.
This month marks 50 years since DJ Kool Herc performed at a party in the Bronx and showed off his DJing invention of scratching records to extend the instrumental breaks in the song. This revelation was the cornerstone for hip-hop as people could dance longer (evolving into breakdancing) and aspiring MCs could rap during song breaks.
In honour of the musical milestone, YouTube has launched FIFTY DEEP, “a cultural campaign on YouTube that salutes how far [the genre] come.” Director of Black Music & Culture Tuma Basa wrote a blog post on the new campaign, saying that the mission “is for every generation to dig into the gems of YouTube’s archival treasury of Hip Hop.”
They plan to fulfil their mission by collating a visual library of 2,000 videos that “have changed the game” for hip-hop music, having a custom Yoodle (YouTube’s version of the Google Doodle) to pay homage to the phenomenon of type beats, and creating a Google Arts & Culture Hip Hop Hub to collate “a wide range of cultural institutions’ collections and curated stories.”
FIFTY DEEP will kick off this Friday (August 11) with a live stream of Hip-Hop 50 Live on Mass Appeal’s official YouTube channel. The celebratory concert has a star-studded line-up of world-class rappers which is headlined by legendary duo Run-DMC, who will share the stage with fellow rap pioneers Lil Wayne, Nas, Snoop Dogg and more on the main stage. There will also be a showcase for the “Women of hip-hop”, where Lil Kim, Eve, Trina and more will recite their hits for the Bronx crowd at New York’s Yankee Stadium.
Basa also shared that YouTube has brought back the YouTube Avenues program in collaboration with hip-hop figure and YouTube cultural advisor Wallo267. Going to the Southern hip-hop hotspots of Atlanta, New Orleans, Baltimore, Raleigh/Durham and Miami, they hope to empower the next generation of hip-hop enthusiasts.
Explaining the reason why YouTube is “going so hard to salute Hip Hop,” Basa wrote: “Hip Hop has been poppin’ on YouTube dating back to when Soulja Boy’s ‘Crank That’ video went viral in 2007. And just last year, nine of the top ten artists in the U.S. were Hip Hop artists and collectively earned over 16B views globally in the calendar year.
“YouTube is a place I can find nearly every version of every song, plus interviews, plus podcasts, plus commentary, plus live performances, et cetera, et cetera. Basically, if it happened and it was recorded, YouTube is where people come to find it.”
At this year’s Grammys ceremony, Questlove curated a tribute to hip-hop which featured LL Cool J, GloRilla, Ice-T and Jay-Z. The performance came after Dr Dre was honoured with the Global Impact Award, which now will be known as the Dr Dre Global Impact Award.
Elsewhere, Nas and the Wu-Tang Clan went on their ‘NY State Of Mind’ tour, performing their hits for fans across the world. After their sold-out London gig at The O2, Nas hosted an afterparty with Hennessy to celebrate 50 years of hip-hop. Ghostface Killah and Raekwon both surprised the audience and recited their verses from iconic hip-hop tracks like ‘C.R.E.A.M’ and ‘Protect Ya Neck’.
The world’s biggest EDM festival is somehow getting bigger.
Over 400,000 people attended Tomorrowland in 2023, watching a staggering 750 artists perform across 16 stages. Prior to the start of the iconic Belgian festival, TikTok was confirmed as its official content and streaming partner.
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The tremendous scope of the IRL event was dwarfed, however, by its digital turnout. Tomorrowland’s TikTok stream reached 16 million unique viewers across both of the festival’s weekends, a representative from the social media platform told Music Ally. They also said that views on posts incorporating the #Tomorrowland hashtag rose by nearly a billion throughout the fest’s two weekends.
Even more impressive is Tomorrowland’s impact on the platform itself. In the wake of its extraordinary 2023 edition, Tomorrowland become the biggest festival account on TikTok to the tune of almost five million followers. To put that into perspective, Coachella has 585,000 followers at the time of writing.
Fans can watch full performances from Tomorrowland 2023 here.
Travis Scott has broken records with his fourth studio album ‘UTOPIA’, which is now deemed the biggest hip-hop release of the year so far.
On July 28, the Houston-born rapper dropped his highly-anticipated album, featuring Beyoncé, Teezo Touchdown, Drake and more on the star-studded 19-track album. It was the follow-up to the ‘Antidote’ rapper’s Grammy Award-nominated third album ‘Astroworld’.
