Have you ever had a moment where you kind of felt disconnected and yearned to be back in the presence of God? In “Coming Home,” Gene Moore speaks of a Father and son relationship that he wants to build up – something we all can relate to.
“There was a point when I had a shift in my mentality, where I realized it was time to get it together,” Moore said. “God told me that I didn’t need to be perfect to come back home, that He’ll do the perfecting part…just get closer to Him.”
Watch his performance of “Coming Home” below in the latest Motown Gospel Music Session.
ABOUT GENE MOORE Profound, beautiful and deeply personal, Gene Moore, opens both his heart and soul on his debut album, THE FUTURE. An exceptional blend of vocals and heartfelt lyrics, THE FUTURE, is a strong entree into music as Moore is being heralded as one of the brightest new voices in music. His smooth, gospel-inflected sound sets him apart from today’s popular climate of praise and worship fare.
Moore teamed up with a host of like-minded writers and producers on THE FUTURE who helped bring his musical testimony to life. The 8-track album is constructed beautifully with uncomplicated production, which allows Moore’s vocal talent to shine. It is an album that is easy to listen to while offering a full picture of who Gene Moore is. With tunes that are based around love, light and healing, THE FUTURE is inspirational, powerful, and relevant.
Sounds Like: True versatility. One minute the Detroit-bred vocalist is a deceptively sweet-sounding, throwback R&B devotee and the next she’s an in-your-face, fire-spitting madwoman.
For Fans of: Jeremih, Aaliyah, Drake if he manned up and became a woman
Why You Should Pay Attention: The 23-year-old Detroit rapper seemingly came from nowhere when she released the darkly twinkling “Try Me,” but she’s been on a rollercoaster ever since. After getting the coveted Drake co-sign (he put some of her lyrics on his Instagram), Dej saw her song reimagined by Wiz Khalifa and E-40, appeared on a track with Eminem and got a deal with Columbia — becoming one of the few female rap artists with a major label contract. Her latest mixtape, Sell Sole, shows her ability to embody whatever corner of the genre she chooses, with a confidence and a writing ability well beyond her years. “My style is free, I do whatever I feel at the moment,” she says. “If I feel like singing, I sing, if I feel like rapping, I rap. I used to be too shy to sing on my earlier songs when I first started out, recording now is more comfortable. So I let loose and do what I want. Swanging!”
She Says: “Nowadays I feel like women rappers come into the game with the same mentality from way back. They think, ‘It’s hard to be a female in the industry.’ They come in using that and it gets them nowhere. My mentality is just to create. No rules. No old-school remedies. What’s next for me is to stamp my name everywhere and become one of the best to ever do it.”
Hear for Yourself: Listen to where it all started with “Try Me” — 13 million plays and counting! By Cady Drell
Sounds Like: Nina Simone’s brother steps into an elegant French café, sits down at the piano and tears open a vein.
For Fans of: Antony and the Johnsons, Nina Simone, Edith Piaf
Why You Should Pay Attention: Born in London to Ghanaian parents, Clementine, 25, was discovered busking in the Paris Metro in 2013 by a French music agent. In short order, the heroically cheek-boned singer who prefers to perform barefoot released his first EP, Cornerstone, and appeared on the BBC TV show Later With Jools Holland, where his galvanizing rendition of the title track earned a big thumbs-up from fellow guest Paul McCartney. His 2014 EP, Glorious You, sealed the deal with another set of proudly despairing kicks against pricks. Benjamin goes international in January with the release of his debut full-length,At Least for Now, and first U.S. tour. A collection of poetry titled Life Through the Eyes of a Wild Greyhound is also in progress.
He Says: “It came out of despair. I just wanted to eat, to survive. I started singing a cappella in bars. I saved up money to get my first guitar and started writing songs. Fame is like icin’ on the cake. What I’ve done mostly is work my ass off. I’m literally nowhere yet…When things started going well, this French designer called Ami gave me some shoes and clothes to wear. But when I sat down to play the piano, the very new shoes kept slipping off the pedal. So I took them off, threw them away and have never worn shoes while playing the piano from then on.”
