Our Playlist of Reference series has seen a wide range of music, and today we’re excited to add to that by tackling one of the oldest genres of music: Blues. Before Electro Swing, before Rock n Roll, before Jazz, there was the Blues, the picked and strummed guitars, the sadness, the beauty of a raspy voice. The simplicity of the sound. Today’s playlist is curated by Milenko, and as usual, let’s get the story behind this amazing playlist.
When did you start listening to Blues?
Since an early age, I was listening to Jazz artists like Duke Ellington, Ray Brown, Count Basie, Herb Ellis, Oscar Peterson, Miles Davis, etc. As my father was a Jazz listener, I think my ears were trained to this genre from the beginning. During adolescence I switched to more Blues Rock artists like Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, The Doors, AC/DC, etc. Then the teenage rebel years, with some Blues-inspired Heavy Rock.
Today, while I still listen to Jazz and Blues Rock, I found myself having a preference for Slow and Traditional Blues with people like B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson, John Mayer, Eric Clapton, Joe Bonamassa, ZZ Top, Stevie Ray Vaughan, etc. (There are too many to list!)
Did you ever have a moment when you felt like Blues started speaking to you?
Every time, that’s the main effect of Blues. When you listen to a Blues song, it’s not about the technique (Blues scales are quite simple), it’s all about the phrasing, it’s about the way the artist is telling a story with his instrument. Each Blues track is about storytelling. That’s probably why you have so many standard tunes interpreted by so many players, and they are all unique masterpieces. For example, take a song like “Born Under a Bad Sign”, do a simple search on Whyd, and listen to the different version of Albert king, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Cream, Warren Haynes, etc. They all tell the same story with variations in the phrasing, that’s how the Blues speaks to you.
What are some example situations when you would listen to this playlist yourself?
I listen to this playlist at work essentially. In fact, the main goal of this playlist is to act as a central repository for all the Blues songs I discover while watching movies, listening to concerts, radio etc. When I find something interesting, I just want to share it with other people hoping they will enjoy it as much as I do.
If you had to choose just one track from this playlist, which one would be your favorite?
We’ve been busy hooking some new things up this week here at the Whyd studio. There are lots of screwdrivers laying among bits of wire. Something truly awesome is coming, and we can’t wait to tell you about it…
But it is also the cat days of winter, where the cold is damp and the rain gets stuck in the air, giving up its quest for the ground. For those of us who are riding out the end of the winter, a melody has resonated. The delicate voice of Michigan’s own Sufjan Stevens delivers a heartbroken message across his signature strums and hums. “No Shade In The Shadow Of The Cross" is his grief pure, a window into the place where the love for his lost mother is hiding in a corner, knee-deep in tears. He lays is bare and clear:
We have the pleasure of continuing our awesome series featuring the stories behind some of the best playlists representing genres and subgenres of music on Whyd. Today, something that hits close to home for our Community Manager. Literally.
Detroit is known around the world for the automobile industry. But there is something that Detroit has been producing this whole time as well, an equally international export: music. From the funky days of Motown, to the garage punk epoch, through the rise of electronic and most recently - the advent of Hip Hop, Detroit is in a constant state of creative evolution. Capturing an era that many can point to as its revival, The Backpackerz have put together their latest “Heavy Rotation” playlist around Hip Hop from the 2000s, “Detroit Hustles Harder.”
Can you introduce yourselves? What is the idea behind The BackPackerz and when did you get started?
We are Antoine and Hugo, the two co-founders of The BackPackerz. We met at Toulouse Business School around 2012 and quickly discovered our common passion for Hip-Hop. Longtime rap addicts, we decided to create The BackPackerz while studying in Barcelona in 2013. In fact, we couldn’t find the type of content about Hip-Hop we’d like to read among the existing websites, especially in French, so we decided to create it ourselves!
The BackPackerz is a web-magazine dedicated to celebrating and educating its readers to Hip-Hop culture. Through in-depth analysis on cultural landmarks, interviews and reviews, the 12 members of our team are creating the freshest online resource for anybody interested in Hip-Hop culture. We also curate the best Hip-Hop events (concerts, festivals, exhibits) in France because HIP-HOP LIVES!
