Tag: "The Roots"

Phony New Kids mania has bitten the dust: Boston is finally getting its own big time festival with Boston Calling, which will be held at City Hall Plaza on May 25-26. Look for fun., The Shins, Matt & Kim, Of Monsters and Men, The National, Young the Giant, Dirty Projectors, Cults, Andrew Bird, and more, in addition to local faves Caspian and Bad Rabbits.

UK folk that won’t bring you down: Skinny Lister, the good-time English folk stompers who recently joined us for an exclusive OurStage session, have just announced a bunch of U.S. tour dates, including an astonishing seven sets at SXSW and a stop at Coachella. More from our friends at Under the Gun.

Returning to the scene: Tyler, the Creator, whose rap collective Odd Future grabbed our attention with a debut on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon back in 2011, went back to the show last night to perform “TreeHome” and “Domo 23″ with The Roots. It was something. Golf wang?

Please sit down and brace yourself for the shock before reading this news item: Alt-rock stalwarts Stone Temple Pilots have…fired Scott Weiland. Excuse me, they “terminated” him, presumably in a round of difficult downsizing. Weiland will be eligible for unemployment and will be able to stay on the band health insurance if he pays through the Cobra plan. This comes just a day after the singer promised to sing STP hits during his upcoming solo tour, slated to start March 1st.

After a four-year-long absence from solo performance, Justin Timberlake will finally take the stage this February 2 at a charity concert in New Orleans to benefit Shriners Hospitals for Children. The invitation-only ”DirecTV Super Saturday Night” concert will also feature DJing from The Roots drummer ?uestlove. For those who were invited to catch this prime lineup, it’s going to be a pretty awesome weekend; Super Bowl XLVII will be taking place the following day in New Orleans at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

Earlier this month, Timberlake premiered “Suit & Tie,” the latest single from his forthcoming solo album The 20/20 Experience, the singer’s first solo outing since 2006′s FutureSex/LoveSounds. Check out the brand new lyric video for “Suit & Tie” here.

Check out OurStage artist Cameron Jaymes if you’re a fan of JT.

More like this:

• Justin Timberlake Premieres “Suit & Tie;” Announces Comeback Album
• Justin Timberlake To Release New Single TODAY At Noon EST

If there were anything to make you want to go back to college again – besides the socially acceptable binge drinking, sleeping until noon, and wearing sweatpants to dinner – it would probably be taking a class with ?uestlove. Yes, that’s right. This spring, The Roots drummer will be teaching a two credit class on classic albums at the Clive Davis Institue for Recorded Music at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. The course’s tentative syllabus involves the analysis of time–tested albums such as Led Zeppelin IV and Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall in order to understand the many factors that go into making those select albums designated classics. Billboard reports that ?uestlove will be co–teaching the course in conjunction with Harry Weinger, the vice president of A&R at Universal Music Enterprises.

Continue reading ‘?uestlove To Teach NYU Class, College To Get 1000 Times Cooler’

?uestlove is injecting some swagger back into the music industry.

The Roots drummer, social media gadfly, and music bon vivant born Ahmir Khalib Thompson announced the return of Okayplayer Records in an exclusive feature with Billboard Magazine.

Okayplayer has existed in one form or another since 1987; the moniker originated from the self-given name of a loose-knit collective of artists that would go on to become The Roots. Since then, Okayplayer has been best known as an online music entity, though the company also dabbles in live events and media production.

News of Okayplayer Records’ relaunch was accompanied with word of some upcoming releases from the label for 2012. Rapper Danny!, who has been working with Okayplayer since 2006, is slated to have his sixth studio album, Payback, come out on September 25th. Payback will mark the end of an eight year gap between releases from Okayplayer.

It was also announced that Young Guru, the studio wiz responsible for engineering ten of Jay-Z’s 11 albums, will be releasing Young Guru: Essentials Vol 1, his all-beats debut album, through Okayplayer as well. Essentials Vol 1 is also the first in a planned series of albums from Young Guru, so fans shouldn’t worry about the lights at the Okayplayer Records offices going out any time soon.

More like this:

• BPL Vs. The Roots
• Q&A … AND GENERAL CONVERSATION… WITH ?UESTLOVE

Back in February we covered how Twitter and Facebook had proved that the Dave Matthews Band and Steve Lillywhite were back in the studio for the first time since 2000′s failed Lillywhite Sessions. Five months later, Steve Lillywhite continues to engage curious fans through Twitter, and the perennial touring juggernaut that is DMB is back on the road debuting new songs from their upcoming release, which fans can expect September 11th. I got the chance to catch their two-night stand in Hartford, Conn. Also in attendance both nights was none other than super-producer Lillywhite himself. Lillywhite had been teasing fans for weeks about listening to the new album in his rental car, and even Tweeting a picture of the burned disc.

Road trip listening !! twitpic.com/9orwub

— Steve Lillywhite CBE (@Sillywhite) May 24, 2012

Quite the brave move, considering the leak of his last studio effort with the band nearly led to their demise, and a decade long producer/band drought. Nonetheless, Lillywhite grabbed a couple of hardcore DMB fans while leaving the Hartford shows, and invited them to his car to give the album a listen.

