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Hi! I’m Ivy Hollivana - a producer and vocalist from Florida. I released a new EP along with a music video on August 23rd and wanted to bring it to your attention! I can't link it in the ask but its the first thing reblogged on my page. Dreampop, breakbeat, and artpop come together for this record and it's a journey I hope you enjoy.

Sure! I'll give it a shot.

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Blank Banshee briefly returns with an interconnected 18-minute "Single" with Metamorphosis

Favorite Tracks: Spawn, Web, Worm, Apolysis, Petrify

Least Favorite Tracks: Opalize

4/10

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On her third studio outing, BANKS finds small was to branch out and improve, even if in the grand scheme of things, her experiments aren't too wild.

Favorite Tracks: Godless, Hawaiian Mazes, Alaska, The Fall

Least Favorite Track: Look What You're Doing to Me

7/10

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Tyler struggles with unrequited love and finds peace with Igor.

Highs: Igor's Theme, A Boy is a Gun, Puppet, New Magic Wand, What's Good, Are we still friends?

Lows: I don't love you anymore

8/10

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You gave the new Black Keys album a 6/10??? It’s at least a 9/10. It’s an amazing album, all the songs are great.

I thought it was fine. Like I said in my review, it feels pretty familiar. The Black Keys are sticking to a formula that just works for them and, while I don't think that formula is bad nessessarily, sometimes it just comes up stail. Plus, It pulls the excitement away for me when I pretty much know what to expect on every track. If you enjoy it though, don't let me take that away from you. Like what you like

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The Black Keys deliver a fair new album even at the expense of retreading old ground.

Favorite Tracks: Shine A Little Light, Eagle Brids, Walk Across The Water, Go, Under the Gun, Fire Walk With Me

Least Favorite Tracks: Sit Around And Miss You

6/10

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If the title didn’t already make you run away the song itself will. It’s bad enough when Logic pushes a Black identitarianism with songs like ‘Black Spiderman’ where Logic implies that Spider-man would be cooler if he were black. There’s a myriad of problems with that idea but, mainly, Spider-man being black shouldn’t change anything about the character outside of pure aesthetics. Not to mention that Miles Morales is just as much Spider-man as Peter Parker is. Black Spider-man is already in existence.

The main problem with these songs and movements that push their identitarian leanings is that they often overlook the human element in favor of judging someone entirely based on things as trivial as their skin color, sexual orientation, or cultural background.

Enter Tom MacDonald and his new song ‘Straight White Male’. If you’ve so much as read the title, you should already know what you’re in for. Let me confirm your skepticism. This song is bad, really bad.

This is like if Kendrick Lamar had made the Blacker The Berry without dropping the other shoe by the end of the song. There's no payoff here for entertaining his ideas. Tom racializes his entire existence then leaves it at that without making a comment on how ridiculous what he's doing actually is. Let me clarify: It's okay to be white, it's okay to be straight, and it's okay to be male. None of these qualities are inherently bad but, in order for the song to be likable, Tom has to oversimplify his detractors and pander to his audience. The kind of person who would regularly listen to 'Straight White Male' is the kind of person who's frustrated and angry with the face of modern politics while also being unaware enough to believe they are contributing something new to the discussion. They aren't, neither is Tom MacDonald. He cultivates an us vs. them mentality, openly insults himself with broad generalizations, and assumes he has the most basic of points to prove about the conversation of identity in Anerica. He doesn't and his message suffers as a result.

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Is it too cynical for me to believe that pop-icon Taylor Swift doesn't really care about LGBTQ people so much as she cares about catering towards them as an audience that might be inclined to buy her albums and contribute to her sales numbers? She doesn't strike me as the type to stand up for expression or artistic integrity. Case and point, this predictable, measured, and almost begrudgingly agreeable pop-tune.

