TranscendNoise

Roy Wood$ – Exis As hype of The Weeknd´s newest effort is on its high point, I figured it would be nice to shed some light on the newest protégé of Drake, Roy Woods (stylized as Wood$). With good reason, because in Woods first effort Exis , you´ll find everything you might be missing on Beauty Behind The Madness , I definitely feel this way. There is this certain kind of murky blend of r´n´b that made The Weeknd translate into the experience or second-hand fiction of life as a lost twenty-something – between lust, frustration, loads of substances and a creative drive being fueled and destroyed by all those things. However, it would not bring Woods any justice to just put him into the line of Weeknd imitators. The similarities in sound are pretty much obvious. While there might not be a grand darkness and haze as on House of Balloons , Exis relies heavily on deep atmospheric beats and the ambiance the whole OVO imprint, fathered by Drake, are known for. But Woods doesn´...

This review is a change of pace and topic for me. I usually don´t really get into much German Hip Hop. The themes most of the time seem one-sided and while in terms of sonic diversity there might be much going on, the expressive quality for the most part doesn’t exceed superficiality. But, and this is the one thing I admire the German side for, there is a certain kind of introspection and critical outlook on the world, that is unique to this locality. There are many imitators and imposter's of the American expression: the turn-up idiocy, the gangster and hard-ass narrative, but moving beyond that, most central to a unique expression in German hip hop seems to be a deeper struggle with the sense of self and achievement in life and society.  Most prominently, I´d put Casper’s 2011 album XOXO : A multifaceted expression of aggression, melancholy and frustration that lives from Casper channeling his generation and its perspective on live through songs dealing with suici...