Music week in review: Young Dolph, Future x Young Thug, MGMT & More
Young Dolph dropped an album. Future and Young Thug dropped a collab mixtape.
OVO kept the momentum going despite no Drake release. ‘Twas a marvelous week in music.
Here’s everything that went down this week… besides the Taylor Swift song, we will not be discussing that.
Young Dolph – Thinking Out Loud
Young Dolph is a Kulture Hub favorite. We’ve made no secret of our unabashed love of the man from Memphis.
This new album, Dolph’s third this year and released a matter of weeks after he was shot in broad daylight in Los Angeles, is a triumphant collection of absolute bangers.
Dolph pulls no punches as he calls out fake shit in the industry and the snakes in the grass. Production credits from Zaytoven, Mike Will, Buddah Bless This Beat, and Drumma Boy have the 808s knocking as Dolph flows in his trademark Memphis drawl.
The album barely lasts over 30 minutes, but every bar, every snare, every rumbling bass is basically perfect. Dolph will see his star rise as the legend around him continues to grow, Thinking Out Loud is an unforgiving record of a rap star coming into his own.
Future & Young Thug – SUPER SLIMEY
Future and Young Thug have teamed up to make one of the truly great pairings in contemporary hip-hop. Collaboration albums have become very en vogue since Kanye and Jay’s Watch the Throne with artists trying to match the magic those two legends captured on their 2011 album.
Future tried it with Drake on What a Time to Be Alive, but it was painful to hear Drake try to keep up with Super Future throughout that project. That’s not even shade at Aubrey, it’s just quite the task to match Future bar for bar (just listen to “Digital Dash” and compare their verses if you don’t believe me).
Thug is a much more worthy match for Future. The two emcees complement each other perfectly, tossing up bars back and forth like D Wade throwing an alley-oop to LeBron.
With a singular feature (Offset), listeners are treated to Future and Thug going in again and again. It’s a damn treat.
Ty Dolla $ign – “Don’t Judge Me” (ft. Future & Swae Lee)
The rollout to Ty Dolla $ign’s Beach House 3 continues with another single this week as Ty enlists Future and Swae Lee for this jig about various fuckery. Ty, Future, and Swae implore those around them not to judge their questionable behavior.
Beach House 3 officially comes out next Friday, if the singles are any indication, this project is going to be an absolute goldmine of R&B flames.
Majid Jordan – “Body Talk”
It’s a testament to the quality of OVO’s roster of artists that Drake’s record label has had an incredibly busy couple weeks of releases without a peep from Drizzy himself.
After last week’s drop from DVSN and PARTNEXTDOOR a couple weeks before, OVO keeps it rolling with Majid Jordan’s “Body Talk” off their upcoming album The Space Between dropping next week.
“Body Talk” is a twinkly, groovy, if not a little simplistic, number from the Toronto production duo. It would be cool to see Majid Jordan take some more risks on the upcoming album. We’ll see next week.
Baka Not Nice – “I Am Who I Am”
BAKA!
Another OVO signee, and former Drake security guard, is keeping his momentum going after setting the summer off with “Live Up To My Name”.
Last week’s “Money In The Bank” coupled with “I Am Who I Am” are definitely upping the hype around Baka, who has a debut project 4Milli coming at some point (no release date of yet).
Baka’s flow is a different version of Toronto, closer to the aggressive, braggadocio of grime artists like Giggs and Skepta as opposed to the soft, Drake-lite sound we’ve heard from many a Toronto artist.
A solo Baka project is an intriguing proposition for sure.
MGMT – “Little Dark Age”
Oh shit, it’s MGMT. Remember them? Yeah, you were just beginning to experiment with illicit substances when they first came out with jawns like “Kids” and “A Time to Pretend”.
This week, everyone’s favorite Wesleyan grads returned with their first track since 2013 and announced a new album to come in early 2018.
“Little Dark Age” is trancy, acid synth-pop with an infectious keyboard line. Andrew VanWyngarden sounds like he’s singing from far down a tunnel, giving the record a weird and discomforting sense of space that recalls Depeche Mode.
It’s a dope record from a band that was pretty instrumental during the mid-2000s indie movement.
Famous Dex – “Pick It Up” (ft. A$AP Rocky)
Famous Dex, by his own admission, isn’t “a Jay Z writer or a Nas” and instead relies on his wild dynamism as he told Complex, “I just go in there and do my thing. I go off energy.”
This new track, with production from FKi, displays Dex’s energy in spades. He switches up his flows as he goes in over a bouncing beat. The Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. sample gives the beat a great soulful switchup.
A$AP Rocky backs up Dex with a fire verse of his own. This is a nice preview of what we can expect on Dex’s debut album Dex Meets Dexter due in February.
Marshmello – “You & Me”
Marshmello, the anonymous producer/DJ who has jumped up the charts off tracks like “Silence” with Khalid and “Alone”, has dropped “You & Me”.
It’s kind of a weird track with a pop-punk twist mixed with the massive EDM drops that Marshmello is known for.
The kids seem to like this guy a lot, and Marshmello actually sings himself on “You & Me”.
“You & Me” is actually a pretty interesting combination of pop-punk and EDM, Marshmello may not be exactly up my alley, but you can’t deny dude knows what he’s doing. He can definitely make a radio banger