You might have noticed the lack of updates as of late… well, not only was I extremely busy with alot of things, but as of today, I am officially part of the Montreal collective known as Indecent Xposure and will be acting as their executive music editor. Nick approached me a couple of months ago, and after some thoughts, I decided to jump onboard.

This means that I will be taking a hiatus of Above & Beyond Magazine… I say hiatus, because I extended my domain name and server for another two years just a little bit before Nick contacted me… Timing is a funny thing, and you never know what will happens anyway right? Maybe I’ll come back here at some point… So yeah, this was a hard decision for me to leave everything behind, I mean this is my baby which I’ve seen it grow for more than two years and a half now, but I feel like I’ve accomplished everything I wanted [and even more] and ready for new challenges and I feel like this is the perfect opportunity for me to not only achieve that, but to leave while everything is still a-ok.

To be honest, I feel like Above & Beyond became much bigger than I ever anticipated… not that I once thought that I’d reach 100,000 monthly visitors, but I once had ambitions to make this blog big you know, but as it grew, I realized that it wasn’t the numbers that matter, it was about who was visiting. I mean, I know that more than a half of my traffic was just people searching through stuff via Google, and that’s great, but I realized that I wanted to create a bigger “dedicated followers” base and I feel like this is too far gone to do massive work on the foundation. BUT I want to thank each and everyone one of you who took a little time of their day to visit if daily, weekly, monthly or just once in a while. I probably don’t even know the 90% of the people who came over, but seriously, it really meant alot to me that you made my blog your personal destination when it came to music and happy to know that I was not the only one with such an wide range of musical taste, even if heavily hip-hop influenced.

So yeah, on that I say goodbye for now and once again, I want to thank you guys for sticking around for two years for those who did and I hope to see some of you on Indecent Xposure as I will also be blogging a little bit on top of … you know being editor-in-chief; as well as other bloggers of the Montreal area and might want to be on the lookout for a new Above and Beyond Mag under a brand new name and on a much smaller, but more focused scale… but this might be too early to tell ;], all I know is that the practice wheels are off and things are happening.

cya
Much Love.

Seems like everyone decided that Spring would be the ideal time for them to drop their mixtape. Pusha-T is the latest as he drops, Fear Of God, his highly awaited debut solo mixtape under G.O.O.D. management which features an impressive list of heavy hitters as 50 Cent, Rick Ross, Pharrell and Kanye West all make an apparition on some of his tracks amongs others. I have yet to listen to it from one end to another, but from what I’ve heard so far, everything seems to have been handled properly, which was something I feared as he was taking his distance from his Clipse project.

1. I’m Lost
2. Nothing Matters Anymore
3. Lost Connection With The Head
4. Regret Consumes Me
5. Out Of My Mind
6. Vehement
7. The Great Emasculation
8. Shepherd, No Sheep
9. Let There Be Raw
10. I Think I’m Going To See You
11. Precursor
12. The Fear Of God
13. Until We Meet Again

Thanks to Mr. X for the link.

download : Pusha-T – Fear Of God

Toronto very own Abel Tesfaye and his project, The Weeknd, appeared out of nowhere a couple of months back and took the world by storm… well not really as it went pretty much under the radar, but it is heavily promoted by another Toronto native that goes by the name of Drake, so expect him to go big. Rumours goes that the creative mind behind most of the music of The Weeknd is no one else than 40, the in-house producer of Drake himself, so that might explain this whole cross-promotion thing they got going on.

And after releasing a couple of tracks here and there in the past few months, The Weeknd finally released yesterday its nine-track long debut mixtape, House of Balloons. To be honest, I was never the biggest fan of R&B in general, but this just hit the spot. Grab it below.

01.) High For This
02.) What You Need
03.) Glass Table Girls
04.) The Morning
05.) Wicked Games
06.) The Party & After Party
07.) Coming Down
08.) Loft Music
09.) The Knowing

download : The Weeknd – House of Balloons

RetroSuperFuture was seen and heard on Rick Ross’ last mixtape, Ashes to Ashes, but gets to see some action again as Rick Ross enlisted the help of his newest Maybach Music Group signee, Wale, for a remix of the song which adds him to the initial Wiz Khalifa feature. Rick Ross is currently gearing up and probably still working on his upcoming album, Self Made and this song will probably not appear on his next album, but it’s still something while we wait for it to drops.

