Brad Cooney Podcast

In the first song of his new album, Highly Sensitive Person, Lamar Woods introduces the theme in the first line of his rap: “I had my first panic attack at 35. I thought I was gonna die.”

Looks dire, right? But listen to the intro about holding the world together with love, followed by a chiming, R&Bish, slightly funky build up, then get the finish to the line about dying, which is, “like Ryan at the end of Drive,” and you don’t know what’s coming next but you know it ain’t gonna be dire.

Lamar, who has had a successful career in television and movies, has continued his return to music with this fun, funny, hugely diverse, 19-track hip-hop exploration of panic and anxiety.

His album is all about mental health, but he does it in style, and many musical styles, and with humor, including three hilarious skits.

The single released to tease the album, “Don’t Give Up On Me,” featured one aspect of high sensitivity: relationship avoidance.

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Regal Rapstar simply had enough of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Pasadena based Latino-American rapper/producer released a song with a title that says it all: “F the Coronavirus.”

This is a hard hitting track aimed at the culprit that put the whole world on hold, with plenty of cool word play and a solid, original beat. It comes from the four track, self-titled EP that was released in March, and is intended on being a “stream vaccine” that everyone should go get a dose of.

“I want listeners to remember this song, and be like, this is a guy who covered a topic that affected us all,” Regal Rapstar said. “This isn’t just like a regular rap song. It’s like a missile. This isn’t like throwing a firecracker. It’s like a serious potion. That’s for real.”

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Dynamic rock artist Ja’son Manwill advances to the quarter-finals of America’s Next Top Hitmaker competition, placing him among the top 1% of entrants. This impressive feat highlights his growing influence in the music industry. With a sharp focus and unwavering determination, Ja’son aims to win the grand prize: a feature in Rolling Stone Magazine, a spot on Rolling Stone’s Future of Music lineup at SXSW in 2025, and $10,000.

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“The Shower” releases on August 9.

“It is playful,” she said. “Lyrically, it feels like one big run-on sentence, just the thoughts going through your head, like, ‘What happened? What did I do? What did they do? What did they do wrong?’ All this stuff that makes you feel absolutely crazy with a breakup.”

From the start of this affair we were 25 years young 
And now I’m starting to regret what I said when I thought 
You’re the one who always called
The only man of the hour
And I still just can’t believe I think about you

It will be the second song to be released from her upcoming album — her debut — Wishing We Could Dream. More singles from the album are coming. The finished project, with 11 tracks, will drop early next year.

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Whether you know a little bit about every genre or a lot about one genre, when someone loves music their love of music is forever. Jimmy Mallia is the perfect example of this considering he put his first single on streaming services this past year at almost 60 years old. His latest, “Had Em All,” has him recounting his past relationships and how every partner was unique for a different reason. Jimmy is a storyteller with a message with a little bit of his own life in each song. These songs recount times in his life that were not always the best but he made it through them all. After all his perseverance through life, he hopes that his stories inspire others to find the strength to make it through their own difficulties.

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Jimii N°1, is a multi-talented creative, as well as a man on a mission to spread love and hope in this world. Through a long and bountiful career, he has been able to touch the hearts and minds of many.  Whether it was on the production team of The Oprah Show, one of his many roles in the theatrical world, or a new song of his own creation, he always finds a way to share his message.

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Themes of spiritual transcendence and mental dysfunction aren’t usual subjects for popular music, unless you are Boston’s Sam Welch and you put them into the kind of techno music he is known for, or the pop of his new album, The Republic.

The combination pop/alternative pop instrumentation and playful lyrics full of quirky rhymes makes even a song with a title like “My Darling Human Condition,” or “The Tenuous Affair,” a song about the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, not only interesting but fun.

“I had a lot of fun creating it this year,” said Sam, who since 2017 has put out an album a year, mostly in a style he calls “transcendental techno vox.”

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Since he grew up on the coasts of Carolina and Georgia, Mack Holland has been involved in writing poetry, culminating with the 2017 publication of his book, Sweet Inspiration: The Mack Holland Book of Inspiration, Poetry and Song. 

As the title would suggest, sometimes Holland’s poetry work takes him into the world of music, and after he was encouraged to start recording his own music a decade ago, Holland’s now making a name for himself as a recording artist. His music catalogue, which consists mostly of inspirational, holiday and love music, includes gospel recordings like “He Is” and “Lord I Thank You,” with the former garnering nearly 200,000 plays in less than two years and the latter earning nearly 150,000 plays in just eight months. 

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