The FADER

Once your ears adjust to the overdriven bass and occasionally nightcored autotune, you might begin to tease out various emotional threads in @skaiwater ’s songs, though their Playboi Carti-derived flows and love of distortion can make deciphering their lyrics less-than-straightforward. Still, that open-hearted energy is there from track one of their new album #gigi : “I need, your love, today / give me, the strength, to stay…” #gigi pushes skai’s music, a blend of hip-hop, pop punk, and dance scenes from London to Chicago, to intense new heights. The baile funk-indebted “richest girl alive” could go decibel-for-decibel with some of Rio de Janeiro’s toughest tracks (some, not all), while “play” sort of sounds like if the Jackson Five were in the studio nonstop listening to New Orleans bounce keystone “Drag Rap.” The FADER hopped on a video call with skaiwater to chat about working with @rip9lives and @lilnasx , coming out as nonbinary, and how their new album reflects where they’re at in their life right now. Read @perlucidum ’s interview at the link in bio, or go to TheFADER.com. #skaiwater

Our newest Gen F artists YL and Starker — the duo behind the indie hip-hop label RRR Music Group — are self-styling a New York rap revival. Founded by YL in 2010, RRR Music Group (an acronym for “Real Recognize Real”) releases soulful and sample-based hip-hop that reminds listeners of classic New York sensibilities without shoving a Junior’s cheesecake slice of ‘90s nostalgia down their throats. “It has a fresh air to it,” @youngwhy says of their label’s sound. “We’re constantly pushing that and not trying to scare the hoes with the music or nothing.” “People believe a part of growing up in New York is letting go of the best parts of your upbringing here,” @ghostnacekillah adds. “You might enjoy our music on a surface level, but we’re also talking about shit that you had to be here for.” Read the Gen F profile at the link in bio. ✍️ Lei Takanashi (@crooknyc ) 📸 @raphgaultier #YL #Starker #RRR #GenF @rrrseason

𝘾𝙊𝙑𝙀𝙍 𝙎𝙏𝙊𝙍𝙔: Getting Lost with @RavynLenae To make her sophomore album, Bird’s Eye, the Chicago singer had to move beyond rigid genres, beyond home, and beyond her past. “What changed in me is the desire to please my ears,” she says. “The music that inspires me made this burst of energy.” Head to the link in our bio or TheFADER.com to read our Ravyn Lenae cover story. Story: @alexrobertross Photography: @brendangeorgeko Hair: @jacobaaronn Makeup: @alero.glow Style: @sakinahbashir_ #RavynLenae

Last week, the Oklahoma City metal band @chatpileband waded into their Twitter mentions to respond to a complaint. Their headlining show in London, the user moaned, was only 45 minutes long. ⁠ ⁠ “My friend,” the band responded, “I’m begging you to go to a punk show once or twice in your life.” On the surface it’s a fairly unremarkable exchange, simply another example of how Twitter emboldens the loud and the wrong. ⁠ ⁠ But beneath the surface, it shows how audience entitlement towards bands is developing and raises troubling questions about what we expect from the musicians who entertain us.⁠ ⁠ Read more at the link in bio, or head to TheFADER.com.⁠ ⁠ 📸 Bayley Hanes⁠ ⁠ #ChatPile

Mabe Fratti (@mabefs )’s fourth album begins with conviction. Over slow, determined drums, she fingers her cello like a furious bassist, its C string rattling with the aftershock of her powerful plucks. As a narrator, though, she’s less self-assured. “Quizás haya oídos en el techo / Quizás alguien está del otro lado de la pared,” she sings: Maybe there are ears in the ceiling. Maybe there’s someone on the other side of the wall. This paranoia reverberates throughout Sentir que no sabes (Feel like you don’t know) — in the white-knuckled groove of “Kravitz,” the soul-searching slow burn of “Pantalla azul,” the claustrophobic minimalism of “Oídos,” and the doomsaying repetition of “Quieras o no.” And that’s just side A. Read @hamiltonthemixtape ’s interview with the Guatemalan cellist at the link in bio, where she discusses paranoia, elastic thoughts, FOMO, and the rockstar moves of her new album, or head to TheFADER.com. 📸 @mmmlunar #MabeFratti

