Cordavision Music Reviews

Who puts out a damn-near 30 song album that isn’t for trying to hit that number one spot? Like, seriously. Ah, yes. The Kid LAROI. He happens to be one of the biggest artists in the world and I haven’t heard a single song from him. Funny enough, he’s a big name and I had no clue. I looked at the landing page for this album, FUCK LOVE 3: OVER YOU , on Apple Music and I saw something genuinely horrifying: This is 29 songs. After listening to it, I learned that this was his other two EPs combined with a brand new album. So, I might as well try to review all three of the FUCK LOVE entries while I’m at it. So, how does FUCK LOVE 3 stand? Let’s find out. Let me just say right off the bat that this is an awful way to release an album. I’ve done my research on this. Some outlets are calling this a deluxe with 15 whole new songs. Some are calling this a new album with his other EPs tacked onto it. Some are just even calling it a new ‘project.’ Whatever this is, it’s a horrible attempt to capi...

As a film major trying to get into photography, this cover is absolutely gorgeous and I really hope it isn’t digitally made. I think I should go through a little crash course of DARKSIDE. Or at least the members of them. Prolific electronic producer Nicolás Jaar (For R&B fans, he produced The Weeknd’s “Call Out My Name.”) and multi-instrumentalist Dave Harrington come back together as the DARKSIDE duo after a six-year gap from their debut album, Psychic . That’s really all I got on it. It’s rumored that this was recorded back in 2018 and finished in 2019 but hasn’t seen the light of day for currently unknown reasons. The duo’s second album, Spiral , is here for the public to listen to, so let’s not waste any more time and get into it. I’ll say that right off the bat that the main attraction here is the production, and it delivers on that end. This album sounds GORGEOUS. Yes, it deserves all caps. Literally every single song here has some odd amount of detail and intricacy that not ...

Is this Game of Thrones ? Ransom is a rapper I’m upset I haven’t found out about earlier. I first heard about him back in February from his feature on Conway the Machine and Big Ghost Ltd.’s IF IT BLEEDS, IT CAN BE KILLED , and while that album happens to be one of my favorites from the year so far, Ransom’s feature appears on the best song off that album. Earlier this year, he dropped the 7 EP, based on the seven deadly sins. It was a great project that sadly flew under my radar, but I’m not letting this slip by. Heavy is the Head , produced entirely by the aforementioned Big Ghost Ltd., is his third album and ever since his “Kill All Rats” feature, I’ve been excited for something new from him and Big Ghost. Let’s get into it. Honestly, the one thing I’d say about it is that Ransom’s writing is just as sharp as ever. One of my favorite tracks here is the heartbreaking “Tyranny,” which is about how cold-blooded people can be. It’s pretty haunting and is a highlight for hip-hop this ye...

Oddly enough, I was listening to Kanye’s “Gold Digger” when I saw that this was announced. Leon Bridges is an enigma in music right now. He’s popular with fans and critics alike. Even most casual music listeners know who he is and enjoy his music. His debut album, Coming Home , is honestly one of my favorite R&B albums of the decade. For better or for worse, it feels like a love letter to the sounds of the 60s and 70s. Some have been pretty adamant that he relies on this sound a little too much, and granted, his voice is very reminiscent of an Otis Redding, but I’m a fan of that sound so it doesn’t bother me too much. On his newest album, Gold-Diggers Sound , Bridges’s sound palette changes from the psychedelic 60s soul to a more traditional pop-soul sound. How does it stand? Let’s find out. Starting off with the lyrics, I guess they’re a little typical for pop-soul in this vein. The main goal for the lyrics on here is to back up Bridges’s vocals and they certainly do that job. Spe...

