February Playlist

Happy Monday everyone!

The best way to describe February’s playlist is chaotic. I thought it would be similar to last month, but I was wrong. It has its own style. I discovered so much music this month that I’ve been both happy and stunned at the same time because the number of genres in it is so beautiful and I cannot wait to share it with you today.

At the beginning of the month, I was being pulled into my hard rock artists and I think I’ve had my foot holding the door to that genre the whole time. As I was traveling through pop and even epic country/rock music (which is SO ahh-mazing!) worlds I would literally make a circle back to enjoy some of my beloved tracks. I would love to share one artist or band every month, but I find it really challenging because I shuffle around so much.

And yes, I have been using the same banner I use on Instagram and Twitter as the playlist’s cover. I don’t know why I’m just doing it now, but it’s been fun coming up with different lettering to symbolize each month. Unfortunately, I can’t use the ones I made above, mainly because it is too large to fit, but since I also make the others, so thankfully I have the others!

I don’t have a general idea why I made January so gloomy, but it was just wanted for that banner. I knew for February, I wanted to go all out for Valentine’s Day, and I used the one color I hate with a passion: pink. I had to put some black in there because the hot pink was a little too strong to match with any other color on the app’s selections. I will (hopefully) continue to do this for the rest of the year and maybe it’ll attract some more people that cruise around on Spotify for more styled playlists.

Here is my Top 25 for the time being. Keep an eye and hear out on my blog’s Facebook and Instagram to see if I include any more songs. If you want to take the easy route, you can look into the entire playlist on Spotify as I’m always updating there as well!

Decode by Paramore
My Universe by Kurt Hugo Schneider featuring Alex Goot & First To Eleven
Feeling Good by Nina Simone
Man On A Mission by Oh The Larceny
Liar by Britney Spears
Your Call by Gaby Grace
Where Is Your Hero Now by Sami J. Laine x Epic Music World
Stabbing In The Dark by Ice Nine Kills
Sweere by Papa Roach featuring FEVER 333 & Sueco
Dirty Talk by Wynter Gordon
Stranger by Hilary Duff
Gold Trans Am by Kesha
Daddy AF by Slayyter
Pink Pony Club by Chappell Roan
Weak by JoJo
Surface Pressure by Jessica Darrow
Back From The Dead by Halestorm
Cutting It Close by Rain City Drive
ABCDEFU by Gayle
Hallelujah by Underoath
Rest In Peace by Dorothy
Boyfriend by Dove Cameron
Tomorrow by Avril Lavigne
Can’t Take My Eyes Off You by Cary Brothers
Yours by Ella Henderson

Before I let you go, I wanted to talk about the Super Bowl halftime show.

I’m not a fan of football by any means, but I enjoy watching the commercials and the halftimes shows. I always think they can be a hit or miss, and I always have some worries about what the artist would do. I did not know who was going to host until probably late November. I feel like we knew pretty early on who was going to play for the last few years, but once I heard about Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Eminem was going to be on stage, I was so pumped!

As you may know, I tend to listen to a lot of old school hip hop, and even though I wasn’t expecting to see 50 Cent there, I brought me back to my middle school days because I was a huge G Unit fan and if you didn’t know, I basically wanted to become the female, disabled version of Dr. Dre after graduating high school. So, the lineup (not so much into Kendrick Lamar, though I do respect him as an amazing record producer!) was everything to my mom and me. It was incredible to see these great artists of the 80’s through the mid 2000’s performing some of their fan’s favorites!

What were you listening to in the month of February? What did you think about the Halftime show? Who would you like to host next year?

Music Monday | Scott Storch

Hello!

For this week, the next music producer is going to be Scott Storch. Scott has always been at the top of my list of best composers and definitely the inspiration for this series. Dr. Dre, Rick Rubin, Timbaland, Scott and Joost van der Breok were the five I originally wanted to discuss for the entire summer but I didn’t think I would have enough material so I made a last minute decision to add a few more people to the list and that was the end of it.

