Categories
Concert Review

Afropunk Festival: my experience

*Like most experiences, mine is extremely unique. This review will be an honest take from my own experience”

I went to Afropunk Brooklyn on August 24th and 25th, 2019. For those who don’t know, the festival, according to Wikipedia, “was created as a safe space for black alternative-minded punks to freely express themselves and build a community with one another.” The definition of the word “punk” is disputed across many circles, I like the phrase “alternatively minded” a little better. This year’s fest was held in Commodore Barry Park.

 I wanted to go to Afropunk because of three reasons of equal weight: fashion, music and because it offered a space for black people that were like me. I had been seeing Afropunk outfit pictures amongst other festival fashion inspiration pages for several years and have always wanted to go to just for the festival fashion aspect. I thought about my outfit for months during the planning stages of the trip to Brooklyn. I never definitively decided on anything until it was too late of course. It was my first time in any state north of Virginia so I was really taking it all in. 

On day one, I was extremely tired after walking around Brooklyn all day before the festival. I also didn’t know what to expect so I was really going through a lot of emotions. I saw Leikeli47, Tierra Whack (who brought out Alicia Keys), Leon Bridges and Jill Scott. Like a typical music festival, the artists performed on different stages around the park and we all scrambled to see our favorite artists on time. Leikeli47 had the whole crowd shaking their asses and bobbing their heads to her songs. Tierra Whack had a wonderfully weird stage presence and I was very surprised to see Alicia Keys come out there with her. Leon Bridges sung his heart out for 2 hours while I waited in line for a vegan BBQ sandwich; he really gave us all a show. The last performer of the night was Jill Scott and she was fabulous. Her onstage presence was magical, her vocals were amazing and she played a lot of the songs I grew up listening to. The fashion from day one was amazing! I saw some really well curated, creative and bold looks from all kinds of people. The energy in the air was chaotic, but I felt safe like I was right where I was supposed to be. 

On day two I came in tired again after another long day. We arrived late to Toro y Moi, but heard his last two songs through the gates. On this day I brought a camcorder I checked out from the library and it was the best decision I’d ever made. I got a chance to bring home a lot of what I saw at the festival with me. This day I saw Scarlxrd, Lianne La Havas, Masego and another act whose name I don’t know. The energy from the crowd and Scarlxrd was so exciting to watch happen in front of me. His fans are dedicated and his stage presence is one I won’t forget. Lianne La Havas’s show was sweet, chill and romantic. Her voice was like pillows. After Lianne, we saw Masego. He was my favorite performance of the night because I knew the most of his songs, he played the sax and because the crowd around me was so engaged while we all danced our asses off together to his music. Also Masego’s rendition of Andre 3000’s “Prototype’’ was very well done. The outfits on this day were fantastic. I saw so many people and they really did a terrific job at coordinating colors, creating stories and expressing themselves with their outfits. 

What I love the most about Afropunk is that it was a space that was created specifically for black people. What happened in Commodore Barry Park in Brooklyn was an amazing thing. It allowed all kinds of people to come together to present a culmination of styles, cultures, lifestyles and music tastes. It was a beautiful experience for any black person to have. 

-Makayla 

Categories
Non-Music News

Shawn’s SoapBox-Dr. Stephen Ferguson

Shawn sits down with political philosopher Dr. Stephen Ferguson to discuss student activism, political philosophy and Hip Hop being dead after 1996. Tune in for an intelligent conversation.

Categories
Weekly Charts

Afterhours Charts 8/27

Artist Record Label
1 KAYTRANADA Nothin Like U/Chances [EP] RCA
2 TORO Y MOI Outer Peace Carpark
3 CHROME SPARKS Be On Fire [EP] Counter
4 SATIN SHEETS St. Francis 100% Electronica
5 CHANNEL TRES Black Moses [EP] Godmode
6 SWEELY Nice Archive Traxx, Vol. 1 Lobster Theremin
7 TILMAN Love [EP] Fine
8 HOT CHIP A Bath Full Of Ecstasy Domino
9 FLOATING POINTS LesAlpx/Coorabell [EP] Ninja Tune
10 DJ SEINFELD Lilium [EP] Young Ethics

Categories
New Album Review

Album Review: Tobi Lou – Live on Ice

By far, the most creative album I’ve heard in a long time.

