Cordavision Music Reviews

Beyoncé is one of the biggest stars on the planet. She’s mainly a singer, but she’s also known for her philanthropy and her powerful influence on politics. Although she’s less known for this, she’s also an actress. While she has been in one of the Austin Powers movies, she most recently voiced Nala in the ‘live-action’ remake of The Lion King . While the movie wasn’t that great, Beyoncé decided to make an alternative soundtrack to the remake, a la Kendrick Lamar and Black Panther. Titled The Lion King: The Gift , it’s Beyoncé’s take on the all-time classic story of the Disney film with a new musical twist. Let’s get into it and see how it is. The Lion King: The Gift is an Afrobeats album with hip-hop and R&B undertones. This is a star-studded affair, no doubt. Bey’s husband Jay-Z and her Lion King co-star Donald Glover (as Childish Gambino) appear on the record, along with Kendrick Lamar, Pharrell Williams, 070 Shake, Tierra Whack, SAINT JHn, Jessie Reyez, and Blue Ivy Carter, B...

I’ve been a Thundercat fan for a while now. I first found him through Flying Lotus’s music and albums and as a part of Kendrick Lamar’s band for To Pimp a Butterfly , and I’ve been in love ever since. His solo projects have always been a little lacking to me, though. It’s been style over substance, in my personal opinion. When It Is What It Is was announced, I was feeling excited about it. I have always enjoyed Thundercat’s solo projects, but they’ve never had any replay value to me. I’m hoping that It Is What It Is isn’t that, so let’s get into it and find out. It Is What It Is is a jazz album with soul, R&B, and hip-hop influences throughout. Like his past albums, Thundercat knows how to set a good atmosphere. He knows how to make a soundscape, and this is shown off in all of its glory in It Is What It Is . One thing that popped out in this that I never really noticed in his other releases is his personality. He’s very funny, and his writing is proof of that! The singles are t...

You already know who Eminem is. Slim Shady, Marshall Mathers, he’s an icon. Although, I did think he had a rough 2010s. Relapse and Recovery weren’t my favorites, but The Marshall Mathers LP 2 was a nice surprise. Don’t get me started on the Revival / Kamikazee era, God. No one has ever doubted the legacy and influence he’s had on the music scene, but I find him to be very overrated by some people. He isn’t the greatest of all time, but I think that he’s definitely up there. He’s put out songs like “Stan” and “Not Afraid,” but then again, he’s put out songs like “Fack” and the entirety of Revival . After whining to his critics on Kamikazee , he’s officially back to his old ways on the Hitchcock-inspired Music To Be Murdered By . Let’s get into it. Music To Be Murdered By is a hip-hop record, and has a heavy horrorcore influence. There’s nothing wrong with horrorcore (horror-inspired rap), but I’m not a giant fan of it. Eminem is kind of back to his ways from the very pop-feature h...

I have never watched a single Poppy video in my lifetime. To her cultish fans, they’d pretty much lose it, but I’m in the same boat as a lot of people. Her first album, Poppy.Computer , was a mix of Lady Gaga, Grimes, and many J-Pop acts that felt like a better concept on paper. Then, her next release Am I a Girl? flipped the script, now with a mix of synth-pop and heavy metal, with Grimes actually being a feature on that album. Now, with her newest full-length project I Disagree , it’s still a mix of pop and heavy metal, but with an emphasis on HEAVY METAL. Let’s get into it. I Disagree is a heavy metal record with electropop and industrial rock influences. The tonal shifts begin right off the bat with “Concrete,” mixing pop and metal to a jarring degree. It may not be for everyone, but it just happened to hit all of the right notes with me. “BLOODMONEY” is a skull-splitter of a track, but after that, it takes a little bit of a breather with tracks like “Fill the Crown” and “Sick of...

Ariana Grande is one of the biggest pop stars on the planet. There’s no denying that at all. She has the looks, the talent, and the FANBASE to back her up. I’ve wanted to review an Ariana Grande record eventually, but throughout her discography, it was a hard choice which one to review first because of how consistent she has been. Well, to decide it, I went on a random generator, typed in all of her studio albums, and her latest release thank u, next ended up on top. So, let’s get into it. thank u, next is a contemporary R&B and pop record with soul and trap influences. Made in just 8 months after her album Sweetener, I was very worried about the turnaround on this record. This record was made in a rough spot in her life. The Manchester bombing, the sudden death of her ex-boyfriend Mac Miller, and her very public relationship with Pete Davidson were all life-changing for Grande, and thank u, next is her moving on from those events while still honoring them. Ariana is already kno...

