Eva Walker

Talented pianist and bandleader, Sérgio Mendes, scored a huge comeback hit with the now Carnival classic, “Magalenha”. Appearing on his 1992 album, "Brasileiro," the song helped to re-establish Mendes at the very top tier of Brazilian pop music and was a huge international success to boot.: www.djdmac.com

Happy birthday, hip hop! On August 11, 1973, an 18-year-old, Jamaican-American DJ who went by the name of Kool Herc threw a back-to-school jam at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, New York. During his set, he decided to do something different. Instead of playing the songs in full, he played only their instrumental sections, or “breaks” - sections where he noticed the crowd went wild. During these “breaks” his friend Coke La Rock hyped up the crowd with a microphone. And with that, hip hop was born.: www.fastcompany.com

In this BBC article, singer, artist, model , and actress Grace Jones is revered as a pioneering queen of pop: www.bbc.com

Run the Jewels on the video for this track: "This video is a fantasy of waking up on a day that there is no monetary system, no dividing line, no false construct to tell our fellow man that they are less or more than anyone else. Not that people are without, but that the whole meaning of money has vanished. That we have somehow solved our self-created caste system and can now start fresh with love, hope and celebration. It’s a dream of humanity’s V-DAY… and the party we know would pop off.”":www.youtube.com

'Why so sad?...Walking around with them blue faces..." On “​untitled 08 | 09.06.2014.,” Kendrick laments the financial difficulties faced by black Americans, and contextualizes his success in spite of it. Here are the lyrics: genius.com

Read a biography of this quartet from South Central Los Angeles: www.allmusic.com

You just heard The Pharcyde's "Passing Me By." They were sampling this song, Quincy Jones' 1973 "Summer in the City." HE was covering the original 1966 song by The Lovin' Spoonful. The original song features car horns and jackhammer noises, during the instrumental bridge, to represent the sounds of a noisy city street.

Burna Boy said about this song: “It’s important for me to show that music is a uniting force that transcends state lines, barriers and borders. This song is about the ‘wonders’ of seeing the impact of my music on people’s lives as they shared their joy, pain and pleasure with me while I toured the world. It serves as a note that no matter how far you go, or how hard you work; you must be ready to come home, the pandemic forced us all to take refuge in our homes. Above all, Africa is home, it is the motherland to all people. For us to truly matter, Africa has to matter.” Watch the "wonderful"l video: www.youtube.com

Here's a 2019 KEXP interview with Victoria Legrand of Beach House. She talks about "Zebra" and the interview features the video for the song: www.kexp.org

Crack Cloud emerged from the fog of Vancouver's opioid crisis. Many of the members of Crack Cloud live and work together in harm reduction units located in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. "Tunnel Vision" was recently selected as a KEXP Song of the Day. Read more about it and download the song for yourself: www.kexp.org

Black Thought, born Tariq Trotter, has just released a new solo album, "Streams of Thought, Vol. 3: Cane and Abel.": themusicuniverse.com Watch the short film for "Thought Vs Everybody," which features vocal clips from activist Angela Davis, here: www.youtube.com

Purchase "Degressive" from this Seattle band here: darksmith.bandcamp.com

The song became Camp Lo's biggest hit, peaking at #50 on the Billboard Hot 100 while also becoming a bigger hit on the Rap Singles chart where it reached #5.: www.youtube.com

Here's the official Solar Records biography of Dynasty: web.archive.org

Seattle band Advertisement just released their debut album, "American Advertisement," in July. "Pretty Money" was the first single off the release.: ventsmagazine.com

"Song 33" was featured in last week's KEXP "The Weekly Mix" podcast; it interweaves music, statements by artists, poetry and healing words for and from Black, Indigenous, People of Color.: www.kexp.org

Like many rap songs from the early '90s, this was built on samples. The sampled tracks are: "Sing a Simple Song" by Sly & the Family Stone, "Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved" by James Brown, "Hihache" by Lafayette Afro Rock Band, "Bicentennial Ni--er" by Richard Pryor, "I'm Nin'Alu: by Ofra Haza, "It's Yours" by T La Rock and Jazzy Jay, and "Dumb Girl" by Run-D.M.C.

"....Kraftwerk had the most defined mission. They built a concept around the menschmaschine (or human machine) powered by a Kraftwerk (power station)." Read a wonderful tribute to Kraftwerk and "The Man-Machine": classicalbumsundays.com

"It’s well known that ‘The Message,’ with its slow, spare, ominous groove and downbeat slice-of-life lyric, opened new directions for hip-hop. Released in July 1982, it pointed away from the good-times boasting and partying of the genre’s early milestones, toward harsher territories that would be explored by outfits like Public Enemy, BDP and NWA as the 1980s unfolded." Learn about the making of "The Message.": damienlove.com

The track answers back at the people who criticize the group for their hippie image: “You say Plug One and Two are hippies” / No we’re not, that’s pure plug bull”. “Me Myself And I” is the group attempting to convince the public that they are not “try-hards” or solely focused on their image and not their music.: storyofsong.com

Anderson .Paak gathers with friends as he reflects on racial injustice, police brutality, unemployment and COVID-19 in the new video for his protest song, “Lockdown.” The video also features a devastatingly long list of Black people who have been killed, including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin. www.youtube.com

Daniel Dumile, better known by several stage names, most notably MF Doom, is a British rapper, songwriter, and record producer. Here's a guide to "10 essential tracks": www.factmag.com

Watch Ms. Lauryn Hill wow the crowd at Austin City Limits when she performed this song live: www.youtube.com

She IS a queen. She is 50 years old this year, born on March 18th, 1970 as Dana Elaine Owens. When she was 8 years old, a Muslim cousin gave her the nickname Latifah, meaning "delicate and sensitive" in Arabic. Here's a biography of this gifted musician: www.hiphopscriptures.com

"Julie-C is an artist, educator, agitator, and cultural catalyzer hailing from the Coast Salish Autonomous Zone/Technocratic City-State of Seattle." Follow her here on her Facebook page: www.facebook.com

This samples "Back Door Santa," which is a 1968 blues track by Clarence Carter. In Carter's song, Santa is sneaking around with another man's girl. "Christmas in Hollis" tells the story of an encounter with Saint Nick in Hollis, Queens, which is where Run-D.M.C. grew up.

Watch the lyric video for "Spaceships" from New Orleans band Tank and The Bangas: www.youtube.com

Wow! "Quality Control" turned 20 in June!: www.spin.com

SAULT's powerful new album "embodies the soul, spirit, and sanctity of revolution": www.albumism.com

A track from the group's debut album, there are just two verses in the lyric; Q-Tip takes the first one and Phife Dawg does the second. Phife, who was just 19 when he recorded it, in later years said that he had a hard time listening to his verse because he didn't like the way his voice sounded back then - he thought it was too high-pitched. Here's the official video: www.youtube.com