Monday Muse: Kipp Stone "Live from the Tap" music video

Fresh off the weekend, heading back into the office, I thought we could all use a steady beat to ease into the week. This Monday Muse features Cleveland hip hop artist Kipp Stone, whom I discovered on Saturday as I researched another local artist, psychedelic blues rocker Thaddeus Anna Greene. The two collaborated on the three-volume, 27-song mixtape series King Basi & The Brougham Music, which is an hour and 28 minutes of lyrical rhapsody and badinage laid over raw, rhythmic and melodic instrumental cuts. (I'm quite pleased with this find.) Nod your head to "Live from the Tap," track five on Volume 3: Dolce Victoria.



This music video was released last October just days before A Right To Create Music Group launched Stone's debut album, Video Game Kids. If you like what you've heard, also watch the artist's newest music video for "Pine Marten" off of King Basi & The Brougham Music Volume 1: Hollywood North. 

Music Video: Smoke Screen "Melodies Of A Silhouette"

Smoke Screen released a new music video for "Melodies Of A Silhouette" from the hip hop duo's Imagination Beyond Illustration album. The video begins with a time-lapsed pan of the Cleveland skyline and features emcees Chemist and Mooke serenading the city streets as the cartoonish, graffiti-inspired album art floats along the brick-building backdrop.


Follow Smoke Screen on Facebook and Twitter:

Facebook: Facebook.com/smokescreen216

Twitter: @Smokescreen216

Review: Nicholas Wonder makes solo statement with 'My Thesis'

A lone man’s strain (“Moving On”) opens Nicholas Wonder’s debut solo album, My Thesis, in a Bob Seger “Turn The Page” fashion. One might find the brief ballad an unlikely intro to a hip hop album yet the melody is connubially tied, by an untrammeled saxophone, to the title track, which follows.

My Thesis is a commingling of sub-genres grounded in hip hop soul. Wonder’s verbal strategy for this recording flows in the same vein as his socially conscious writing for Vitium, the artist’s internationally acclaimed hip hop, funk project, which he boldly declares a “first class revolution” on a track titled “First Class.”

A true poet, Wonder’s wandering lyrics will make you wonder as he articulates keen observations of disregarded societal flaws, speaking to a degenerating generation on “Prescription Kids” and world at war on “Drifting ...”.

Pure originality is difficult to attain in any art form; hip hop, a genre built on cultural cross-references, is no different. Wonder and his supporting cast of instrumentalists and audio engineers, including Vitium bandmate Jerry (JL) Lang II, New Zealand-based Soulchef, Cleveland-based Adam Korbesmeyer and None Other Than, distinctively repurpose a variety of techniques from defining epochs in hip hop and R&B music, with rhythms on the album reflecting retro and modern styles.

Recommended song: “Trippin’”
Sounds like: Lupe Fiasco, Common, The Roots

Executive producers: None Other Than (mixing) and Nicholas Wonder
Additional production: Adam Korbesmeyer (mixing/engineering, Pro-Plane) and Soulchef
Mastered by: Chris Keffer
Recorded at: Ante Up Audio

Get a free download of the song "My Thesis" by clicking "download" below. Download the full album on Nicholas Wonder's Bandcamp site for $5.




Editor's note: "Moving On" is the opening song on the printed version of My Thesis. The online version of the album begins with the title track, "My Thesis."

Now Playing: Nicholas Wonder, Album: My Thesis; Lyric of the Day "Girlfriend"

Lyric of the Day: "Delete the whole entourage in my phone for that gorgeous strut when you're dressed like Sloan." 

–Nicholas Wonder, "Girlfriend"