Tag: Notable

Featured New Releases, Notable Episode 13, April 11th-25th

Featured

These past two weeks were really interesting in terms of both music news and releases. What better a note to end our regular season with, but don’t worry we will be producing more episodes over the summer (there will be some experimentation involved). Make sure you keep an eye on our Twitter (@notablepod) and this very site for all updates regarding the podcast. But without further ado, here are your new releases from the past 2 weeks. Bolded releases were discussed on the podcast.

SINGLES:

  • Ariana Grande – No Tears Left to Cry
  • Bebe Rexha – 2 Souls On Fire (feat. Quavo)
  • Carrie Underwood – Cry Pretty
  • Five Finger Death Punch – Sham Pain
  • 5 Seconds of Summer – Youngblood
  • Florence + The Machine – Sky Full Of Song
  • G-Eazy – 1942 (feat. Yo Gotti & YBN Nahmir)
  • Kid Cudi – The Rage
  • Lil Pump – Esskeetit
  • Louis the Child – Better Not (feat. Wafia)
  • Nicki Minaj – Barbie Tingz
  • Nicki Minaj – Chun-Li
  • Prince – Nothing Compares 2 U
  • Taylor Swift – September
  • ZAYN – Let Me
  • Bebe Rexha – Ferrari
  • Janelle Monae – Pynk (feat. Grimes)
  • Janelle Monae – Make Me Feel
  • Rae Sremmurd – Guatemala (feat. Slim Jxmmi)
  • Rae Sremmurd – CLOSE (feat. Travis Scott)
  • Powers Pleasant – Pull Up (feat. Joey Bada$$ & A$AP Ferg)
  • Taylor Swift – Delicate
  • Ekali – Forever (feat. Medasin & Elohim)
  • Bearson – Get Lost (feat. Ashe)
  • Marian Hill – Wish You Would
  • Liam Payne – Familiar (feat. J Balvin)
  • Khalid – OTW (feat. 6LACK & Ty Dolla $ign)
  • Martin Garrix – Game Over (feat. LOOPERS)
  • Leon Bridges – Beyond
  • The Chainsmokers – Somebody
  • Billie Eilish – lovely (with Khalid)
  • BURNS – Hands On Me (feat. Maluma & Rae Sremmurd)
  • Pete Yorn – Bad Dreams (feat. Scarlett Johansson)
  • Wiz Khalifa – 420 Freestyle
  • Becky G – Sin Pijama (feat. Natti Natasha)
  • Steve Aoki – Moshi Moshi (feat. Vini Vici & Mama Aoki)
  • Sean Paul – Tin Pon It (feat. Major Lazer)
  • SahBabii – Outstanding (feat. 21 Savage)

ALBUMS

  • Young Thug – Hear No Evil EP
  • Bazzi – COSMIC
  • Breaking Benjamin – Ember
  • Cole – KOD
  • Sofi Tukker – Treehouse
  • Carnage – Battered Bruised & Bloody
  • Sting, Shaggy – 44/876
  • Chrome Sparks – Chrome Sparks
  • Smokepurpp, Murda Beatz – Bless Yo Trap
  • Bishop Briggs – Church of Scars

And here is all the news we covered on the episode.

