Thug Misses – 99 U Ain’t 1

Blog, Industry Spotlight, ME Blog, Music, Promo, Videos

Thug Misses pops off like a little gun while rapping on hot new single ’99 U Ain’t 1’ 

VALLEJO, CA – As a half-Black, half-Latina female artist trying to make her way in the music industry, Camille “Thug Misses” Carlos has faced her fair share of challenges. Like a lot of other women in the industry – especially those within the hip-hop genre – she feels like she hasn’t always gotten the credit she deserves. That’s not to say she’s proud or even bitter about some of the things she’s missed out on throughout her career – in fact, she’s quite humbled by the opportunities she’s been given. But to say that it’s been effortless and without challenge is inaccurate. She’s overcome a lot of adversity as a woman in the industry, which she chronicles on her latest hit single “99 U Ain’t 1.” 

Inspired by the hit Jay-Z single “99 Problems,” the Thug Misses single features fellow artists Hitta Slim and Mistah F.A.B. It’s a contemporary rock meets hip-hop kind of East Coast old-school vibe. Thug Misses takes it back to the basics of the genre by spitting some solid bars on top of a drum-heavy beat enhanced by live instrumentation. She raps about how it feels to be a woman in the industry, how there seems to be a problem around every corner, and how she doesn’t have time for any new issues new people might bring to the table. 

“One of the key things that makes me different as a female artist in hip-hop is that I’m not talking about sex, sex, sex,” she said. “The majority of the Top 10 female recording artists on major labels are heavily promoting sex. That’s just not my style. I’m actually writing about something – like back in the day when Tupac and Biggie used to write. But I’m not sounding outdated. I’m still touching on key subjects that are relevant and refreshing for today’s culture. I put a dope beat to it and I’m really saying something important.” 

Some of her other recent songs have tackled issues of African American and Asian American injustices in this country. Others uplift women and praise men for what they’re doing to promote feminism. She even gets transparent and attempts to motivate others out of personal struggles by inspiring them to overcome challenges in life 

Known as a woman who “really gasses” on the mic, Thug Misses has been in the industry for a minute. She started when she was younger after being discovered right out of high school by Shawn “C-Bo” Thomas of the West Coast Mafia Gang. She was with that label for about 10 years – writing and recording and earning her reputation as a aggressive and hard-hitting rapper. It was C-Bo who christened her with her stage name after telling her one day that “when you rap you pop off like a little gun.” She also loves to embrace the duality of her hair-braided-and-tatted-up exterior that sometimes she likes to dress up with makeup and high fashion. At the end of the day she said she hopes to mostly be known for her quality as a writer and rapper.  

“I can really write,” she said. “I can be prolific. When you think of Tupac, people are still playing his music today. What he had to say never goes out of style. That’s what I want my music to be – never outdated. You can hear it today or 20 years from now and enjoy it.” 

Thug Misses said she has more music that she’s creating with her business partners Jason Gilbert and Julius “LJ” Jackson of Eargazm Music Group, and encourages fans to keep an eye out for more singles this summer. 

To listen to Thug Misses’ music, or to follow her on social media, please visit the following links: 

Instagram – @dathugmisses  

www.Facebook.com/thugmisses707  

www.TheRealThugMisses.com 

www.YouTube.com/c/thugmisses  

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1YKAeco0oHmIz4JTHCFio3?si=zJln2SMgQiOipS1NWAMd6g

Yung Yaro – Illiterate

Blog, Industry Spotlight, ME Blog, Music, Promo, Videos

Find What “Lies” Beneath Deceit With Yung Yaro 

Yung Yaro isn’t who you think she is. She defies any and all expectations. She rejects your labels and dissolves your preconceptions. “I like to read poetry,” said Yung Yaro. “That’s how I started writing music in the first place.” Yung Yaro has sharpened both her intellect and her songwriting prowess. “The last year has been horrible,” Yung Yaro admitted. “But before, I wasn’t as tuned in as I am now.”  

Yung Yaro’s song “Illiterate” beseeches a person to view the plank in their own eye before pointing out the speck in another’s eye. “It comes from the way people perceive me,” said Yung Yaro. “They think that you’re behind where they are. They feel like you don’t have a strong vocabulary.” She elaborated, “I know that you feel I’m this person. Realize that my eyes are open. I don’t speak on everything that comes my way. But my tongue is very strong. When I speak, it comes on strong. I know y’all think that I’m clueless. But I see what you’re doing.”  

