London-based experimental duo Jockstrap (Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye) have finally announced the release of their debut album, I Love You Jennifer B. “[It] is a collection of Jockstrap tracks that have been 3 years in the making,” they explained. “Everything on it is pretty singular sounding so we hope there is a track on there for everyone and something that speaks to you and says ‘I’m a banger.’” The record features the previously released singles “50/50” and “Concrete Over Water.”

Alongside the announcement, the band also shared a brand new single, “Glasgow,” which Taylor described as “our coming of age, moving forward, long-distance, travelling, beautiful bosk, wonderful thicket song.” Georgia added: “Glasgow is a great city, perhaps my favourite in the UK. Only downside is that it’s so damn cold all the time.”

Watch the self-made video for “Glasgow” below and pre-order/save I Love You Jennifer B now.

Jockstrap (Georgia Ellery + Taylor Skye) announce today their signing to Rough Trade Records. Alongside this exciting news, they are also sharing a new single, “50/50,” as well as a Mollie Gallagher-directed video. The London-based duo has often drawn from electronic and dance music, but this new offering is probably one of their clubbiest so far. You would not believe that this pulsating beat was crafted by Taylor in bed whilst recovering from tonsillitis. Listen and watch below.

“I want to be a multifaceted artist, not just a musician, but an intellectual woman.”; never has this saying been less true than it has been with Princess Nokia. From the title alone, “A Girl Cried Red”, one can quickly make the conclusion that Destiny Nicole Frasqueri has taken a left turn in her stylistic musical direction. Her last major commercial release in 2017, “1992 Deluxe,” was an anthemic homage to her childhood growing up in the gritty streets of New York City. This new 8-tracked album exchanges aggressive horns and chants of empowerment for mellow guitar melodies and lyrical despair.

There’s a stand out lyric that Frasqueri uses repetitively that truly encapsulates the album’s overall glum theme. A pre-recorded sample of her singing, “Smash my heart in pieces / it looks so good on the floor”. This unofficial mantra is used generously throughout the EP and it inexplicably fuses itself well into any melody. In essence, that is Frasqueri in a nutshell: constantly transcending and experimenting through her musical persona: Princess Nokia. Her debut mixtape, “Metallic Butterfly” was heavily influenced by drum’n’bass and the jungle genre while its follow-up, “Honeysuckle”, was a venture into her disco soul roots. Prior to “A Girl Cried Red’s” release, she highly publicized this upcoming album as “real alternative shit”, an outpouring of intimate emotions, fears, and insecurities of peak adolescence and it is clearly obvious over a cursory listen to the album.

What makes Princess Nokia‘s “A Girl Cried Red” worthwhile is the universality of self-centeredness.

What makes “A Girl Cried Red” worthwhile is the universality of self-centeredness. Frasqueri metaphorically bleeds over her specific anxieties from her teenage angst and extreme sadness in her raspy falsetto from the beginning to the end of the EP. The album at its core could be an extension of the once popular punk goes rap series from the early 2000s. She is able to epitomize a generation when the emo subculture was at its renaissance. “Look Up Kid”‘s aggressive electric arpeggio opening is eerily similar to a Paramore song circa “Misery Business” and “Little Angel” could moonlight as a B-side to a early “Dashboard Confessional” album. The incredibly sorrowful “Morphine” and equally despondent “Your Eyes Are Bleeding” pay reverence to the ubiquitous emotional turmoil of accepting the lonely feeling that no one can never truly understand you except yourself.

Undeniably this is a purposeful decision, as Frasqueri and long-time friend and producer, Tony Seltzer, exclusively produced nearly the entirety of the album. Seltzer, known most notably for his work with the underground NYC music scene, complements Frasqueri‘s raw and depressive pour over of emotions with his tightly wound and clean production chops. This allows her to stay within the alternative hip-hop genre while exploring diverse methodologies. Although there are some solid material like “For the Night” and “At the Top,” there aren’t any to provide great single material like “Brujas” or “Tomboy” from “1992 Deluxe.”

