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- #45 - Sunlighter Pink 🌞
#45 - Sunlighter Pink 🌞
Your weekly music round-up: Pink Tape album review, Eras Tour, Travis not guilty, Ripple, Canva adds music, Stephen Sanchez.
Donya Bayrami & Chris Xu
July 2nd, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 16 minutes
Happy Sunlighter Sunday! We’re embracing pink a little extra this weekend with Uzi’s release of Pink Tape, just in time for July 4th cookouts everywhere. If you’re actually bumping this album at your cookout, chances are it’s probably out of hand and your cookout has turned into a mosh pit. Also PSA: stop throwing things on stage.
Here's what we have queued up this week:
🌶️ Review of Pink Tape by Lil Uzi Vert.
💿 This Week in Music: Eras Tour, Travis not guilty, Ripple, Canva adds music.
🔀 Recommendation Station: ATEEZ, Gunna, Queens of the Stone Age, Killer Mike, Asake
🎙️ Stephen Sanchez is our artist of the week.
Rating Rationale: The anticipation for Pink Tape was palpable and in Uzi fashion, he dropped the album on short notice this week. While Uzi clearly emphasizes his unique hip-hop and punk-rock (trending metal) fusion by bringing in guest features like Bring Me The Horizon, BABYMETAL, and System of a Down (through his rendition of “Chop Suey!”), he isn’t afraid to bring in other influences from his youth, clearly earmarked by the “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” sample in “Endless Fashion” and Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” sample in “Mama I’m Sorry.” The album is very diverse and very authentically Uzi. However, it’s too long and at times a bit too chaotic. For OG fans, “Pluto to Mars,” “Patience,” and “All Alone” are all reminiscent of Eternal Atake and Luv is Rage.
This Week in Music 💿
👩🎤 Biggest Tour in History: Earlier this week, Taylor Swift added 9 additional LA dates and a fifth show at Wembley Stadium to her Eras Tour. Her tour will likely break the record currently held by Elton John’s ongoing farewell tour, which has pulled in over $887 million. Taylor is on track to gross over $1 billion.
💫 Astroworld Grand Jury: A year-and-a-half since the Astroworld tragedy, a grand jury ultimately determined that Travis Scott should not be criminally indicted for the crowd surge that killed 10 people. However, there are still plenty of pending civil lawsuits against him.
💯 50/50: K-pop girl group, FIFTY FIFTY, suspended their exclusivity contract with Korean record label, ATTRAKT, after the organization claimed Warner Music Korea attempted to illegally poach members of FIFTY FIFTY. ATTRAKT should’ve watched this video.
🎓 XXL Freshman Class 2023: Every year, XXL magazine honors rising hip-hop talent by inducting a new “Freshman Class.” This year, they announced 12 spots, but the Princess Diana of rap, Ice Spice, was notably missing from the list. It turns out, she turned it down due to a “hectic schedule” 🤔.
🤑 Logical Sale: Maryland-native rapper, Logic, has sold his entire publishing catalog to Influence Media Partners (a music catalog acquisition company backed by BlackRock and WMG) in an eight-figure deal 😮.
⛑️🏠 Music Cares: MusiCares, a charity focused on providing health and human services for the music community, is launching its “Humans of Hip-Hop” initiative to focus on the unique needs of hip-hop communities across eight cities. Separately, Beyoncé and Kelly Rowland are working together with local leaders from the city of Houston to develop 31 permanent housing units in order to combat homelessness.
📺 You Gotta Listen to This: The third season of Dua Lipa’s At Your Service podcast just kicked off featuring Amelia Dimoldenberg, host of her hit YouTube series, Chicken Shop Date (goes on dates with celebrities, primarily music artists). Lots of music-social medium crossover here.
⌚ Ripple in Time: TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, launched a free music production app in which users can sing into the app to create an instrumental song. This feels like a big disruptor to the current digital audio workstation (Ableton, FL Studio, Logic, etc.) landscape.
🎨 A Music Canvas: Canva is partnering with Warner Music Group and Merlin (a digital rights licensing organization) to bring licensed music to Canva’s visual creation platform.
🧼 Popwashing: Saudi Arabia has long been accused of reputation-laundering. This controversial practice came back into focus earlier this year with the merger announcement of the PGA and LIV golf tours. The music industry is breeding another example, popwashing through Riyadh’s upcoming Soundstorm festival.
🔊 First Fans: SoundCloud is trialing an AI feature called “First Fans,” which recommends newly-uploaded tracks to approximately 100 users with relevant music preferences in an attempt to resolve the “Zero Plays Problem,” exacerbated by the oversaturation of music uploaded to SoundCloud on a daily basis.
📈 Raising Payments: SXSW opened their artist applications this week while simultaneously announcing that they would be raising payments to both bands (from $250 to $350) and solo artists (from $100 to $150). This really doesn’t move the needle much, but it’s a step in the right direction.
🌎 AWAL Expansion: As part of a continued trend in the globalization of music, it’s no surprise that record labels and distributors continue to expand internationally. This week, AWAL (under Sony Music) is expanding into India.