After 20 years of hard work, Little John is still having a hard time finding affordable housing in the big city. Like the most young adults, he’s been royally fucked by a combination of stagnant wages, high inflation rates, and rapidly rising rental costs in pricy markets like New York City. The odds are already stacked against him, but TikTok’s favorite fictional building contractor — in garish teal and pink florals — is still determined to join a shrinking class of young homeowners, even if his entire life savings buys him two safety straps attached to a door on a zero square meter ledge. He has big dreams of having a place to call his own and is determined to make it work, regardless of structural integrity, area measurements, or what his landlord, HOA board, or the rest of the co-op has to say about his “unhinged home designs.” Over the last month, Little John has become TikTok’s ultimate handyman thanks to his knack for transforming increasingly cramped and bizarre places into functional homes, which he documents in a series of build videos. There’s something inspiring about his tiny home creativity and the fact that if he can make barely-there studio work, you can too! You just have to be okay with having a pet eagle, training for years to become a human sledgehammer, and some unsanitary set-ups that require making food on top of his toilet. Read @sndrsng ’s full feature at the link in bio, or head to TheFADER.com. 📸 @homedesign369 (TikTok) #LittleJohn

Not all heroes wear capes, except for Louis Tomlinson who brought a television set to Glastonbury to broadcast the England game ⚽️⁠ ⁠ #Glastonbury #LouisTomlinson #England

The gently fluorescent songs on JACK & THE BEANSTALK thrum and pulse like a constellation of fireflies, glimmering little moments thronged together in the night. Watch how they flutter between the trees, luciferin streaking through the dark. LUCY (@cooperhandy ) glides from one contorted idiom to the next over a bevy of lush @surfgang1 beats that thump and twinkle in equal measure. Six years in the making, this bioluminescent mixtape of humble anthems and charming lullabies marks a new high for LUCY’s mesmerizing synthesis of hip-hop, pop, and punk rock. Back in February, LUCY explained his songwriting approach to The FADER over the phone: “I’ll have a phrase that has a melody to it, and then I’ll make a song around that.” At the time, we were discussing “WHAT SHE’S HAVING,” his airy and danceable contribution to @evilgiane ’s January mixtape #HEAVENSGATEVOL .1, which twists the cashier’s refrain “I can help whoever’s next over here” into an indelible earworm. The Western Massachusetts artist usually self-produces his own music, welding GarageBand presets into charmingly irregular forms, but he’s been branching out a little more this year (see: January’s 100% PROD I.V.). “It’s not so much a switch I’m making,” he says of the collaborations. “It’s more like experimenting, because when people send beats it’s always very different...] all the emphasis goes on what I do with the vocals, rather than composing music.” Read @perlucidum ’s Discover Blogly review at the link in bio, or head to TheFADER.com. #LUCY #surfgang @harrrrisonnnn

Despite her impressive music catalog, @eikoishibashi has always been more fascinated by the world of film. Evil Does Not Exist is renowned Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s second feature scored by Ishibashi. Their first creative partnership, the Oscar-winning Drive My Car, was a relatively straightforward director-scorer affair. But the working relationship that led to the new film was much more symbiotic. Watching and listening to its opening sequence out of context, it would be impossible to discern whether the music was made for the film or vice versa. In fact, the orchestral theme is the only part of its score that Ishibashi composed after viewing its final cut. It was recorded in her longtime partner Jim O’Rourke’s studio, which sits next to the house they share in the Japanese countryside. She recorded the rest of the music in her own studio (within the home itself), before looking at the script — some of it before Hamaguchi had even envisioned the footage he’d shot in her area as belonging to a full-length film. Read @hamiltonthemixtape ’s full interview with the composer at the link in bio, or head to TheFADER.com. 📸 Jim O’Rourke, Shuhei Kojima #EvilDoesNotExist #EikoIshibashi

It's New Music Friday, and FADER staffers are diving into the most exciting new projects.⁠ ⁠ This week's picks include fresh releases by Mabe Fratti (@mabefs ), @omar.apollo , Boldy James & @conductorwilliams , @lomatheband , and @eikoishibashi .⁠ ⁠ Head to the link in bio to check out our selections, or visit TheFADER.com.⁠ ⁠ 📸 Melissa Lunar (Mabe Fratti)⁠ ⁠ #NewMusicFriday #MabeFratti #OmarApollo

A new Ryuichi Sakamoto album, Opus, is arriving on August 9, a collection of material performed and composed by the late composer from his final concert in the fall of 2022, before his death a few months later.⁠ ⁠ It features the single "Tong Poo,” originally from Yellow Magic Orchestra’s 1978 debut album — the slow tempo solo piano version is "a new arrangement performed for the first time at Sakamoto’s 2022 concert."⁠ ⁠ 📸 Neo Sora⁠ ⁠ #RyuichiSakamoto

@tinashenow is selling "Match My Freak" condoms in her merch store 💌⁠ ⁠ #Tinashe