Hip Hop Lite

It is Copenhagen Jazz Festival and to honor this, I decide to dig into my own Jazz archive and find some really nice tracks but since hip hop is often very jazz inspired it is also not hard to find that jazzy hip hop vibe that always brings another dimension to the organised melodic chaos that is jazz.

Summer is officially here and there's been heat waves and rain and humidity so Isabella decided to put together her own mix of hip hop and r&b summer feeling tracks. Hope that you can enjoy it and find some new inspiration for your own summer playlists for all types of occasion.

Isabella discovers more about the San Francisco rapper Larry June, who promotes a healthy lifestyle through his rhymes and sets himself apart from the “culture” of lean and hard drugs.

In this episode of Hip Hop Lite we are gonna do part 2 of our African hip hop discovery series. We are gonna travel to South Africa, which is both influenced by house music and beats as well as the US Hip Hop that west africa also experienced. But, it still stays true to its native rhythms and accents.

In this episode we are going to discover the hip hop and RnB of West Africa and we will also talk about the genre that emerged in Ghana called Hip Life.

In this episode Isabella plays J Cole. He doesn't need any introduction but J Cole has just released his first solo album since KOD back in 2018. It is much anticipated, it generated one of the biggest buzz of this year within hip hop and there is even a little documentary that showcases the making of the album and J Coles positioning as a rapper as well as his own expectations. If you haven't heard the new album yet, let's listen to some of his old stuff too.

In this episode of Hip Hop Lite Isabella is discovering one of the most creative mixtape producers, J.Period. He has worked with Questlove, Nas, Snoop Dogg, Dave Chapelle and many others and he just released his very own debut album called Story to tell - Chapter One.

I am discovering the World's Greatest Boyband, and since this is a hip hop show it might even come as a surprise to some of you out there that this exists and it is not Backstreet Boys nor One Direction. Brockhampton, are the self proclaimed World's Greatest Boyband and if there's one thing that's sure, it is their vision of what this really means. I will explore it all while listening to music from all their 6 studio albums as a boy band starting from their albums from 2017.

In this episode of Hip Hop Lite Isabella re-discovers Bad Boy Entertainment and the Ruff Ryders Anthem, both very iconic for the Hip Hop Golden era. Black Rob and DMX, who both represent these passed away some weeks ago, at the same age, definitely way too soon. Rest in Power to them and it is good that music is timeless.

In this episode of Hip Hop Lite Isabella discovers a website called herebeforeamillion, that brings Youtube videos that have less than 1 million views into one big screen and it feels like you are watching MTV without commercial breaks. The website / playlist is entirely created and curated by a human person. This is an additional great platform that supports up and coming artists.Check out https://herebeforeamillion.com/!

In this episode of Hip Hop Lite Isabella talks about how we can support up and coming artists on streaming services and interviews the artist Thilo from Berlin who knows a lot about this topic and has also released some new music.

In this episode Isabella discovers the rapper Navy Blue, a skater, rapper, producer, model and visual artist. Navy Blue resides in Brooklyn New York and listening to him is like discovering the best and most beautiful hip hop art exhibition that yet again demonstrated the many different facades of hip hop.

In this episode we explore two Wu tang clan members, these two that are a mini wu tang group just the two of them, we are talking about Reakwon and Ghostfacekillah. They recently battled it out on producers Timbaland and Swizz Beatz Verzuz series that became the pandemic phenomena and has already made music history.

Earlier this year Mr Lou Ottens, the inventor of the cassette, passed away. Isabella dives deeper into how the cassette revolutionised audio back in the days and how it is so that the cassette sales has doubled in sales within just a year. She combines this episode with great music from hip hop artists that all are releasing their music digitally as well as on cassettes.

In this episode of Hip Hop Lite, Isabella is discovering the untold history of Soul Beat TV, the first all black owned TV channel from Oakland California. Where artists like Raphael Saadiq and Souls of Mischief had their first TV exposures. Tune in and listen to how this local TV channel gave back to the community from the 70´s to the early 2000´s and catch some really nice music from other artists from The Bay area.

In this week's episode of Hip Hop Lite Isabella discovers the new sound of Jamaica. For the past few years there has been new and exciting discoveries with great talent hailing from Jamaica and these amazing women are taking over the baton and leading the new generation of reggae music and inspiring others to do the same. They are the voice of tomorrow's generation.

'Creative Quest' is the book written by Questlove where he 'questions' (no pun intended) what it means to be creative. Questlove is known as "a man of many hats." His career began as the drummer for the rap band 'The Roots,' a unique anomaly at the time, celebrated for its 'real' musicianship which was considered missing during the sample heavy 90s. Questlove is a person who is everywhere and his reach has transcended hip hop in recent years. This episode Isabella asks what is creativity, specifically during spring. Everything is changing around us but we are still in strict lockdowns throughout Europe (a remix of a familiar sound, if you will).

The evolution of the 'dirty' south, where collaboration is not only the key to success but the biscuits and gravy on the side. Without question, these philosophies of the music making process originated by the Dungeon Family, which birthed the iconic sounds of Outkast and CeeLo Green, are still flourishing in the musical Mecca of Atlanta GA. Call them a super group, a collective, call them whatever you want but make sure to follow it up with extremely talented. Spillage Village is the new south.

Glen Earl Boothe aka knxwledge began making music and publishing it on bandcamp in 2010. He is well known for his soulful collaborations with Andersen Paak that seem effortless and yet nostalgic under the name Nxworries. The two have an obvious unspoken chemistry in their work. There is an authenticity and vulnerability in his sound, more specifically, his love for Meek Mill freestyles laid over jazzy Sunday tunes that feel like he digged them out of crate in the attic.

The English song writer Sade's influence on pop culture and music is unparalleled. The perfect match of mystery and familiarity that keeps her relevant in contemporary music. She has seldom collaborated with rappers formally, but that hasn't stopped them sampling her sound and vocals unapolegetically. This episode, Isabella celebrates the birthday of one of the most iconic musicians of all time and her influence on Hip Hop through the decades.