Liv.e & Karriem Riggins Share HOWWEFLOW From GENA Project & Announce Album

Liv.e & Karriem Riggins share the second single, “HOWWEFLOW,” from their GENA collaboration project and reveal the release date for their album. “HOWWEFLOW” seeks to find the funk in an R&B loop with Liv.e’s sensual vocal repetition and Riggins’ steady snare. It sounds like a warm-up to a much bigger party, a bit more than an intro. The video pokes fun at the madness of office life from the perspective of an artist. An overhead shot captures Liv.e sleepy and surrounded by a ton of work papers that have probably exhausted her. GENA popped out with “Circlesz” after doing shows together in Detroit and New York. They made the decision to record a whole album together as GENA after finding common ground as artists. The Pleasure Is Yours comes out February 27th on Lex Records. They have a show coming up January 31st in London at ICA and tickets are on sale now. 




Dawn Richard Is Here With A Flex

Dawn Richard’s visual for “A Flex” has all the confidence of the title. Richard’s lithe moves turn the room into a tinderbox of aspiration. The Katalyst Collective produced the latest single from Richard, who released her Quiet in a World Full of Noise album in 2024, her second collaboration with artist Spencer Zahn. “A Flex” is back into her R&B world with a hip-hop stance, hence the grill and fluttery variation on a trap beat. The sound and visuals are pure Dawn and the chemistry of it all makes you wonder if her next project will be just like “A Flex.”




Throwback: Jimi Hendrix: Still Raining, Still Dreaming

Electric Ladyland is the third and final studio album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Many listeners discovered the album after hearing Hendrix’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower,” which became the group’s best-selling single. “Still Raining, Still Dreaming” demonstrated Hendrix’s mastery of the wah-wah pedal and his ability to make the guitar “talk.” He was playing a kind of lazy funk with the guitar, almost sounding like a human voice. It was psychedelic like “Purple Haze,” but the sound was less compressed. The song sounded like part of a jam session instead of a neat song for radio consumption. The album’s loose structure, except for the Dylan cover, is the reason critics did not initially understand the music. Over time they started to see what Hendrix was doing and how he was innovating rock music again.

Electric Ladyland was the band’s sole number one album, and it grew in value, becoming one of the many important links to music of the future with sounds landing everywhere from P-Funk to rappers like Outkast, The Soulquarian collective, and D’Angelo. In 1997 the Hendrix estate released At Last… The Beginning: The Making of Electric Ladyland, a documentary about the album. The film was reissued in 2008 with an additional forty minutes of footage. In 2025, the Axis Bold As Love Sessions was released on Blu Ray and the Seattle Seahawks dropped Hendrix-inspired merchandise. 

 




Media Questions Of The Week

Is Lil’ Kim’s Hard Core album cover the best hip-hop album cover ever? 

 

Will Spotify’s purchase of Whosampled.com lead to more artists being sued for sampling and how will that impact art?  

 

Is Metro Boomin’s take on contemporary hip-hop albums sounding like compilations because there are too many producers and no single vision correct?