Despite not sticking to a signature sound or genre, through and through one of Frasqueri‘s everlasting qualities is her profound authenticity. The modern musician especially female icons are unanimously refined by agents, publicists, and teams of other people. In contrast to this, Frasqueri is a gigantic pot of piping hot soup to the over-processed sugary popstar churned out by the industry. (Coincidentally, she was also reported to have thrown hot soup at a vocal racist in the subways of NYC). At her own shows, her unapologetic magnetism and energy is full-frontal and infectious, calling out marginalized people to come to the front and take up space, stopping the music if a fight breaks out, and displaying her assets without reserve. It’s nearly impossible to name another musician or celebrity like Princess Nokia in the slightest and maybe that’s just what the music industry needs right now.

Labelled as “real alternative music” and “emo”, Princess Nokia‘s new 8-track mixtape “A Girl Cried Red” definitely showcases a new side of the artist’s sound personality. As you might have guessed, the follow-up to her 2016’s critically-acclaimed mixtape “1992” is loaded with acoustic guitar, autotune and personal emotional lyrics.

About this new sound and mixtape name, she explained:

[su_quote]It’s taken from my favorite song, ‘The Robot with Human Hair.’ I have a lot of references from this Dance Gavin Dance album, and the first line in the song is ‘Your eyes are bleeding.’ I always loved that image, and it’s a big motif in my work. The mixtape name is supposed to mean a girl cried blood, or a girl cried fury. There’s so many interpretations of what red is.[/su_quote]

Princess Nokia also shared a Milah Libin-directed video for lead single “Your Eyes Are Bleeding” which mainly features footages from her 2-year-long worldwide tour.

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In the 8-minute video, wich starts with the album opener “Bart Simpson”, Princess Nokia is bringing us back to her high school days, with quite intimate and realistic sequences of her life at school and into home parties with friends. In the second part of this video that she co-directed with Milah Libin, Princess Nokia shows us the metro line she was used to taking every day and raps in front of Queens’ Unisphere. This double video appears as particularly authentic and personal as it enables us to understand a bit more about her real life but also because this can be what a NYC’s teenager life can look like.

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“Bart Simpson” and “Green Line” are both taken from Princess Nokia‘s excellent album “1992 Deluxe”, wich was released in its new version on September 8 via Rough Trade.

Besides those news, Princess Nokia also started a GoFundMe campaign in order to raise money in support to Puerto Rico, which was seriously damaged after the hurricanes Maria and Irma.

Connect with Princess Nokia via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Princess Nokia is Destiny Frasqueri, an Afro-Nuyorican independent alternative hip hop formerly known as Wavy Space. She is also the co-founder of Smart Girl Club and Radio with Milah Libin, an urban feminist collective based in the arts and community outreach. The two artists directed the video of ‘G.O.A.T.’ together. Watch it below.

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‘G.O.A.T.’ is one of the six new tracks taken from the upcoming deluxe edition of Princess Nokia‘s excellent debut ‘1992.’

Connect with Princess Nokia via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

This track is also the opportunity to give the date release of her previously announced album called “Hopelessness” due to be released on May 6th via Rough Trade Records. This announcement also comes with the release of a video directed by Nabil starring supermodel Naomi Campbell. You can check it below via Apple Music

The new album “Hopelessness” will contain 11 tracks. You can check the artwork and the tracklist below

She also announced some dates around Europe that you can check below

Fri. – Mon. 27, 28, 30, 31 May – Sydney, AUS @ Vivid LIVE
Fri. June 17 – Barcelona, ES @ SONAR
Sun. June 26 – Holland, NL @ Down The Rabbit Hole Festival, Holland
Mon. July 4 – Paris, FR @ Day Off Festival
7, 8 July 2016 – London, UK @ Barbican
Tue. July 12 – Ostrava, CZ @ Colors of Ostrava
Fri. July 15 – Turin, IT @ Flowers Festival
Sun. Aug. 7 – Katowice, PL @ Off Festival