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The instrumental is stiff and far too calculated to be danceable. Lil Dicky has nothing to say. His lyrics are dumbed down to the point of being unfunny. Not to mention that the humor relies heavily on shock value to even function. Beyond that it's just gross and obnoxious. The chorus sounds like it took a minute to write. The singing is rudimentary and bathed in autotune. The only demographic I could see this song appealing to is children. I know a grown adult wouldn't find this track entertaining and this wouldn't even work as a kid's song either because it's too inappropriate for them and not even in a cool way either. It's not like something a kid would put on to rebel against their parents because it's too saccharine. The target audience for this song is no one. Not that every track needs a target audience but I just don't understand who Lil Dicky is trying to market to on this song. How he managed to pull together this many celebrities to be on this monstrosity is beyond me. Everyone takes on these different animal personas to display the biodiversity of the Earth, which would be fine (if not a little corny) by itself, but they each go on to remind the audience about how disgusting these animals really are. I don't want to listen to a charity song about how big a baboon's anus is. Lil Yachty plays the role of HPV. Yes, honest to God. Lil Yachty plays the role of a sexually transmitted disease in a charity song for the benefit of the Earth. This song doesn't make me sympathetic to the plight of mother Earth, it doesn't make me laugh, I am not entertained, it's directed at no one in particular, and is topped of by bland, uninspired instrumentals, spoken word, and singing. It's a true abomination.

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Terrible political opinions aside, this is just a bad song. The singing is obnoxious, the carnival vibe is tacky, and on top of that the track goes nowhere. Cementing how much of a failure this track is, Woke Kesha comes in with a really ham-fisted, unsubtle political satire about how straight, rich, white men rule the world. You may be asking yourself 'Why would Kesha hate rich white people? She is one.' and your guess is as good as mine. If I were to bet on an answer to that question though, I'd say it's that Kesha has embraced this very popular, corrosive identitarianism that's currently tearing its way through popular culture at the moment. We don't let Tom MacDonald get away with this shit so why would we let Kesha do it?

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My Top 100 (no repeat artists)

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I want to raise public awareness about this gutless cash grab. Mind you, I don't hate Taylor Swift in general and I believe every artist, no matter how terrible, has good intentions but this song is awful.

Instrumentally, it's competent but Taylor's poor lyricism is really inexcusable this late into her career. Hire a writer! Oh, wait... it took three people to write this drivel! Any song that features an artist unironically shouting "Hey Kids! Spelling is fun."  deserves all the hate it can get.

The song's message also rings painfully hollow as Taylor insists that "You'll never find another like her" while failing to cite anything that sets her apart from her competition. If anything, the song only provides reasons to abandon her immediately. "I'm a handful" She reminds you. According to her, She talks like a psycho on the phone, she doesn't think before jumping into compromising situations, and trouble is bound to follow her wherever she goes but, hey, She's the only one of her!

Sure, you can't spell awesome without "Me" but you can spell awesome with Taylor Swift and Brendon Urie. This is trash.

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Review: Logic - Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

On his fourth album, Logic proves himself to a rapper but fails to be an artist.

Confessions isn't as conceptual as Logic's previous two efforts and that isn't necessarily a bad thing because Logic's concepts don't tend to be fully fleshed out anyway. The Incredible True Story features skits that don't tie into the songs at all and Everybody attempts to be more topical but fails because Logic only really knows how to rap about himself or how he's biracial or something to that effect. It's hard to understand the creative decisions that led to Logic making Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and why it's so disappointing without some context first so let's get that out of the way now...

Let me be clear: Logic is an incredible rapper. He's technically proficient, his vocals are easy on the ears, he's likable, charismatic, and expressive. He can sing (unlike most rappers who believe they can sing). He has always shown incredible potential but, in the years since the release of his debut, Under Pressure, he's failed to capitalize on that potential artistically. He borrows his style from his contemporaries, namely Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, and Eminem. This is fine on it's face. It's okay to have influences but Logic tended to take this a little far. Under Pressure saw Logic wearing his influences on his sleeve to the point where I half expected to hear Kendrick's 'Sing About Me' refrain on the title track. Still though, I was optimistic about where Logic's career would take him, especially since he was so great at emulating other artists so early on.

The Incredible True Story brought us more of the same but also carried with it some of the best beats Logic would ever rap on in my opinion. Not only this but the album also brought with it a space theme that completely failed to tie into what Logic was even rapping about. Overall it was fine but it wasn't Logic's masterpiece yet. He still needed to develop into his own voice, sharpen his focus, and deliver a unique perspective on more topical things. I could sense a masterpiece in him. All of the pieces were there, this just wasn't the right time yet.

Then we had Everybody, another concept album and another failure to quite hit the mark. This album brought with it Logic's signature 1-800 Suicide Prevention song, a track with a solid message that would be dumb to argue against. Aside from that however most of the tracklist is loaded with duds and the messaging is inconsistent. This wasn't the masterpiece fans had been clambering for quite yet.

