Since the release of his debut album, Freudian, Daniel Caesar has remained relatively quiet. Back in October of 2018, he released the single “Who Hurt You” featuring T-Pain which confirmed his improving sound and longevity within the music industry. The very same month, he was also featured very prominently on The Free Nationals single; “Beauty and Essex.” While these tracks were good indicators of Caesar’s growth as a singer and as a songwriter there were no leads as to when a new project from the Canadian singer would release.

Then, with no prior warning, on June 24th, 2019 Caesar announced on Twitter a special show in Los Angeles limited to the first 200 guests that arrived. In the days following, Caesar would then announce the title along with the release date of his new project. Attached was a cryptic video of a man in what appears to be a space suit walking in the desert with an audio excerpt of an interview with physician J. Robert Oppenheimer discussing the very first nuclear device. This same audio snippet appears at the beginning of the opening track of CASE STUDY 01 simply titled, “ENTROPY.”

The album itself marks a much more mature and calculated interpretation of existentialist and sexual themes. Daniel Caesar still uses jazz-infused hip-hop to carry his stellar vocals but he experiments a little more on this album with some lo-fi influenced elements and singer-songwriter guitar leads. Caesar also uses several scientific terms in order to set the thematic basis for numerous tracks on this record. For instance, one track is titled “SUPERPOSITION” which is a scientific principle where when two waves interact they have the chance to combine to make each other bigger, cancel each other out, or most commonly both. He uses this concept in the song as a way of explaining his own reason for living and by extent life itself. One could say the central idea of this record is that Caesar is using his life and experiences as a case study for these scientific phenomena and his songs are simply the conclusions of his analysis.

Daniel Caesar’s exponential development as a musician reverberates heavily throughout this record and cements Caesar as one of the most significant players in the RnB music scene. CASE STUDY 01 is available on Apple Music, Spotify, and most other music platforms.

After their latest album Year of the Snitch released back in June of 2018 the iconic experimental hip-hop trio: Death Grips has finally released some new music fans can sink their teeth into. It all started when they were announced as special guests on Warp Record’s new music event”WXAXRXP.” This lead fans to speculate that the California-based group would finally be unveiling something brand new after the success that was Year of the Snitch. The album was praised for being truly experimental and uncompromising and after its success fans were eager to see how the group would reinvent themselves once again.

It would seem good things really do come to those who wait because on June 21st Death Grips debut 30-Minutes of unreleased music on NTS Radio as part of their special guest appearance. It was labeled as a special show interestingly titled Gmail and The Restraining Orders. This is previously unheard of content and for many, it seems to house some of Death Grips’ most notable work to date.

One commenter by the name of “King Nothing” on youtube noted the EP’s nostalgic appeal and remarked, “I feel like I’m listening to Death grips for the first time again” much to the agreement of several others. A few others claimed that the trio also seemed to use samples from a lot of the cuts off of one of their previous albums Fashion Week and also Government Plates. However, one of the most fascinating statements that were made was one by a commenter named “olive” which merely said, “I have a feeling this isn’t the last we’ll be hearing from death grips this year.”

One can only hope, but for now, you can listen to this masterpiece of an EP on youtube.