I’m not going to lie, I’ve been listening to Tobi Lou for a while now, but how I discovered Tobi Lou is actually quite interesting. A producer that I was extremely fond of named YOG$ had just got done doing a collaboration project with another artist I thoroughly enjoy, and upon finishing that project, did a track with Tobi, and I hated it. It took me about around 3 months and 15 listens to actually come around on the song, and I was still pessimistic listening to the rest Tobi’s music. I finally started coming around to Tobi’s music because of the dichotomy between lighthearted fun and melancholy teenage emotions within his songs. Not to mention his incredible lyrical creativity, singing ability, and downright fantastic production, mixed with actual interesting ad libs. Tobi Lou quickly became one of my favorite artists to follow, and Live on Ice does not disappoint.

Something that makes this album truly interesting and separate from other hip-hop/r&b/pop albums is that many of the songs can be thrown into any of those genres, and possibly others. From the first track on the album, 100 Degrees, it would appear to be a hip-hop album, but as you head down the track list, you find songs like Sometimes I Ignore You Too and That Old Nu-Nu that are so far from hip-hop in a traditional sense, and that argument can be made for just about every song on the album. Tobi even collaborated with K-Pop artist Vernon on the track Looped Up, arguably making for one of the most creative and ambitious songs on the album.

I have been trying to think of a good comparison for Live on Ice, and from a musical perspective, I haven’t been able to find one. It’s just that unique and creative. But, I believe an argument can be made that Acid Rap by Chance the Rapper and Tobi Lou’s Live on Ice have very similar impacts on the audience it reaches, essentially accomplishing the same goal, connectivity. Acid Rap, is arguably one of the most influential factors for the type of music I listen to, and many others my age. Live on Ice accomplishes the same effect, but for a slightly different audience. Acid Rap was influenced by extremely prevalent themes being love, friends, following your dreams, with the biggest theme being heavily based around drugs. All of these elements combine for one of the most successful mixtapes ever made, as well as being responsible for Chance the Rapper’s massive popularity. Live on Ice is similar to Acid Rap in a way, due to how Tobi effectively connects the themes of the album to the listener. While it might not be as successful as Acid Rap, Tobi Lou has created a project that will touch the lives of many people in the same way Acid Rap did. Themes like finding love, dealing with depression, being comfortable with who you are, and heartbreak are expressed throughout the album extremely effectively through fantastic production, Tobi’s ambitious vocal layering/editing, and lyrical creativity. Personally, I love happy music, and when I heard tracks like Favorite Substitute, Like My Mom, and Ice Cream Girl, I immediately fell in love with them because they connected with me in a personal and interesting way. The use of non-traditional hip-hop instruments, catchy choruses, unique vocals, and actually interesting ad libs (seriously no one ever has good ad libs) make songs more lively, and help to set a mood for the album overall.

Live on Ice is genuinely in a league of its own, and I think it should be treated as such. It took me almost a month to fully understand and interpret this album, and I hope others get as much out of this project as I did. I truly haven’t listened to an album this interesting since Healy’s Subluxe in 2017. I highly suggest you give this album a shot, even if you don’t like hip-hop/r&b/pop because it is such a different experience.

Suggested Tracks:

-100 Degrees

-Sometimes I Ignore You Too

-Berlin/Westside

-Cheap Vacations

-Looped Up

-Favorite Substitute

-Ice Cream Girl

-Jaye

Categories
New Album Review

EP REVIEW: Josh Mullen – Lemon’de

EP REVIEW: Josh Mullen – Lemon’de (8/23/19)

BEST TRACKS: Fine, Lemon’de

FCC Clean

Meet Josh Mullen, who is just now dipping his toes into the world of songwriting with his first EP, Lemon’de.

This 18-year-old grasshopper from Youngseville, NC is an unashamedly self-proclaimed indie boy who draws his inspiration from the likes of Mac Demarco and Neutral Milk Hotel, which is evident in this EP by the mellow vocals and dominant use of acoustic guitar. Mullen admits to recording this entire EP in his bedroom using Audacity, but to be fair, who doesn’t record their first EP on either Audacity or Garageband? Despite not having the greatest means of production, for a first EP, it’s pretty good.