This is officially my 300th review. This is a massive milestone for me, so thank you for everything so far. 🤍 Throughout the past few months, I’ve been getting into UK hip-hop lately. I’ve found a lot of artists in this space through Twitter, and outside of names like Stormzy, Lancey Fouxx, my personal favorite Skepta, and the rapper we’re gonna be talking about here, Dave. His debut album, Psychodrama , is highly praised as one of the best hip-hop albums in recent years, and while I personally don’t think that, I totally understand why. The concept of that album being a year-long therapy session is a tough topic to tackle, but Dave certainly has one of the better albums in that vein across all genres. When his newest album, We’re All Alone In This Together , was announced, I was pretty excited to see what he could do next. I ended up avoiding all the singles from this, and that’s always pretty exciting to me. With features from Stormzy, Giggs, Ghetts, Meekz Manny, Wizkid, BOJ, Snoh A...

I didn’t know that John Mayer had such a fascination with wet stones. I’m pretty torn on John Mayer, honestly. It’s pretty obvious that he’s not a great person, but dammit, he’s made some great music. “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room” is one of my favorite songs of all time, and Continuum is hands down one of my favorite albums ever. It’s kind of shocking to me, knowing my taste and all that, but this is really the only solo John Mayer material I like. The rest just hasn’t appealed to me, but his collaborations with Frank Ocean are pretty top tier to me. Now, he returns to the public eye with Sob Rock , his first album in four years. I didn’t listen to any of the singles off this, so I don’t know what to expect from this. Let’s see what Sob Rock has going for it. For an interview as promotion for this album, Mayer called this album a ‘shitpost.’ The official definition of a ‘shitpost’ follows: A deliberately provocative or off-topic comment posted on social media, typically in order t...

Might as well shoot my shot with this one: Al, you’re fucking awesome. If you’re reading this, my DMs are open. Hit me up, I missed out on the This Thing of Ours drop. It’s no question that The Alchemist is one of my favorite producers working right now. He’s worked on some of my favorite hip-hop projects in the past couple of years and has consistently put out solo instrumental work that may not get as much attention as his collaboration albums with Freddie Gibbs, Action Bronson, Boldy James, or his most recent one, Armand Hammer, but they deserve just as much attention. Unlike his This Thing of Ours EP from earlier this year, the sixth release in his Rapper’s Best Friend series, which is essentially a compilation of his favorite/best beats from the past couple years. This time around, these beats were rapped over by Westside Gunn, Conway the Machine, Freddie Gibbs, Roc Marciano, Mach-Hommy, Boldy James, Navy Blue, YOUNGQUEENZ, Tvoy, Eto, Nas, Benny the Butcher, India, Big Twins, A...

If this is the 2000s pop-punk revival, I’m down for it. If you don’t know who Willow is, I mean, come on. Willow Smith is the daughter of Will Smith and brother of Jaden Smith. Granted, it’s been a hot minute since I’ve kept up with her music. I know she has a self-titled album from a few years back, but I haven’t heard it. Why? Because this would apparently have a completely different sound here: The pop-punk sound of the 2000s that was (personally) perfected by Avril Lavigne. Switching from conscious R&B to this seems pretty risky, but Willow seems like she’s confident in this. lately i feel EVERYTHING is Willow’s second album and features contributions from blink-182’s Travis Barker, Ayla Tesler-Mabe, Tierra Whack, Cherry Glazerr, and the aforementioned Avril Lavigne. Is this album a successful revival at a long-dormant sound? Let’s find out. So, let’s just answer the question I posed above right now. I think it’s almost there. It’s not that long of an album, only 26 minutes, s...

When I saw that Kanye stan account tweet about how excited he was that Kanye said the n-word on his feature, I actually died a little bit inside. I’m pretty confident in saying that if he was still in the land of the living, Pop Smoke would be one of the biggest stars in music. He just had this special thing about him that no one could ignore, and with good music to boot, he had the world paved for him. His first posthumous album, Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon , is one of the only modern examples of a posthumous release done right. With the help of executive producer 50 Cent, Pop Smoke’s work and image were given a whole new layer with the help of some of his closest collaborators at the top of their game. It is the perfect sendoff for an artist that was taken away from the world way too soon. At least it was. Quietly announced and released, Faith is the second posthumous album from the New York rapper. Granted, I was nervous going into this, mainly because of the features. Ar...

