Music

Skittish reconnects us to the wild with soulful new single “Mother Nature”

Skittish’s new single “Mother Nature” is a breath of fresh air. It is an aching exhalation of someone who has been too long under bright lights and has nearly forgotten the feel of soil after rain. Skittish reaches out to the longing to go back to something real, something rooted, something human. “Mother Nature” is about the silent erosion that occurs when we spend too much time in the buzz of cities and forget our connection to the land and time. Skittish gives us a song meditation on divorce and the bittersweet ache of recalling what it felt like to belong to the earth.

The track is laden with emotional weight through rich collaboration. Famed Nashville studio pianist Phil Madeira adds warm and grounded piano licks that run through the song like roots, grounding the listener. The playing is soulful, placing itself at the service of the song’s mood rather than overwhelming it. Next comes Deza’s vocals that soar above the arrangement with rich, expressive clarity. There’s softness to the tone, but there’s also strength. In her delivery is the ache of longing, the tug of memory, inviting us to feel that same push-pull between where we are and where we belong.

What makes “Mother Nature” so appealing is how seamlessly it mixes reflection with accessibility. The playing is sharp, and the songwriting is earnest without being preachy. Skittish pulls off the trick of making a deeply personal subject feel highly relatable. In “Mother Nature,” Skittish reminds us that the most fundamental ideas often don’t need to be earned with loud screams but with soft production. It’s a song for those moments when you realize you’ve been running too fast for too long. And perhaps it’s time for some grounding.

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Celebrity

recent leak of Kanye West and Jay-Z’s “Living So Italian” brings back the legendary Watch the Throne mystery.

One of the most longed unreleased tracks from the album era is Watch the Throne, and 15 years after Kanye West and Jay-Z dropped it, it has reappeared online. Another fleeting peek of a long untouchable song: a new nine-second clip of “Living So Italian” is rumored to have leaked.

Beyond the officially released material, Watch The Throne is also long linked to unreleased songs that have become highly sought-after among fans. “Living So Italian” is one of those songs that has had bits and pieces emerge online over the years, but never the full song.

Even in that short clip, the snippet adds another piece to the long-running mystery around the track. The production has a lavish European feel, which suits the song’s title and the material associated with West during the Watch The Throne era.

The possibility of hearing Jay-Z alongside West on the full production has also added to the track’s appeal. The two artists have since fallen out, and a collaboration between them is unlikely. Their official collaboration “Jail” has been described as possibly their last, adding another layer of suspense to older material from their collaborative period.

The new snippet also raises a bigger question of what unreleased material from the Watch The Throne era could still be out there. “Living So Italian” is one of many unreleased songs from that period, and many of those recordings may never be heard.

But for now, fans have another nine seconds to wait instead of the whole track. Yet the emergence of a new snippet after years of leaks and rumors shows that the Watch The Throne vault still has material that can garner attention long after the album’s original release.

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Celebrity

DJ Khaled’s Top 5 Rappers List Causes Controversy After Leaving Out Drake

DJ Khaled sparked conversation amongst hip hop fans when he excluded Drake from a recent list of his favorite rappers. Given the pair’s increasingly weakened relationship, it was bound to be a talking point.

Khaled was in view of fans over the weekend, and they asked him on camera to name his top five rappers. Khaled didn’t name Drake, who would have been his first choice in the past , instead he named Jay-Z, The Notorious B.I.G., Tupac, Nas, Kendrick Lamar, and Rick Ross.
The list actually had six artists, not five, but Drake’s absence was the main talking point.

The situation gets more interesting because Khaled and Drake reportedly haven’t been on the best of terms in recent years. Khaled was once going to have two Drake features on an album that was supposed to drop a couple of years ago. But comments made during the Drake and Kendrick Lamar beef contributed to the icy relationship between Khaled and Drake.

Drake later made a pointed comment suggesting he won’t appear on Khaled’s upcoming album. Khaled has not publicly responded, and two years later the project still hasn’t materialized.

But there is an alternative explanation. Khaled may have just been listing six artists he thinks are some of his favorite rappers. The moment itself doesn’t confirm that anything on the list was meant as a message to Drake. But reactions on social media suggest many fans are reading more into the omission. Given Khaled’s previous connection to Drake and the long history of his delayed album, the rapper’s absence has understandably become a major topic of discussion.

It’s unclear if Khaled and Drake will ever get past their differences. Drake’s relationships with the artists from the 2024 battle also remain a topic of conversation, with Future allegedly the only artist from that feud he seems to be on good terms with again. For Khaled, the bigger question might be when his long-delayed album will finally drop. For now, his surprise top-rappers list has given fans another reason to think about their relationship with Drake.

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