Yes, I am a Madlib fan. This is the second time I’ve covered the producer here, and it’ll never get old to listen to his great records. Today’s review will be all about his 2004 record Madvillainy , with none other than MF DOOM on the vocals. Funny enough, I had never sat down and listened to an MF DOOM record except for “One Beer” and “Rapp Snitch Knishes” from his album Mm.. Food , also from 2004. Other than already knowing how great of a producer Madlib is, I knew nothing going into this record. Let’s get into it and see how I thought about Madvillainy . Madvillainy is an abstract hip-hop record. Many of the samples that are featured come from Indian and Brazilian songs, along with American soul and jazz tracks. DOOM and Madlib have so much chemistry through the entire record, and when there are some instrumental tracks or an entire track is dedicated to a feature, you can still feel DOOM’s presence over the track. Even at 22 tracks, each song was memorable in their own way. I did ...

As I stated in last week’s review of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy , I was going to state what my favorite Kanye West album is. I have to admit, this was a very tough decision to make. It always switches between this record and MBDTF . While MBDTF is widely considered to be Kanye’s best record and has many reasons to be this, I just personally enjoy this record even more. Let me get into why Yeezus is my favorite Kanye West record. Yeezus is a hip-hop record with experimental, electronic, and even some punk tinges throughout. There was a lot of hype around this record throughout its build-up, and it’s easy to understand why. This was Kanye’s first solo project since MBDTF , already being praised as one of the best albums of the decade so far, and this had very high expectations from around the globe. Most of the tracks are very minimalist in sound, the exact opposite of MBDTF , and personally, the ‘less is more’ approach to music is a lot more effective to me. Some of my favorit...

So, throughout these strange times in the world, music has been one of my escapes from all of that. Sometimes, it’s been video games ( Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is awesome, by the way), but it’s mainly been films and music. I’ve been taking a dive into more indie rock artists and albums like The 1975’s latest album Notes on a Conditional Form, and a name that appeared on a couple of different tracks on it was Phoebe Bridgers. I had always known that name, but I never actively listened to her projects. She was pretty good on that 1975 record, and I had seen that her new album, titled Punisher , was released early. So, let’s get into Punisher and see how it is. Punisher is an indie rock and singer-songwriter record. As the name of the album, this is a punishing record to listen to. That sounds bad, but hear me out. The storytelling throughout Punisher is quite striking, with most of the topics being about fear and anxiety and relationship issues. But what makes Bridgers’ performan...

Kanye West has been a very polarizing figure for the past couple of decades, and if you know his name, I certainly don’t need to tell you why. The first rap album I had listened to the whole way through was Watch The Throne , his collaborative effort with Jay-Z. It ain’t a masterpiece by any means (except for “No Church in the Wild,” that song will always bang), but Watch the Throne opened up this gauntlet of music that I’d never thought I’d be up to listen to. Funny enough, on the day of this writing, Yeezus is celebrating its seventh anniversary (!!). So, since I haven’t reviewed a Kanye record on here yet, what better album to review than his 2010 comeback album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy . Let’s get into it. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a hip-hop record with influences of art-pop throughout the record. A word to describe this album would be BIG. If this album were a movie, this would have the budget of a Marvel film and would look just as good. Every single instru...

Pusha-T has always been one of my favorite rappers, although a lot of people like to hype him up. His tenure with his brother, No Malice, in Clipse was legendary and more recently, his 2018 album DAYTONA turned heads with its Drake diss, and the beef they had would shake the hip-hop world to its core. As a member of Kanye West’s GOOD Music group, Pusha-T has always put out a steady amount of work with albums and mixtapes and features on other tracks. Some of his solo projects have always been hit or miss to me, and when I decided to listen to his 2013 ‘debut’ album My Name is My Name , I went into it a little concerned. Let’s see how King Push did on this record. My Name is My Name is a hip-hop record through and through. Most of the record is produced by West himself, and by his standards, none of the beats truly stood out to me. It didn’t make me feel hyped or just disappointed. It felt empty. I felt nothing at all listening to most of these songs. While I can’t deny Push’s writing...