This finally brings us back around to the subject of this review, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and why it's such a failure overall.

First off, after listening to this thing I struggle to understand why this album is titled "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" because Logic isn't confessing to anything, he isn't dangerous, nor is the album thought out well enough to have a 'mind' behind it at all. The project's title is irrelevant to the content of the record and was seemingly just tacked on because it sounded interesting or something. The Incredible True Story suffered from the same problem too as the Story it tells wasn't Incredible nor was it true.

Titles aside though, Logic's Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is terrible from start to finish. Individually the tracks aren't so bad but, when listened to all at once, I struggle to see how anyone could believe they'd made a cohesive album.

The title track kicks us off and carries little weight. Logic occasionally reaches to make a point but never does. He talks about things and makes observations that are fairly rudimentary about himself, his culture, and caring for one's self. And that's it. The track just leads to nothing substantial and continues to the next track. The dissatisfaction is overwhelming.

Homicide with Eminem is a major highlight for me, even if it's an isolated one. Eminem handles himself surprisingly well considering his abysmal output as of late too. The track introduces itself with Logic's father joking that his son is the greatest alive because he came out of his balls. Not only is this not funny but it doesn't connect to anything else in the song at all. Over the course of the song nothing notable in particular is said. This circles back to one of my core problems with Logic as a performer. He raps well but overwhelmingly finds himself without anything to talk about. He struggles to stay on topic for longer than two or three bars before changing the subject or providing a throw away line that carries no weight. Every word is low impact because each line is just filler to fill time until the next track where you could responsibly expect more filler.

On the off hand, however, when Logic does manage to say something consequential, the line usually borders on questionable to downright inappropriate. Take for instance the track 'Pardon My Ego' where Logic wishes he could have bipolar disorder so he could make an album as genius as Kanye's Ye. I could rant about this line forever. This is ridiculous on it's face and Logic's intention with the statement is unclear. He should understand having bipolar disorder won't help him to make better music but says the line anyway. He's weirdly complimenting Kanye but gives credit to his disorder for the success of the album. The two aren't necessarily related. Sure, Ye is, in part, about kanye's struggle with mental illness and how these experiences helped to form him into the man he is today. Though it's important to point out that Ye is more about Kanye prevailing despite the illness and not about how his mental illness helps him to make great albums. This point seems totally lost on Logic who seems to believe that mental illnesses are somehow like the real life equivalent to superpowers and that, if you're just mentally fucked up enough, you too could be a creative genius. This is a huge misconception.

This segways nicely into another thing that rubs me the wrong way about Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. It's an amalgamation of several ongoing tropes in hip-hop right now:

- Illusions to being different, being politically conscious, or woke.

- rapping about bitches, money, drugs, or being better than everyone else.

- Society being bad or expecting you to act a certain way.

- Social Media is addictive and is something you should ignore.

- Logic is 'killin' the game. He's a 'game changer'. He's a self-proclaimed Genius. He's biracial. He's this. He's that.

It's all just noise at this point and, truthfully, I no longer believe that Logic has the same potential to create the masterpiece I once believed he would. His latest album isn't about anything in particular. The tracklist could be ordered in any way and carry the same weight, which is next to none.

On the upside, the beats are well-produced and Logic is a proficient rapper. He sounds great over these instrumentals but this is about all the credit I can give the album before checking out completely. Nothing of substance ever happens on Confessions. Logic never has a topic and seems to just spit whatever he wants to in that moment. The best line he manages on this album is: "Scarecrow Flow, I'm outstanding in my field". It's a stroke of brilliance that never manifests itself again on Confessions.

Overall, the more I listen to the album, the more I struggle to find it's appeal outside of just being background music. The whole album is filler, loaded with Hip-hop's most rudimentary tropes and tracks that take up space rather than generate interest. There's no artistic vision to be found here, no plan, no surprises, no concept. The whole album just feels empty, without tension, conflict, purpose, a driving force behind it's creation, or anything to provide appeal or intrigue at all. Logic lacks depth of character and has nothing interesting to say. No new perspective or anything even remotely noteworthy to tell his listeners. Why was this album made? The answer to that question still eludes me and, for that reason, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is one of the worst, most uneventful hip-hop albums I've ever heard. I definitely recommend you sit this one out even if you kind of liked Logic's music up until this point. His charm is just non-existent on this project.

