There’s beauty in the simplicity of COLORSxSTUDIOS audiovisual experiences, presenting an artist and their music with no strings attached. Alex Walden is here to explain more and guide you through the very best that the studio has to offer.
With projects such as Kanye West’s Donda and Drake’s Certified lover Boy making headlines everywhere. It’s easy to think that today’s music industry is dominated by this new wave of trap music. However, fear not reader, as music platform COLORSxSTUDIOS is here to restore your faith.
COLORSxSTUDIOS is an aesthetic-based music platform which showcases artists who are on the rise from all over the world, ranging from America to the UK, to Spain to Cameroon, and many more. COLORS forces viewers to focus on the artist by providing them with three simple ingredients. A background, a microphone, and headphones. The use of minimalist design leaves the viewer no choice but to simply focus on the artist and nothing else. It almost creates a form of escapism where for those three or so minutes you can forget about everything going on in the world; in that moment it’s just you and the artist. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Allow me to give you my personal top five COLORSxSTUDIOS performances that are bound to move you.
5 . Slowthai – Ladies
4.JID – Workin Out
Next, we take a trip to the States where Atlanta’s own JID gives us his performance of one of his most popular singles to date, Workin Out from his album DiCaprio 2. Armed with incredible flow and skilled lyricism (accompanied by an absolutely killer sample from Helen Miller’s Don’t Explain) JID discusses how despite attaining substantial wealth and success, his life isn’t “all that” and, as a matter of fact, it’s something far from what the kids today should aspire to have. Upon analysing the lyrics, we begin to unearth how vulnerable JID really was throughout points in his life. From leaving his mother to make a living, being around fake friends, to feeling completely numb inside as if he’s used to the mental toll his lifestyle has on him by this point. JID really shows us that this popular rapper lifestyle that the media portrays to us nowadays isn’t really all it seems and that in reality, he’s just a regular person, with regular people problems. JID’s soft voice is accompanied by a soft violet background to give a truly relaxing and comfortable vibe for his performance.
3.ENNY, ft. Jorja Smith – Peng Black Girls
Taking it back to the UK for number 3, East London artist ENNY, accompanied by legendary new age R&B singer Jorja Smith, tells us what it’s really like to be a black woman in the UK. Touching from topics such as body insecurities, under representation in today’s media and even topics as specific as the struggle of hairbands bursting due to your hair being so thick, ENNY and Jorja Smith take us through the thoughts of a black woman in the UK. ENNY effortlessly murders her verses to which Jorja Smith’s responds equally with a voice that sounds as if it’s almost holding back to give us a nice soft delivery to show us the true definition of “killing it”. I urge you to read the comments of the video as well as watching the video as you can see how big of a positive impact this performance really had on the Black British community.
2.EARTHGANG – UP
For number 2 we go back to Atlanta for probably the most energetic COLORSxSTUDIOS performance out there to date. Atlanta duo EARTHGANG give us a borderline surreal performance of their track UP, the second song from their 2019 album MIRRORLAND. To call this performance thrilling would an understatement. There are so many elements that make this it so good. From the way that Johnny Venus is able to push his vocal abilities to the edge yet make it work so well when accompanied by his erratic movements, it feels like you’re watching a performance from villain in an old Disney movie. And when you think it can’t get any more intense Doctur Dot adds a layer to the chorus melody to which Johnny Venus responds by somehow kicking it up another notch, then the bassline kicks in and it all comes together. It almost feels like a well strategized attack on your ears. This is quickly followed by a verse by Doctur Dot that you will definitely have to listen to a couple times to catch all the lyrics (I know I did). It’s rare that we get such an energetic performance on COLORSxSTUDIOS, however, clearly these guys came, saw, and conquered with this absolute banger of a show.
1.Jorja Smith – Blue Lights
To pick a number one performance was a difficult decision, however, after some careful consideration (and countless alterations of my list) I realised that picking a number 1 performance was, surprisingly, quite easy. I just had to boil it down to the basics of what separates the music that we love from the music that we just casually listen to. Those songs speak to us, make us feel some extreme emotion that makes us realise how beautiful music can actually be. Therefore, you’ll understand why I had no choice but to choose Jorja Smith’s Blue Lights.
Touching on topics such as knife crime and using headphones in an attempt escape the troubles of the growing up in the modern world, Jorja explores the feeling of having a guilty conscience due to growing up around an area filled with knife crime, which is still a growing issue in the UK. With subtle changes in lyrics throughout the song such as “There’s no need to run, if you’ve done nothing wrong, blue lights should just pass you by” to “When you hear the sirens coming, the blue lights are coming for you”. As a person of colour myself, I can say that I was moved to the point where I was on the verge of tears after hearing such a delicate topic ,which can be difficult to discuss, performed so well by such an amazing voice. There’s a reason as to why this is the second time I’ve mentioned Jorja Smith in this article, her voice simply speaks for itself. Her choice of soothing melodies fit so well with her soft voice until there’s a sudden clash where she absolutely belts it out with all her heart, yet it still sounds very controlled, it has such a genuine feel to it, as if she’s singing directly to you, as if she knows you need to hear this song.
So, there you have it, my top 5 COLORSxSTUDIOS performances. With performances ranging from the soft vulnerability from JID to the hard-hitting hyper tracks from EARTHGANG, I hope that there’s a performance that you’ll find as remarkable as I did. If I’m honest, I could’ve easily written about hundreds of COLORS performances due to the abundance of videos COLORSxSTUDIOS have, so regardless of if any of these particular recommendations interest you, make sure you check out COLORS. They upload frequently and cover multiple genres, so you’ll never run out of videos to enjoy.