Hear for Yourself: Benjamin is “all alone in a box of stone” in this powerful solo rendition of “Cornerstone.” By Richard Gehr
Sounds Like: Usher as a vintage soul crooner in 1963, backed by Motown’s Funk Brothers
For Fans of: Sam Cooke, Aloe Blacc circa “I Need a Dollar,” John Legend
Why You Should Pay Attention: Leon Bridges’ elegantly smoldering voice often evokes comparisons to Sam Cooke at his finest. However, his tone is unmistakably modern, a result of listening to 112 and Dru Hill as a teenager growing up in Fort Worth, Texas, before discovering Cooke and the Temptations. “I come from a slow jam background, and that carries over into the music I have now,” he says. Four years ago, he started performing at open mic nights, accompanying himself on guitar. It was at Magnolia Motor Lounge where he met Austin Jenkins of rock group White Denim. “His vision was, ‘I want to make it exactly like it came out in the Fifties and Sixties,'” remembers Bridges. Together with White Denim’s Josh Block, they recorded “Coming Home” and “Better Man,” and premiered the songs on Dallas-based music blog Gorilla vs. Bear last October. A bidding war ensued, with Bridges signing to Columbia, and he subsequently earned raves at this year’s SXSW for songs like “Lisa Sawyer,” where he lovingly details his mother’s childhood in New Orleans, and “Brown Skin Girl,” a celebration of women of color. His debut album, Coming Home, drops on June 23rd.
He Says: Born Todd Bridges, he originally performed under the name Lost Child. “My mom, she used to always tell me whenever I had a haircut or something, ‘Boy, you look like a lost child,” he says. “Later, I wanted a more professional-sounding name. A lot of people in college would call me Leon, after the actor. He acted in Cool Runnings, The Five Heartbeats and The Temptations. People were saying I looked like him. I felt that ‘Leon’ and ‘Bridges’ went together very well.”
Hear for Yourself: On “Better Man,” Bridges and his band strum soulfully on a black & white stage straight out of Shindig! Mosi Reeves
Corinne Bailey Rae: The soul survivor on finishing her album after her husband died and finding love again
Nick Duerden
Corinne Bailey Rae was halfway through making her second album when her husband died. She tells Nick Duerden about the hardest year of her life and how she found her way back to music, happiness and love.
There is a song that comes halfway through Corinne Bailey Rae’s new album, The Heart Speaks in Whispers, in which she ditches her doe-eyed jazzy songstress cloak in favour of channelling her inner Chris Martin.
It’s a delicate acoustic lament called “Stop Where You Are”, and it builds towards what can only be described as an anthemic, sing-along chorus.
“Stop where you are/ Under fading stars/ Light a fire where you are,” she sings, while her backing singers offer some undulating “woah-oh-ohs”. The goosebumps it prompts may be the result of shrewd sonic manipulation, but it is no less effective for it.
When I tell her this – intended as a compliment – on a bright February morning in a West London restaurant, she frowns.
“Coldplay? Really? I’m… I’m not really that aware of Coldplay songs,” she claims, a touch disingenuously given that she too lives on planet Earth.
But she is insistent. “I don’t know their music very well. With “Stop Where You Are”, I was just trying to write a song about being optimistic, really, about grabbing opportunity where it falls.
New-found optimism is a theme that runs throughout an album that seems determinedly positive and meditative, even spiritual in places.
When it was announced that she was at last returning with only her third album in 10 years, it came with the following statement from the singer: “How does the heart speak to us? It speaks through Nature, Dreams, the Body and Instinct. These songs are mystical, elemental and concerned with transformation, verdant with lifeblood and cosmic nature.”
This rather made me fear that she would arrive today in long flowing robes and smelling of Body Shop product, issuing peace signs.
But no, she remains resolutely down-to-earth, and elegant in high fashion. Her new album is similarly tailored and upmarket, and, like everything she has ever done, is impeccably gentle and easy on the ear.