NEWS

  • Avicii has died at 28
  • J Cole breaks records for first-day album streams
  • Kanye went crazy on Twitter announcing albums and poetry
    • http://www.nme.com/news/music/kanye-west-teases-new-album-arriving-june-2297269
    • Earlier today (April 19), he wrote, “My album is 7 songs”, before adding in a following message the date “June 1st”.
    • His next tweet stated that he and Kid Cudi are set to release a joint album the following week on June 8. “It’s called Kids See Ghost,” he elaborated. “That’s the name of our group.” He also shared news of two GOOD Music releases, saying Pusha T’s album would be out on May 25, and Teyana Taylor’s on June 22.
  • Kanye also likes Donald Trump and was addicted to opioids…
    • https://www.spin.com/2018/04/kanye-west-trump/
    • Ebro of Hot 97’s Ebro in the Morning said today that he spoke with Kanye over the weekend, after the rapper tweeted “I love the way Candace Owens thinks,” referencing a right-wing pundit who spent Friday chiding Black Lives Matter protesters for talking about oppression because they didn’t personally live through slavery or Jim Crow. West apparently told Ebro that he likes Owens (who is black) because she is “challenging conventional black thought.” In case that stance isn’t clear enough, according to Ebro, Kanye also said “I really love Donald Trump,” which shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that paid attention to him in 2016.
  • A whole brand spankin’ new Prince album is coming out in September…is it something he would’ve wanted?
    • https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/8372668/prince-album-of-unreleased-material-september
    • Troy Carter, the ex-Lady Gaga manager whose company Atom Factory is overseeing Prince’s estate, states, “Last week, the release of ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ was the first piece of music to come from our collaboration with the estate, and now we’re working on a release for the fall — a full-length album.” This news comes after the two year anniversary of his death this past weekend, as well as the release of the aforementioned “Nothing Compares 2 U” and an accompanying music video of archival performance footage from the vault.
  • Eminem celebrated 10 years of sobriety
    • http://www.nme.com/news/music/eminem-celebrates-10-years-sobriety-2299558
    • The rapper uploaded a pic to social media of his sobriety coin – something that’s rewarded to Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12 step programme users after key points in their recovery – with the caption: ‘Celebrated my 10 years yesterday’.
    • He’s been sober since 2008, following years of prescription drug addiction.
    • Back in 2011, Eminem spoke out about how the prescription drug Ambien caused him to lose huge chunks of his memory, saying it gave him a four year long stretch of writer’s block.
    • During the peak of his drug addiction, he revealed that he was taking up to 60 Valium and 30 Vicodin pills a day.
    • “The doctors told me I’d done the equivalent of four bags of heroin,” he said in 2011, talking about his 2007 methadone overdose. “They said I was about two hours from dying.”

Take a listen to the episode at the Central Michigan Life website, Spotify, Soundcloud, and iTunes.

If you have thoughts on what I wrote, or on the episode, or on the podcast in general, you can contact us here or on our Twitter.

And if you want to contact me specifically, Tom, then you can tweet me at my Twitter.

Thank you again, see you next time.

The History and Genius of ‘Gucci Gang’ Rapper, Lil Pump

Featured

Love him or hate him, you’ve probably at least heard of young mumblerapper “Lil Pump”, but what you may not know is that the ‘Gucci Gang’ rapper was actually a Harvard student…or so he claims.

Born August 17, 2000 Gazzy Garcia (aka Lil Pump) is one of the youngest people in the rap game, but he’s also becoming one of the biggest. Garcia began his rap career in 2014 when he was just 13, through an introduction to Soundcloud rapper, Smokepurpp. Smokepurpp asked Lil Pump to freestyle over one of his tracks, which was then released in 2016 and titled “Lil Pump.” The song blew up in its own right and was followed up shortly after by singles like “Elementary”, “Ignorant”, and “Drum$tick”, which also became hits. Lil Pump’s success on Soundcloud, lead to him to a co-headline the No Jumper tour in 2016.

Following his breakout success in 2016, Lil Pump entered 2017 strong releasing “D Rose” and “Boss”, which became major hits for him (as of now “Boss” has nearly 90 million Spotify streams). “D Rose” was arguably his first mainstream hit, and lead to a music video in January of 2017 that had earned over 100 million views by the end of the year. Looking to add the young rapper to their lineup, Gazzy Garcia signed a record deal with Warner Bros. Records. The problem here? Lil Pump was underage at the time and therefore the contract was void, making him a free agent. Suddenly offers started coming his way from all over, with people like Gucci Mane and DJ Khaled looking to jump on the mumble rap sensation.

But before the voided contract, Lil Pump saw even greater success with the release of Garcia’s biggest hit to date, “Gucci Gang.” Gucci Gang was his first hit to make it to the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #3. A couple months later Garcia released his debut studio album, the self-titled Lil Pump, which saw features with the likes of Gucci Mane, Lil Yachty, Chief Keef, Rick Ross, 2 Chainz, and long-time collaborator Smokepurpp. With names like that and the momentum he’s had it’s no wonder how the album has reached 650,000 equivalent album sales. 

It wasn’t until January of 2018, when Lil Pump released I Shyne with Carnage, that it was revealed that Gazzy Garcia’s contract with Warner Bros. Records had been voided. Garcia, at times, mentioned that he wouldn’t sign for less than $12 million, but in March of 2018, Garcia resigned a contract with Warner Bros. for only $8 million. The kicker? According to Garcia, the $8 million was for only only one project. However, TMZ does report that the $8 million was granted in advance, but that the contract was a seven-year deal. Which really isn’t bad at all when you consider that he’s reportedly earning 14% off US sales and up to 66% in royalties.

