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bearBOI Photo

The fast-rising singer soothed a sold-out crowd on Tuesday night.


bearBOI Photo for MPR

Photos: Coco Jones Shines at First Avenue

Each week, we add new music, older tracks, which are known as “Gold adds”, and tracks that might not fit our general format, but still deserve a place in rotation because they serve our mission of showing the depth, breadth, and influence of Black musical expression - These are known as “Variety adds.”

. If you make music and want it considered for rotation, 

 If you want to give feedback directly, reach out to me at jgreen@mpr.org.

Tune in to hear our host Sanni B. live on The Message from 10 AM to 1 PM Monday through Thursday!

Keep all these tracks in one place with the 

 Spotify playlist. This playlist is updated weekly with all the new adds. When that playlist is cycled with new tracks, the tracks live forever on the 

 playlist. That playlist contains all of the music that we've added since the week of July 11, 2022 in chronological order of when it was added. All of the tracks available on Spotify, at least.

Julian Green built and manages the music library for Carbon Sound and oversees content creation.  


Julian Green

All of the tracks added to rotation on Carbon Sound the week of August 14, 2023.


Image for New on Carbon Sound Spotify playlist

Natalia Toledo

New on Carbon Sound

Old on Carbon Sound

New Music on Carbon Sound - Week of August 14, 2023

Michigan-born YouTuber Darryl Granberry Jr, AKA DDG’s, “Maybe it’s Me” sucked. Like, a lot.  

There was not a single moment between the uncomfortable overshares about his rocky relationship with the much more talented Halle Bailey, three separate versions of “Geekin’,” or endless boasts about sex with women other than his estranged girlfriend that made me think, “Wow, what a cool up and coming rapper this is!”  

“Maybe It’s Me” is another ebb in the troubling tide of internet influencers trying to reach a new frontier of fame: becoming shitty rappers.  

Pewdiepie did it, Jake Paul did it, and RiceGum, too. For some reason, internet celebrities believe that the next step in their online career is to become a rapper. I think this is for two reasons. The first being is that rap has a lower barrier to entry than other music genres, often being made from bedrooms and minimalist setups. The second is that rap music is viewed as only a medium to make money instead of art. Is rap now becoming just a piece of content? Regardless of the reason, it’s hurting the genre and those who love it. 

So, why are they rapping and not picking up oboe or forming barbershop quartets? To put it plain and simple, rapping makes them even more money. Their devout followers, hungry for whatever content they put out, eat it up. Not only are these big-name YouTubers getting it from the songs themselves from advertisements, but they also go to put them up on streaming sources, adding to their revenue. 

This trend raises questions about whether rap music is being seen solely to make money, rather than as a genuine art form. The danger lies in reducing rap to mere content creation, which compromises the authenticity and essence of the genre. As a rap fan, it’s disheartening to witness this shift, as it dilutes the quality of music I’ve loved for so long.  

The YouTuber Diss Track Craze of 2016 comes to mind as the fateful moment when this shift began. Enter Bryan Quang Lee, better known as RiceGum, who is infamous for being one of the key figures in many viral rap videos. Jake Paul’s “It’s Everyday Bro” came in pursuit, and then the rest was history.  

A lot of rap enthusiasts would agree that RiceGum’s and other influencers’ music lacks authenticity and a genuine connection to the genre. His early rap songs were often criticized for having simplistic lyrics that focused on personal drama and internet feuds rather than exploring deeper themes commonly found in rap music. Because these influencers are mass-producing music that lacks depth or misrepresents the culture, it contributes to a dilution of the genre’s reputation and integrity. 

When listening to newer rap albums, I often find the instrumentals captivating, but the verses are lacking. One reason for this is that some artists prioritize a catchy hook (whether they are successful is up for debate) and appealing production to cater to a broader audience. I believe YouTubers copy this approach, as it is easier for them to pick a good beat than be technically skilled at rapping. I think this is a direct correlation of rap culture shifting in a different direction, for the worse.  

No, every song doesn’t need to be a lyrical masterpiece, but for the sake of hip-hop, the missing ingredient for a lot of these fledgling rappers is artistic integrity.   

Rap can be fun. I’m not saying everything needs to be taken so seriously, but good rap music demands a skill set that goes beyond online clout. Because these people are directly in the public eye, arguably more than most rappers, this is slowly becoming the way people are broadly introduced to current rap, which is heartbreaking. 

DDG’s album is just the latest example of an influencer trying to make more money. You can hear authenticity and artistic integrity take a backseat. Are there more to come? Probably.  What can we do? We can call them out on it.  

