With the release of his fourth album 'Saudade', Mr. J.
Medeiros brings you one of his best projects yet with a solid 14-track album
that fits in well with the Summer. Medeiros is known for integrating a mixture
of fusion, electronic, alternative and jazz into his style of hip hop and this
opens up the minds of 'hip-hop-heads' (such as myself) to appreciate a piece of
work like this. Even if you happened to be a full time Mr. J. Medeiros hater,
you would still be able to find at least two songs off of the album to appreciate.
Not one song on Saudade sounds similar to each other; each
track brings something new instrumentally and lyrically, which shows the
diversity of music that Medeiros can cover. The first song that I heard
from the album was one of his recent leaks, ‘Neon Signs’ with Stro. I felt like I couldn’t really form an opinion
based on hearing that one song, so the lovely Mathilda Green gave me the opportunity to
give Saudade an entire listen. After
only having to run through the album one time, there weren’t many negative
thoughts that I could form about it.
The Intro track ‘Shower Curtains’ came on with a jazzy vibe
and the last thing I was expecting was him to flip some lyrics. Needless to say, it drew me in and brought me
to the second track, ‘This Is Not A Home’.
At this point, I was sold because this song also had a jazzy vibe, but
was more upbeat than the first track.
Now let me remind you all that I am a big fan of smooth jazz, so his
ability to integrate his flow with the music was really impressive.
When I listened to ‘Fear & Safety’ featuring Bekah
Wagner, I could tell that he put a lot into that song. Miss Wagner did a great job on the vocals and
the instrumentation towards the end was really nice.
Tracks 5-7 all gave you a reason to continue on the next
ones. ‘Stand Down’ threw me off a bit,
but that’s only because I don’t enjoy screamo that much. I must admit though, he did rip the first
verse going into it.
‘Swallow’ featuring Logan and ‘The Sailor’ seem to be
perfect back to back radio singles.
Those are summertime songs to me; I have them saved in my favorites on
iTunes.
Then comes the ‘Neon Lights’ track that I was previously
talking about. I thought that was solid
the first time I heard it, but the rest of the album was as good, or even
better.
‘Serious’ was legitimately serious. A great track to end the album with and
giving you reason to start it over, or research more from Mr. Medeiros. Saudade turned out to be great and after listening to
this album, I was glad that I took the time out to listen to it.
If you know me, you know that this isn’t something that you
would regularly see on our site; mainly because there aren’t a lot of artists
bringing something different to the table (such as this project) and if they
are, they wouldn’t look at RTF as a place to share their music.
But honestly, this kind of music is what needs to be
supported by websites/blogs similar to ours.
People need to open their ears a little more and not be afraid to give
variety a chance. I did and at the end
of the day, I was glad to come across this project. As of late, it has given me more motivation
to feature underrated/up and coming artists on RTF.