Any lyrical torment only becomes apparent through closer listening, and even when she sings, as her record-label boss puts it, “fuck” songs – with particular reference to the track “Green Aphrodisiac” – she does so in a manner that would raise the eyebrows of precisely nobody.
“I don’t ever feel in control of my songwriting,” she says. “They just sort of… happen. It’s like the fairytale of the shoemaker and the elves. He goes to bed at night, the elves get to work, and when he rises in the morning, all the shoes are there, made. It’s the same with my songs: they just appear.”
Corinne Bailey Rae on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno
In truth, there are not many “fuck” songs on the new record. Many of the tracks, like “Caramel” and “The Skies Will Break”, instead concern the journey taken between darkness and light.
In 2008, her husband, saxophonist Jason Rae, died of a suspected drugs overdose. A medical report detailed traces of alcohol and methadone in his system, and the coroner delivered a verdict of death by misadventure. For Bailey Rae, halfway through completing her second album, everything fell apart.
She spent the most wretched year adjusting to widowhood before The Sea came out. When it did, she immediately went out on the road because, she says: “What else was I going to do? I was still very much in that phase. It hadn’t been that long since Jason died, and it was still my biggest preoccupation in life, a very real and present thing. Playing live with my band – my most trusted friends – seemed like the only thing to do.” And she enjoyed being on tour, she says. She travelled throughout America, and also in Brazil, Indonesia, and South Korea.
“It was great, and the shows themselves really helped focus my mind. But the promotion wasn’t much fun. The interviews I had to do… they were hard.”
Bailey Rae was then, and remains now, an intensely private individual. She makes for charming company, but her conversational comfort zone, among strangers at least, is music, and only that. Dare to stray, and she will guide you politely but firmly right back on topic.
Born in Leeds to an English mother and a father from St Kitts, she was a model student, and the very antithesis of a bad girl, a factor that perhaps contributed to the fact that her first band, Helen – inspired by the American all-girl rock group L7 – never fully convinced.
But being quieter than the average pop star didn’t hurt her career. She came of musical age in 2005, aged 26, alongside the likes of Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen, artists with whom she had little in common, and she stood out.
Her eponymous debut album, released in 2006, sold four million copies, and second album The Sea was a hit in America.
In 2012, her Is This Love EP won a Grammy for Best R&B Performance. She was already writing her third album by then, endlessly tinkering with songs in her home studio in Leeds with producer Steve Brown, a man she had known, and counted as a close friend, since 1997. In 2013, they married.
“It took me ages to even recognise that I was in love with Steve,” she confesses, shyly. “But then I’ve only ever been in love twice in my life, with him and Jason. Both times I didn’t recognise it as love, and both times they started out as friends. I just recognised it as an obsessive desire to spend a lot of time with the same person.”
Being married again clearly suits her. “If you have a time in your life where you weren’t happy, and in fact couldn’t imagine ever being happy again, then to rediscover it is incredible.”
When the album was finished, she says, she “felt relieved.” She then presented it to her American label boss, who liked it but also had reservations.
“He told me I needed to let the sunshine in, that it sounded like I had recorded it in a bubble” (the kind of bubble, perhaps, that kept her largely unaware of bands like Coldplay). “He was also very specific in his criticisms. He wanted to know why we had taken the drums out of the second verse of “Green Aphrodisiac”. ‘Don’t interrupt the rhythm!’ he told me.”
And so he invited her and Brown to Los Angeles, to work on it further. Over the next seven months there, they began to collaborate with other musicians – among them Valerie Simpson, and Marvin Gaye’s drummer James Gadson –and, in this way, gradually let the sunshine in.
“It’s a very seductive place, LA,” she says. “Initially, we had planned to only be there for a few weeks, but, you know, we had a house in the hills, a pool, a soft-top car, and then we got to play with all these incredible musicians, so there was little incentive to leave, really.”
Nevertheless, eventually they had to. Arriving back in Leeds, where there isn’t generally the climate for either a pool or a soft-top car, must have required certain adjustments.
She smiles tersely, as if reluctant to appear critical of her place of birth, and where much of her extended family still resides. “It did,” she says succinctly, and leaves it at that.
