VMP Magazine

Picture it: It’s SXSW 2019, and Ric Wilson takes the stage at the Empire Control Room & Garage as part of the VMP Rising Showcase. He performs and starts a Soul Train line (the “best fucking Soul Train,” according to Wilson.) Four years, a pandemic shutdown and a stint in London later, VMP and Wilson reunited at the same venue ahead of his afternoon set to catch up on how his career, art and creative process have changed since that Soul Train line.

Photo by Braylen Dion

Every week, we tell you about an album we think you need to spend time with. This week’s album is DEACON by serpentwithfeet.

At the end of the second track and single from Anna Wise’s latest record, Subtle Body Dawn, there’s a recurring note, a deliberately repeated piano key, reminiscent of soothing meditation music. It is impossible to listen to “The Now” without feeling rooted in the moment by the firmly repeated “welcome to the now” in the lyrics and reiterated note in the outro. Similarly, when I speak with Wise via Zoom — joining from California, where she’s been spending time in the sun and the ocean with her family — the conversation is grounded and present. This is the first interview Wise has given about her new project. She begins with a singsong “hi,” inviting in her warmth and excitement that remains for the entire call.

Sylvan Esso’s Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn didn’t set out to make their fourth studio album earlier this year. The duo drove from their home in North Carolina to Los Angeles for the 64th Annual Grammy Awards — their third album, Free Love, was nominated for Best Dance/Electronic Music Album — but the award show was postponed, which left them in a small rental house with a makeshift recording studio and unexpected time to make new music. 

The result, No Rules Sandy, is an album focused on connection, created with a freedom and looseness unlike any Sylvan Esso project before it. Fittingly, when I met with Meath and Sanborn to talk about the record, it worked out to do so in person, seated around a table in a dark leather- and oak-clad Lower East Side hotel lobby. Our meeting came just days after the band’s multiple performances at the Newport Folk Festival — including debuting the full new album live. Amid asides about salt-boiled potatoes and astrological compatibility, I spoke with the duo about writing and producing No Rules Sandy, surprising each other and breaking their own rules.

Every week, we tell you about an album we think you need to spend time with. This week’s album is Few Good Things, Saba’s long-awaited third studio album and follow-up to 2018’s CARE FOR ME.

SZA told Vogue last year, “I use the anniversary of Ctrl as an opportunity to cry and reflect every year.” This time, to celebrate the undeniable album turning five, she’s opted to cry, reflect and release a deluxe version of the record, with seven previously unreleased tracks. According to a tweet from the artist, the new songs — including an alternative version of “Love Galore” — were all made between 2014 and 2017.

Every week, we tell you about an album we think you need to spend time with. This week’s album is The House Is Burning, the long-awaited record from Isaiah Rashad.

Every week, we tell you about an album we think you need to spend time with. This week’s album is Santigold’s fourth studio release, Spirituals.

A bunch of grapes, one banana, two strawberries and a pineapple made out of papier-mâché; noises created by shoes, gravel, string, a shoelace, nylon shorts and a water bottle; yodeling, covers, traditionals and one original song: These are the main components, big and small, that went into The A’s debut, Fruit.

The A’s in question — Sylvan Esso’s Amelia Meath and Daughter of Swords’ Alexandra Sauser-Monnig — are longtime friends and members of Mountain Man (alongside Molly Sarlé). They first performed as a duo in 2013, but the project got its start even before then; when I spoke with Meath and Sauser-Monnig on the phone, they both traced The A’s beginnings back to those early Mountain Man days.

Jorja Smith might be known so far as a feature artist, after collaborations with Drake, Kendrick Lamar and Kali Uchis, among others. But the range of her debut album, Lost & Found, proves she is so much more. At times rasping and plaintive, then soft and rapturous, Smith’s first full-length has mood shifts and an ambivalence toward genre that only someone with a voice as singular as hers could balance.

Despite being unique, captivating and definitely Smith’s own, this record feels familiar in that it echoes the honesty and intimacy of women in R&B who came before her, and resonates with the accessibility of her contemporaries. R&B has always been an avenue for emotional expression, with a history of powerful women within the genre speaking out about sex, relationships and, radically, themselves.

Every week, we tell you about an album we think you need to spend time with. This week’s album is flora + fana, the sophomore album from Fana Hues.

Every week, we tell you about an album we think you need to spend time with. This week’s album is Heaux Tales: Mo’ Tales, the deluxe version of Jazmine Sullivan’s acclaimed 2021 album Heaux Tales with 10 added tracks.

Every week, we tell you about an album we think you need to spend time with. This week’s album is CAPRISONGS, the new mixtape from FKA twigs.

“I see myself as a visual artist first and foremost, and I’ve always felt strange that people know me for music.” — Grimes, in a 2020 interview with Bloomberg

Karen Dalton was not a household name in ’70s folk, but she has modern fans in Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom, and Bob Dylan called her his favorite singer in his 2004 memoir Chronicles: Volume One. Her second and final album, In My Own Time, celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2021, its title both ironic and prognostic — Dalton is receiving much more recognition today, long after her death.