Highs: Homicide, Mama/Show Love

Lows: Pardon My Ego, The Title Track, Commando, Icy, BOBBY

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My Top 100!

Hello everyone! I’m starting a review passage here on tumblr to keep up with music news in a productive manner as well as work on my writing skills.  This is, as of May 2019, the top 100 records I have personally heard.  Top 10 are ordered, 11-34 are tied and everything else is unordered. For a full view of my collection, check out https://rateyourmusic.com/~Kankato Hope you have fun~

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Review: Billie Eilish - WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?

I don’t know much about Billie Eilish. I know she’s an american singer-songwriter. I listened to her debut smash hit EP, Don’t Smile at Me, which I liked. She has a distinct, very modern production style that artfully incorporates elements of minimalist jazz and electronic pop (really well actually). If there's one thing I can commend Billie on, it’s her unique sound palette. When you hear one of her songs, you KNOW it’s hers based solely on the fact that no one sounds quite like her in the pop-sphere right now. Sure, you could lump her together with the likes of Lana Del Rey or Lorde but she is clearly not like them, at least, she isn't directly comparable. Stylistically, the person she has most common ground with is Lorde.

I am in love with the bangers this album deals out. Tracks that hit hard with that distorted bass like all the good girls go to hell.

The slower cuts on this album are fine but most just aren’t for me with the exception of "listen before i go".

Overall, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP WHERE DO WE GO is an above average affair for Billie. 

Highs: all the good girls go to hell, you should see me in a crown, my strange addiction, bad guy, bury a friend, listen before i go, & !!!!!!! (of course)

Lows: xanny 

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Review: Tyler, The Creator ~ Scum Fuck Flower Boy

Scum Fuck Flower Boy, or simply Flower Boy, is the fourth studio album by American Hip-hop artist Tyler, the Creator.

His previous project, Cherry Bomb, was an awesome distorted mess, a mess that featured a train crash between harsh sounds and smooth neo-soul. It was difficult to take in sometimes. Sound wise, Cherry Bomb wasn’t the prettiest album in the world but it definitely had a unique style that kept it edgy and exciting.

Now, with Flower Boy, Tyler beautifully builds off the groundwork laid on Cherry Bomb. The neo-soul is still here in spades. Here though, Tyler does a much better job of leading his audience into the angrier cuts. Take Who Dat Boy and I Ain’t Got Time! For examples.

  The vibe is bittersweet because Tyler uses the bright neo-soul sound to mask the more emotional lyrics. The result is a perfect late-summer album. Flower boy feels like a summertime binge. Tracks like Boredom and 911 / Mr. Lonely highlight this. Production is dreamy, and lo-fi on these cuts.

Where this Flower Blooms features vocals from Frank Ocean over a nice, rickety beat. The piano outro on this song could stop time. Cinematic and gorgeous the keys lead flawlessly into the Sometimes… interlude.

Tyler has his audience listening to his life like it’s a movie. The crazy thing is, Tyler’s life actually makes for a pretty good fuckin’ movie.

See You Again is so sweet with Kali Uchis on that vocal. Tyler’s “20-20-20-20 visions” hook is my favorite on the whole album.

“So I can I get a kiss? And can you make it last forever? I said I’m bout to go to war. And I don’t know if imma see you again…”

I think Glitter would’ve served better as an interlude. The chorus is little annoying at first but doesn’t take much effort to warm to.

Also, Tyler could’ve used that last song, Enjoy Right Now Today, to drive his point home with a passionate, wild closing verse. The outro to Glitter features an answering machine perfect for this:

“We didn’t get your message, either because you were not speaking or because of a bad connection.”   

This would’ve been a perfect time for Tyler to make sure his message didn’t go unheard and slam everyone with witty final bars. His flow could’ve lead back around into the “foreward” track and really made the record feel complete.

I don’t wanna be hung up on what could’ve happened though. Other than a few things here and there, Flower boy is a perfect album. It’s instrumentally unique, all of Tyler’s verses land, there are great details, breaks, and surprises on every single track. Not to mention, Tyler’s recent coming out and his relatable emotional tone throughout. He has come into his own with Flower boy. This is easily among the best material the Odd Future crew has produced so far and will, no doubt, go down as a highlight for music in 2017.

Favorites: See You Again, Who Dat Boy, 911 / Mr. Lonely, Garden Shed, November, I Ain’t Got Time!, Boredom

Least Favorites: Glitter, Enjoy Right Now Today