Five Dope Tracks – The Cultural Exposé

Five Dope Tracks – The September 2017 Edit

Matilda — Sun, 03 Sep 2017 19:35:03 +0000

So…

I wasn’t 100% sure what I wanted to do for this month’s Five Dope Tracks (as I’m actually looking forward to the October Edit which may or may not be a podcast!?!? Waaaahhhh….We’ll see).

Anyway, I knew I wanted to make this month’s more artist focused. Jill Scott popped into my head as I haven’t heard from her in a minute – and it turns out her third album The Real Thing: Words and Sounds Vol. 3 is officially 10 years old (!) on September 25th. Sure, it didn’t match the mega success of her first two projects, but it’s just as musically accomplished – so I’ve rounded up some of the album’s dopest moments for a mellow Sunday eve, and a couple of her other tunes for good measure.

ENJOY

(You can read about why I started this little music project here. And feel free to follow me on Twitter here)

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Five Dope Tracks – The August 2017 Edit

Matilda — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 07:30:46 +0000

It’s August! My birthday month! And I’m excited! Can’t you tell? So without further ado, here’s the latest edition of Five Dope Tracks, inspired by the year of my birth ;-)

Check out the playlist below – it’s currently on Spotify and if you like what you hear, spread the word, follow Five Dope Tracks on Twitter, send me a message, or leave a comment below!

(PS – I did two playlists this month because the music made me do it (lol). Here’s part 2.)

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Five Dope Tracks – The July 2017 Edit

Matilda — Sat, 01 Jul 2017 08:00:14 +0000

Happy July everybody! You good? Everything straight? Your people okay? Nice. I’m FINE although I’m not satisfied with the few hours of summer we’ve had – and the little that came and went absolutely nuked the grass in the communal garden. Not cool. It doesn’t help that I always consider July as the start of the steady descent to autumn – so I’m already thinking about what boots I’d like to rock soon (I’m thinking a suede Chelsea in maroon could be a cute look).

BUT – as it’s supposedly still summer, I’ve gone for a late, balmy night at a rootop party vibe for the second edition of Five Dope Tracks. The theme I had mind was ‘nostalgia’, thanks to this brilliant artist from LA I recently came across called MarcLo. His throwback Neptunes style gets the playlist started this month, followed by the original R&B It girl Kelis, the inimitable Janet Jackson and Canada’s underrated neo-soul star Slakah the Beatchild. Q-Tip brings things home with a song from Kamaal the Abstract – the album he released in 2009 that nobody could quite get their heads around. But hey, I liked it.

Check out the playlist below – it’s currently on Spotify and Google Play – and if you like what you hear, feel free to share it, follow Five Dope Tracks on Twitter, send me a message, or leave a comment below!

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Introducing Five Dope Tracks

Matilda — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 07:09:25 +0000

Before I was a lifestyle journalist I was what you’d call a “music critic”. This meant that for at least a decade, my career typically involved:

getting new music in the post
rating – or slating – that new music
attending “album playbacks”, sometimes with the artist in attendance
interviewing artists (new and old, promising and legendary), sometimes on the phone, occasionally in another country
going to those musicians’ shows – sometimes in this country, sometimes in another city

It was a charmed life – a poorly paid one, mind you, but I had fun. Eventually, the love for the game died and I realised I preferred scrutinising starters at restaurants and hanging out in art galleries than waiting for the music industry to produce artists I could get excited about – like really excited about, not “you’ve flown me halfway across the world to listen to a wack album but I’m gonna pretend to like it because free flight and hotel innit” excited. Trust me, it’s happened.

Anywho, to prevent this becoming unnecessarily ranty, I officially like music again. Dare I say, I even love it. I started flirting with Apple Music, eventually put a ring on it (aka £9.99 a month) and it’s opened me up to a whole new world of music in the way my favourite mags did back in the day (Vibe, The Source, XXL, Black Beat, Blues & Soul, Trace, Touch, Tense, Undercover the lot).

It also doesn’t hurt that I’ve been covering gigs for The Evening Standard since the beginning of the year which means going to a lot of shows – some fab, others a bit meh – and remembering why I fell for music in the first place.

So to consolidate my new-found appreciation of it all, I’ve launched a little something-something called Five Dope Tracks. It’s a regular round-up of the tunes I’ve either come across recently or back in the day and reckon you might like – five tracks at a time. It’s short, sharp and sweet.

The June 2017 Edit is kicking it all off, featuring Mr Jukes (London, stand up!), Ohmega Watts (a conscious rapper from Brooklyn I’ve been loving off for years), Beleaf (a ‘dad’ rapper from Baltimore who’s got a hilarious YouTube channel starring his wife and kids), Rob Araujo (a very cool jazz man from LA) and Pool Cosby (an indie-ish group from NY who’ve done this nice summery collabo with man like Raekwon – who’d have thunk it?)

Check out the playlist below – it’s currently on Spotify – and if you like what you hear, feel free to share it, follow Five Dope Tracks on Twitter, send me a message, or leave a comment below!

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