Kendrick Lamar has established himself as one of the best to ever do it. He has had many landmark releases like To Pimp a Butterfly and DAMN. , along with the Black Panther soundtrack too. Many people still consider Lamar to be one of the greatest of all time, and I couldn’t agree more with that. So, what we’re gonna do is go back to his major-label debut, 2012’s good kid, m.A.A.d city , and see how it holds up. Let’s go on Kendrick Lamar’s incredible journey. good kid, m.A.A.d city is a conscious West Coast hip-hop record, and it chronicles Lamar’s youth in Compton, California. It’s presented as a ‘short film by Kendrick Lamar,’ and it certainly has the scope of one. Nearly every track has a voicemail from Lamar’s mother to provide exposition to the album/short film, and as a story, good kid, m.A.A.d city works perfectly. As an album, though, it’s just as perfect. From a production standpoint, the majority of the record is very laidback, similar to an early Outkast sound that I en...

FKA twigs has always been one of the most intriguing artists I’ve heard. The first time I heard her on a track was on A$AP Rocky’s 2018 album Testing , on the track “Fukk Sleep,” which also happened to be her first feature on a different song, believe it or not. As the buildup began to her second album MAGDALENE , it became clear to me that FKA twigs was gonna be someone to watch out for. To prepare, I listened to her projects like LP1 and her M3LL155X EP, and I loved the glitchy sound that was peppered throughout her songs. It seemed like MAGDALENE would have continued that song, but with a little extra flair. Let’s get into it! MAGDALENE is a glitch pop record with the emphasis on the word ‘glitch.’ With producers like Skrillex, Cashmere Cat, Oneohtrix Point Never, among countless others, the behind-the-scenes power is very high. There is only one feature on the record (the first feature on an FKA twigs record), and it belongs to Future, the one artist that I’d never think would ...

There’s been a new sound of hip-hop on the rise, and it’s very unconventional. It consists of looping, lo-fi, sampled production, the short track lengths, and the vocals mixed really high. The best and most well-known example is Earl Sweatshirt’s 2018 album Some Rap Songs , an absolute masterpiece that I’ve talked about before. Anyway, Earl continued this sound on his EP FEET OF CLAY , where he had expanded on his sound and got lesser-known artists as features on this EP. One of those artists is MAVI, and after hearing him on FEET OF CLAY , I just had to give his solo work a listen. So, I gave his album Let The Sun Talk a couple of spins, and here’s what I thought about it! Let The Sun Talk is a hip-hop record that’s very sample-based. His lyrics on this album can be described as "conscious", they cover a wide range of subjects: family, race, depression, money and politics, without ever seeming too obvious as we sometimes understand it by "conscious rap". Deeper ...

Yves Tumor was someone that popped up on my radar earlier this year with this record that I’m reviewing today. I had also listened to their other two major releases, Serpent Music and Safe in the Hands of Love , and I was confused yet very impressed. Now, their third album titled Heaven to a Tortured Mind was released this past April, and I was very excited to take a listen to this! Let’s get into Heaven to a Tortured Mind and see how it was. Heaven to a Tortured Mind is an experimental rock record, which is a diversion from the pop and sound collage sounds of their last few records. But like their last few records, this one is just as dynamic and passionate. I really feel there's a notion of "good and evil" here, the atmosphere is sometimes chaotic, strident, cruel, and absurd, sometimes it exudes a certain kind of freedom, which leaves hope. Besides, the person who sometimes seems to take pleasure in doing evil and torturing his mind, sometimes remains a total quest...

Within the last half of the 2010s, the rap trio Migos were running rampant on the trap scene. Their earlier mixtapes like No Label 2 had a good amount on it, but a majority of the record just seemed like filler to me. Then, their second album Culture and the lead single with Lil Uzi Vert, “Bad and Boujee,” was released to acclaim from critics and fans. It was catchy as hell, and I was thinking that this was gonna be a turning point from Migos. Let’s get into what makes Culture so good. Culture is a trap rap album, and it’s a very unique record. The sound is pretty same-old, but what makes Culture unique is how trimmed it is. It’s only 13 tracks and a little less than an hour long, which is considered a short trap record in these standards. There isn’t a lot of filler, which is a pleasant surprise for me. In a lot of trap records, artists like to get out as much content as possible, no matter how good or bad it is. For Culture , it seems like each member of Migos went into this rec...