After years of emotional turmoil, Bailey Rae seems at last happy again. As our plates are cleared away, I ask if she and her husband are planning to have children. “That’s a little too private, really – considering I’m 36 years old,” she scolds.
And so we turn to other things. She tells me she has been reading a lot of Carl Jung lately, and is consumed by the idea that too many of us think with our brains when we should be listening closer to our hearts – and, apparently, our stomachs.
“Think about it! Why do we have that saying: go with your gut? It’s because there is also grey matter in our intestines!” (recent medical reports suggest there are more than 100 million brain cells in the gut).
“We know a lot of things instinctively, but we end up overthinking. It’s good to know I’m not just a brain in a jar!”
Recently, she was talking to a film composer who had spent seven years obsessing over a single project. “He told me how immersive it was, and how long you could find yourself on just one thing. And then he realised that he was going to die!” She laughs loudly.
“I really related to that because, you know, one day we are going to die! You can be completely consumed by a project, you want every last detail to be perfect, but you have to remind yourself that you are going to die.”
And what did she glean from this particular revelation?
“That we’ve all got to get out there and live more,” she says.
‘The Heart Speaks in Whispers’ by Corinne Bailey Rae was released on 6 May. The single ‘Been to the Moon’ is out now!
MP3 – 64.0kb/s – 1.8MB AndraDay‘s life changedwhenStevieWondercalledher on the telephone. The musicsuperstaraskedDayif he couldworkwithher.
That was almostsixyearsago. StevieWonder had heardabout the singer from hiswife at the time, KaiMillardMorris. She had discoveredDay in a shortvideo. It showedDaysinging in front of a smallshoppingcenter in Malibu, California.
AndraDaysaidhertalkwithStevieWonderinspiredher.
“I was sonervous,” she said. “I keptsaying to myself that he’s just a regularperson. But in the samebreath, I was saying, ‘He’s a legend.’ I feltlike a meteorhitmyhouse. It inspiredme to keeppushing.”
A yearlaterWonderintroducedDay to longtimeproducerAdrianGurvitz. Hesignedher to hiscompany, BuskinRecords.
Nowhercareer is taking off. The 31-year-oldsinger is nominated for twoGrammyAwards – best R&B album for herdebut, “Cheers to the Fall,” and best R&B performance for the single “RiseUp.”
Day and GrammynomineeEllieGoulding will singtogether at the awardsceremony. The GrammyAwards are on February 15.
Untilthen, Day is preparing for herupcoming 35-cityshowtour.
Everythingseems to be fallingintoplace for Day.
“Myprayers are beinganswered for mycareer,” she said. “There‘s a reason I have this platform. There‘s a reason I have this gift. It’s a blessing.”
FilmmakerSpikeLeesawDayperformlastyear at the SundanceFilmFestival. She sangthereduring a NinaSimonetribute. AfterseeingDay’s performance, Leeoffered to direct the musicvideo for herfirstsingle, “ForeverMine.”
This month, Day will appear on a BlackHistoryMonthprogram on ESPNtelevision. ESPN is featuringDay and hersong “RiseUp” as part of the network‘s BlackHistoryMonthhour-longprogram. It airsFebruary 14th. “RiseUp” will playduring the specialprogram, whichhonorsblackathletes.
Day has alsoperformed in commercialswithStevieWonder and SerenaWilliams. Over the holidays, the ObamafamilyaskedDay to perform in twoWhiteHouseevents, including the 2015 NationalChristmasTreeLightingceremony.
Daysaidheralbum, “Cheers to the Fall,” is aboutherlife. She said that includes a pastrelationship in which she wronged a friend.
“I wantpeople to … not be afraid of theirtruth,” Daysaid. “No matterhowdark or precarious it mayseem, continue to pursueyourtruth.”
I’m CatyWeaver.
The AssociatedPressreported this story. CatyWeaveradapted it for LearningEnglish. AshleyThompson was the editor.
Haveyouheard “RiseUp” or seen a video of AndraDayperforming the song? We want to hear from you. Write to us in the CommentsSection or visitourFacebook page.