Just sat with in @Sillywhite‘s car and listened to the new #dmb album with @kaciewithak & @ScarltFireDancr. #thankyou twitter.com/coreymanicone/…

— Corey Manicone (@coreymanicone) May 26, 2012

The DMB fan community erupted with excitement as the news started to trickle out that someone had heard the new album, and suddenly Corey Manicone was a micro-celebrity. Over the next few days he answered as many fan questions about the album as he could remember; most importantly confirming that the new songs being played on the tour up to this point were all on the album. And later confirming the fourth and final new song to be on the album as well.

Read on to watch live performances of the four new album songs debuted thus far, and check out the full tracklist.

Continue reading ‘Dave Matthews Band Debut Four New Songs From ‘Away From The World,’ Announce Release Date And Tracklist’

• Biebs giving teenage girls everywhere a reason to want to become President of the United States.
• People expecting a documentary about Queen Elizabeth are going to be so disappointed.
• Chris Martin is really fitting into his role as the anti-Gallagher.
• Sorry to all those hoping for more hipster drama.
• Remember when we’d have to wait what seemed like eons for the next Radiohead release? Those were the days.
• Wait, so that wasn’t Florence Welch dressed up as Katy Perry hosting SNL? We’re so confused.
• You’ll forgive us if we don’t hold our breath for X Factor‘s chances for yet another season.
• It’ll be like American Idiot, but with less obnoxious pop-punk anthems.

• Santa Claus must be looking at his new rival with an eyebrow raised completely to the ceiling.
• M83 is really giving Kenny G too much hope of a sax revival.
• Even now, Michael J. Fox plays guitar better than most. Whoa, that’s heavy.
• We all know the only reason Noel Gallagher isn’t involved is because he wasn’t offered the part of James Bond.
• We can already see all the teenyboppers scrambling to book their closest churchs for their Twilight weddings.
• Placebo needs to take some of their own medicine and get back to working on their next album already.
• Leonard Cohen’s got no new ideas.
• Nice one, Roots.

When I first heard the news about Amy Winehouse‘s passing (on Twitter, naturally), the comment that stood out most was one by Winehouse herself in an interview that the singer had done a few years ago with my former Entertainment Weekly colleague Chris Willman. In it, Winehouse jokingly made a prediction that, in hindsight, isn’t very funny at all.

Portrait by Lauren Wells

In 10 years, she said, “I’ll be dead in a ditch, on fire.” Sadly, for her many fans who had rode shotgun as she drove down the path of self-destruction, the “dead” part of her premonition was no joking matter. It was a distinct possibility, if not a certain probability, and one that came to pass on July 23, when Winehouse, who had infamously battled drug and alcohol addiction and had been in and out of rehab in recent years, was found dead in her London home.

The first thing I thought, after spending a moment to grieve for her family and loved ones, was that the world would be cheated out of so much great music. With Back to Black, her 2006 breakthrough album, Winehouse did so much more than show great promise. Hers already was a talent in full bloom. Back to Black was destined to go down as one of the all-time masterpieces. I was living in Buenos Aires at the time of its release, and I knew people who didn’t speak a word of English who could recite every line from every song.

It’s better to burn out than fade away. Live fast, die young. Leave a beautiful corpse. We’ve also all heard the one about how dying (especially before one’s time) is the best career move. I don’t know how beautiful Winehouse’s corpse will be, but she is guaranteed a spot in the pantheon of musical greats who left the party too soon.

Chillingly, she’ll be right beside the musical icons that she seemed to want to emulate most: Janis Joplin, a blue-eyed soulful precursor to whom she was often compared; Jimi Hendrix; Jim Morrison; and Kurt Cobain, all of whom died when they were the same age as Winehouse. If ever there were an unlucky number, it would have to be 27.

Unlike the legends who preceded Winehouse to an early grave and left behind so much incredible, indelible music, Winehouse bequeathed us with relatively few musical gifts. There are her two albums, 2003′s Frank and Back to Black, as well as a handful of one-off guest appearances on other people’s songs (Mark Ronson, Quincy Jones, and Tony Bennett, whose Duets II album in September will feature Winehouse). Sadly, her final impression will be a June concert in Belgrade, Serbia in which the apparently bombed singer stumbled and slurred her way through a few songs before being booed off the stage.

She had reportedly been working on new music for years, and at one point, was said to be on the verge of working with Roots drummer ?uestlove and producer/performer Raphael Saadiq on a project that had been delayed because of Winehouse’s trouble securing a U.S. travel visa due to her 2007 drug arrest for marijuana possession in Norway. So from here to eternity, all we’ll have to remember Winehouse by will be masterpieces of melancholy like “Love Is a Losing Game” and “Tears Dry on Their Own.” We’ll sing along, we’ll cry, we’ll look for clues to what was going on inside her troubled mind, to figure out why she was such a lost soul.

