Album Review: CupcakKe – Ephorize

When analysing the album of the year polls in December one thing was clear: rap is the dominant genre in music right now. Yet in 2017 albums by female rappers were almost completely shut out from critical and commercial success. In the Stereogum Rap Top 40 Albums of the Year only a handful of women appeared, most of whom were somewhat underground artists like Princess Nokia and Rapsody, in comparison to most of the men on the lists who are populating the mainstream.

Cardi B might have had one of the biggest songs of the year but she’s not an album artist yet, concerning herself with singles and mixtapes instead. Her music is going stratospheric but will she just end up being the one woman who is successful in this era (as per this Pitchfork ‘women in rap’ theory), or can she open the door for a wider range of female rappers to enter the music scene?

Rapper CupcakKe has made a promising start to the year, presenting her unique vision on this engaging and exhilarating album Ephorize. Continue reading “Album Review: CupcakKe – Ephorize” →

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Most Anticipated Music of 2018

At this moment it’s hard to believe that 2018 could be as good a year for music as 2017, such was the breadth and depth of brilliant albums released by female artists. Still this time last year I hadn’t even heard of many of the acts who ended up on my favourite albums list so I’m hoping for more hidden gems to surprise me over the next few months. Read on to find out who you might be listening to this year. Continue reading “Most Anticipated Music of 2018” →

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2018 Blog Resolutions

I loved reading the old Woody Guthrie and Johnny Cash new year resolutions that have been making the rounds on Twitter so much that I have decided to write a few of my own. I would definitely steal most of Woody’s including ‘read lots of good books’, ‘love everybody’ and ‘dream good’ but this post will focus on my personal blogging resolutions for 2018. Continue reading “2018 Blog Resolutions” →

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What the ‘Album of the Year’ Polls Tell Us About Female Representation in Music

The ubiquitous end of year album lists might seem arbitrary but they are an important way for people to find new music and I believe they have a significant impact on an artist’s overall career. So this year I decided to do a very unscientific analysis of various polls to see how well female voices were represented overall. Continue reading “What the ‘Album of the Year’ Polls Tell Us About Female Representation in Music” →

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Top Twenty Favourite Songs of the Year

Picking favourite songs of the year turned out to be a little more challenging than I thought – some songs were easy to choose as they connected instantly, others slowly worked themselves into my consciousness after listening over a longer period of time. My only criteria for inclusion on the list was that the songs must appear on albums released in 2017, so any singles from albums released last year or next year were excluded. I have loved so many songs this year – writing the blog has opened my ears to so many amazing artists and it was so hard to decide on only a few but here goes my top twenty, for what it’s worth. Continue reading “Top Twenty Favourite Songs of the Year” →

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Album Review: Gwen Stefani – You Make It Feel Like Christmas

We all need a little bit of festive cheer to get us through the rest of 2017, a year that somehow managed to even surpass the hell that was 2016. Every year I enjoy those few weeks in December when I can listen to any old cheesy Christmas song on repeat. I was looking for a new Christmas album to review this year and stumbled onto Gwen Stefani’s Christmas special on TV the other day and it had enough sparkle to cheer up any Scrooge. The accompanying album You Make it Feel Like Christmas is a flourish of festive fun from start to finish. Continue reading “Album Review: Gwen Stefani – You Make It Feel Like Christmas” →

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