AJ and Free are back to host BET’s “106 & Park.” Wait a minute, something sounds a little fishy. Plus we have to remember that today is April 1. And you know what happens on the first of April. But since AJ Calloway himself took to Instagram Friday afternoon (April 1) to tell the world…
If you’ve picked up a copy of NUVO or tuned into WFYI within the past year, there’s a good chance you’ve come in contact with some of Kyle Long’s work. A longtime local music advocate, the Cultural Cannibals co-founder also orchestrates and DJs at all kinds of parties around town as well, exposing dance floors to a unique blend of music from around the world.
Before Cultural Cannibals upcoming New Year’s Eve party (in partnership with Old Soul Entertainment) at Georgia Reese’s Downtown, Seth Johnson caught up with Long to talk about his musical roots and how they led him to where he is now.
Seth Johnson: I know that you’re someone who’s now very passionate about local music. That being said, when were you first introduced to Indiana music, and do you remember if there was anything specific that initially sparked your interest?
Kyle Long: I used to go to shows all the time. I would go to all-ages shows when I was a teenager. They used to have shows out on the Westside at the India Community Center, which was literally an Indian community center. It was mostly straight-edge bands that would come through there. Like, that was kind of the home base for a lot of Split Lip’s early shows. So I would go there, but the main venue that I really loved was called the Sitcom [mentioned in Seth Johnson’s NUVO story on music venues lost to time], which was in SoBro. I saw a lot of local bands there, but I also saw Bikini Kill, Beat Happening, Rancid, Huggy Bear and all these other cool groups play there. So I was hearing local hardcore and punk rock groups at those venues, but what really got me fascinated with local music… and I remember this vividly… is I went to a record sale at the Speedway Public Library. It was in the middle of the day. No one was there, and they were selling used books and records. This was pre-Internet, so you’re just kind of experiencing everything at face value. But, I found this record for a quarter. It was called In This World by Billy Wooten, and Billy Wooten was a vibraphonist who played with the great Blue Note guitarist Grant Green.
So I was curious about this record and bought it, and I was just blown away by this track called “Chicango.” It was just this funky Latin track recorded here in Indianapolis. I was reading all the musicians’ names and reading where it was recorded, and that just set off an interest. I was like, “Wow. There’s this whole history of music here that I never was aware of — things that I couldn’t have possibly imagined happening here.” So from that point on, I just started picking up local albums when I would find them. And over the years, I accumulated tons of local records. I would just buy them because they looked interesting, and that turned into a deeper fascination with the music scene.
As Eryn Allen Kane tells it, she got her start in the most cliché way: in the church.
Kane was raised on Detroit’s east side attending Detroit School of the Arts—the same as the late Aaliyah, which was a huge driving factor in her enrollment there. After a sticky development deal gone wrong she spent her college years focusing on acting. Shortly after college she found herself longing to sing again. A summer in Australia led to her unleashing creativity in a minimalist fashion, recording songs comprised purely of vocals for horn sounds and lyrics with her beating on tables and baskets for percussion. She returned to Chicago with a compilation of songs and a spark that indicated she was ready to launch her career.
At what point did you decide music would be your focus? I was a little confused and went to Australia just to clear my mind. That’s when I got in touch with myself and realized I wasn’t living up to my fullest potential and wasn’t doing what I love. At first it was therapeutic for me. It ended up being something where I was like I need to do this for myself for my own happiness. I went back and I got to work.
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How did the “Baltimore” collaboration with Prince come about? A couple years back I released an acapella song called “Hollow.” We shot the video and put it out. It was my first song ever to be really put into the universe. Prince got a hold of it. He tweeted out the video and said “Wallow Hollow” or something like that. His people contacted my manager saying they wanted to meet up. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Two years later I released “Have Mercy.” I guess he kept his eye on me because a couple of days later he hit us up and was like ‘That song you released is great. Do you want to be on this song I have?’
