This is fine.
Leather Corduroys (consisting of rappers Joey Purp and KAMI) have a distinctly different sound and they are cool with giving it away for free. Their newest mixtape Seasons is more of the same, which is a good thing and worth checking out. Seasons can be streamed via their Soundcloud page or downloaded for free via LiveMixtapes. My favorite song off of Seasons is below.
I’ve been enjoying Skizzy Mars’ music for a couple years now for one solid reason: it’s just good. He’s not the type of rapper that’s going to turn heads because he has clever word play–and there are those that would argue 90% of his songs are love songs or break up songs–but his songs are almost always a total package; nice beat, smooth delivery, catchy chorus, ambiance, vibe, etc. Skizzy Mars has been teasing his The Red Balloon Project for a while and it finally came out yesterday. He will be setting off on The Red Balloon Tour at the end of February. While he will not be coming through Austin, a leg of the tour will be coming through Texas (Houston and Dallas). The Red Balloon Project can be streamed from Audiomack or downloaded from iTunes. Skizzy Mars has two older mixtapes that can be downloaded for free from DJBooth. My favorite song from The Red Balloon Project is below.
MMG rapper Wale will be headlining Emo’s this Friday, February 6. The stop will be part of Wale’s Simply Nothing Tour, promoting his upcoming fourth album, The Album About Nothing. Wale’s career-long deliberate references to the TV show Seinfeld come with whole-hearted approval from Jerry Seinfeld himself, which says a lot about Wale’s talent and artistry. While Friday’s concert will no doubt be a showcase of Wale’s upcoming album, it would be safe to assume there will also be some songs performed from his Festivus mixtape that appropriately dropped on December 23. A highlight from that mixtape is the Janet Jackson-sampled “Girls On Drugs”. Festivus can be streamed or downloaded for free via Audiomack. “Girls On Drugs” is below.
When Trinidad Jame$ first hit the scene in late 2012 with “All Gold Everything” many people in the hip-hop community labeled him a one-trick pony most likely destined to disappear as quickly as he appeared. Two and a half years and four mixtapes later he’s still around, displaying a surprising amount of depth and creativity in his music. His most recent mixtape No One Is Safe dropped January 20th. Some of the highlights include “H.O.M.E.“, a letter from Trinidad Jame$ to himself about music industry struggles, and “T Jame$ Expre$$“, a vulgar and predictable dance song over a hypnotic bass line. The mixtape can be streamed via Trinidad Jame$’s Soundcloud page or it can be downloaded for free from DatPiff.
Wiz Khalifa freestyles over Canadian singer-songwriter Mac DeMarco’s “Chamber of Reflection“. The end result is a mesmerizing throwback to his “Kush & Orange Juice” days.
Los Angeles rapper Kid Ink’s most recent album, My Own Lane, has been out for about a year but on New Year’s Eve he released a music video for the best song on the album, “Hello World”. The video was shot while out on the My Own Lane Tour in various spots around the world. This is definitely one of Kid Ink’s best songs in his catalog and the most visually appealing of his music videos to date. His new album comes out February 3rd.