“Fair Enough” represents Yung Yaro’s acceptance of the often crippling unfairness and injustice of reality. “Either we’re inside a grave or your mama making visits. Suicide on my mind,” recites Yung Yaro. She delved deeper into the song’s subject matter, explaining, “After I came home from prison, it was an oversight of everything that was going on. Those 3 years became so many years of my life. It was a hard time.”  

The music video for “Lies” shows Yung Yaro trekking through the graveyard of her own thoughts. She directed the video herself, using dark hues of blue and green to bring her anguish to life. “It’s supposed to be based on living within my mind,” said Yung Yaro. “Everything has to be dark. It’s supposed to be a fabricated story. The fabrication comes from you. You believe the storyline is a lie, but you’re actually living inside my mind.”  

“Lies” offers listeners an intimate peek into how deceit causes genuine, enduring pain. “When I visited the graveyard and the bathroom,” said Yung Yaro. “Those are my places. Those are either places I’ve been trapped or fallen off of. That’s where it starts. hTat’s where I am the most dead and alive. At the same time, in my dreams. But I want to allow people to come up with their own perspective of it.” 

For the foreseeable future, Yung Yaro has many upcoming projects. “We’re looking at a 90s EP. A different flavor, for me at least. I’m gonna try SWV and Boyz II Men. To reach back and bring those flavors back,” she said. Yung Yaro also plans on finishing an upcoming novel. “I’m working on rewriting my book, Betrayal Lives In All Corners (BLAC). It’s the first in a series and will be self-published. Beyond that, I’m looking at launching a clothing line.”  

Stream the music video for Yung Yaro’s “Lies” and follow her on all social media channels via the links below.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8-uoSZ4Gzc 

https://www.instagram.com/__yungyaro/ 

https://www.facebook.com/yung.yaro.9  

https://youtube.com/channel/UCM1g3HUR-whI7KE1KL4fjuA  

https://twitter.com/__yungyaro

Chlz – Simple

ME Blog, Music, Promo, Videos

Angelic voice of Toronto’s Chlz soars with sultry lo-fi sounds on debut self-titled album 

TORONTO, CANADA – It’s not often that a classically trained, triple-threat performer like Toronto’s Chlz enters the scene with all of the elements needed to create a musical hit. But now that she has it’s time to sit up and pay attention.  

Originally from British Columbia, Chlz marries classic R&B, Jazz and Soul vibes with her signature cosmic and sultry lo-fi sounds. She cleverly does this in a way that makes you feel like you’re in a deep, claw-foot-tub with a glass of wine and feeling good about life.  

Chlz will “take you to church” and then some, with lyrics and catchy hooks that are sure to pioneer a new sub-genre for a new era of music. Her deep connection to natural mysticism drives her music to empower and shine a light on the divine feminine within each of her listeners. She does this while also exploring and navigating the real-world ebb and flow of every-changing relationships. These elements came together while Chlz took advantage of the focused time she had during the COVID quarantine of 2020. The end result is her self-titled EP, which she is excited to share with the world. 

“I was fortunate enough to find a space in which to create,” Chlz said. “The EP was born from a time of isolation while navigating various relationships, which were all forced into social-distancing statuses. It’s the kind of territory that no relationship of our time has ever faced. Everything is new, uncharted and difficult. Some of the songs on this EP deal with heartaches and heartbreaks, while adjusting to the changing times. It’s a modern and musical unrequited love sort of thing.” 

Circumstantially, things are different and the pandemic has magnified our attachments, Chlz said. However, a listen through the EP reveals that the whole project is ultimately about a journey back to oneself – making “Simple” one of the most important songs on the project. 

“While sitting in isolation, we can replay the relationships we had with people – how we sometimes over-complicate things and what it’s like to now be without them,” Chlz said. “It also forces you to realize that at the end of the day all you have is you.” 

For many listeners, “Simple” is one of the catchiest songs on the EP. It acts as a sort of personal mantra that plays over and over again in the listener’s head, even long after the song has ended.  

“It’s a musical reflection on how we tend to overcomplicate things in our mind’s eye,” she said. “Sometimes insecurities and traumas can create barriers that keep people from moving forward as their authentic selves, and instead we repeat negative messages to ourselves … which hold us back. It’s easier to deflect and look outward to others and judge their efforts while just sitting there and doing nothing. This project helped me to solidify my understanding that if something is going against the grain, or if you’re trying to force something to flow that’s not right for you, it will magnify chaos to show you that you are not in alignment with something you need to let go of. I was reflecting on how we hesitate to let things go, even when it hurts us. We hide behind beautiful lies because they create a façade of safety to avoid facing ugly truths. So, we overcomplicate things to delay that pain, and only make things worse. 