It’s been almost exactly three years since Charlotte Day Wilson first spoke with VMP as our July 2018 Rising artist. When we spoke to her again on the phone, a week before her debut, ALPHA, will be out in the world, she noted that it felt like coming full circle.

The story of Mountain Man is a story of true love. Bandmates Amelia Meath, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Molly Sarlé still remember the first time they ever laid eyes on each other — down to the rainbow striped Moon Boots, floral patterned clothes and dyed red hair. When I spoke to the three of them on the phone about the 10th anniversary edition of their debut record, Made the Harbor, their relationships were often inseparable from the music.

Protest songs, whether from the lips of Pete Seeger or Chuck D, often move us because they take something hyper-specific and strive to make it universal. Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” was written in response to a particular moment, but has transcended its intended NYC streets and spread as far as the Serbian capital of Belgrade to protest Milošević’s regime in 1991, which was cited as the reason it was No. 1 on Time Out’s 2011 list of the 100 Songs That Changed History.

The idea that led to the creation of “Fight the Power” — the song by Public Enemy that everyone knows — was simple: Spike Lee was making a movie (1989’s Do the Right Thing) about the racial tension, tragedy and violence in New York, and he knew he wanted Public Enemy to soundtrack it.

Photo from the 2015 film ‘Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors.’

“Influential” is not a big enough word for what Dolly Parton has come to mean to us all — the woman who not only has a theme park, Dollywood, but also recently made a million-dollar donation to fund coronavirus vaccine research and updated her enduring hit “Jolene” to encourage vaccination (“Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine / I’m begging of you, please don’t hesitate / Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine / ’Cause once you’re dead, then that’s a bit too late”). In light of this, it’s not an understatement to say Parton is doing her part to try and save the world.

Her advocacy for public health is not a surprise to anyone who has followed the career of this larger-than-life star: Since her solo breakthrough, Coat of Many Colors, Dolly has been telling us to care for one another.

Infographic by Stefanie Gray

Word of Mouf is not just Ludacris’ breakthrough, but the creation of several linguistic trends, from his mouth to pop culture’s ears. Luda popularized multiple phrases on the album that were relatively unknown beforehand, including “sticky icky,” “rollout” and, most notably, “I’ve got hoes in different area codes.”

Every week, we tell you about an album we think you need to spend time with. This week’s album is Be Right Back, the new EP from Jorja Smith.

Every week, we tell you about an album we think you need to spend time with. This week’s album is Reunion, the new EP from Anjimile.

What makes a record valuable? Personal reasons aside, we can all likely agree on one standard method for valuing records: Each one has a price.

The exclusivity of Vinyl Me, Please and the limited editions we offer in our store translate to sometimes-shocking resale values on Discogs and other second-hand sites like it. Just looking at the outliers — like that time someone bought a record for $103.54 on Discogs when they could have signed up for Vinyl Me, Please that month and received it for $29 — doesn’t always provide the most realistic benchmark. So, we asked our friends at Discogs for the stats on our releases with the highest average costs, not the one highest one-time price, like we did last year.

Whether you want to imagine your record shelves filled with cash or just want to reinforce how proud you are of that one record in your collection, we’ve got you covered with this list of the 10 most valuable Vinyl Me, Please releases.

Photos by Lissyelle Laricchia

In the geodome at The Outlier Inn in upstate New York, softly lit with oranges and reds, Anna Wise’s band — Joy Morales, Juuwah and Jon Bap — starts the live-streamed performance without her. Our first view of Wise is dominated by her large, bell-sleeved silken top as she walks toward the dome, in measured time to the band’s introduction.

Mostly composed of tracks from Wise’s full-length solo debut, As If It Were Forever, the following performance swells and recedes on the power of her voice and the trust these musicians have in one another. Improvisational and free-flowing, Gently Powerful, Live translates the soul-tinged ambiance of Wise’s catalog into an authentic live album. When I spoke to her on the phone for VMP, she assured me: “Those are the takes. There’s no chopping or Auto-Tune or Melodyne on those, that’s really what happened.”

Photo by Ricky Alvarez

Every week we tell you about an album we think you need to spend time with. This week’s album is Yebba’s debut, Dawn.

Photo by Tré Koch

Every week, we tell you about an album we think you need to spend time with. This week’s album is Mood Valiant, the third record from Australian band Hiatus Kaiyote.

Photo by Ethan Nelson

Every week, we tell you about an album we think you need to spend time with. This week’s album is the sophomore release from The Internet’s Patrick Paige II, If I Fail Are We Still Cool?

Every week, we tell you about an album we think you need to spend time with. This week’s album is Music by Benny Sings.

Portrait by Daniel Anum Jasper, via Asthmatic Kitty

Every week we tell you about an album we think you need to spend time with. This week’s album is the new collaborative record from Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine, A Beginner’s Mind.

Every week, we tell you about an album we think you need to spend time with. This week’s album is Public Storage, the debut full-length from Hana Vu.