In case you forgot, Lil Pump is only 17 years old. 17 years old and he’s signed 2 major, multi-million dollar record deals, 5 platinum singles, and over 2 billion combined streams. He knows how to work the system, being one of the biggest successes of the Soundcloud rappers which include the likes of Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Peep, Ugly God, and Ski Mask the Slump God. Where did he learn how to do this? Was it Harvard? Well, according to Garcia in August, 2017 he dropped out of Harvard to “save the rap game.” However, that has not been confirmed and there is no record of him attending the school. And it would be hard to believe that Garcia could get in, especially when you look at his record which includes being expelled as a sophomore for inciting a riot.  But Garcia has already embraced the rumors, with the title of his next mixtape being quoted as “Harvard Dropout.”

It’s hard to say where the career of Lil Pump will go, but his trajectory has been astounding and there seems to be no stopping it. We wish him the best of luck.

Not a fan of Lil Pump or maybe mumble rap as a whole? Give our discussion episode on that very topic a listen here.

If you have thoughts on what I wrote, or on the episode, or on the podcast in general, you can contact us here or on our Twitter.

And if you want to contact me specifically, Tom, then you can tweet me at my Twitter.

Thank you again, see you next time.

Featured New Releases, Notable Episode 11

After taking a week for discussion on the state of streaming and how we discover music with a guest, we are back to talking new releases! We had over 15 hours worth of new music in our playlist (though we won’t be covering it all)!  However, this all means it’s time for another list of what new releases we think are important…or notable…this week, including those that we didn’t talk about on the show. Those that are bolded are one’s we talked about on the show, so be sure to give the episode a listen, which should be out by the time you are reading this and if they aren’t already there, the episode links will be included below. But without further ado, here is the list of our featured new releases.

 

SINGLES:

  • Drake – Nice For What
  • A$AP Rocky – Bad Company, A$AP Forever
  • John Legend, BloodPop – A Good Night
  • Poo Bear, Justin Bieber, Jay Electronica – Hard 2 Face Reality
  • Rich Brian – watch out!
  • Slim Jxmmi, Pharrell, Swae Lee – Chanel
  • Tori Kelly – Help Us To Love
  • Tyler, the Creator – OKRA
  • Bhad Bhabie, Lil Yachty – Gucci Flip Flops
  • Calvin Harris, Dua Lipa – One Kiss
  • Bullet For My Valentine – Over It
  • Charlie Puth, James Taylor – Changes
  • CHVRCHES – Never Say Die
  • James Bay – Us
  • Joyner Lucas – Frozen
  • Lauv – Chasing Fire
  • Lord Huron – When the Night Is Over
  • Mike Shinoda – Crossing the Line/ Nothing Makes Sense Anymore
  • N.O.R.E., Pharrell – Uno Mas
  • MØ – Nostalgia
  • Ne-Yo, Bebe Rexha, Stefflon Don – Push Back
  • Nelly – Freaky With You
  • Shinedown – THE HUMAN RADIO
  • Tinashe, Ty Dolla $ign, French Montana – Me So Bad
  • Ty Dolla $ign, Gucci Mane, Quavo – Pineapple

ALBUMS:

  • The Weeknd – My Dear Melancholy
  • Cardi B – Invasion of Privacy
  • Rich the Kid – The World Is Yours
  • Thirty Seconds to Mars – AMERICA
  • Revamp: The Songs of Elton John and Bernie Taupin
  • Hayley Kiyoko – Expectations
  • Alison Wonderland – Awake
  • Escape the Fate – I Am Human
  • Famous Dex – Dex Meets Dexter
  • Frankie Cosmos – Vessel
  • Harry Hudson – Yesterday’s Tomorrow Night
  • Henry Green – Shift
  • Her – Her
  • Kacey Musgraves – Golden Hour
  • Kylie Minogue – Golden
  • Lil Xan – TOTAL XANARCHY
  • Rainbow Kitten Surprise – How To: Friend, Love, Freefall
  • Rick Ross – Albert Anastasia
  • Slushii – Find your Wings
  • Tiesto – I Like It Loud EP
  • Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Sex & Food
  • The Vaccines – Combat Sports

At the time of my writing this, we have yet to actually record the episode, but I (Tom) just want to say that, as you can see, we are not talking about a lot of works. I know I promised already to discuss the most recent album from The Fratellis and Dorothy, and I will, but you can also add The Vaccines and Rainbow Kitten Surprise to that list. You may even see some commentary on the new sound from Escape the Fate and the awaited TOTAL XANARCHY album. Lots of good stuff this week. Enjoy it.