Where does your passion of Hip Hop come from?
Antoine: I was introduced to rap music very early, around my second year of middle school, by a friend’s brother who had me listening to NTM, IAM and the whole Hostile posse. At the beginning, I was on French rap mostly because I liked the rebel attitude that came along with it. Then I started to dig into the American rap from the 90s after I got struck by Cut Killer’s mixtape “Party Jam - 1989 1996, The Golden Age.” I was in high school when I first heard Nas’s “Illmatic,” A Tribe Called Quest’s “Midnight Marauders” and Wu-Tang Clan - “Enter the 36 Chambers” which are still my all-time favorite albums. At that time, I was spending hours translating lyrics and searching Urban Dictionary (a time before Rap Genius) to get a better understanding of what those cats were saying.
Later with Olivier Cachin’s books and films like “Wild Style,” I discovered Hip-Hop was not only a music genre but also a fascinating culture with other elements like graffiti and dance and tremendous impacts on our modern society. Since then, I kept reading and gathering artifacts (records, films and books) of this sublime culture. A few years ago, I realized this archiving work had to be shared so I decided to launch The BackPackerz with Hugo.
Hugo: My passion for Hip-Hop came later than Antoine’s. In High School, I began to listen to mainstream stuff such as 50 Cent or Eminem and I immediately fell in love with this music because it combined rhythms that made my head bang hard and dope lyrics spit with amazing technicality. Soon I would dig into the history of this genre and couldn’t stop, because every day I would discovered how deep and wide this culture was. At first, I was really into the producers (Preemo, Dilla, Pete Rock, Q-Tip…) and how they chopped samples etc..They were my entry door to real Hip-Hop, more than the MCs.
Tell us about the concept of your Heavy Rotation playlists?
The concept of the Heavy Rotation playlists is to bring to our readers 10 dope tracks every Monday, in order to soften the pain of this particularly hated day of the week. Most of the time you will find a selection of 10 hottest rap songs of the last couple of weeks but sometimes we build playlists around a specific subject: a genre (e.g beatmaking edition) a specific technique (e.g brass edition) or for a special occasion like this “Detroit Hustles Harder” edition for J Dilla month. There is no rule, it just depends on our mood! Now our readers are really looking forward for them to come out, because you know “Fuck it’s Monday…but at least I’m gonna hear dope music!”
What’s special about this Post 2000 Detroit Hip Hop playlist?
Originally, the idea of the post 2000 Detroit rap playlist came up while we were preparing our interview with Detroit superstars Phat Kat, Elzhi and Guilty Simpson (that we will drop in a couple of weeks). As we were deep-digging into our hard drives, we were amazed to see how prolific and brilliant the Detroit scene was in the 2K decade. From Slum Village, to Elzhi, Black Milk or the great Apollo Brown; it seems that Detroit has never stop shining since we changed millennium.
On top of that, releasing a fine selection of the dopest tracks from Detroit rappers was exactly what The BackPackerz is meant for: curate history to educate and entertain. The purpose of this playlist - along our article Detroit State Of Mind - is for our readers and followers to discover / remember the greatness of this scene over the past 20 years.
Curating the playlist, we realized this excellence would not have been the same without a man: James Dewitt Yancey a.k.a J Dilla or Jay Dee, one of the greatest producer of all time. If you look at the playlist, you’ll find Jay Dee’s legacy in almost every single track: as a producer, an influencer or in the lyrics. We decided to release this special Heavy Rotation in February since it is known among his fans as “J Dilla month” (as he was born and died during the month of February).
We’re only at the middle of February, on the historically superstitious day of Friday the 13th, and already one of the year’s biggest releases has reverberated around the globe propelling the single to the top of the Hot Tracks here in Paris. Kendrick Lamar just scooped up a GRAMMY for best rap performance for “i” (for which he also claimed the much more prestigious Whyd Track of the Weekend), and his newest effort “The Blacker The Berry" encapsulates the perilous state of race, spitting his signature verses with anger across reggae calls all summed up with the proud statement: "The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice."