I’d buy a Clairo-patented sling blade if she put that merch out, honestly. If you go all the way back to August 2020 for my review of Clairo’s debut album, Immunity , I stated at the very end of it this sentence: ‘I also hope that she gets with Jack Antonoff like Taylor Swift did for folklore in the future.’ I guess I’m fully psychic now, so that’s a plus. The Atlanta-born singer-songwriter has finally dropped her highly anticipated sophomore album, Sling , and guess what? It’s fully produced by Jack Antonoff, who has produced for and worked with Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, Bruce Springsteen, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Kevin Abstract. Fun fact: That’s only within the past two years. He also already has confirmed work coming out soon. Later this month, he’s returning to his Bleachers name for his newest album Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night and is producing the entirety of Lorde’s next album, Solar Power . He’s a busy man, and Clairo is definitely someone to make time for. How is Sl...

This art reminds me so much of Halo and I love it so much. Alright, I don’t have that much of an intro for this one. Tkay Maidza happens to be one of my favorite up-and-coming artists, and the past two entries in the Last Year Was Weird trilogy are honestly pretty great. I’ve heard some loose singles that she’s dropped, and they were pretty good, but I was patiently waiting for the final installment in her beloved series. Now, since Last Year Was Weird, Vol. 3 is here, let’s get into it and see if it has worked. I do think the sound of this EP fits the summer sound, with the industrial sounds of the other EPs in the series being replaced by a more breezy pop/R&B sound that’s similar to Tyler, the Creator post- Cherry Bomb stuff. And like some of Tyler’s work, Maidza’s work on this project is somewhat experimental but smooth as well. It’s the complete opposite of her past projects, and it’s pretty refreshing. Every single song on here stands on their own, especially the track “H...

(A/N: I’m already apologizing about all the Skylanders jokes I make in this.) If you wanna know my thoughts on the movie itself, here’s my review of that: https://youtu.be/Wf9yeXj1Pwk Some movies didn’t come out last year. It sucked, but we had to understandably wait for some of the bigger films set to release in 2020. Finally, over a year after it was supposed to, the newest Marvel film Black Widow released last week to critical acclaim and box office success. Being connected to the franchise, both personally and quite literally as an actor, I kind of feel obliged for pop culture mediums to collide so I could take a look at the score for the Cate Shortland film. This score’s been composed by Lorne Balfe, who’s done legendary scores like Megamind and every single game in the Skylanders franchise. Outside of that, he scored the latest Mission: Impossible movie, the His Dark Materials series, and even the new sci-fi/action film The Tomorrow War . How did his work for Marvel go? Let’...

A violet sky actually sounds really cool. A good chunk of newer R&B artists hasn’t really clicked for me lately. I’m actually reviewing this artist, Snoh Aalegra, and her new album because of a suggestion by a friend. I haven’t really heard of her before, but with a James Fauntleroy feature and multiple Tyler, the Creator features, I’m going into this with good expectations. Let’s not waste any more time and get into Temporary Highs in the Violet Skies . I’m not sure what the main single was off this album, but “Lost You” certainly would make a great single for it. She reminded me of Sade a lot, and that’s not a comparison I make lightly. It’s a good thing, though. I do believe Tyler had some pretty good contributions here and he makes a good duo with Aalegra. I’d love to see what she could do with someone like André 3000, though. As much as I like James Fauntleroy, I do think his feature was a little disappointing, but nobody’s perfect and I think I’d listen if they collaborated a...

I love that the visuals for this album on YouTube are just him building a Game Boy successfully for about 45 minutes. IDK is an artist that came onto my radar earlier this year not because of a song, but a song announcement. He said that a song off his upcoming album will feature Westside Gunn, the late MF DOOM, and the elusive Jay Electronica all on one track. That’s a stacked feature list, but on one song? I hadn’t heard of IDK before this, so I went and listened to his debut album Is He Real? and his two IDK & Friends collaborative EPs. All of these projects were pretty cool, but Is He Real? really stuck with me the most. While it wasn’t too mind-blowing, I had a lot of fun with it. One thing I noticed on that album though is that the features on it came and went, and maybe this new album, USEE4YOURSELF , would be the same. So, let’s just get right into the new album. There’s a bit of a light concept here, but it’s not entirely explored here. Or at least it isn’t explored as ...

