Byron Major has achieved quite a lot for a 24 year old – he’s performed his original song ‘South Africa’ at Nelson Mandela’s Boston birthday celebration in 2013, shared a stage with Pavarotti for his farewell tour in South Africa as part of the Drakensberg Boys Choir, made it to the Top 24 of South African Idols at the age of 17, and sang alongside Grammy Award-winning songwriter Paula Cole at a songwriting showcase while attending the prestigious, Berklee College of Music in America. His 2016 single ‘May Flower’ caught the attention of 21 radio stations across the UK and was produced by multi-platinum selling producer Andy Whitmore (Lemar, Atomic Kitten & Eternal) in the Londoner’s Greystoke Studios. Byron Major’s original track “Delicious” charted for 10-weeks on college radio in South Africa. Now in 2017, Matchbox Music PR is proud to present Pop-artist, Byron Major’s latest single, “Midnight Daydream”. This song peaked at number 26 on the UK Music Week official club charts for Commercial Pop. World-renowned DJ/Producer Mikey Gallagher has remixed the track with an inspired disco beat, Beatlesque piano arrangement and soulful R&B vocals, which are sure to get the club pumping and dance floor jiving. The follow […]
Shadz & YS drop a gem of a mixtape with ‘Duality’
Shadz & YS are both members of south east London rap and hip hop collective MCR. Shadz is the harmony master and sing a long rapper while YS would be considered more the hype man of the two. Shadz and YS had a successful 2017 with a good number of releases from Shadz being released performing at a number of shows in London. Shadz & YS are influenced by rappers like mad b, lil durk and Big Chess. Their forthcoming Mixtape entitled ‘Duality’ was produced by The fanatix & Just B Studios ( chip, sneakbo, not3s, fredo, section boys ) and is out now on pre-order with the full release set to come out later in 2018. The first single off ‘Duality’ is called ‘Juicy Flex’ and is already available and out now from all good digital stores. Shadz and YS Online: https://mobile.twitter.com/ShadzMCR https://mobile.twitter.com/YS_MCR https://www.instagram.com/morecreamregardless https://www.instagram.com/ys_mcr https://www.instagram.com/shadzmcr
Culture II – Migos
While their rise to fame was somewhere between fast and meteoric, the Atlanta trio Migos are steeped in the Southern tradition of hip-hop groups, having come together over their shared love of acts like the Hot Boys and OutKast. Members Offset, Quavo, and Takeoff, who are all related, grew up together and first started making music in 2009 under the name Polo Club, with the name Migos becoming official in 2010. In 2012, they released the mixtape No Label, which featured the cut “Bando,” a regional hit that caught the attention of producer Zaytoven and Kevin Lee, aka Coach K, the manager who launched the careers of Gucci Mane and Young Jeezy. The year 2013 was a whirlwind as June saw the group drop its Young Rich N*ggas mixtape, which featured the instant hit “Versace.” That same year, Coach K got them on the Hot 107.9 Birthday Bash, a popular Atlanta festival where Migos came across their newest fan, Drake. The rapper added a verse to the “Versace” remix and put the cut on his 2013 album, Nothing Was the Same. Featuring the hit single “Fight Night,” 2014’s No Label II was the group’s next high-profile release, as it was […]
Language of the Heart – Santiago Quartet
Astor Piazzolla’s wild, sensual Las Cuatro Estaciónes Porteños (The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires) combines the sultriness of the tango with the coolness of classical modernism for a vivid portrait of the heat and energy of his native city. Virtuoso bandoneon player Julian Rowlands provides the Latin foil to the Santiago Quartet’s passionate playing, full of ardour and considerable technical skill. In contrast, contemporary British composer Will Todd’s Birthday Quartet explores themes of human struggle—love, loss, resignation—in gentler music of sublime beauty. Both works, in their unique, personal ways, speak directly from the heart. Get more HOT new releases at Apple
Black Panther The Album Music From And Inspired By – Kendrick Lamar, The Weeknd, SZA