Lady Gaga is an icon. I’m not the biggest Lady Gaga fan on the planet, but she was pretty innovative for bringing the electropop that came and went throughout the 2010s to the modern mainstream. Personally, my favorite album of hers is Joanne , her foray into country-pop and rock which eventually turned into her time in A Star is Born , which is such a great film and showcased Gaga’s voice and acting range incredibly well. Now, after spending nearly seven years away from the genre that made her famous, Lady Gaga’s return to the dance-pop scene is here, titled Chromatica . The singles leading up to this, “Stupid Love,” “Rain on Me” with Ariana Grande, and “Sour Candy” with K-pop group BLACKPINK, were relatively okay, with “Sour Candy” being my favorite. They didn’t really change my opinion on my hype for Chromatica , so I had a reason to believe that there could be a big chance of this new record being her best yet. So, is Chromatica a return to form? Let’s find out. Chromatica is a...

Killer Mike and El-P, better known together as Run the Jewels, are angry. Mike has been one of the most vocal supporters of Black Lives Matter and he recently went viral because of his passionate speech last week. For a couple of months now, RTJ has been preparing for their fourth studio album as a duo. I don’t want to get into every detail of the movement on a music blog, but this is a topic that’s very important to me. Killer Mike and El-P know this as well, and it feels almost prophetic that RTJ4 is here in this hour. Let’s get into it. RTJ4 is a political hip-hop record, with an emphasis on political. A typical RTJ song has bombastic production and aggressive and in your face delivery, and every track has that in some capacity. Every song is a punch to the face and every lyric an anthem to a world we wish we were living in. It's music to stir around in your system and to make you pissed off. If you want a visualizer, just imagine a burning building. With all of RTJ4 ’s aggres...

The killing of George Floyd in Minnesota has sparked a civil war of sorts in America, with the riots and protests ravaging cities across the country and social justice becoming one of the biggest issues in America, if it wasn’t already. I was scrolling through Twitter, seeing the aftermath of all the lootings in each city, Cleveland in particular, since I’m from Ohio and it was one of the harder-hit cities in America. I follow some music accounts, and one of these posted about which politically-charged rap album is being revisited the most. Personally, I expected Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 masterpiece To Pimp a Butterfly , but while those were some answers, the replies were mainly dominated by Joey Bada$$’s 2017 album All-AmeriKKKan Bada$$ . I never really understood behind the appeal behind Joey to me, but after listening to All-AmeriKKKan Bada$$ , I just had to write a review for it. All-AmeriKKKan Bada$$ is a conscious hip-hop record. There are many different political undertones thro...

Lil Yachty has always been a mid-tier artist to me. When he was starting off with breakout mixtape Lil Boat, I thought he was gonna be a pretty fun addition to the rap scene, and for a while, he was. Then, as Yachty became more and more famous, the quality of his music started to go downhill. Lil Boat 2 , Nuthin’ 2 Prove , and Teenage Emotions were all a huge drop in quality from his breakout mixtape. Now, this past weekend, Yachty dropped Lil Boat 3 , a threequel to his breakout mixtape. The lead single from this, “Oprah’s Bank Account” with DaBaby and Drake, was pretty fun. To me, it sounded like a return to form for Yachty, along with fun contributions from both Drake and DaBaby. Maybe Lil Boat 3 is gonna be a turning point for Yachty, a return to his more impactful and albeit strange early days. Let’s get into it! Lil Boat 3 is a cloud rap album, like so many of his cohorts and features on this project. And there is a doozy of features on here. They include A$AP Rocky, Tierra ...

Yes, I reviewed Freddie Gibbs last week. Yes, this album was a surprise release and I nutted when I saw that this was out. I lost my shit. To help with the context, The Alchemist is one of my all-time favorite producers. So many projects of his are so underappreciated that it’s a crime, and in 2020, he’s been on a roll. In 2020 alone, he’s made great songs and sometimes entire albums with Eminem, Boldy James, Roc Marciano, Jay Electronica, Griselda, and now Freddie Gibbs. There’s not much else I can say about this. The album’s called Alfredo (get it?), and we’re just gonna get right into it. Alfredo is a gangsta rap and jazz rap album, and most of the samples come from old and some unearthed jazz recordings. Freddie Gibbs is in top form, and if you know Freddie’s music and his style, there’s nothing different with it. It’s still his formula, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s addicting to listen to, and it’s also quite an aesthetic that’s unmatched by any other artis...