a l l i e and Gazelle Twin

My mom loves to tell the classic story of when my grumpy old uncle offended poor Kanye West's grandmother on her birthday in Oklahoma City a few years back. This was obviously back when both she and West's mother were still alive and clearly before Yeezy went completely crazy like he is today. My uncle and Ye's grandmother went to the same church at the time and the church happened to be throwing a special birthday party just for her. Well Kanye flew into town to attend it and he decided to get up and perform a surprise number just for the occassion. My uncle, being an old minister, had no idea who Kanye West was but had just found out that he was "some kind of a rapper". So when Kanye got up to perform, he in a rather loud whisper, asked my aunt "Oh Lord! You mean we have to listen to rap?!?!" My aunt, who is a bit more hip than my uncle is, slunk down in her chair in an attempt to hide herself because there was no way that Yeezy's relatives didn't hear him as they were sitting right next to them when he said it. God bless my uncle!

This was obviously before the Graduation album dropped and he became the global sensation and nut job that he is now (btw I love Kanye), but I'm still surprised that I haven't heard at least one lyrical diss from him about old preachers and disrespect at this point. Because this would obviously lead to me dropping an album with a counter diss and then Jay Z releasing a diss track of his own to support his boy and so on and so on, just like Boyz in Da Hood. "Either they don't know, don't show, or don't care about what's going on in the hood"

The point is, I don't ever want to be as oblivious as my uncle was, so I constantly check out new artists no matter how strange or how wack they are. Now with all of that said, here are a few more artists that my family can hopefully offend in the near future.

First up is a l l i e. She is the latest artist out of Canada that is bringing the noise and thankfully for her she just so happens to sound like a mix of the Chicago based Nylo, with her beauty and soul, and the wonderful Erykah Badu and her neo funk. She represents the more experimental side of Badu as she has the ability to take you on these sexy trips to outer space with her ambitious take on the Rnb genre. I'm hesitant to give her that label because it puts her in a box that she doesn't quite belong in but I have to start somewhere. She is on Kaytranda's label, who is based out of Montreal, and you cant help but hear his influence in her music with the head nodding hip hop beats that are dropped on her tracks. The combination of the coolness of her music and her sexy delivery wont quite inspire you to go raw dawg and produce babies but there will definitely be some baby making activities going on. Some of her highlights include Maharajah, Just Like That, and Cross My Mind. Private Island with 2nd Son is like nothing I've really heard before in RnB with its innovative beat that has these spatterings of underground electronica mixed in it. I give her a rating of FRESH but let's just hope that she has more of a stage presence than Sza does, another artist I fell in love with until I saw her perform live.
https://soundcloud.com/search?q=a%20l%20l%20i%20e

Next up is Gazelle Twin; and I have to admit that when I first read up on her, I immediately rolled my eyes and let out a loud hipster esque sigh in disgust! There were all of these comparisons to Nine Inch Nails and stories about how she always disguises her face with a mask or some sort of visual matrixing while also appearing with dirt covered hands. Typically when artists go through these drastic of measures in an attempt to separate themselves by not drawing attention to their looks its because of two reasons : 1. They are generally ugly and 2. Their music really sucks. Look at Kiss. But after listening to her music I discovered that it actually is heavily influenced by the industrial scene with its dark, grimy, and sonically booming electronic beats. This is the kind of music you'd expect to hear playing while Ryan Gosling walks into a dark club night right before he whacks someone in an art house action flick.

She spits out lyrics at a steady and determined rate like an evil robot would but she also has the ability to sing in such a beautiful way that cant help but slowly and sneakily draw you in. Her EP Mammal is the perfect example of this. Outside of Anti Body, Belly of the Beast is my favorite song of hers as this is where you hear the NIN influence. "I'll beat them at their own game" from that track may be a shout out to all of the big boy artists in this male laden genre; and I have to say that she may certainly give them a reason to look over their shoulders with her talent. I rate her as FRESH!
 https://soundcloud.com/gazelletwin