Another Pop #1: CL Sosa
December 7, 2010, 1 comments
We’re happy to introduce you to our latest category, a series of guest posts named Another Pop that is intended to bring to attention the tastes of artists, musicians or not, that would usually not be featured on No Fear Of Pop, starting with New Jersey rapper Carlos Gonzales aka CL Sosa.
Carlos Gonzales:
“Inspiration can come from many places, and although I’ve never been to StewRat’s hometown of Springfield, Ohio, it’s hard to think that this would be the birthplace to the hazy, soul dripping collage of sound found in his music. A hip-hop chillwaver of sorts, he has a unique ability to make a record that sounds familiar yet unpredictable. One minute he is warping a soul sample into neck snapping Portishead-esque trip-hop jam, and the next he is making an entire album that sounds like it could have scored any 80s John Hughes movie.
I’ve had the pleasure of working with him on my upcoming album (“…and then everything turned grey”) and it’s the goosebump inducing vocal rips that sound like they were pulled directly off a vinyl that hasn’t seen the sun in a couple decades that made me want to have him produce almost every other track I put out.
On top of everything, he is a really cool dude, almost scarily unaware of how talented of a producer he is, the flow of his music sounds like it was done with almost no effort, like putting together tracks comes as natural for him as breathing does. And as long as I’ve been working with him, I still can’t quite put my finger on what he’s going to do next. In 2010 he’s released about five instrumental albums, and various singles, and all in a year where he claims in a blog post to have not had “any inspiration to make music”. You can hear that sense of desperation and angst in songs like “Where U @”, a song where the drums and vocals sound like a direct response to abandonment.
Songs like the Washed Out meets Pharell-esque “Searching For Something Real” or the too chill “Need You” make me realize that while living in literally the middle of a continent, musically he is able to transport himself much farther than the horizon of his Springfield, Ohio home.”
StewRat – Searching For Something Real
Though I always used to listen to a good deal of hip-hop, of course NFOP was never conceived as a blog that would be about it in any way. So when New Jersey native Carlos Gonzales aka CL Sosa first hit me up back in August with a mail succinctly uttering “Whassup no fear”, I was already about to ditch his submission and only more or less accidentally first listened to the attached tune Stormy Black which, frankly, instantly blew me away with its tight production and incredibly captivating flow. Gonzales is more than just a rap talent: his style might resemble a whole bunch of ancestors of pre-bling bling hip-hop culture, but instead of just citing the past, he manages to transcend the early days and create something fresh and unique, whatever you generally might think of “indie hip-hop” as a concept. His brand new tune Come and Go is simply gorgeous and probably his most intriguing yet, StewRat’s smooth production perfectly supports CL Sosa’s pleasantly raspy voice while he is telling heart-warming stories about that dude from the Garden State.
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