And then? He flew us to Minnesota. We got in the studio and he gave me the freedom to do whatever I pleased. He said, ‘I need your soul on this track.’ The day after it was released he asked if I wanted to come perform with him for the peace rally [in Baltimore]. I was just blown away. It was just all a little bit too much for me. It’s been an amazing ride. I’m so thankful for him coming into my life and believing in my music. He’s sort of a mentor right now.
What kind of advice has Prince given you? He really wants to see young talented artists thrive. He wants to see real musicians get shine. He tells me to stay true to myself even though my music isn’t the type of music that’s being played on the radio all the time it’s important for people to hear it. He’s like, it’s up to you to be authentic and stay true to who you are at all costs because that is going to give you a long career.
He encourages you to be authentic. Yeah, authentic and not let people have you like, ‘Oh you’re supposed to make this kind of club song or this kind of … We’re supposed to add this to or these cents and this and that.’ He’s like, ‘Your generation is going to be the generation that needs to change some of the bad things that are happening with artists in the music business right now so it’s up to you to be authentic and to stay true to who you are at all costs because that is what’s going to give you a long career.’ That’s exactly what he is an example of, staying true to who you are no matter what. It’s a really good example to look at and to follow after.
The first song I heard of yours was “Have Mercy.” You created all of the instruments and the background yourself. Yeah, that’s all me. That’s how I create music. I do the entire thing just like that. Then for my EP I did all my songs like that and then gave it to my friends who are instrumentalists and said, ‘Okay can we translate these vocals into the percussion, the horn sections and the guitar, and this and that?’ They just mimicked the vocals that I was doing on their instruments. That’s how we made the EP. “Have Mercy” is the only all vocal song on there. The rest is live band, but it was made like “Have Mercy.”
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Who else has influenced your sound? Gospel. My mother’s a really big Chaka Khan fan and Aretha Franklin fan. Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Etta James, Nina Simone, all the greats. I was really into gospel singers for a minute.
Who are some current artists that you relate to or maybe get influenced by? I’m really into the Alabama Shakes right now. They’ve just released an album that I’ve been listening to front to back since it came out. The lead singer is a very powerful singer. She’s got a really strong presence and soul presence. She’s someone who I’d say… she’s just amazing. That’s an amazing band too. I love the whole live instrument aspect of that. Yeah, they’re one. Leon Bridges is really great. I’m into his stuff right now. Jack White, I’ve always been a fan of his—rock n roll guy from Detroit where I’m from. They’re all amazing artists that I really respect.
Finish this sentence, “My music is…” Timeless.
Eryn Allen Kane’s forthcoming EP, Aviary, is expected to be released this
Prohibition Entertainment in Nyc is excited to announce a strategic marketing alliance with the new app Band & Me. As part of the collaboration Prohibition vocalist TRAEDONYA! aka The Bride Of New Funk Hipopera is the inaugural ”Artist Ambassador” for the Band & Me app brand. The marketing collaboration will involve exclusive content windows, marketing spots, contests and tactical data analysis. For the foreseeable future all of TRAEDONYA’S! new media and content will premiere thru the Band & Me app for short windows of time. Tocelebrate the launch of Band & Me TRAEDONYA’S! new single Brooklyn 2 Grenada Ras Abda.
I am amped about being part of something from inception. I feel this app is a must have for all serious music fans around the world! says TRAEDONYA! See the link below to learn about the benefits of the Band & Me app. Download the app to get her new single.
Band & Me is a mobile app that lets fans share in the music journeys of their favorite bands. With Band & Me fans can stop searching for news about the bands and artists they love because it’s all in a single location. The most recent items appearing in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Youtube and other pertinent information about those artist you care about. Members of the app get a direct connection and special access to bands and artists they are passionate about.
The bands and artist can deliver personal messages, ones that can give something special…Recognition, exclusivity and participation in exclusive events. The Band & Me app is exclusive to the Itunes app store.
For Android family users won’t be left out TRAEDONYA! has joined the Noise Trade is a platform where music is the whole point! TRAEDONYA! has released a 3 song sampler including her brand new single Brooklyn 2 Graneda to introduce herself to that community of 1.3 million music lovers. Android users join Noise Trade to get the new single. See the link below.
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The Evolution! 