POV: You are the food in Vince’s microwave. Vince Staples has been one of the most interesting artists in hip-hop working right now. His past couple of albums, especially his past two, have been some of the most unique hip-hop albums of the 2010s. Big Fish Theory brought in an electronic atmosphere that’s incredibly unique and stands as one of the best albums of 2017. Also, he’ll always be legendary for getting Kendrick Lamar on a SOPHIE beat (R.I.P.). In 2018, though, he dropped FM! , a criminally short concept album based around FM radio format. Both of these projects are insanely catchy and innovative, and because of that, whatever he did next was highly anticipated. Three years after that, we have the first of two new albums coming this year, one being called Ramona Park Broke My Heart and the other being this project, a self-titled album. Entirely produced by the one and only Kenny Beats, it was pretty exciting to see Staples return to the spotlight. Does Vince Staples deliver?...

CLASSIC ALBUM #2: THESE ALBUMS ARE NOT RANKED OR SCORED BECAUSE THEY’RE, WELL, CLASSIC. Something I did this summer was binge the original run of the legendary Japanese anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion and its finale movie, The End of Evangelion . It really has been a pretty mind-blowing series, and with the four Rebuild films coming to the U.S. later this month, I decided I somehow had to get some of its music onto here. I’ve thought about reviewing the recent compilation, Evangelion Finally , which is essentially a greatest hits album, but the more I’ve thought about it, The End of Evangelion ’s score/soundtrack really deserves some praise and recognition. They might be the same in this case, but who cares, this is my website. Let’s get into what makes Shiro Sagisu’s score/soundtrack to The End of Evangelion a classic album. Let me just come out on record that this soundtrack has one of my favorite classical pieces of all time. It’s Sagisu’s rendition of Johann Sebastian Bach’...

I’ve tried to find out what ‘Left at London’ means, and if you see this Ms. Puff, please let me know. I’m very curious. When I sit down and write album reviews, I try to find out about the artist I’m covering if it’s the first time I’m writing about them on here or if this is the first time I’m hearing an artist’s work. Left at London, or Nat Puff as I’ll refer to her as in the review, was an interesting artist to find out about. A friend of mine recommended this album, t.i.a.p.f.y.h. , to me and when I went to do the research for this review, I was actually pretty blown away by some similarities we have, even if they aren’t in terms of friendship. We both deal with ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, and PTSD. I always try to champion people that deal with ADHD and ASD that have a wider audience, and it always excites me when someone on the autism spectrum has that audience. Because of this, I was incredibly excited to write about t.i.a.p.f.y.h. , which stands for ‘there is a place for yo...

This is definitely gonna be a review where the members of this group are definitely gonna see it somehow, but I’m never gonna know. I wish I had a bio on SAULT. I really wanna know who these people are, but I guess they don’t want us to know. The most we know is that they’re a London neo-soul/R&B group and that this is their fifth album in two years. The two albums they put out in 2020, Untitled (Black Is) and Untitled (Rise) , are some of the most celebrated albums of that year. Outside of that, that’s all I really got on them. This new album, Nine , is weirdly available for only 99 days, which is October 2 if y’all don’t wanna do the math. It’s also available for a free download on their website, which will be available past that date. So, what the hell’s going on with this album? Let’s get into it and see. This album is just as thought-provoking as their Untitled duology, but think of this as an abridged version of it. Those albums are nearly an hour long each, but this is onl...