🌐 Web3 Updates: Warner Music is doubling down on web3 music by partnering with Polygon Labs on a new music accelerator program. COLORSxSTUDIOS, a (very aesthetic) platform that promotes distinctive artists by having them perform live in a unique, colorful backdrop, is dropping COLORS COLLECT through ZORA. Songcamp just launched its new (also aesthetic) website. Itoka is tokenizing AI-generated music content on the blockchain. Arpeggi Labs dropped a new AI voice toolkit.
🛏️ Paint My Bedroom Black: Our very first artist of the week was Holly Humberstone, and her debut album, Paint My Bedroom Black, is coming out in October. We are still staunch believers in her stardom. It’s coming.
🏙️ Summertime Chi: Trendy house DJ, John Summit, will be playing a July 4th pop-up show at Space Stage Studios in Chicago.
🏟️ Doris: Earl Sweatshirt’s debut album, Doris, will officially be 10 years old this summer. To commemorate his journey, Earl is playing a special show at The Novo in LA.
🚶♂️ Artists On Tour: Trippie Redd, J Hus for the first time in six years, The Dinner Party, The Used, beabadoobee cancels the European leg of her tour due to illness, and Lewis Capaldi is taking a break from touring to adjust to Tourette Syndrome.
🎶 Taking Back Sunday dropped their first single in four years. Paris Hilton dropped a new song? 2 Chainz debuted a new song during Paris Fashion Week. The Chemical Brothers dropped a song and a limited edition book.
👀 In 2010, Nicki Minaj dropped her iconic debut album, Pink Friday. This November, Nicki will be releasing Pink Friday 2. Olivia Rodrigo dropped her new single, “vampire,” alongside the release date of her upcoming sophomore album, GUTS. According to Killer Mike, Andre 3000 has a debut album on the way. After dropping “Who Told You” with Drake earlier this month, J Hus announced this week that he’ll be dropping his third album. James Blake will be Playing Robots Into Heaven. Jon Batiste’s upcoming album, World Music Radio, will feature Lana, Weezy, and Leigh-Anne (from Little Mix), Curren$y & Harry Fraud reinvent Miami Vice.
Recommendation Station 🔀
Sunlighter Playlists 🔁
We’ve updated Balanced Breakfast with Jay Wheeler, AP Dhillon, Doe Boy, Mike Dimes, and Polyphia.
 A balance of genres to satisfy your music hunger. Listen to Balanced Breakfast. |  The SUN rules everything around me. Listen to Midsommar Solstice. |
Artist of the Week: Stephen Sanchez 🎙️
Primer: Stephen is one of those artists who rose to fame during lockdown, and chances are, you’ve listened to one or a few of his songs on your TikTok shuffle without knowing it. Elton John co-signed him after his Troubadour debut and compared him to the likes of Chris Isaak and Roy Orbison (one of Stephen’s greatest musical inspirations). Last weekend, Stephen joined Elton John on stage at his final UK performance at Glastonbury.
Hey Mama, welcome to the ‘60s: When you hear Stephen Sanchez’s music for the first time, you’ll swear you've been transported through a time machine. The musical era he’s creating now stems from the nostalgic love songs you heard in the 1960s–particularly Roy Orbison, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis Presley. Growing up in El Dorado Hills, California, the vinyl records of these greats and many more were the soundtrack to his childhood when he visited his grandparents in San Jose. Throughout his early high school years, Stephen began writing his own songs while learning how to play guitar by listening to artists like Cage The Elephant, fun., and Foster The People.
Cigarette Daydreams: Once Stephen combined his love of guitar and songwriting, he started gaining attention–even winning a contest to open up for Ben Rector in his hometown. Within three months after COVID lockdown began, he’d released a cover of “Cigarette Daydreams,” which attracted over 160,000 views, as well as an original song, “Lady By The Sea.” The latter caught the attention of his first manager as well as Jeremy Zucker (another Sunlighter favorite), who offered to produce the official version. Two months later, Stephen signed with Republic Records, and he partnered with two music industry titans as producers–Ian Fitchuk (Kacey Musgraves, Golden Hour) and Konrad Snyde (Noah Kahan, Stick Season).
Genre: Pop-nostalgia
Influences: Roy Orbison, Lord Huron, Jeff Buckley, Dean Martin, The Platters, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Nat King Cole.
Current Label: Republic Records
What’s Next: Stephen describes “Until I Found You,” as the catalyst to finding his sonic sphere, and he plans to continue embracing that sound. His upcoming record is set to take place from the years of 1958-1964, in which he plans to craft a fictional world and share stories of characters derived from his fantasy with songs like “Evangeline” and “Only Girl.” Until then, he’s hitting the festival circuit this year, making appearances at Festival d’été de Québec, Bleached Festival, and Sea.Hear.Now before heading on tour in October.
Wrap Up 👏
We're closing the newsletter this week with a meme reminding all of you we don’t need any more Katy Perry “Firework” captions on social media.
Who’s Burning? 🌡️
Hopefully not you. Don’t forget that SPF this weekend 🧴
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See ya next Sunday 😎
Chris and Donya
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