‘UTOPIA’ has broken many records since it dropped. In its first week, the album sold 496,000 album units and amassed over 650 million streams globally, topping the charts in 17 countries. This succeeds the success of Lil Uzi Vert‘s ‘The Pink Tape’, which was the highest-grossing hip-hop album before ‘UTOPIA’, selling 167,000 units in its first week.
The album’s physical sales reached 252,000 units, making it the second-biggest first-week physical sales for an album this year. Taylor Swift‘s ‘Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’ has the biggest first-week sales of 2023 so far with 716,000 album-equivalent units, including 507,000 album sales.
Also, Apple Music and Spotify claim that the album earned the highest first-day streams for an album in 2023 on the platform. The latter confirmed that the record was streamed 128 million times on its first day and 79 million on its second day, which is bigger than the first day of any other rap album in 2023. According to Hot New Hip Hop, the Drake-assisted ‘MELTDOWN’ currently accounts for 10% of all ‘UTOPIA’‘s streams.
‘UTOPIA’ is the moment. 😤
The new @trvisXX project had the most first day streams for an album released on Apple Music so far in 2023.
In a three-star review of the record, NME said, “Whereas ‘Astroworld’ was the perfect theme for Scott’s music… in trying to navigate a lofty concept like finding utopia, his ambitions have led him back to someone who was far more formidable at it.”
Accompanying the album, the 32-year-old announced a special one-off gig at the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt but was eventually cancelled due to production issues. Instead, Scott performed at the iconic Circus Maximus in Rome, Italy earlier this week (August 7). All 60,000 tickets for the concert were sold in two days. On stage, he brought out his once mentor Kanye West to perform ‘Praise God’ and ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’.
CIRCUS MAXIMUS also was released in support of ‘UTOPIA’. Written and co-directed by Travis Scott, the film premiered on July 31 in sold-out movie theatres across the US.
Last month, despite the concert being cancelled, fans held a party in Egypt at the pyramids in honour of ‘UTOPIA’s release.
This week, after endless messages and comments from fans, rising singer KayCyy shared his frustrations about not being credited as a featured artist on ‘Thank God’.
Geestmerambacht Park in the Netherlands transformed into a haven for drum & bass fans during the thrilling, three-day experience of Liquicity Festival.
Welcoming attendees from across the globe from July 21-23, the unique festival once again succeeded with flying colors, providing them with a selection of some of drum & bass’ very best.
From the outset, a palpable sense of community enveloped the greenery-filled festival grounds. The energy was infectious.
Esteemed names like Andy C, Pendulum and Dimension delivered electrifying performances while trailblazers such as Halogenix, Command Strange and Technimatic introduced more melodious, liquid drum & bass soundscapes. The lineup also included performances from the likes of Koven, Fox Stevenson, Culture Shock, Subsonic and many more.
Lennart Zwaan
Yet, Liquicity Festival was more than just a musical journey. Beyond the stages, festival-goers engaged in chess battles, indulged in vintage arcade games and tapped into their creativity at the event’s arts-and-crafts stations. The festival also hosted a dome adorned with mesmerizing art projections, where fans were able to immerse in a world of psytrance and ambient music.
As the echoes of yet another sensational edition fade away, attendees are already aching to experience the next chapter of Liquicity. The festival returns to Geestmerambacht Park for its 8th edition from July 19-21, 2024.
Fans can register for Liquicity’s ticket pre-sale here.
NME and L’Oreal Paris are giving away a pair of VIP tickets to this year’s Luno presents at All Points East.
As part of their Stand Up Against Street Harassment programme – which utilises the 5D’s training – L’Oreal Paris are an official sponsor of this year’s edition, where The Strokes, Haim, Jungle and more will all perform in London’s Victoria Park (Aug 18-28).
To enter, take the 10 minute online training and share your completed training certificate to the following email address: lorealparisukdigital@loreal.com.
Entrants will have the chance to win two tickets to one of the following dates: The Strokes (Aug 25), Jungle (Aug 26), Dermot Kennedy (Aug 27) or Haim (Aug 28). See here for full terms and conditions.
L’Oreal Paris is committed to Stand Up Against Street Harassment globally and they have already trained 1.8 million people around the world. Their training programme helps to educate and empower people to safely intervene if they either witness or experience street harassment. It uses Right To Be’s 5D methodology – Distract, Delegate, Document, Delay, Direct – which provides practical and effective tools to safely take action.
Speaking of the campaign, L’Oreal Paris said: “By opening the public eye to the scale of harassment that women in particular experience, Stand Up aims to simultaneously discourage harassers, support victims and encourage bystanders to intervene with the aim to overall drive a cultural shift in the global response to street and public harassment.”
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