You can listen to our podcast on Soundcloud, iTunes, Spotify, and the Central Michigan Life Website.

If you have thoughts on what I wrote, or on the episode, or on the podcast in general, you can contact us here or on our Twitter.

And if you want to contact me specifically, Tom, then you can tweet me at my Twitter.

Thank you again, see you next time.

Featured New Releases, Notable Episode 9

Hi everyone!

Tom here. It’s been brought to my attention that it could be useful to provide you with a list of all the music we discuss on Notable each week, especially since sometimes it can be A LOT. So, starting this week, I hope to be posting a song/album listing of all new releases that we cover, as well as the classic if we do one that week. The bolded items are songs or albums that we discussed in greater depth on the show. Enjoy!

SINGLES:

  • Everybody Hates Me – The Chainsmokers
  • Freaky Friday – Lil Dicky, featuring Chris Brown
  • Early Morning Trappin – Rich the Kid, Trippie Redd
  • Be Like You – Whethan, featuring Broods
  • Alone – Halsey, Big Sean, Stefflon Don
  • Can’t Deny Me – Pearl Jam
  • Lemon (Drake Remix) – Drake, Rihanna, N.E.R.D.
  • Nowhere Fast – Eminem, Kehlani
  • Say Amen (Saturday Night) – Panic! At The Disco
  • (Fuck A) Silver Lining – Panic! At The Disco
  • Burn the House Down – AJR
  • Mayhem – Steve Aoki, Quintino
  • Playinwitme – KYLE, featuring Kehlani
  • In My Blood – Shawn Mendes
  • One Track Mind – Thirty Seconds to Mars, A$AP Rocky
  • Flames – David Guetta, Sia
  • Let It Be – Hayley Kiyoko
  • Curious – Hayley Kiyoko
  • Over You – Kasbo, featuring Frida Sundemo
  • Bad Bad News – Leon Bridges
  • Bet Ain’t Worth the Hand – Leon Bridges
  • Feel It Still – Remix by Weird Al (originally by Portugal. The Man)
  • Real Shit – Sophia Black, KYLE
  • I Want Love – Chris Stapleton
  • Rearview Town – Jason Aldean
  • Over My Head – Echosmith

ALBUMS:

  • To Dream (EP) – Timeflies
  • California (EP) – Diplo
  • It’s Complicated (EP) – Wale
  • Staying at Tamara’s – George Ezra
  • ? – XXXTENTACION
  • Places We Don’t Know – Kasbo
  • Boarding House Reach – Jack White
  • 28 Days in the Valley – Dorothy
  • In Your Own Sweet Time – The Fratellis

In the upcoming week, we can expect work from such artists as Deadmau5, Escape the Fate, Kacey Musgraves, The Vaccines, Rich the Kid, and U-God.

Just in case you also want to be caught up on the news we covered, here are the links to the stories we talked about:

  1. Physical sales outsell digital downloads for the first time since 2011
  2. Lana Del Rey’s lawsuit with Radiohead comes to a close?
  3. Swedish House Mafia reunion!
  4. iHeartMedia files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
  5. XXXTentacion video comes out of him sucker punching woman
  6. Rihanna takes a (well-deserved) shot at Snapchat
  7. grandson released new song featuring the LA Children’s Choir titled “thoughts & prayers.” The song is ardently against gun violence. We are not sure about proceeds from song itself, but he released limited time merch and is donating 100% of the proceeds to Youth for Safety and Justice Fund. Or you can just donate at the established site nothoughtsnoprayers.org

Just some additional comments from Tom here. We didn’t get a chance to talk about the new albums from Dorothy or The Fratellis. Something that was a bummer to me, but I understand why. A lot of music came out and we like to talk! Discussion/review of both of those albums is something that I will likely do by the end of the week this week right here on the site. So, stay tuned for that.

We also discussed Chris Brown and XXXTENTACION on this episode, and just to make sure it doesn’t get lost in our babbling about them we do not support or condone their actions. They both happen to be relevant this week musically, and that opens the door for a later conversation on if you can or even if you should separate the art from the artist. Something that we’d like to talk about on a future episode of the show.

I also want to make some comments about the future of this site. Something we love to do, obviously, is discuss music. However, we recognize that we hold a very limited perspective and taste, because that’s just how the world is. This site, along with having guests on the show, is something we hope to use to connect with others. By that I mean, I want to see what you have to say on here. We don’t yet have reviews or more essay-based content here yet, but that is something we really want to do. If you have something you want to say about an artist or a trend or pretty much anything related to music, please contact us. We’d love to feature what you have to say right here. Ways you can do that is through the contact page on this very site. Or you can email it to us, we’d love to read it and talk about it. Our email is thenotablepodcast@gmail.com.

