Browsing Tag

rick ross

B-Guy Griffin earned a place in Idaho’s hip-hop Hall of Fame with his seminal release, Rick Ross

Posted on 1 April 2024

Serendipitous enough that it may as well have been foretold, B-Guy Griffin’s third LP, Long Time Comin, is a cunningly cultivated collection of tracks, featuring a solid line-up of featuring artists.

The standout single, Rick Ross, embodies the titular artist’s larger-than-life persona over the mic as the lyrics cascade in a fiery cadence that will leave you psyched on the potential of B-Guy Griffin and his collaborators on this track, Tnyg & Twigg.

Rather than reinventing the wheel, the playful polyphonic melodies and solid boom-bap backbeat in this seminal track keep it old school in the contemporarily slick production as B-Guy Griffin waxes lyrical and gives the airwaves a taste of how his cheeky wit translates through his wordplay, which has easily earnt him a place in Idaho’s hip-hop hall of fame.

Long Time Comin was officially released on March 22; stream the single on Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

North Carolina Rapper Avajor rips through with strong single ”Forever”

Posted on 19 June 2020

Most of us want to live forever and make sure that we are comfortable the whole time. Grinding hard is the only way. Being inspired by seeing others work hard is the only to stay at the top and not drop down. The Producer-emcee is from Winston Salem in North Carolina and was formally known as Jay Major. I quite like the new name and Avajor pulls out all the stops here with the heavy beat and straight up lyrics.

”Sorry, I Was Distracted’‘ is the name of Avajor’s first album that has just dropped on Spotify and ”Forever” is one of the best songs off it. This has a Rick Ross type feel on it and is a major statement of intent. He wants the big time and is not letting go.

Avajor has done well here with the new single and he is a name to watch in the flooded US Hip Hop market. I’d like to see him work with other local artists and even a heavyweight so he can get more ears to his music. He is clearly talented and a new name to keep an eye out for in 2020.

Stream this track through Spotify and check out his whole collection of music.

Review by Llewelyn Screen

Dream-Rap? Is That Even A Thing?

Posted on 2 December 2017

Even with the amount of new music being made every day, with sheer weight of collective imaginations, the genre splicing experiments, the fusing and fusion of styles Garrison Carver seems to be on to something new here. Yes, there is a trippy trap beat, a cool R&B vibe and a rap delivery but that is then cocooned in something totally unexpected. Around these more expected elements he wraps a dream-pop haze, chilled psychedelia and electronic washes.

It’s confusing, but experience tells us that is a good thing, expectations are made to be subverted, rules are made to be broken and new musical horizons are their to be explored and DD does all of those things and more. Blissed out hip-hop? Ethereal R&B? Dream-rap? Are those even a thing? The fact that you have to invent whole new genres to put the music in is an indication of just how original this music is and how singular and lateral Garrison Carver’s thinking is.



Check out Origin’s dope freestyle ‘Apple Of My Eye’

Posted on 11 August 2017

One of the great aspects of hip-hop and rap is its ability to mix a street vibe with informed and intelligent lyrics, to play the fool but do so with a knowing wink, subvert the listeners expectations and mix the rough with the smooth. This is exactly why Origin’ works so well. It is a balance of groove driven lyricism and skittering beats, it mixes classicism with modernity, deep thought with throw away comments.

Musically it also confounds in the best of ways, tight clinical beats hold everything together but on it is hung smooth distant jazz saxophones and plaintive piano lines. This is the sound of up town sophistication drifting into the workspace of the struggling bedroom artist, of the self-educated street kid with no money but a ton of ambition. It paints a very real picture of the strange collisions and juxtapositions of the modern city and how music itself is often built of such fascinating interactions.

A&R Factory Present: Rockie Fresh

Posted on 16 May 2016
If you haven’t heard the buzz yet, let it be known that Chicago native Rockie Fresh is quickly becoming your next favorite rapper. Only starting his music career a few years ago, this young up-and-comer is already one of the hottest independent artists in hip-hop.
After releasing 4 “The Night I Went To…” projects this year, Rockie Fresh is back as he delivers us his first official single on MMG.  Produced by Mike Daley and featuring Chris Brown, Call Me When It’s Over is a big summer anthem that we’ve all been waiting to hear from the Chicago native.
Call Me When It’s Over available on iTunes, Apple Music, and Spotify now!