Following an arguably weak year for albums, 2015 has seen a lot of great projects and many unexpected ones as well. While this year we saw the highly anticipated return of Adele, patient fans are still awaiting Frank Ocean’s sophomore album and Kanye West’s Swish. But where Frank and Kanye have left music fans hanging, new comers like Bryson Tiller, Alessia Cara, GoldLink, BOOTS, Halsey and more have put out some great albums to help kick off their relatively young careers. 2015 though was also a great year for some heavyweights, of course we’re referring to artists like Drake, Future, Kendrick Lamar and even pop superstars like One Direction and Justin Bieber. In just one day, November 13th, the music world saw more great releases than it did in a span of months in 2014. Cheers to hoping 2016 delivers as well as 2015 did!
Tonight TDE’s Kendrick Lamar brought his series of intimate venue performances, the “Kunta’s Groove Sessions”, to Chicago, IL. Selling out Chicago’s Riviera Theatre, King Kendrick absolutely killed it! Lamar performed his critically acclaimed To Pimp a Butterfly album, as well as a number of records from his previous projects for his day one fans. Kendrick and his labelmate and opening act, rapper Jay Rock, grooved out all night with the sold out crowd and gave Chi-town a night that it won’t soon forget.
Check out our photos below of Kendrick Lamar’s sold out performance for the Windy City.
Every rapper from Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE) has a very nostalgic vibe to them. And in his new music video, for his record ‘The Ways’, rapper Jay Rock is taking us back to the BET Uncut era of rap videos. Full of strippers, fat asses, and throwing singles, Jay Rock’s new visuals definitely have an influence from ratchet rap videos, circa Ludacris’ ‘P-Poppin”. From Jay Rock’s sophomore LP, 90059, ‘The Ways’ will definitely take you back and is another great record from TDE’s most underrated artist.
Watch Jay Rock’s music video for ‘The Ways’ below.
These are the highlights of this past week in music! Hopefully you can bump these tracks on your way to work to brighten up your Monday mornings, and to stay up-to-date on today’s music.
This week we have a track from Migos’ forthcoming debut album, a bonus track from Lil Wayne, and a track from TDE’s most underrated artist, Jay Rock!
TDE isn’t just Kendrick, ScHoolboy Q and Ab-Soul! Jay Rock had a standout verse on Kendrick’s ‘Money Trees’ and if you liked that then you will definitely want to check out his new track ‘Gumbo’. Produced by J.LBS, Jay definitely showcases his lyricism in his new song.
Stream ‘Gumbo’ below or stream it on Spotify here.