Despite my love of him being a producer, I fell in love with his way to create a killer beat. A lot of people tend to forget that a producer are also the ones making the actual music too! Back when the network VH1 use to air those episodes of The Lives of Rich and Famous. Scott was selected to be featured in one of them and he gave everyone a sneak peak into the way he came up with three of the biggest songs in 2003-04. He would play snippets of 50 Cent’s “Candy Shop” and “Just A Little Bit” and Fat Joe’s “Lean Back”. I always found it hilarious that while both of these rappers were feuding with each other, they were working with the same person who was helping them their music! Anyways, once I figured out how these songs were made, I was floored! I knew both “Candy Shop” and “Just A Little Bit” sounded similar, but I didn’t know how to explain what I was hearing; everybody would have thought I was overly obsessed because at that time I was a huge fun of 50 Cent.

Unfortunately, Scott sort of disappeared from the music world for a while. I think he finally came back out of the shadows in 2014 or sometime after that. I know he had produced songs for Fat Joe in the last year and recently released a brand new song helping carry out the reggaetón flavor, that I definitely enjoy hearing, in the summertime. The track is called “Fuego Del Calor” and it features Ozuna and Tyga. I honestly thought I wouldn’t really enjoy it, because when I want to listen to that type of music, I’d rather have someone who knows that genre in and out, and can make it sound completely different than the others on the radio. So, it was a surprise that I actually enjoyed the whole thing!

Do you know any Scott Storch albums he’s worked on in the past? What are your favorite songs ever?

Music Monday | Dr. Dre

Howdy!

Last month I announced that I was going to do another series on my blog. It would replace my normal summer Tune Tuesday posts since I am no longer publishing anything on those days, instead I would switch it to Monday.

The theme would be based off of what inspired to want to become a record producer after I graduated from high school ten years ago, but I would also include people who I look to nowadays. Every month, I will post a banner that will have two people I will focus my attention on, and hopefully that’ll keep you excited for the next one.

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I have always had a love/hate relationship with hip hop music. There are words that I don’t really enjoy hearing all the time, such as “bitch,” and the “n” word that you will never find me using ever! I also don’t like the way women and the breed pit bulls are being laid out whether in a rhyme or the music video. They allow each part to be stereotyped, even themselves as musicians. Whenever people listen to rap music, the audience automatically assumes the person spitting a line, is a gangbanger, has abused women, over uses alochol and drugs, etc. Something about the world of music affected me in both a positive and negative way that I still wanted to be the disabled and female version of Dr. Dre.

Since I was born in the early 90’s, and my mom was both a lover of rap and rock music, there was a lot of sounds jamming in our household. My dad worked construction, so he was gone through most of the day and would get home late, so while we spent time with mom, she would play various cassettes and CDs of music. When we were home sick, I really relished in the environment. Since my sister and I were introduced to the genre at a fairly young age, we weren’t shown the violent side of the genre, I actually didn’t know anything about it until I was in my teens and then everything I heard as a child made more sense to me.

Although I don’t remember if my mom had any of Dr. Dre’s albums when we were kids, I still knew why he was so important to the music world. To be perfectly honest, I’ve always felt I don’t have to listen to older music if I highly respect and understand what each person did for their genre. Dr. Dre was no different. I knew he was at the heart of the rap world, but I didn’t really see it first hand until I hit my second phase of listening to that kind of music in 2003.

I don’t remember how I was introduced to 50 Cent’s music. I feel like Eminem had something to do with it, and at this time, Dr. Dre was producing music for Eminem and they were both working with 50 Cent to release him to the masses, so they were a formable force to be reckoned with, almost like a Holy Trinity, together they could release anything and everybody would love it.

The music video for 50 Cent’s hit “In Da Club” is showing you how they molded him into this person; they influeced him into this giant act to entertain people from around the world. It was incrediable! In a way, that is what a music producer is suppose to do, is make you into this beast, give you the confidence in yourself to be able to make greant music. I feel there’s a lot of trust going into this, because they direct you into the right lane, they become your mentor and inspire you to release your demons, passions, easily, and because of this everything you say can be taken in a certain way, whether that is a good or bad thing is debatable. They believe in you and see your true purpose and I think that’s what makes Dr. Dre a legend.