This music created by influencers is a cash grab. The pursuit of rap only as a money-making venture leads to shallow and formulaic content. Are there content creators with actual talent? Of course, there are. Look at Quadeca, KSI, and JOJI, all of which were YouTubers who I think are pretty good. If people want to try new things and/or follow their passion, they should. If they’re just trying to make a quick buck, they should strongly reconsider. Because more often than not, it just sounds awful. 

Nikhil Kumaran

Shallow, half-baked attempts to enter the music industry hurt fans in the search of great music.


Carbon Sound

Jake Paul - It's Everyday Bro (Song) feat. Team 10 (Official Music Video)

RiceGum - Its EveryNight Sis feat. Alissa Violet (Official Music Video)

Why Influencers Should Stop Making Rap Albums

Hip-hop is turning 50. Minneapolis organization TruArtSpeaks is celebrating the 50th anniversary of hip-hop with a three-part event on Friday, August 11 at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. 

Part one of the event will start off with some tunes by DJ JUST NINE, followed by a  panel discussion. Each have all made a name for themselves in Minnesota’s hip-hop culture and represents one of the four core elements of hip-hop: DJing, MCing, B-boy or breakdancing, and graffiti. 

Panelists include DJ Kool Akiem, David Staller, Jr., BDotCroc, Timothy Wilson, and St. Paul Slim. DJ Kool Akiem is a DJ and music producer in the Twin Cities who has shared stages with Atmosphere and Public Enemy. David Stalter Jr. is a dancer from Minneapolis, who specializes in hip-pop, animation, popping and more. In 2022, Stalter was awarded the champion of the Red Bull Dance Your Style World Finals. BdotCroc is a lyrical musician who uses her music to help mentor at-risk youth in the Twin Cities. Timothy Wilson is the owner of the only Black-owned record store in Minnesota, Urban Lights Music. St. Paul Slim is an artist that has shared stages with MC Lyte, Wiz Khalifa and Cee-Lo Green. Slim is now focused painting and has completed several projects in the Twin Cities and hosted three successful art shows.

Hip-hop culture and storytelling influences many across the world today, TruArtSpeaks co-founder Tish Jones says Friday's discussion will explore Minnesota's hip-hip history and what the future could look like.

“We have such a great opportunity for narrative shift, narrative change and social impact through Hip-Hop culture. So, the questions that these artists are going to be grappling with have to do with that; really thinking about ourselves as responsible stewards of the culture and to the future into the next 50 years in Minnesota,” said Jones.

Part two will be a space for networking and community discussion over a shared meal catered by K’s Revolutionary Catering. Some prompt questions include, “What does queer representation in hip-hop look like?” And, “How is hip-hop pedagogy related to cultural relevance?” Jones says hip-hop education will close the achievement gap.

“How do we stop smothering our students that have hip-hip perspectives who are fully immersed in hip-hop culture? How do we see them as full human beings? How do we honor their cannon, their lexicon, their vernacular, their presentation in their space and give them space to tell stories in their first language and arguably that language is hip-hop,” said Jones.

Jones believes that hip-hop is one of the most powerful genres of music.

“Hip-hop has the power to shift perspective to rally a community to action and to really emphasize a moment in time. Whether that's eulogizing something, or commemorating something, or celebrating something.”

The night will conclude with a dance party with DJ NeekaSoDope and performances by Yoni Light, a multidisciplinary artist, and dancer Cecil “Virgo” Neal. Myc Daz, a Twin Cities-based artist, will be completing a mural throughout the event.  

Jones says she’s looking forward to seeing several hip-hop practitioners all together in one space.

“I’m so excited for the positive energy conversations, ideas, and possibilities that are gonna come from this experience.”

Aaliyah Demry

The prolific Minneapolis organization will celebrate hip-hop’s 50th with a three-part event.


Tru Art Speaks

TruArtSpeaks celebrates 50 years of Hip-Hop

Joshua Ezeagwula

Click to view Joshua Ezeagwula’s photos from the event.


Joshua Ezeagwula for MPR

Photos: Artists immerse the crowd at The Playground Experience

Zoe Challenger

The young Nigerian phenom brought his unique take on Afropop to the newly opened venue.


Zoe Challenger for MPR

Photos: Rema brings Afropop to Uptown Theater

All of the tracks added to rotation on Carbon Sound the week of July 31, 2023.


New Music on Carbon Sound - Week of July 31, 2023

National Book Award winner and New York Times bestselling author Hanif Abdurraqib has a lot going on. Aside from winning a MacArthur Genius Grant and writing some of this century’s most vital 

 at the Walker Art Center. Dubbed the “Black VHS Experience,” these five films explore the interplay between music and the moving image, particularly Black music in 90s films. 

