NIKKIYA - SPEAKHER (bohemian R&B songbird and Yelawolf associate makes mixtape of the year)

there was some discussion of her on the r&b thread, but three months on i'm still jamming the hell out of this and i think it needs to be brought to wider attention, cuz it's one of those albums where i'm still falling over and over for songs i hadn't immediately gotten into).

http://www.djbooth.net/index/mixtapes/entry/nikkiya-speakher

she kind of has a voice that reminds me of tweet and eartha kitt, and she's kind of theatrical in a similar way to janelle monáe, without being as try-hard about it all.

on "when i was high" she reminisces about good times on drugs, on "titanic" she bestrides this monster beat like a bond villainess, on "i like what you're doin'" she expresses ecstasy by singing crystal waters over a house beat, on "in the game" she gets mc lyte to rap "i am the spark you love to chase after - getcha ass caught up in the rapture". my favourite two songs might be the straight-up heart-on-sleeve soulful "nobody but me", which is just gorgeous and heartbreaking, and the heart-drifting-in-space gaseous feeling of "wish".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBd4mk4RtW8

then there's this, which is tremendous fun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5MSRLvd1-8

OH SNAP I THINK THIS MAN IS STUPID / WHEN I PULL THESE ARROWS OUT WILL HE MISTAKE MY SHOTS FOR CUPID'S?

it was all produced by the same dude (supahot beats), who i'd never heard of, but i'm definitely impressed - with his variety and the way in which his beats are tailored just right for her voice. rare that anyone, let alone in r&b, drops a debut mixtape as coherent and consistently high quality as this! get it girls.

nobody but me is greeeeeat

oh man i like this a lot

Sure sounds good on first blush.

this rules

yeah been loving this!

Oh hey I didn't see there was a thread for this. Yeah, it's really good and Tweet comparison otm. "When I Was High" is one of the best songs this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc7GirwglHw

btw, Supa Hot Beats = Will Power, who produced most of Trunk Muzik

"When I Was High" remix f/ Rittz & Tech N9ne (!)

http://www.djbooth.net/index/tracks/review/nikkiya-when-i-was-high-rmx/

The extra tweaks to the beat are so awesome.

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# Simpin Ain't Easy: The Official Thread For Drake's Sophomore Album, TAKE CARE [Started by Tyler the Creator Knows White People (The Brainwasher) in September 2011, last updated 1 hour ago by J0rdan S.] 618 new answers

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# NIKKIYA - SPEAKHER (bohemian R&B songbird and Yelawolf associate makes mixtape of the year) [Started by lex pretend in October 2011, last updated Yesterday by fauxmarc loi (The Reverend)] 3 new answers

:(

'Wish' is a gotdam jam. Love them floating keys in the background.

Lex being the alex in NYC of r&b isn't really a good look for you.

Obv I'm enjoying Speakher a lot.

Lex being the alex in NYC of r&b isn't really a good look for you.

^

how am i being the alex in nyc of r&b?

I think that complaining across multiple threads that people are listening to the wrong r&b tends to come off as somewhat shrill and hectoring in an alex in NYC "raise your standards" sense, even though on almost every occasion strictly speaking I agree with you.

But, you know, whatever works for you I guess.

Nobody But Me is a tear jerker. The production felt.. a bit weird on those synths on Titanic and the chorus of Cheater. Just a bit too much for me.

I tend to agree w/Alex in NYC when he's being shrill fwiw

if you agree so much why don't you, you know, back me up then? if you enjoy nikkiya better than drake why not talk about her instead of contributing to the awful disparity?

i mean, you should know by now that i can't be doing with gentle persuasion. yell at people until they do as i say!

at the end of the day, killing joke really did rule

Lex you've posted in the Drake thread much more than in here!

i STARTED this thread

drake is a monolith you cant ignore it

or wait are you talking about the pop star

jeoks aside for whatever reason i think nikkiya is just not my particular style. this record is v. good and accomplished -- i checked it when it was posted in the R&B thread -- but i haven't come back to it a lot, not sure why. might just not be my thing

I'd kinda agree with that actually, though I suspect I like the album more than deej. I really enjoyed "When I Was High" and "Cheater"* ahead of the mixtape coming out, but find my enthusiasm flagging across the entire release.

Actually rather than Tweet I'd describe it as a mix of Lina and Brooke Valentine maybe. And I suspect I'll have the same r'ship with it that I have with the BV album where if I select any tune in isolation it sounds fantastic but I rarely feel motivated to put the whole thing on.

But it's early days so I might 180 on this.

*relevant here is that "Cheater" perhaps works best as a video clip rather than a song per se.

One possible issue is that I find "Speakher" to be a truly awful pun that was bad enough as part of a Yelawolf song title. I'm trying not to hold that against Nikkiya by focusing on how great the album cover is otherwise.

ha brooke valentine is EXACTLY what i thought of but i felt like that might be too backhanded because i think i went kind of hard on BV

this record is v. good and accomplished -- i checked it when it was posted in the R&B thread -- but i haven't come back to it a lot, not sure why.