Also….we are now on SPOTIFY!! We are so excited to expand our presence to Spotify which continues to grow as a platform for podcasts, too. Links are below.

Thank you for reading this far!

You can listen to the episode discussed on Soundcloud, iTunes, Central Michigan Life’s website, libsyn, and now on Spotify!

If you have thoughts on what I wrote, or on the episode, or on the podcast in general, you can contact us here or on our Twitter.

And if you want to contact me specifically, Tom, then you can tweet me at my Twitter.

Thank you again, see you next time.

A Recap of #KanyeMadness

Hello everyone!

I’m Tom, one of the hosts of the podcast Notable. If you somehow found this website and are not a fan, or you just wanted to read a little background from the episode before jumping into it, I will include some links below for the episode discussed.

Last week, in the second part of our accidental back-to-back two-parter, we went through the Kanye West March Madness Bracket. The bracket was created by Carrington Harrison and he has since done voting on the rounds via the poll function on his Twitter. His champion, which was different than ours, was Runaway. Our bracket actually ended up looking a lot different than what the Twitterverse voted on. We shared only one Final Four pick. For reference, here is the bracket:

Image result for kanye west march madness

So, I want to recap what we chose as our champion before I do a little rundown of some of our personal brackets. As a group, just the three of us, we voted Hey Mama as our champion in a 2-1 vote. Emir was the only dissenting vote shockingly, as his bracket which he created on the fly as we went through, was identical to our general consensus except for the champion. However, I, Tom, have a significantly different taste than Grant and Emir. So, my bracket in particular, looked very different. Part of this is because I’m not a huge Kanye fan, and then on a greater scale I don’t have the same appreciation for rap/hip-hop that Grant and Emir have. That’s not to say that I don’t like it, but I haven’t listened to as much and it certainly is rarely my go-to. My rap tastes may be considered more niche, and just typing that I can hear Emir calling me a hipster. But, because I doubt all of our audience also share Grant or Emir’s taste, we thought it would be fun to add what our picks were with you guys. Some of you may identify with the music tastes of one of us over another.

Now, since Emir didn’t have  a concrete bracket outside of the one we did on the podcast, I will show you what Grant and I chose for our ‘Elite Eight’.

GRANT:

  • Hey Mama
  • Through the Wire
  • All Falls Down
  • Get Em High
  • Jesus Walks
  • Good Morning
  • Touch the Sky
  • Family Business

TOM:

  • Hey Mama
  • Love Lockdown
  • Heartless
  • The Glory
  • Stronger
  • Gold Digger
  • Diamonds from Sierra Leone
  • Homecoming

Just comparing Grant and I’s picks, shows you how different our music tastes are. We shared one Elite Eight pick. Perhaps most appropriately, as Hannah points out in the episode, Hey Mama, the one song Grant (and Emir) and I, had a similar high appreciation for, was the song we had winning it all.

Just for comparison, I’ll share with you what the Twitterverse voted on as their Elite Eight.

TWITTER:

  • Can’t Tell Me Nothing
  • Through the Wire
  • Runaway
  • All of the Lights
  • Jesus Walks
  • Power
  • Touch the Sky
  • N****s in Paris

It’s really interesting to see the divergence from the general Twitter consensus. To share some insight on my picks, I will say that for a lot of the songs in the bracket, my first time ever hearing them was when I made my way through this. While I was definitely not a fan of a fair amount of the songs featured, by the time I hit my Sweet Sixteen and then even moreso as I progressed towards my Championship, I really felt like I had a newfound appreciation for Kanye West. I’m not like his new biggest fan, but I do like him more now. Too often people are quick to judge Kanye for his wild personality and generally odd progression as an artist, and that’s a big put off for a lot of people, including me, but when you hear his music and you listen to the story, it’s a lot different, in many cases, than the image he projects. He’s definitely found a new fan, while not a die hard, but a fan nonetheless. Several of these will make their way to my personal playlist.

Thank you for reading this far. If you want to listen to this episode here are the places you can find it: Soundcloud, Central Michigan Life website, iTunes, and Spotify.

If you have thoughts on what I wrote, or on the episode, or on the podcast in general, you can contact us here or on our Twitter.

And if you want to contact me specifically, Tom, then you can tweet me at my Twitter.

Thank you again, see you next time.