I use to have dreams and write songs throughout my time in school about the possibility of working with my favorite rappers of the time. Since I was highly obsessed with 50’s group G Unit as a teen, they appeared quite a bit but once I decided on what I’d like to study in college and after I was accepted into the school, sadly those dreams became less and less, and I wonder if I should have read into that change a little more. My ability to write songs officially vanished in 2008, which I find interesting because I always think that this was the last year rap music felt new and exciting. Of course, this is only my opinion and considering I made the choice to give the genre another try after a six year hiatus, I can’t say for sure it was a great idea on my part.

Which side of Dr. Dre do you like the best, his rap career (whether with N.W.A. or solo) or are you more interested who he works with and the beats he creates?

When TRL Ruled My Life

Growing up, coming home and watching TV was a given. Nobody as a kid or a teenager wants to do their homework as soon they come home. Favorite shows would come on an hour after you get home. I remember coming home from school a lot and watch Full House and  Family Matters on ABC Family or one of those channels. I think around when I turned nine years old I started to watch this show on MTV, it was called TRL (Total Request Live) and I remember watching every once in a while. I would watch for Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Christina Aguilera, and N’Sync. For me at that time, everything revolved around them. After I came home from Shriner’s I remember watching it more often. I started getting into rap music again and discovered Good Charlotte and Simple Plan and just exploded my musicial tastes from there.

I was just watching VH1’s doctumentary of “The TRL Decade” and was seriously holding back tears because I miss that part of my usual routine and it was my childhood to watch music videos all day long when I was sick and around 4pm it would be TRL time. That was my day. No wonder I’m crazy about my music. I still watch music videos all day long sometimes. I remember watching Backstreet Boys on there. Practically kissing the TV as well. Then when I got into 50 Cent and Eminem, it was a bomb went off. I would get excited about watching their interviews and wish I was there watching them perform to all the people there. I remember the first time I heard and watched Fort Minor’s “Petrified” it was on the countdown and I instantly loved it. I don’t remember seeing any Linkin Park on the countdown unfortunately. MTV will never be as good as it was back then. Maybe that’s why they’ve been playing all these reality shows now.

Remember That One Time On The Bus, When…?

I have a lot of crazy stories of the time I rode the bus to school and back home, but there was one story that is just priceless and very funny to try to talk about. Because anytime I try to tell about it I instantly start laughing because my bus driver, at the time he was our sub. Anyways, he did not expect it and neither did I. It’s a funny story and I’m going to share it.

In 2008, we had a sub bus driver. On my bus, we had a total of four students on our bus at the time. Now there’s a story before this, between my friend Nathan and myself our music stations didn’t mess well with each other. It wasn’t til Junior year that I started bringing in my iPod so I didn’t have to listen to Country music ALL the time! Well when Nathan had to stay after school, guess who got to channel the station. This girl.

Anyways, our bus driver apparently liked the Country stations a lot more than he liked mine. We have two pop stations here in my hometown. Well I got on the bus and got strabbed in place and our bus driver changed it to one of the channels. I didn’t know it was going to play these songs, but it did.

The first song that played was “Goodies” by Ciara featuring Petey Pablo. Second song was “Candy Shop” by 50 Cent featuring Olivia. And the last one was “Hot In Here” by Nelly. That was an awkward ride home, believe me. He had that mirror so he can see behind him in the back and for him always telling us after he become our official bus driver that he couldn’t hear the radio. Sadly, I think he heard those three songs. I felt bad afterwards.

When we got up to the house, I was laughing my butt off because of his face. When my mom brought the lift down and greeted my bus driver and I. He said to my mom, “you know her music is a little wild.” I think my mom started laughing after he said that because she was the reason why I even listen to that kind of music. When he left and we went inside she asked me what played and I told her and I thought her eyes were going to come out of her skull. It was hilarious but yet weird. I think it’s safe to say I think he switched the station back to Country afterwards. Can you blame him?

So that’s my story. That’s the priceless story I will never forget.