A big thanks to Encee x Kalab’s for getting it to Whyd first!
Onward. The next installment of our awesome Playlist of Reference series moves to the eccentric world of Jazz, curated by one of the Whyd team members, the one that wears bowties with ducks on them. Let’s get the story behind the playlist:
When did you start listening to Jazz?
I went to a jazz club once on a high school trip to New York City. There was something so alluring about the environment. I felt like we were there to listen to the musicians, not just there to listen to a repertoire of music performed by a band I liked. No two performances can be the same.
Did you ever have a moment when you felt like Jazz started speaking to you?
Seeing Jazz live was always special, but I admit I didn’t listen to it much outside of those occasions. It wasn’t until I was working on art projects when I lived in New York City that I would put on Jazz radio as my soundtrack to creation.
Recently here in Paris, the advent of Electro Swing and Electro Jazz, combined with the awesome Whyd community, have given me more reasons to listen to it!
What are some example situations when you would listen to this playlist yourself?
Jazz is Sunday afternoons. Painting, working on art projects, writing, reading. Jazz is unique in the sense that it can be the soundtrack to anything you want. For me, it fades into my thoughts, giving them a hop they wouldn’t normally have.
If you had to choose just one track from this playlist, which one would be your favorite?
God I hate this question! (And I wrote it!) but I just think that Duke Ellington hits the notes that I would hit if I were a legendary musician. Particularly “Jeep’s Blues.” It’s got a vibrancy in its sadness, and it’s catchy as hell.
The cold is instilled in our bones here in Paris. Our breaths smoke like dragons. Les chauffages are bien allumés. Luckily for us, there is sound, and when that sound is beautiful, with a little boogie, it’s enough to shake the chill from our souls.
This week that funk is “Vanilla Fraise" (Strawberry Vanilla) by L’Impératice, a light-hearted romp that is reminiscent of the glory days of Rinôçérôse or Air, French electronica at its most delicious. It’s easy to see why it was the most popular track on Whyd this week.
The French artist THYLACINE, originally from Angers, just received the honor of the track of the weekend with “Closing” feat. Dyllan. It’s the third track on his new EP “Exil” which came out last week. So how does the EP stack up?
Released: January 26, 2015
Genres: Electronic, minimal, trip hop
Tracks: 4
Who would like this EP?
Fans of Wood Kid’s orchestral harmonies, and people who like Kavinsky’s beats.
Our thoughts:
Though there are certainly some unique elements at play, mashing harmonies on top of the hollowness of something deep, this EP is a product of a lot that came before it. The highlight track, “Closing,” features the pleasantly subdued and haunting voice of Dyllan, an element that could’ve taken the other tracks on “Exil" much further. Instead the three other tracks swerve between strings, minimal beats, and trip, making for a pleasant listen but one that remains more shallow than complex.
The next in our incredible series of Playlists of Reference we tackle a beast: the world of rock music. This week’s playlist is curated by Tom P. who has dedicated a significant amount of time into this monster of a playlist with 871 tracks for your listening pleasure. It has earned the exclamation point. But first, let’s get the story behind the playlist.
When did you start listening to rock music?
In the late 60’s, a vibrant time with some great music.
Did you ever have a moment when you felt like rock started speaking to you?
Yes, many of these songs spoke for a generation of your people then and left us with many good memories. For me, early favorites included Iron Butterfly - “In A Gadda Da Vida,” Uriah Heep - “Salisbury,” and later classics like Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” and “Black Dog.”
I really enjoyed classics from the Doobie Brothers and Kansas (especially “Dust in the Wind” and “Incomudro.”) Also can’t forget great jazz-fusion-rock from Santana and Jethro Tull, as well as hard-driving blues-rock from the Allman Brothers and Little Feat. Where do I stop? There’s also BTO, Bad Company, Lynyrd Skynyrd - “Free Bird,” Fleetwood Mac - “Hypnotized,” Van Halen & Sammy Hagar - “I Can’t Drive 55” and on and on.