“Simple” is fun, catchy and deep, but not preachy. Chlz has managed to create a song that is relevant for the current times because it was inspired by true personal reflection. 

“As much as it’s a message for my listeners, when I wrote it there was a reminder to myself – as someone who has a busy mind – to just keep things simple,” she said. “I didn’t want all of my songs to be about romantic relationships. ‘Simple’ is a song about the relationship within myself.” 

The full EP will drop wide across all streaming platforms on April 30. Fans can also check out all of Chlz’s previously released singles on all streaming platforms. Chlz said she hopes people will appreciate the amount of work that went into creating such a high-quality “mystical, ethereal, lo-fi” yet soulful sound. 

“I’m very passionate about creating a sacred space where my fans feel comfortable enough to let their guards down,” she said. “I want to create that feeling of being in a bathtub drinking wine and just being relaxed.” 

To listen to Chlz’s music, or to follow her on social media, please visit the following links: 

TIKTOK: @chlz._ 

INSTAGRAM: @chlz._ 

TWITTER: @chlz_lee 

YOUTUBE: 
https://youtube.com/channel/UC6TKrtIgCVD6P5PKghcHg6g 

https://soundcloud.com/chelsea-lee-norgren/real-ft-macaano 

https://soundcloud.com/chelsea-lee-norgren/unravelled-chlz 

Randy Hannah – The Only 1

Blog, Industry Spotlight, ME Blog, Music, Promo, Videos

Professional balladeer Randy explores lost love with acoustic piano ballad ‘Hands of Time’ 

ROCHESTER, NY – Music has a power to bring people together – whether for the first time, or through reuniting people who have been apart. This is especially true of love songs, and for New York based balladeer Randy, his love ballad “Hands of Time” – set to be released across all streaming platforms this June – is the kind of song that can lead to healing for a lot of people around the world.  

The acoustic piano ballad from this seasoned songwriter and professional musician is told from the point of view of a man who is trying to save his relationship with the woman that he loves. After a bad breakup, she’s left him and he is distraught. He cries himself to sleep because he’s so sorrowful, and he goes into a dream that Randy describes as an almost Wizard of Oz type environment. In this dream the man asks the hands of time to rewind and take him back to a place when the woman was his and things were good between them.  

“He believes he can get to the hands of time and convince them to rewind on his behalf,” Randy said. “It’s a forbidden type of thing, almost – but he’s desperate. I’m a balladeer, and this definitely falls into that category. That’s my thing. I don’t believe love or romance is dead. What you have in today’s market is a lot of sex – too many artists tend to get right down to the sex, and the era I came from the romance came before the sex. You wanted to woo a woman into the bed. That’s the gist of my approach musically. I don’t believe chivalry is dead.” 

Randy has always been that kind of a songwriter and performer. As a child growing up in the 1980s, he studied a lot of the R&B legends of the day – from Baby Face to Michael Jackson to the Isley Brothers and especially Marvin Gaye. He dug deep into the music, and it wasn’t long before he started writing poems to match the songs he was playing on the piano. And along the way he found a purpose and a motivation to the music he was creating. 

“I want to be known for bringing people back together,” he said. “Music is a way to open the door. It’s something that people can use to rekindle their love, or find love for the first time if they’re looking for it. 

Randy said “Hands of time” is part of a bigger album that he plans to release later this year. Before that, however, he’s planning to release another single called “Do All Lives Matter” sometime in mid-June.  

To listen to Randy’s music, or to follow him on social media, please visit the following links: 

https://soundcloud.com/musicbyrandy/the-only-1-radio-edit 

https://www.facebook.com/randyRandy1976 

https://www.instagram.com/randy.Randy/ 

https://twitter.com/RRandy1

J.Adams – Paris

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Smooth vocals from R&B artist J Adams take center stage on new single ‘Paris’ 

PRATTVILLE, AL – A new slow jam featuring the smooth falsetto stylings of Southern R&B artist Jacolby Adams has hit the airwaves and is gaining major buzz from fans all over the world. “Paris” is a groovy R&B classic set against swinging 808s that perfectly features the sultry vocals of this fast-rising artist from Alabama. His voice is hypnotic and the rhythm lulls the listener in and takes them on a sexy journey that is undeniable.  