The song “Fine” kicks off the EP and immediately blasts you into the 5th dimension of consciousness with high energy strumming and a nicely complimenting bassline. The vocals are easily the most impressive part of this song. Mullen’s voice is soft but not completely mushy, carrying a pleasant amount of grit and intensity while still remaining soothing to the ears. The heavily reverberating vocals will penetrate their way into the center of your brain and settle down there. The reverberating, softly warped vocals make their appearance again on “Brown Recluse” and ‘Punch”.

Another highlight of this EP is the title track “Lemon’de”. For this lighthearted number, Mullen sets aside the guitar and picks up a sweet little ukulele. I feel like I’m in the Curious George universe when I’m listening to this song, dreamily floating down a river in a rowboat on a sunny day. Eating a banana. This song will ‘whistle’ your worries away.

Josh Mullen is a talented guitarist and vocalist with a lot of potential. Josh Mullen, if you’re reading this, keep making music! Everyone starts somewhere. Thank you for being a fan of WKNC and I hope to see you making waves in the future.

You can listen to Lemon’de on soundcloud here: https://soundcloud.com/skippysgotmail/sets/lemonde-ep

-Safia Rizwan

Categories
Miscellaneous

Obviously, Fake Top 5 Most Shocking Moments in Music History

Obviously, Fake Top 5 Most Shocking Moments in Music History

5. When Ozzy Osborne ate an entire horse on stage 

The undisputed king of classic doom has been relegated to docile geriatrics as of late.  Following his exploration into reality TV at the turn of the millenium, Osborne has become somewhat of a parody of himself with his cartoonish antics and increasingly unintelligible ramblings.  That being said, it’s crucial to remember Osborne as an absolute legend of classic rock. As he popularized playful occultism, sludgy romantic doom, or just general head banging goodness, Ozzy was a key player in transforming rock into a liberated art form.  Nowhere is this more clear than the infamous occasion wherein Osborne participated in a horrifically graphic equine feast. While on a solo tour after leaving Sabbath, the band was halted mid-set by their leader; Osborne first looked out into the audience in silence before finally opening his lips.  “Bring her outttttttt!” he screamed as Randy Rhoades and company scrambled backstage before bringing out, well, you guessed it. A giant horse. For the next three hours, the audience stood stark horrified as Osborne slowly sliced through the beast and consumed it piece by piece, blood dribbling down his chin and onto innocent concert attendees who just wanted some good-down-to-earth-metal-music-itellyawhat.  The show was, of course, cut short as Osborne proceeded to shit himself and die after eating so much raw horse meat. Classic Ozzy, he’s quite a clown, huh? 

4. When Mick Jagger Didn’t Die 

How is this guy still alive? Like, I don’t wish ill on him.  But it seems like a natural violation that the Rolling Stones are still a thing.  I’m pretty sure him and his bosom buddy Richards have done it all: smoked poo skeletons, injected specially radioactive gas poison, writhed around in the River Styx while occasionally shouting “yeah baybay” to each other as their tight leather pants grazed death water. It doesn’t matter, I guess, though. 

3. When Billie Idol Invented Punk Rock 

When the words “poonk rok” first creep past your ears with their spindly digits, the first images that pop into your whimsical head may be of dingy clubs occupied by New York’s darling quartet of hideous grandmas, but they, sadly, were posers.  Wha…? Posers? Posing as whom? Iggy Pop? Nope. The MC5? Nope. Lou Reed?! Nope again. See, they were actually following what could essentially be distilled down to an elaborate marketing campaign designed by one Billie Idol. Idol, originally a marketing consultant for Viacom, spent years researching what could set off what he identified as a powderkeg of untapped teenage angst. Several years of looking at graphs, gathering disgruntled testimony, and co-opting avant-garde aestheticism into white-consumerism later, Idol emerged with the hit single “White Wedding” which fundamentally altered the course of music history.  Idol would go on to enjoy a long and successful career as punk’s most vital contributor, eventually giving birth to two sons: Henry Rollins and Ian Mackaye. 