Platinum-selling, Grammy-nominated rapper Kendrick Lamar is one of the rare artists who has achieved critical and commercial success while earning the respect and support of those who inspired him. A native of Compton, California, Lamar originally rapped as K. Dot and released a series of mixtapes under that name. Youngest Head Nigga in Charge (2003), issued when he was only 16 years old, caught the attention of Top Dawg Entertainment and led to a long-term association that helped raise the rapper’s profile. Training Day (2005) and C4 (2009) also preceded his decision to go by his birth name. The latter was issued the same year he became part of Black Hippy — beside fellow Top Dawg artists Ab-Soul, Jay Rock, and ScHoolboy Q — a group whose members, for the most part, appeared on one another’s mixtapes and albums. Overly Dedicated (2010) was the first Kendrick Lamar mixtape and fared well enough to enter Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart that October. His first official album, Section.80 (2011), was released as a digital download the following year and entered the Billboard 200 at number 113. By that point in his career, Lamar’s reputation had been strengthened through guest appearances on dozens of […]
London based Tearborn unleash new single ‘Beauty in Me’
Tearborn are a duo based in London that consists of Monika Mikalauskaite on Lead vocals and Kelly Hauge on production. The duo are an Independent band with British, Norwegian and Lithuanian roots. Tearborn met in Buspace Studios, Ladbroke Grove while Monika was studying music. In her own words “I was sitting in on a recording session when Kelly was working on a new song and needed female vocals. He randomly asked me “can you sing” ? and that was the beginning of it”. Tearborn successfully released their first cover ‘What is Love’ as a taster, which led to their first original single ‘Beauty in Me’. Kelly was inspired by the likes of Jimmy Hendrix, Mother’s Finest and the ‘urban’ hip hop movement. Monika’s biggest influence was Linkin Park as it pulled her towards a music career, but song writing was always in her heart as she wrote her first songs when she was just seven years old. The New Single ‘Beauty in Me’ was recorded and produced at Buspace Studios, The Recording Workshop and is out now. Tearborn Online: https://tearborn.com/ https://twitter.com/tearbornmusic https://www.instagram.com/tearbornmusic https://www.facebook.com/tearbornmusic https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcZhXlNOxX6rwsusiUYuLlQ
NEW MUSIC TIP – Brixton – Sneakbo
Born Agassi Odusina in 1992, in southwest London, this inventive rapper combined grime with Afro-beat and dancehall influences to create a sound that sporadically graced the U.K. singles charts from 2011 onward. Sneakbo got his first break when the Play Hard management company/label — home to fellow London artist Chipmunk — took interest and he was ultimately signed to their label. His debut single, “The Wave,” was issued in late 2011, during the brief period that he was imprisoned following charges of aggravated assault. When he was released, Sneakbo focused on building upon that single’s success by recording new material and making live appearances throughout Europe. Jetski Wave, his own clothing line, soon began to flourish and by the end of 2012, he had guested on D’banj’s U.K. Top Ten hit “Oliver Twist” and had his first solo Top 40 single in the form of November’s “Zim Zamma.” Continuing to work with production duo Ill Blu, Sneakbo enjoyed further success in summer 2013 with the Shabba Ranks-sampling “Ring a Ling.” In 2014 he guested on another U.K. pop hit, “Dr. Who!” by Tujamo and Plastik Funk. He also released his full-length Certified, which featured several tracks produced by Ill Blu […]
Bobby Tarantino II – Logic
An imaginative and stylistically dynamic rap artist who emerged during the early 2010s, Logic launched his career through uploads and independent mixtapes prior to reaching the mainstream with a Def Jam record deal. Born Sir Robert Bryson Hall II in Gaithersburg, Maryland, the rapper, singer, songwriter, and producer dropped a mixtape as Psychological in 2009, then shortened his name. After the 2010 release of Young, Broke, & Infamous, Logic joined the independent label Visionary Music Group. A one-tape-per-year schedule continued with a trilogy of Young Sinatra releases, a period during which he toured internationally without label support and was selected for XXL magazine’s Freshman Class of 2013. Additionally, Logic and Visionary Music Group worked out a contract with Def Jam. Logic released his major-label debut album, Under Pressure, in October 2014. Executive produced by No I.D., it didn’t need any guest appearances to enter the Billboard 200 chart at number four, and was eventually certified gold by the RIAA. The Incredible True Story, an ambitious concept album based 100 years in the future, arrived in November 2015 and peaked at number three on the Billboard 200. The following year, Logic embarked on the Endless Summer Tour with G-Eazy, YG, and […]
Lil Boat 2 – Lil Yachty
