Track Review

Hip-hop Can Sound Like A Myth and Ray Gibbz’s “Royal Ruby” Proves It

It definitely takes some guts to rap about ancient goddesses, mythology, and ancestry. Because let’s be honest, those aren’t exactly the topics dominating playlists right now. Yet Ray Gibbz leans fully into them on Royal Ruby, as if he’d been waiting centuries to tell this story to the world. Ray Gibbz is a self-taught producer,

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Deportee Treats Genre Like an All-You-Can-Eat Buffet Rather Than a Stringent Doctrine on “Black Women Are Not Cheap”

Some songs show up with the subtleness of a brick through a window. They do exactly what they say they’re going to do, point out who the baddies are and then proceed to scream their message at you until you either agree with them or take yourselves and your attitudes somewhere else. Deportee’s “Black Women

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You Won’t Feel Safe In Joseph Turner & The Dudes of Hazard’s “The Shadow Remains”

There are no other ways to describe fear aside from how Joseph Turner & The Dudes of Hazard built The Shadow Remains. Here, fear isn’t just a theme or a mood, it’s a whole structure embedded in every detail until it seeps into your bones like it belongs. Joseph Turner writes from the Dutch delta,

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GISKE’s “August Came” Feels Like A Warm, Fleeting Summer

Repeat after me: a good song doesn’t have to be anything specific. Sometimes, it just needs to get one exact feeling right when you need it most. GISKE does exactly that with their latest single, August Came. GISKE features members of acclaimed Norwegian guitar-pop band The Margarets, with a songwriting partnership that traces back to

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Philmac’s “Live My Life” Starts as a Deeply Personal Declaration and Then Grows Into Something More Encompassing

At some point in every dream, it loses its shine. Most people aren’t interested in talking about that point. Most people are interested in the dream. The initial momentum. Late-night idea sessions. Inspirational quotes overlaid on stock photos of mountains. The dreams where you wake up to it all working out, then do a magazine

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“If I Ruled” by Ray Gibbz is Hip-Hop When Refusing to Stay Small

Other artists want a seat at a table. Ray Gibbz flips it instead with no apologies. That defines the entirety of his latest release, If I Ruled. For a self-taught producer, songwriter, and rapper emerging from San Diego, Nas’ If I Ruled the World becomes a clear touchpoint in shaping Ray Gibbz’s vision for this

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Sometimes, Endings Sound Like Reetoxa’s “Love Keeps Burning Still”

Imagine grief when it doesn’t come off like a movie that made you cry like a bucket or a devastating video that lingered like smoke in your room. What you’ll get from Reetoxa’s Love Keeps Burning Still is grief settling in the most tender, softest way possible. Reetoxa is a Melbourne band fronted by Jason

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X-ANONYMOUS Couldn’t Have Picked a Better Title Than “CLAIM IT ALL”; They Absolutely Do

This is a weird time to be involved with music; it demands we all be content creators, influencers, amateur marketers, compulsive oversharers, and, when we have time, musicians. All the songs now come pre-packaged with personalities, branding, carefully manicured online identities detailing everything the artist had for breakfast and their subsequent thoughts and feelings and

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Credible Witness Turns Financial Anxiety Into a Fuzzed-Out Celebration of Survival and Stubborn Optimism

The air in a cramped apartment feels a little lighter when Paycheck to Paycheck by Credible Witness starts to rattle the floorboards. It arrives with the frantic energy of a morning commute where the train is late but the sun is shining and you still believe in the possibility of a win. This is a

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