Words by Brian James
Brian James is a former co-host of the Best Song Ever podcast and contributor to Off Shelf along with other music publications. As a lifelong enthusiast, he has been a fan of hip-hop and r&b since middle school and now enjoys keeping up with mainstream and underground releases, and diving deep on the sampled and influencing sub-genres.
Generally speaking, It’s difficult for me to gain traction with new music at the beginning of a new year. For some reason music in the first quarter doesn’t really hit me until it gets later in the year. Usually there are some releases in February that at least get the blood pumping a bit more, and thankfully that’s the case this year. Although the indie music scene feels a little stagnant so far, hip-hop and R&B is going strong and below I’ll cover six albums well worth your time and let you in on the secret of how to find amazing new music, so you too can do this at home!
Bandcamp
Every weekday the wonderful people over at Bandcamp post their “Album of the Day.” Being that they post so many of these and that they have a focus on supporting artists, you often find albums that are not being written about anywhere else, which results in some great discoveries that feel like your own. This is how I first discovered Britti and her album Hello, I’m Britti (Easy Eye Sound). Is this soul? Is it R&B? Or is it actually country? The answer to all these questions is yes! It’s a very lovely combination of genres, all anchored by an incredible voice and nice, smooth music.
Bandcamp also does their own write up of the best Hip-Hop music each month and there are often many albums I had never heard of before, and sometimes I see an album released by an artist I like, but that slipped through the cracks. One such crack slipper that I saw on Bandcamp’s Best Hip-Hop of February post was the album 74: Out of Time (Coalmine Records) by Ol’ Burger Beats. Good Ol’ Burger Beats is a producer who released a really great album with Vuyo back in 2021, so I was already excited to hit play. And, speaking of Feats, the features on this album are ridiculous: billy woods, Tha God Fahim, YOUNGMORPHEUS, Quelle Chris, Fly Anakin, lojii, Lil B, Vic Spencer, and more! Wow, it’s wild to even write that out and is obviously well worth your time.
Hip Hop Golden Age
I mentioned in last month’s post that Hip Hop Golden Age has an amazing ongoing best of the year list that is randomly updated, so every day it’s fun to load up the page and see if any changes have been made. Recently, I surfed on over to their page and saw Golden Age of Self Snitching (Heavenly Recordings), a new album at number 1 from an artist I’d never heard of before. Revival Season is a hip-hop duo from Atlanta, making music that sounds nothing like the Atlanta (or really any other) scene. Great rapping meet really interesting production and results in a thrilling listen.
Stereogum
I know the comments section is a place where your soul normally goes to die, but have you checked out the Stereogum comments section? It’s often funny, upsetting, and sometimes illuminating on music that even Stereogum may not be writing about! The best artist I’ve ever discovered from there is, without a doubt, Erika de Casier back in 2019 when her album Essentials came out. Fast forward to 2024 and we now have Erika’s third album Still, out on 4AD. It was instantly one of my most anticipated releases of the year and who knew something so great could come from the comments section.
In all honesty, I was planning to skip Heems & Lapgan’s album, LAFANDAR (Veena Sounds). Heems was in the rap duo Das Racist, which just felt too much of a “certain time” for me to really want to revisit and it just didn’t pique the ol’ interest meter. However, when Stereogum made it their “Album of the Week” I checked it out and boy I’m glad I did! It’s definitely still quite Heems’y but also more mature. The production is really cool as well and just makes for a great listen.
You Know I Got Soul
I’m really excited to talk about You Know I Got Soul! It’s a site I found in a very roundabout sort of way and begins with my journey last year to do a deep dive into 90s R&B. When I dive into a genre it’s a lot of internet research to find the essential artists to check out as well as lesser known or underappreciated acts. Once I have the artist list in place, I’ll start looking for rankings of said artists discographies to help narrow down what to listen to by people who are experts in the field. This led me to the site Soul in Stereo, which has the most amazing discography breakdowns of R&B artists anywhere on the whole internet.
Anyway, long story, very long, but the boss of Soul in Stereo, Edward Bowser also writes for the website You Know I Got Soul and they have reviews of modern R&B albums! Through this long and convoluted journey I recently got into Shae Universe and her album Love’s Letter. It’s a really great, focused album full of R&B nostalgia that I’m excited to get to know better over the course of the year.