That’s the kind of music J Adams makes, and it’s the signature style he’s become known for over the years. After years honing his craft and releasing singles to fans for the past decade, J Adams found himself facing 2020 with a lot of tough choices. As he used music to try to navigate his various feelings of confusion and uncertainty, he discovered a desire to reinvent himself and to make commitments that would last the rest of his life. “Paris” is one of the singles that was born from that process. 

“At the end of last year I had a transition within myself,” he said. “I wanted to start off with a clean slate. I started thinking about what I wanted as a man and what I wanted in my relationships. This song is a vision of what a man expects from himself as he tries to build a family. It’s about a man giving his wife everything he desires for her. It’s about self-reflection and asking myself, ‘As a man, what am I really trying to accomplish?’ Paris is a place connected with love, and I wanted to tie that whole concept together. There’s a line in the song that says, ‘We’ll use the language of love together in Paris. See us together in Paris.’ That’s basically how it all comes together.” 

Originally from historic Selma, Alabama, J Adams currently works out of a home studio called Evan’s Room in Prattville, Alabama. His passion in music started at a young age while riding in the car and hearing timeless songs from the likes of Donell Jones and Joe. His musical ability in production, singing, songwriting and engineering are all self-taught from videos, practical application, forums and trial-and-error. He tends to focus on topics of relationships and the trials of self-realization. His two EPs “Behind Closed Doors” and “Mood AF” have gained him some attention in recent years, and with the release of “Paris” he’s set to explode onto the international scene. 

“I want my music to be a form of healing,” he said. “It should be something to help people through difficult situations. I believe there’s a point in every person’s life when they have to try to figure out if what they’re feeling is unique to them or if there are others in the world who feel that way. Music helped encourage me through that time in my life, and that’s what helps me to be more confident and vulnerable in my songs. Some of my messages need to be for other people. Creating art is something that soothes me, and I hope my music can be soothing for others, as well.” 

 

 

To listen to J Adams’ music, or to follow him on social media, please visit the following links: 

https://soundcloud.com/jacolbyadams/paris 

https://www.instagram.com/1jadamz/ 

https://www.facebook.com/J-Adams-274667736427270

Disco Sundays – Cloud9

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Disco Sundays has fans dreaming of better days with new single ‘Cloud9’

BALTIMORE, MD – Soul, Funk, R&B, Jazz and Disco come together in profound new ways on the debut album “Sending Love” from the new group Disco Sundays. With a sound that’s often described as nostalgic yet progressive, Disco Sundays pays homage to the catchy sounds of the past by combining elements of previous eras with sounds and styles of today. The undeniable swing of the drums and a signature soulful touch in the melodies pairs perfectly with a healthy dose of funky bass lines, making Disco Sundays one of the hottest new acts in the music industry today.

The standout single “Cloud9” from the new project is perhaps the best example of Disco Sunday’s original sound. With a mesmerizing and hypnotic melodic flow that plays against bouncy 808s, the song hooks listeners from the beginning and invites them into an unending flow that takes them on a ride and refuses to let them off the tracks until it reaches the end of the line. It almost has a Bone Thugs N Harmony kind of feel to it, though with more of a throw-back vibe that evokes ethereal emotions along the way. As one of the only songs on the album with vocals – from featured artist Irie Buchanan – it certainly stands out from the others and serves as a great introduction to the one-of-a-kind sound and style coming from Disco Sundays.

“It’s a favorite among most who hear it,” said Melvin Thomas – the music producer, musician, audio engineer, DJ, sound designer, and digital artist behind the creation of Disco Sundays. “Basically it’s about when the world tries to knock you out of your zone and you have the willpower to fight and stand up for what you believe in. It’s a song that shows off what we’re trying to do. Disco Sundays has a production style that has a lot of kicks and crazy basslines. The name describes a lot.”

The name is so powerful, in fact, that Thomas said Disco Sundays plays to reinforce that vibe by releasing a new single on Soundcloud every Sunday for the rest of the year. They’ll start with “Pick Me Up” on March 29, followed by “Nightcrawl” on April 4. Thomas said it’s a strategy that Disco Sundays wants to employ so as to keep listeners engaged consistently every week and continue to build momentum over time as they share their music with the world. Eventually the group will sell vintage-like merchandise and offer their music on vinyl instead of CDs. It’s an approach similar to artists such as The Gorillaz, Flying Lotus or Thundercat, just to name a few.

To listen to Disco Sunday’s music or to follow them on social media, please visit:

“Sending Love”
https://li.sten.to/uDk1wwe

https://linktr.ee/discosundays