I feel kind of the same way. Individually some of these tracks are among the best of the year, but all those wild mood shifts make it a bit of a manic start-to-finish listen.

BV is a good comparison point! is its variety really that manic? i find it a remarkably coherent work actually, esp as she retains the same producer throughout and they obviously make a strong team - it's refreshing to see a mixtape go in more than one direction while still carving out a really distinct and coherent persona, rather than yr trey songz model of focusing so much on mood that the songs blur into each other

is "speakher" a pun? idgi

"cheater" is perhaps the one song that works really strongly as a video in isolation but jars in mixtape context - i love the second half of it though, the way she carries the mc lyte track and the crystal waters track and the soulful loveliness of "wish" through to triumph

is "speakher" a pun? idgi

― all i see is angels in my eyes (lex pretend), Monday, November 14, 2011 3:01 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

what

of course it's a pun! it's a pun on "speaker", which is how you listen to music. and also nikkiya -- her -- is speaking to us, through the music. which is coming from a speaker.

It reminds me of exam topics when I was 14: "History: His-Story or Her-Story?"

How could you not get speakher?

I felt bad that I didn't get Buck Cherry for like 5 years though, or Miles Prower from Sonic the Hedgehog for like 20 years

But "speaker sex" doesn't make sense either! "Speak her sex" makes more sense

I don't get "buck cherry" or "miles prower" either

It also took me nine years to get "ebeneezer goode"

I disapprove of puns as a subset of comedy tbh

speaker sex = surround sound sex = overwhelming yr senses

I disapprove of puns as a subset of comedy tbh

well duh. puns are the flatulence of wordplay.

Oh audiophile nick southall sex then? Hmm

Also Lex just so you know "Lick The Cat" is about cunnilingus.

Or maybe Yelawolf literally enjoys licking cats, I dunno.

Maybe it's the licks made by jazz cats.

Old soul vibes:

http://en.musicplayon.com/play?v=299742

nice!

wonder if anyone upthread turned around on this? I initially only liked "When I Was High" but deleting "Love Machine" and "Cheater" made me like the whole thing a lot more.

Miles Prower from Sonic the Hedgehog for like 20 years

ohhhhh, i get it now

"buck cherry" is a spoonerism for "chuck berry" though there's probably some sex pun I'm missing. I had to wikipedia Mile Prower.

it's too bad that nick southall will probably not click on this thread

so i'm guessing the 20 march release for this speakher overload thing never happened? :(

huh? i dl'd this record a couple months ago. or is it a mixtape?

speakher was her mixtape last year, in feb she released "hold on me" as a trailer for something called speakher overload that was gonna be on itunes on 20 march. it's not on uk itunes and when you google the only references are to its future release so i'm assuming it never happened

<3<3<3 this. Occasionally I bump it in outloud. I just heard the original for the first time like, 5 minutes ago...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT4xWOgjneg

Better late than never; you can stream and download the deluxe edition here:

http://www.djbooth.net/index/mixtapes/entry/nikkiya-speakher-overload/

ALL the new tracks are damn great imo

as well as the fuller-sounding "i like what you're doin"

no really, these bonus tracks are so great. i love how "alibi", "dui" and "let's fly" triangulate nikkiya's dreamy bohemian air with an incredibly strong melodic sensibility and almost this...grown-woman version of the my boo/swing my way summer-crush aesthetic. love the way she switches into voicebox mode for the second half of "let's fly". "reasonable" does that thing of being massively corny but inexplicably also massively moving and uhhh inspiring i guess? it's a really nice way of looking at life.

i'm trying to upload these to youtube and none of the mp3-to-youtube sites are letting me. i don't understand technology. it's worked fine before.

did ANYONE apart from evan and i download this?

I think this probably speaks to the silliness of a "deluxe edition" mixtape more than anything else. The new songs are great, but people would have been much more likely to hear them if they'd been bundled as their own EP. Also, charging people for a mixtape they downloaded for free is asking a lot, too

ilx's noted anti-NIKKIYA bias continues unabated

zzzzzz chicks, man, wake me up when a dude R&B singer does something

yeah Evan otm. If I had loved every single track on the mixtape, I would have gotten this quickly, but there were enough duds for me that I've just been keeping this thread bookmarked as a reminder but haven't actually bothered to get it for weeks.

i paid up readily because i'm happy to spend money on up-and-coming artists who've given me excellent music for free, it was kind of like a belated opportunity to pay her for something i listened to loads. but, here are the new songs

http://soundcloud.com/supahotbeats/alibi-written-by-nikkiya

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZe_2MgKAKY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHBX4Tt4qFI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqE3ctlWo4k

Man Nikkiya is great but my laptop is unfortunately down for the time being :\