Doctors called in: Dr. Dre helping Snoop Dogg, Koreans experimenting
Snoop Dogg reunites with Dr. Dre and hooliganizes, A$AP Rocky mocks Taylor Swift, and K-pop stars Stray Kids try to reinvent themselves. In December, the flow of high-profile musical novelties is rapidly decreasing: who wants to compete with Merry Christmas and All I Want For Christmas Is You? Nevertheless, several potentially high-profile, expected releases will still appear before the end of 2024 - and Izvestia has collected the main things about them. And at the same time, we've also presented recent albums, singles and broadcasts that you might have missed.
Snoop Dogg - Missionary
Missionary is without a doubt the most anticipated album of December. And it's not only about the performer (the main but not the only one) - Snoop Dogg, but more importantly about the producer: Dr. Dre. The latter rarely appears as a performer, and he creates music for others very selectively. His last production benefit was two years ago - Marsha Ambrosius' Casablanco. However, the public was waiting, of course, for a louder union, and here it is. Could you think of anything more spectacular than a creative duet with Snoop Dogg, with whom Dre started working more than 30 years ago?
Let's say more: these artists owe a lot of their careers to each other, because their duet single Deep Cover, released in 1992, was the debut for both of them. Snoop's first solo album Doggystyle was produced entirely by the Doctor. Now the friends are back together - and with them an army of other stars. They include 50 Cent, Eminem and even Sting (although it would seem hard to imagine a weirder partnership). The track with the founder of The Police, by the way, has already been released.
And it's a genre experiment, paradoxically combining rock and rap. But the same is true for the other two singles, where we hear female voices in addition to male ones. In general, there is no doubt: Missionary will be at least a bold and interesting record. Even the lewd cover artwork can be forgiven for that, along with the title, which hooliganically echoes Doggystyle.
A$AP Rocky - Don't Be Dumb
The only album that could compete with Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre's Missionary for the title of December's top musical release is the long-awaited A$AP Rocky album. Admittedly, there's no certainty yet that it will actually be released this month. The date was endlessly postponed by the artist: first it was announced August 30, then - the fall, now there are hopes that at least until the end of the year we will hear the work of Rihanna's husband. Three singles are already available.
The first of them - Highjack - was recorded together with Jessica Pratt, and in the newest one - Ruby Rosary - Rocky's company was J.Cole. In both cases not only the guest stars are interesting, but also the melancholic sound with the weighty participation of the piano, very rarely used by rappers.
Well, another single, Tailor Swif, caused a scandal with its title (misspelled, apparently, had to because of possible claims of the singer) and the line I'm too swift, don't tell Taylor 'bout this shit. However, how many times Swift's name has been invoked in hits by various artists - you can't count.
What will be on the album besides the aforementioned is still a mystery. There is not even a complete track list. However, it is known that in one of the songs to A$AP Rocky will join his wife. And that is perhaps intriguing most of all.
Stray Kids - Hop
Less than a month ago K-pop band Stray Kids released their album Giant, and now a new release is on the way. And it will occupy a special place in the band's discography. It is a mixtape (i.e. a collection of songs that are not united by a common concept), the main part of which consists of compositions that represent each of the eight members in solo form. Thus, Youth is Lee Know's number, Hallucination is I.N.'s work, and in Hold My Hand we hear Han. In addition, the edition includes two Stray Kids group tracks and their collaboration with Canadian rapper Tablo.
No singles have been officially released yet, except that label JYP Entertainment has posted a half-minute teaser based on Hold My Hand on YouTube. But if you want, you can listen to quite a bit of the fresh material in its entirety. The solo songs were played on the band's summer concert tour, and, of course, the craftsmen pulled the audio from the live recordings and distributed it on the Internet.
Is there anything unusual in the distributed material? Hardly. And let the band members assure that this is nothing less than a new genre, which doesn't even have a name, but in reality we see pure K-pop with all its trademark features. However, this direction has long been a hybrid of rap, pop-rock and pop. So, in a way, Stray Kids' words are fair.
You may have missed
Arbenin tribute (Deluxe)
Various events, in one way or another related to Diana Arbenina's 50th birthday, were organized throughout the year. Of course, it was impossible to do without typical for such cases tributes - performances of songs of the jubilee by other artists. It was decided to finish the anniversary year with a large collection of such interpretations.
In total, the album included 14 songs recorded by 14 stars - from Tosi Chaikina to Mari Kreimbreri. It's interesting that not rockers of Arbenina's age were involved, but pop idols of the new generation. And they sometimes quite boldly and ambiguously reinterpreted the hits of "Night Snipers". It turned out, which is logical, to be pop music, despite all the guitar admixtures. But the more interesting.
And each musical number is preceded by a short audio commentary of the artists explaining their choice of song (often very little content) and - declaring their love for Diana Arbenina.
Broadcast of the concert of the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Republic of Tatarstan
The concert life of the capital this November was traditionally saturated. We told you about some of the events in Izvestia (for example, the Five Evenings festival ), and of the more recent broadcasts we recommend paying attention to the performance of the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Republic of Tatarstan conducted by Alexander Sladkovsky at the Moscow Philharmonic. The program of the evening can be defined as a journey through the 19th century. Beethoven's Triple Concerto, written in 1803-1804, belongs to the Classical era and even refers with its atypical composition of soloists to a genre of earlier times - the Baroque concerto grosso. Richard Strauss's famous symphonic poem Thus Spoke Zarathustra is already the quintessence of Romanticism. And Schoenberg's Enlightened Night is its expiration: composed in the last year of the century, this opus heralds future aesthetic revolutions.
Sladkovsky, however, does not seek to bring these poles closer together. On the contrary, he emphasizes the specificity of each composer: the majestic clarity of Beethoven, the colourful pathos of Strauss and the exquisite emotionality of early Schoenberg. But in all cases the orchestra sounds beautiful, and in the Triple Concerto we can also enjoy the brilliance of the soloists - Sergei Davydchenko (piano), Ravil Islyamov (violin) and Vasily Stepanov (cello).
Sound Review 4
The Union of Composers of Russia and the Melodiya company continue their anthology "Sound Review" with recordings of vocal music by composers of the second half of the XX-XXI century. Two of the four digital albums included in the set include cycles by Valery Gavrilin, the third disk is devoted to Grigory Fried's mono-opera The Diary of Anne Frank. And finally, the collection is rounded off by a brand new opus (from 2021, premiered in 2022): "Seven Songs on the Poems of Ezra Pound" by Alexei Sysoyev.
The goal of the entire Sound Review program is to present little-known gems of domestic music in impeccable studio quality and top-notch performance. But there is also a less obvious goal: to trace the deep continuity of the entire Russian academic tradition over the last 100 years: from the half-forgotten (but rapidly actualized today) Russian avant-garde of the 1920s to the experiments of our contemporaries. The next batch of albums fulfills the concept to the fullest, despite the seemingly insurmountable distance between Gavrilin's folkloric motifs and Sysoyev's international microchromatics. And here we get a kind of sonic chronicle of the 20th century with its dramas, tragedies and, despite everything, hope.
Izvestia playlist
We conclude our music review with a selection of singles and album tracks released over the last month that may have escaped your attention but deserve it. "My Michelle," City 312, Stromae and Tosya Chaikina need no introduction. Vladimir Spivakov, playing Tchaikovsky's Sentimental Waltz, even more so. We would only add that traditionally we strive to present a wide range of styles in a short selection, but also to find some inner connection between the compositions. So we advise you to listen to the whole.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