What are some example situations when you would listen to this playlist yourself?
I enjoy many diverse musical styles now, including jazz, blues, gospel, world, and classical. But classic & fusion rock are still great for pumping up the adrenaline. Can’t think of a bad time to listen to good rock, except perhaps when it’s time to chill. Listening to many kinds of music now, occasionally I’ll “cleanse the palette” with some good rock.
If you had to choose just one track from this playlist, which one would be your favorite?
Hard to choose, but I’ll go with “Salisbury” by Uriah Heep, for great musicality and an early mix of styles.
Heavy wet snowflakes are falling here in Paris, and winter feels real. There is an indoor feeling, something cozy and warm, calling for a musical cocoon to envelop us. A perfect track for that cocoon is this week’s Track of the Weekend. “Closing" by THYLACINE feat. Dyllan is steady like the ocean waves, elevated on the wings of a soft, angelic voice until it drives through the build and attaches itself firmly into your memory.
The emerging French artist THYLACINE (which was the largest marsupial carvinore, also known as a Tazmanian Tiger, but is sadly now extinct) released his EP “Exil” this week, something to definitely get your hands on.
Thanks (comme d’hab!) to Le Coup du Lapin for slipping it into our streams this week!
Another week, another installment in our new series delivering you trendy subgenre Playlist of References curated with love and attention from our community of music lovers. But it’s not enough just to accept the music, we also want the story behind the curation. This week it’s Collective Soul curated by the creator of Underground Playlist, Sal Cannata.
When did you start listening to Collective Soul?
Collective Soul is a recent addition to my playlist catalogue on Whyd. Soul music has always been one of my favorite genres and I have seen a big change in how it has been implemented in music the past several years. Generally when one thinks of Soul they tie it in with R&B but with all the cross-genre experimenting going on, a lot of Soul-based music has translated into a unique style of Indie music that touches the boundaries of other genres. Despite the different genre influences of these particular songs they all sound so right when placed next to each other. I thought it would be great to put together a sample of this kind of music that we feature on Underground Playlist and showcase a new wave of Soul music to the Whyd community.
Did you ever have a moment when you felt like Collective Soul started speaking to you?
Totally. I live for this kind of music. Soul singers bring a lot of passion to each lyric. The artists in these songs have a great way of conveying emotion and I connect with that a lot. It seems like whether these particular songs contain certain elements of Pop, Rock, R&B, or Electronic, the aspect of Soul brings everything together and connects with me in a big way.
What are some example situations when you would listen to this playlist yourself?
I find that the overall tone of this playlist centers around relaxation. That could be useful in pretty much any situation except for maybe the dance club. For me, I’ve found this playlist to be a great listen towards the end of the day as things wind down. Everyone listens to music differently so this playlist can be used for all sorts of things like during work, cooking dinner, lounging with your friends, the list goes on!
If you had to choose just one track from this playlist, which one would be your favorite?
It’s hard to choose just one track out of the 80+ in the playlist. From a Whyd experience the Robin Schulz remix of “Waves” is one of my favorite finds on Whyd. I remember just browsing around and clicking on the song to see what it was about and instantly became a fan. I love how a bootleg can turn into a mainstream hit a year or so later. It’s rare and awesome that I was able to witness that journey early in the game. When I would hear the song on the radio in front of my friends I’d make sure to let them know how long ago I first heard this song and where I found it. Thanks for the bragging rights Whyd! :)
From a more musical standpoint, Ben Howard’s cover of Keisza’s song “Hideaway” blows me away every time. I love how an artist can flip a song and give it a brand new feel. A few others that never get old to me are Jordan Bratton - “The Grey,” Harper - “Animal,” Shy Girls - “Renegade,” Ari Lennox - “Bound,” The Prince Fox remix of Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me,” and the newly added Kevin Garrett - “Coloring.” There are so many that I love but those are some standouts in this playlist. Stay tuned as I plan to update Collective Soul with new additions as time goes on!
Thanks Underground Playlist! Check out the personal account of the creator of Underground Playlist, Sal Cannata for more Indie Soul and extra tracks!