With hair that looks like red-hot cheese curls and the wild Atlanta ATLien style to match, Miles McCollum — best known as singer/rapper and Sailing Team leader Lil Yachty — bounces between the feel-good positivity of D.R.A.M. and the druggy weirdness of Future with the greatest of ease. Part of this is due to the use of two personas, the wild Lil Yachty and the stern but strange MC Lil Boat. He began to break in 2015 when Drake’s OVO Sound Radio show aired his bizarre, singsongy number “Minnesota.” In early 2016, his other persona became the name of Lil Boat, his debut for the Capitol- and Motown-affiliated independent Quality Control. The mixtape featured “Minnesota” along with “One Night,” a woozy party cut that reached number 30 on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop chart and cracked the Hot 100. An appearance at Kanye West’s Yeezy Season 3 fashion show followed soon after, along with an appearance on Chance the Rapper’s Top Ten mixtape Coloring Book. A second Quality Control mixtape, Summer Songs 2, arrived that August and debuted on the R&B/Hip-Hop chart at number 44. By the end of the year, Yachty scored a hit with D.R.A.M.’s playful “Broccoli,” which peaked at […]
MUZIK MIRROR HOT NEW RELEASE -MEMORIES DON’T DIE – Tory Lanez
Tory Lanez was one of the more versatile commercial artists to surface during the early 2010s. A songwriter and producer who flits between and fuses R&B and rap — his vocals alternate between swift and rugged boasts and smooth and sensitive come-ons — he made steady strides toward the mainstream with numerous mixtapes, guest appearances, and self-directed videos. He spent parts of his early life in Toronto, his birthplace, as well as in Montreal, Miami, Atlanta, and New York. Although he was known underground well before his 20th birthday, and was supported early on by Sean Kingston, he made some of his biggest moves in 2014. During that year, he was featured on “Me & My Bitch” — a track off YG’s Top Five album My Krazy Life — and among his own tracks that circulated in 2014 was “The Mission,” his first cut to hit Billboard’s Twitter Emerging Artists chart. In July 2015, after he had signed an Interscope-affiliated deal with Benny Blanco’s Mad Love label, he released “Say It,” an R&B slow jam that sampled Brownstone’s mid-’90s hit “If You Love Me” and peaked the following February at number 23 on the Billboard Hot 100. A handful of […]
Armonite release new album "And the Stars Above" on Cleopatra Records.
Composer Paolo Fosso and violinist Jacopo Bigi are classical-trained but “classical” is not how they would describe their genre. Through their teenage years they joined a few local bands playing a variety of genres and artists from the Beatles to Dream Theater. At the end of the ’90s while still in college they played in a band called Armonite. They released an album in 1999 performed a few dates live and then split up. In 2015 they formed a new band while borrowing the name of their old one. When they had enough tracks to make an album they hired Porcupine Tree’s bassist Colin Edwin and Dutch drummer Jasper Barendregt for the recording which took place remotely. The first producer of Muse, Paul Reeve accepted the offer to produce the entire work with mastering at Abbey Road Studios in London. Their album ‘The Sun is New each Day’ was released in June 2015. On September 21 Armonite performed at Expo 2015 Milano for The Water Rooms Official Launch organized by UNESCO. After their performance in Bettmeralp, Switzerland at an elevation of 2000 meters (6 500 ft) the band toured UK in mid-July 2016. Armonite has published the videos of a […]
Rae Stewart hits the official UK Charts with debut single ‘Be Down’
Introducing Rae Stewart the latest R&B vocal sensation from Manchester, UK. Rae has spent many years behind the curtain honing her skills and perfecting her art and after some recent newfound confidence she is ready to step out of the shadows and shine her own perspective light on the world. Rae Stewart is influenced by and grew up to the sounds of John Holt, Denise Brown, Bob Marley, Blondie, rock and roll, Cuban music, Prince, George Clinton, James Brown, Lauren hill, Swv, Aaliyah, Missy Elliot, Lil Kim, Faith, Brandy, Lil Mo, Destiny child and B2k. After finding a lane to drive in at her own speed and a team that supports, manages and produces her musical endeavours in the form of NorthSide Media Entertainment, this enabled her to create and experiment, thus in turn finding the right sound for her voice. Over some retro R&B sounds, Rae opens up on her first single ’Be Down’ an open heart pledge to a friend that states she’s ready to take their previously platonic relationship to the next level. In the tradition of classic R&B Miss Stewart lays her heart on the line, openly expressing feelings while ultimately demanding her love be taken […]