Self Made is due May 24.

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download : Rick Ross – RetroSuperFuture ft. Wale & Wiz Khalifa

Did you guys know that Ryan Leslie is a genius? Like litterally a prodigy. Yeah, I had no clue either until I came up on some infos about him in the last months which was about his past and how smart and successful he’s been etc… so yeah, he’s just that guy ahah. Anyway, that aside, here’s a brand new song of him titled Joan of Arc from his forthcoming album, Les Is More, which might end up being his ticket to the mass recognition he’s never been able to achieved as he’s been overlooked and underrated by most so far.

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download : Ryan Leslie – Joan of Arc

First of all, before anyone says something about it, this is apparently not the final render of the song, but to be honest, I find the remix of All of The Lights to be lackluster [so far]. The line up might look ok on paper, but the result is the complete opposite. Actually Big Sean is actually ok, but Drake who had a decent verse on a leaked version of All of The Lights prior to the album release is not even going with that original verse and decided to switch things up for the worse for the half part of his verse; And let’s not even talk about autotuned Lil Wayne on the opening verse… Anyway, hear for yourself, but I am really hoping the final version ends up good.

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download : Kanye West – All Of The Lights ft. Lil Wayne, Big Sean & Drake

Fresh off the release of his Friday Night Lights mixtape, J. Cole is definitely not missing a beat as a new song by him titled Killers recently made it’s way onto the internet. And even though he’s hard working on his debut album, this song is apparently not going to appear on it, in fact, it’s not even a track of his own as it’s being said to be a reference track for someone else that has yet to be named.

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download : J. Cole – Killers

You know that it’s been three years now that MSTRKRFT released their Fist of God album? To be honest, that album was a bit of a hit or miss in terms of content, but songs like Heartbreaker was making up for… well other songs that I didn’t like on the album. While DFA1979 has been booked in a couple of festivals over the course of summer, MSTRKRFT are also making their comeback, but in form of new material as they released a brand new song titled Beards Again, which is the first step towards an upcoming release of a full fledged LP by them Canadian boys which should be coming anytime this year. Let’s just hope we won’t have to wait for another three years for new material once that comes out.

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download : MSTRKRFT – Beards Again

Sorry for the lack of updates this week people, I’ve been extremely busy… I’ll at least try to finish the week on a good note by blogging a little eheh. First off, Danger Mouse and James Mercer are at it again with their collaborative project known as Broken Bells releasing two tracks of their forthcoming six-song (which includes 2 bonus songs) EP, Meyrin Fields that drops on March 29. While Windows doesn’t stray off the beaten path of what they’ve their self-titled debut album, Heartless Empire is definitely sounds like they were building up on previous releases and experimented around a little bit.

Meyrin Fields is available now for pre-orders as we speak at BrokenBells.com

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download : Broken Bells – Heartless Empire

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download : Broken Bells – Windows

Fresh off his nomination on this year edition of the XXL Freshman class, Pittsburgh very own Mac Miller drops his highly anticipated tape, Best Day Ever which boasts an impressive list of collaborations on the production side aswell as landing a guest feature with Phonte and another one with Pittsburgh rising star known as Wiz Khalifa.

01. Best Day Ever (Prod. By. ID Labs)
02. Get Up (Prod. By. Teddy Roxpin)
03. Donald Trump (Prod. By. Sap)
04. Oy Vey (Prod By. ID Labs)
05. I’ll Be There (feat. Phonte) (Prod. By. Beanz ‘n’ Kornbread)
06. Wear My Hat (Prod. By. Chuck Inglish)
07. Wake Up (Prod By. Sap & ID Labs)
09. Down The Rabbit Hole (Prod. By. Blue of The Sore Losers)
10. In The Air (Prod By. Ritz Reynolds)
11. Play Ya Cards (Prod By. Chuck Inglish)
12. She Said (Prod By. Khrysis)
13. Life Ain’t Easy (Prod. By. ID Labs)
14. Snooze (Prod By. ID Labs)
15. Keep Floatin’ (feat. Wiz Khalifa) (Prod. By. ID Labs)
16. BDE Bonus (Prod. By. ID Labs)

download : Mac Miller – Best Day Ever