Originally aired in 1981 on the BBC, this beautifully rare, physically fragile piece of celluloid has resurfaced online, all these years later, for all to marvel at and enjoy. I am reminded near enough every day as to why I love the world wide web so much, today this was my mnemonic.
“Hotter Than July”, the documentary, is based around Stevie Wonder’s 1980/1981 American Tour; it sees him preparing for shows, follows him during his appearance at the Washington Rally in celebration of Martin Luther King’s birthday (and briefly touches on his personal campaign to have MLK’s birthday recognised as a national holiday). It also captures him testing out and discovering ‘new technologies’ for the visually impaired, not to mention catches tender behind the scenes moments of him with his friends, his crew and his family. The live tour footage that this is all intertwined with is the icing on the cake.
A wondrous piece of filming making, capturing an era that until now was almost mythological to me. Wonder’s 19th studio album has long been one of my favourites, it’s an album very close to my heart and so to be able to have access like this into such a important period is something really quite special.
I saw some twitter chat about this here compilation a couple weeks back, told myself to remember. I failed. But once again, someone’s 140 characters helped remind me. Gosh, I love twitter.
Anyways – this completely free compilation boast over 20 tracks, put together by Joe Kay, Andre Power & 96, from the likes of AFTA-1, V Looper, B.Lewis, Nikko Gray, Insightful and more. I mean, the list really does go on. I’m about to press play on this myself, but I already know I’m going to love consuming it. I highly recommend you go over there and download it too. You won’t regret this.
Jennifer Hudson premiered the first single off her sophomore album I Remember Me earlier today. The ballad was written by R.Kelly and produced by Harvey Mason Jr. Unfortunately, I can’t lie – I find this a little lackluster, especially given this is the albums first single. I wanted something bigger – either a big power ballad (which this is not) or a bumping up-tempo.
J-Hud also revealed that the new album (out March 22nd) will feature collaborations with Alicia Keys (‘I Need Love’), and Ne-Yo (‘Why Is It So Hard’). She also mentioned that I Remember Me will include a gospel song, but “will have something for everyone”, including up-tempo songs.
Have a look at the cover for Jessie J’s debut album Who You Are, released March 28th. I like the image (I think?), and don’t even mind the ‘Jessie J’ logo (think it could have been better, still), but really don’t like the way ‘Who You Are’ is displayed/laid out – not only is the font pretty standard, but it gets lost amidst everything else. Excuse the extended review, the inner graphics designer in me just won’t shut up sometimes.
Along with the cover, the albums tracklist has also been revealed, peep that after the jump.
Oh, and if you haven’t already, I’d highly recommend you take a peep at our latest episode of ‘Rehearsal Rooms’ featuring this lady herself – it’s really quite good…!
Wait, this new Bilal video is directed by Flying Lotus (aka Steve Ellison) and features Erykah Badu, Thundercat & Shafiq Husayn (producer of the track)? Schwwwweeet!
Ergh, and how incredibly trippy are those visuals? With the aforementioned artists involved, did you really expect anything different? Biggup FlyLo and his floatious ways, Bilal for being so cool to go with it and Badu, just because.
Mikael Columbu teams up with soul man Reggie B for a brand new video taken from his latest album The Traveller. Peep the futuristic Tron-like trailer up top and expect the full video soon. Looking rather dope…
My love for Bilal’s most recently album Airtight’s Revenge runs deep, I have made no secret of this. In fact, the album reached #3 on our ‘Album of the Year’ list and with good reason. So, it’s no surprise I was happy to hear that one of my favourite songs off said album was being released as an EP featuring not only the original version, but also an instrumental and two remixes by Flying Lotus & Sonnymoon. I was debating which remix to post up, but went for the FlyLo simply because I prefer it to the Sonnymoon one. Have a listen to his more relaxed, vibe’d out version and then, go ahead and download the extended player via Plug Research or iTunes.