For you I was a flame

Love is a losing game

Five story fire as you came

Love is a losing game

From this day forth, Winehouse’s world-weary look of love will make Adele’s 21 sound like feel-good music. Speaking of Adele, Winehouse should have been where the “Rolling in the Deep” singer is now, reaping continued financial and critical benefits after a first rush of success. Now who’s going to fill her f**k me pumps (to quote the title of one of her early songs)?

Surprisingly, for all of her Grammys, accolades and albums sold, Winehouse only had one single resembling a hit in the U.S., “Rehab,” which went to No. 10 on Billboard’s Hot 100. I’ll never again be able to listen to the song in quite the same way, as a statement of bad-ass defiance. Now it will just sound like the words of a sad, desperate woman in denial and on the brink of collapse. If only she’d taken their advice.

Hey guys! In this new, weekly feature on OurStage we’ll be shining a spotlight on one of our own OurStage artists and comparing them to a nationally recognized artist that you might be more familiar with. Each week, we’ll select an artist based on musical characteristics similar to a well known mainstream artist. While highlighting the similarities between said artists, we will also show you what makes each OurStage artist unique and not simply a rip-off of the artist they are being compared to. Our goal with this column is to help you guys find great new music that you might not have heard of or found on the site yet.

For our inaugural post let’s look at North Carolina-based alternative hip hop group BPL, and compare them to the hip hop group The Roots. BPL’s most obvious similarity to The Roots is that they are a “hip hop band”. The band packs a punch with seven members, including two saxophone players and a trumpet player . Much like The Roots, BPL mixes influence from soul, funk and jazz, and meshes that all together with a 90s hip hop flavor. Performing using all live instruments, their sound is much more organic and natural sounding than most synth driven hip hop you will hear on the radio today—you won’t find any Autotune on these tracks. And like The Roots, these guys are talented instrumentalists. It’s one thing to sound good in the studio, but BPL brings it live with the energy and tightness of any of the best touring acts today. Check out their live video for “The Answer” below.

OurStage's BPL

The Roots

Now, you’re probably thinking, “Well, what makes BPL different from a group like The Roots.” BPL sets themselves apart from the pack with their lyrics and arrangements. While The Roots’ lyrics typically deal with socially conscious and political themes, BPL’s lyrical themes are far more varied. This is clearly evidenced on their track “Do You Remember?”, a song about a night of partying and trying to remember what happened the day after. While this sounds somewhat juvenile at first, BPL’s fantastic MCs have the ability to tell a detailed story with their lyrics that keeps you enthralled. MCs Peter Schaffer and Michael Martin have the ability to paint a picture with their words much like rappers Eminem or Nas do; their use of specific details and clearly enunciated rhymes make it very easy to mentally visualize the story they are telling in their lyrics.

BPL continues to defy mainstream conventions with their lengthy and complex arrangements, clearly demonstrated on their epic, eight and half minute track “Winter”. This is a track that is as much of a jazz tune as it is a hip hop song. The track begins with a slow and somber piano melody, and with an opening line like “I feel like Coltrane in a land of Kenny G’s,” you can tell these guys know their jazz. About halfway through the song, the rapping stops and the song breaks down into almost a free form jazz jam with the instrumentalists improvising, until ultimately building up to the most energetic verse of the song, where Peter Schaffer raps in double time. It is a truly striking song and unlike anything you’ll hear on the average hip-hop radio station.

BPL’s debut album Higher is out now on NuSouth Entertainment

To many people, the green movement was a short-lived fad and, eventually, a flop. Fortunately, there are still those committed to the cause including bands like Pearl Jam, The Roots and Green Day. Of course, most bands don’t have that much money sitting around, or really any money sitting around for that matter, so we think it’s important to support the ones with green ideals. The Appleseed Collective, for example, is an Americana/jazz/gypsy band formed just six months ago with startling potential. They’ve already amassed a respectable fan base and want to tour the continent—but how can such travel be environmentally friendly? If only they had a bus that ran on waste vegetable oil… Well with your help they just may be able to buy one by June 18th. Admittedly, Americana/jazz/gypsy is pretty specific and hard to imagine, so check out this video to get a taste of what they sound like:

The band has already met with a specialist and received an estimate on the van. They’ll need about $7,000-$10,000 total for the van and conversion, so they’ve set their Kickstarter goal at $8,000 with plans to cover the difference if need be. Basically, the van will run on diesel for about thirty minutes until the engine heats up and then will switch over to vegetable oil. They’ll be able to reuse waste oil and save a ton of fossil fuels. It might sound like a minor effort since it’s just one van on the road among millions, but they’ll be touring from coast to coast and maybe even to Canada to Mexico. That’s a lot of driving! Plus if you donate over $500 they’ll book a show in your town and drive out there to play for you. They’re also giving out hand-drawn portraits in return for $200 donations.

These guys are talented, full of hope and conscientious about the environment. We think it’s admirable that, despite not being able to afford a van, they’re still going out of their way to respect our planet. We wish there were more people out there with the same mentality. If you think they deserve break, make a donation here on Kickstarter.