At the series’ first screening last Friday, Abdurraqib came to introduce the seminal film, “The Five Heartbeats” (1991). Upon taking to the mic, Abdurraqib reflected on his ties to the city: “I published my first book here, through Button Poetry. I’m also a lifelong Timberwolves fan, for better or for worse.”

Before the first screening, Abdurraqib took some time to chat with Carbon Sound about his connection to Minneapolis and what music means to him.

First and foremost, how are you liking Minneapolis?

I like it a lot. I’ve been [to Minneapolis] a lot and I’ve spent a lot of time here… I’m on my way now to one of my favorite sneaker shops in the city. So it's good to return to these corners of the city that mean a great deal to me. This is one of my favorite Midwestern places. It’s good to be back.

Speaking of the Midwest — In your work, particularly your essay collection “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us,” you touch a lot on the Midwest and its influence in American music. For instance, J Dilla, Michael Jackson, and Aaliyah all grew up in this region. What are your thoughts on what Minnesota in particular has to offer? We have Prince, for starters.

Speaking of the Midwest — In your work, particularly your essay collection “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us,” you touch a lot on the Midwest and its influence in American music. For instance, J Dilla, Michael Jackson, and Aaliyah all grew up in this region. What are your thoughts on what Minnesota in particular has to offer? 

Of course. There’s Prince and the Minneapolis sound. There’s also a massively important punk scene that came out. I love The Replacements. I’ve always loved punk and rock in general. Hüsker Dü… Semisonic. To some degree, The Jets are from here. They’re a band I adore. Something massively overlooked, at least in my mind, is how there’s a deep hip-hop scene in the Twin Cities.

Last night, [local performer and organizer] Tish Jones hosted 

 at the Walker. I went, and it was great. It was an ode to hip-hop and all the local artists in the scene. The Twin Cities’ contributions to music are vital. Prince and [Bob] Dylan headline that conversation, but there’s a lot of glossed over things that make this place so great.

For your Walker film screening series, you mentioned that you’re trying to create a sort of logical arc in the way you’ve picked and sequenced these five films. Tell me more about that. 

For your Walker film screening series, you 

 that you’re trying to create a sort of logical arc in the way you’ve picked and sequenced these five films. Tell me more about that. 

 of their soundtracks. Music plays a role in how these movies come across. So, it was easy for me to sequence these films as if I was sequencing a playlist, just basing it off of the music of the films. 

I really wanted to start with the more upbeat sonic templates. So start out with a “Five Heartbeats”

or “Sister Act” kind of thing, and then get into sounds that were a bit heavier or a bit weightier. 

We're watching these films, but they require close listening as well. So I really wanted to treat it as though it was also a listening practice. And the order of the films have a sonic arc to them. Narrative arcs too, but the sonic arc is really palpable.

In reference to this being a listening practice, what do you want the viewers/listeners to get out of it?

The soundtrack of the film allows us to step inside the way a song enhances a moment, and then exiting that film experience as a witness. I think we can apply some of those enhancements to our own curation of sound to get us through the day. 

This is why I'm so particular about the soundtracking of my own life. I'm so particular about placements in playlists, or what purposes a playlist can service. 

 That's because I go about it like I'm scoring a film. Which is not to add importance to my life, I don't think my life is a film, but I'm saying treat it that way, give [your life] that opportunity. It allows me to put the focus and put some rigor into the sound that accompanies it.

Let’s talk about these soundtracks. They’re all pretty influential, especially “Set It Off” and “Sister Act.” What’s your emotional connection to them?

We had “Sister Act” on VHS because my grandmother was living with us for a while. She was very Christian, and also loved Whoopi Goldberg a great deal. She would watch “Sister Act" religiously. I remember she lived in a room upstairs and I would sneak up the stairs and sit in the doorway and watch with her. 

“The Five Heartbeats” soundtrack was on a cassette tape that my dad played in the car. We played it all the time in the house when I was younger too. I came to love these songs independently of the films they were attached to. That to me is the mark of a good soundtrack. With “The Five Heartbeats,” those songs were made specifically for the film, those songs were made to kind of sink into the film. They were required to. But these are also standalone great songs. 

There are two kinds of soundtracks. Soundtracks like “The Five Heartbeats” where the songs are engineered to stitch the film together. The other soundtrack is where you just get a bunch of good artists to make new songs. In “Set It Off,” there’s an incredible 

 that you can only hear on that soundtrack. They didn’t put it on any albums.