WHERE IS THAT COLLAB ALBUM WITH EARL SWEATSHIRT? The first time that a lot of people heard of Sage Elsesser, or Navy Blue, was when he was one of the lone features on Earl Sweatshirt’s last album, Some Rap Songs . Since then, he’s put out two of his own albums, worked with Sweatshirt on a few more tracks, and produced an entire album for AKAI SOLO called True Sky . His past two albums, Àdá Irin and Song of Sage: Post Panic! , have been pretty great, with Àdá Irin making onto my favorite albums of 2020 list. Elsesser dropped his third album and his second album-length offering of 2021 under the Navy Blue moniker, Navy’s Reprise , exclusively on his website, and while it took me a minute, I’m finally covering this. Let’s get right into it and see how it is. Let me just say right off the bat that this is Navy Blue’s peak writing. Like most of his other albums, this is pretty autobiographical, touching on subjects like trauma. What I admire about this album is that while many of the them...

Somebody asked me who my bias was, and I didn’t know what they meant. I’m just trying to listen to music here, not which gender I’m attracted to. K-pop artists and groups have always been a touchy subject. Of course, it’s all the rage on Twitter, but I really don’t have a ‘bias’ like most of the K-pop stans. I always try to keep an open mind with this, and I’ve gotten quite a few Twitter DMs about my very few reviews on K-pop projects. I’ve listened to LOONA for a while now, and actually, they’re the group that got me into K-pop. So, I’ve got high expectations for whatever they do, and [&] is one of my most anticipated projects of the year because of that. Haseul, who had left the group due to mental health issues, is back on this. That may not seem like a big deal to people not in the K-pop scene, but it really is. Let’s get into [&] and see what’s happening here. Like their past projects, the group has always tried to keep it versatile with some peppier tracks and some slow...

Well, this review was supposed to come out Thursday, but the VHS tape got stuck and scrambled. That’s probably not how you’d describe a VHS tape not working, so let’s just say it broke. Ah, yes. boygenius. The indie-rock supergroup that introduced me to one of my favorite singer-songwriters at the moment, Phoebe Bridgers. That group also includes fellow indie rocker Julien Baker and the artist we’re talking about today, Lucy Dacus. With this new wave of albums like Bridgers’s sublime Punisher and Baker’s eye-widening Little Oblivions , it was only a matter of time before we got Dacus’s next solo effort. Right here, we have Home Video , a brand new album that comes with a very hypnotic cover. Like most singer-songwriter albums, I avoided all the singles from this because I simply like the experience. How does this sound? Let’s find out. I think the main thing about this album that sticks out amongst the rest of her projects is that it’s much more personal. Instruments like strings, per...

Shoutout to Brainfeeder and Flying Lotus for signing these guys, good lord. If you’re a hip-hop fan, you’ve definitely heard a Hiatus Kaiyote song. They only have three albums to their name, including this one here, and during that time, their songs have been sampled by Kendrick Lamar, Drake, Jay-Z, Beyonce, Anderson .Paak, and Chance the Rapper, among many other artists. After a few roadblocks since the six years that came after their last album, Choose Your Weapon , the neo-soul group is finally back with Mood Valiant , jumping labels from Sony to Brainfeeder. Is Mood Valiant the massive comeback the group was needing? Let’s find out. Let me get a little detailed first, though. It’s tough to combine the layered nature of jazz and the openness of soul for any artist. I hope you get what I mean by that because it’ll be tough for me to explain that. Hiatus Kaiyote has done that very well in the past, and it’s no different here. I personally feel that this sounds a lot better than Choos...

Let me tell you, this is not a Frank Miller joint, sadly. I’ve been pretty excited for this one. Ski Mask The Slump God has always been an eccentric rapper with amazing songs but not that many great projects. His last project, 2018’s STOKELEY , was and still is a fun exception from that statement, and in a smart move, he rode the success of that album very well. Every now and then, he’s dropped a few singles and given out a couple features, but he’s remained relatively silent for the past couple of years. Now, after a few years behind the spotlight, Ski Mask’s ready to come back in full force in 2021, starting with his comeback mixtape, Sin City . How’s it sounding? Let’s find out. This mixtape is insanely short, clocking in at only 17 minutes. The project itself has a pretty dark atmosphere, like the Sin City franchise itself. “Merlin’s Staff,” produced by Kenny Beats, has a great Missy Elliot sample with it. Honestly, outside of that, there’s not that much worth listening to. I don’...