The Witzard

"When I first read this phrase at 16, it blew my mind: "all songs written, performed, produced, and arranged by D'Angelo ." After that point, I knew [that was] exactly what I wanted to do for my debut: write, produce, and play all the instruments on my project (I recently learned, it was Prince who inspired D'Angelo to do this). To express myself to the full capacity of my abilities and strive to take a similar challenging, but rewarding, journey as one of my idols to create the debut that I truly wanted," singer, song-writer, producer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist Chris McClenney wrote within A Written Note On Portrait In Two . McClenney's self-released Portrait In Two EP , which was just released this past Friday, January 13th and followed by a Saturday Blue Not Jazz Club release show, was preceded by critically-acclaimed singles "Headlines," "Otherside," and "What You Mean to Me." McClenney has previously ...

"Yeah, that's my grandfather. My grandfather's side of the family is a bunch of Jazz musicians. Nat & Cannonball Adderley , my grandfather's Richard Adderley , they played with Miles Davis ... and my grandfather, he's a beast," Rome Fortune ecstatically revealed to THE HUNDREDS writer Senay Kenfe during a 2015 Small VVorld EP -centric interview; Kenfe was inquiring about a suspicious underlying Jazz/Hard Bop influence running through his Beautiful Pimp I-II mixtapes. It makes a bit more sense, taking his Jazz roots into account, that Rome Fortune has worked with such a wide array of genre-spanning producers and musicians such as Neo-Soul -minded multi-instrumentalist Chris McClenney , Jazz -inclined Electronic producer Four Tet , Grimes -affiliated song-writer and producer BloodPop (formerly Blood Diamonds ), and Haitian-Canadian Hip-Hop/R&B producer KAYTRANADA . Rome Fortune can easily be categorized as a by-product of fellow ATLiens Out...

While it's largely unclear exactly how Atlanta emcee Rome Fortune and British Electronic producer Four Tet managed to record their recent series of cross-continental collaborations, I'd like to think they followed the Jaylib model; legend has it that J Dilla & Madlib 's lone Stones Throw album, Champion Sound , was painstakingly assembled from dozens of beat/vocal CD-R's that were mailed back-and-forth between Los Angeles and Detroit . Rome Fortune & Four Tet unexpectedly released their second track together, "Lights Low" Thursday afternoon, which Fortune vaguely alluded is "Track 2 of ? between myself and Four Tet ..." For those not exactly familiar with either artists' work, "Lights Low" and "One Time For" don't sound totally dissimilar from Daft Punk 's Electro -tinged Hip-Hop collaborations with Kanye and Jay Z , "Stronger" and "Computerized" (respectively). Four Tet r...

I'm about 98% sure that I first stumbled upon Kieran Hebden (aka Four Tet ) during my early exploration of Jaylib -era J Dilla ; the late great rapper-producer concocted a neck-snapping remix of Hebden's own "As Serious As Your Life" (2003) along with fellow Detroit emcee Guilty Simpson . While he's primarily regarded as a one-man band, Four Tet has branched out in recent years working with drummer Steve Reid , MADVILLAIN, Neneh Cherry , Syrian wedding singer Omar Souleyman , and has produced unofficial remixes for everyone from Lana del Rey to Justin Timberlake. Four Tet unleashed his latest foray into Hip-Hop late Tuesday afternoon; "One Time For" is one of two tracks recently recorded with rising Atlanta emcee Rome Fortune . Even though it may still be a little rough around the edges, "One Time For" is an extremely glitched out, drum-heavy Electronic Hip-Hop hybrid, which could very well be the start of a great collaborative ef...