Both of those modes entice me. I like the new Spider-Verse soundtrack because they just let Metro Boomin work. They gave him space and told him to get some artists to do some songs. That felt like a kind of a call back to an era that I really loved.

What's your favorite song in movie usage? Now that you bring it up.

Oh, gosh. I have a few. I don't really love the movie “City of Angels,” but the use of “Iris” [by Goo Goo Dolls] is fantastic. And I don't even know how much I like “Iris” at its face-value. That's one of those situations where the song maybe surpasses the film for me. 

Another one would have to be in the first “Creed” movie. There’s a scene where the villain boxer comes out and they play Krept & Konan’s “Don’t Waste My Time.” That’s such a perfect encapsulation of that song. This works on TV too. In the opening scene of “The Americans,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk” is playing. Yo, that shit is perfect. 

I'd love to hear more. It sounds like what you're saying is that it's kind of a symbiotic thing. Both the song and the scene are amplified by each other.

Yeah, the song is redefining or expanding our ideas of what a scene can be. I think this is in part because I grew up in the music video era. So I believe songs should be a visual experience. I'm still a music video watcher, but I think it is safe and fair to say that the music video as a form and the attention paid to it has begun to dwindle. 

So what do we do then? I still have an interest in seeing songs spring to life in any kind of way that is useful visually. That’s why I turn to film and television.

You mentioned that music video viewership has been dwindling. Given the rise of Spotify and TikTok, I’m curious, what are your thoughts on this?

I mean, I was a big music video person. I still am. I remember when Rihanna released the music video for “Work.” I remember it vividly because it was one of the last times I felt like there was real excitement in a music video premiere. We knew what time it was premiering on YouTube. People were watching it in real time together, people were responding to it in real time together. And that was really cool to me. I kind of miss the communal witnessing of a single thing that we could share together. 

This did not happen, obviously, in the original music video era that I grew up in. We were watching them on MTV. But I think the music video is an opportunity to be a kind of short film, or a film that is not fully realized, but is still rich and textured. So I look at a director like Hype Williams. Have you seen his film “Belly”? It came out in ‘98.

I don't think so. I definitely will after this conversation.

To be clear, “Belly” is not a good movie. [laughs] But it’s an aesthetically beautiful movie. Hype Williams is primarily a music video director. So essentially, he just directed a film that maybe should have been a music video. His training, his brain is wired towards music video-making and colors and lighting. There's a real generosity in how he sees Black people — he understands how to light them well. 

The music video is an opportunity for risk taking. There has to be a place for that. There has to be a place for that kind of imagination to flourish.

This film series also solely focuses on 90s films, given this was a vibrant time in terms of representation of Black music in film. How would you say this representation has changed since? Have you noticed any trends?

I think that so much of Black music in film falls on the biopic now. I guess that’s kind of always been the case. But I think the thing about “The Five Heartbeats” is that it was kind of a reimagining of the Black biopic, right. And that was cool to me. 

There are so many ways that music can be used and shaped, Black music specifically, where it doesn't need to be at the forefront of the film. It can be in the backdrop, a generous backdrop.

I'm not anti biopic. I'm not opposed to them, but I think there's so many of them that try to capture a full life. I think they're most useful when they’re attempting to capture a moment. I think there was a broader imagination for how Black music could live in film back then.

Last question: Aside from your upcoming book, There’s Always This Year,and your event series at the Walker, what else can we look forward to seeing from you in the coming weeks and months?

Last question: Aside from your upcoming book,

and your event series at the Walker, what else can we look forward to seeing from you in the coming weeks and months?

In terms of stuff that the public can touch, I'm still 

 pretty regularly. I’ve been doing some smaller, more intimate readings, spending a couple nights at a time in one place. I do hope to come back [to the Twin Cities] in the next couple of months and do one here. It's been good to get back to my roots of more small-scale, quieter reading spaces. 

Hanif Abdurraqib’s Black VHS Experience film screening series will continue through the rest of the summer at the Walker Art Center. The next screening is “Sister Act.” 

Find more info on Walker Art Center’s website.

Fatima Rahman

The MacArthur Genius Grant awardee chatted with Carbon Sound about the intentions behind his new series at Walker Art Center.


Person stands outside with hands in pockets

Photo by Maddie McGarvey, courtesy Hanif Abdurraqib

Exploring the Black VHS Experience with Hanif Abdurraqib

Bora ⠀

The singer’s career-spanning set show at Huntington Bank Stadium brought out highlights from 2022’s RENAISSANCE and a lot more. 


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