2.  When The Beatles Headlined Woodstock

Imagine this, Woodstock has already been going on for nine-days, your one pair of super hip homemade jean shorts have been absolutely soiled by mud and human feces, and the acid jell-o isn’t enough to keep you going.  It’s about time to leave, the sun is rising, but wait. There’s one more act. Who could it be? You think, lids nearly crusted over from sleep and probably a little pinkeye too, the headliner has been kept a secret from us this whole time.  Who is it who is going to come out and end the show. Also, this was New Year’s Day 1970. Then, you see it, a lanky figure with a severely unbrushed beard begins making his way towards the stage. Sunlight is still soft, you can’t see exactly who it is but the anticipation is beating against the inside of your head as another figure steps forward.  This time, it’s a greasy guy with no shoes and a round face who is tailed by a guy with an impressive mustache wearing like robes and then another guy. Of course, it was the Fab Four appearing to close out both the now-legendary music festival and the 1960s as a whole. Who could forget their classic renditions of “Hey Jude”, “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”, “Octopus Garden”, “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road”, or Ringo’s fifteen minute drum solo rendition of the National Anthem.  You had to be there, man. 

1.  When the guy from Def Leppard Grew An Extra Arm to Drum Harder 

Deep in the bowels of 1985, Def Leppard was perched gracefully upon international charts and drew tens of thousands of rabid fans who were interested in seeing what was, simply put, the worst band of all time. During one of their famously shitty performances which drew attention from Rolling Stone writers who were baffled at the sheer magnitude of their diarrheal soundscarpes, drummer Rick Allen began to sweat profusely as shapes began to appear in underneath the skin of his sweat-drenched chest.  Audience members wretched as the shapes began to take more tangible figures and it became clear that what was being formed was none other than a horrible bundle of fingers. Fountains of bile streamed down the floor of the jam-packed stadium as the fingers flailed helplessly into the air as they were painfully pushed out of the now swollen and putrid body which housed them. Eventually, the arm was fully generated, picked up a drum stick, and laid down the worst drum solo of all time.

– Cliff Jenkins 

Categories
Concert Review

Jonas Brothers Concert Pictures

Categories
Music News and Interviews

Off The Record: Delta Rae

Off The Record: Delta Rae

DJ Beowvlf interviews the headliner for Packapalooza Delta Rae’s Brittany Hölljes , they discuss how the band came together, how they maintain their North Carolina sound within the mainstream music landscape and goals for Delta Rae in the future.

Categories
Short Stories

Nightmare of a Softboy Chapter 2

Nightmare of the Softboy Chapter 2

I’m uncomfortable marking my infidelity as an aberration of bad choice.  Maybe I would have before the accident, before I became who I am today or, I should say, realized a piece of my own figure which was given inadequate attention.  It seems, one could posit, that this lack of attention is what subsequently led to a frustrated transgression, a rebellion which gives too much agency to its master when considered as a lapse in judgement.  I cannot claim my body; my body claims me. As such, moving against the grain in a refusal to acknowledge an inalienable part of my being was destined to end in supposed catastrophe. 

Just as I would start any day, the morning in question began at 1:00 PM.  I must admit that my personal life had deteriorated severely in the preceding several months, and I must admit that I do not have a job.  My days are, or were, understandably free. There is no use in explaining whatever semblance of a routine I had here in this narrative. It would be useless.  It would be infinitely difficult because my days were spent inwardly, exploring tangential realities that the mind is left free to explore when material is lost with social interaction. This is why WKNC was so important to me, to us, to an entire world that has essentially disintegrated into will.  Whenever the opportunity presented itself, or whenever I could be bothered (these two are operationally the same), I would switch on my house radio, which was always set to 88.1 It wasn’t me who switched it to my trusty station originally, or if it was I couldn’t remember. What was important is that I became a subject beneath it. 

Such subjectivity breeds alienation, anger, hopelessness.  The apparent viceroy of unbias would here point to me, or what was me, or what has always been me but historically more so, and screech with an obtuse digit that “it is your own doing, you cretin! It is (or was) you who switched to WKNC! If not, then it was still you who remained under it! Whose life was built around it!” after  which I would retort, “Yes! Yes! Exactly that! I am only it and so I cannot without!”.

But, of course, rebellion creeps slowly.  And I had nothing but time. It doesn’t matter how long before that morning I was listening to WKNC, the reader just has to trust that it was long enough to question my own vacuous existence.  And so, in an action which was no more prophetic than it was a mistake, I tuned my dial to 102.9.

Categories
Non-Music News

Shawn’s Soapbox Episode 1-Camerian Williams

Shawn sits down with the magnetic personality that is Camerian Williams as they discuss life after college, having faith during times of struggle, and flirtatious personalities.

Listen to their conversation.