(Left)
PlantLife
Lady Sovereign
Tynisha Keli
(Right)
Prince
Jim Jones
Chester French
This collection of CDs is quite surprising to me, because it contains artists that I haven't been familiar with and albums that I didn't expect to buy, such as Prince's latest set. Yes I'ma fan of the music by His Purpleness, but I don't really feel his previous effort,
Planet Earth, and didn't think of buying the new one until I heard
MPLSOUND playing in a store.
Now that there have been a bunch of younger artists/producers who are strongly influenced by his music in the '80s (especially
1999 and
Prince & The Revolution era), Prince has easily brought
sexy that style back and simply proved that there'll never be another like him. With some modern twists including the use of AutoTune, I think that this time he has done this back-to-the-basics thing even better than he did on
3121.
For a long period of time, I've been a bit away from the majority of NYC mainstream hip-hop music, such as G-Unit, Dipset and D-Block. I, however, happened to pick up
Pray IV Reign, the latest and first major-release effort from Dipset boss Jim Jones after I found it really good with solid beats and good guest spots by R&B performers like
Oshy and
Ryan Leslie. I enjoy the whole album.
Chester French is an indie-pop duo who were found and signed by
The Neptunes and their label Star Trak and have already been featured on Common's "What A World," which was produced by The Neptunes. Despite that, their debut album,
Love the Future, was entirely performed and produced by the duo themselves and turned out to be a nice mixture of indie pop, new wave, '60s rock and anything like that. The pre-album mixtape (hosted by Clinton Sparks) was more urban-targeted and featured guest appearances from R&B/Hip-Hop stars such as Kanye West, JD, Diddy, Talib Kweli, Bun B, Solange, Janelle Monáe and Ryan Leslie. Speaking of Ryan Leslie, I read that both of the duo graduated from Harvard, too.
Tynisha Keli is an American R&B singer and released her debut album,
The Chronicles of TK, just today in Japan. As Tynisha has been strongly promoted by Warner Music Japan, all her singles have already topped the ringtone chart (for Non-Japanese category) in Japan and this album seems to become a big hit, too. I've known her name and music since "
I Wish You Loved Me" was leaked onto the web a few years ago, but I didn't expect at all that she would become so popular in my country. Anyway, this album is very good both vocal-wise and music-wise, as it features productions from Jonathan Rotem, Corna Boyz, Madd Scientist, Kara DioGuardi, Rico Love and Makeba Riddick, not to mention that Tynisha's a unique, talented and skilled performer.
PlantLife
2. Cut Chemist - The Audience's Listening (36) 
