Ain’t No Love – Ain’t No Love EP

Dance elements find new ways to breath amongst clever verse and catchy hooks on the debut EP from Montreal based Ain't No Love. 

When I think about my experiences with pop music there is a lot of disappointment. Not much quality seems to surface these days, although the presence of quality music on the mainstream scene has bubbled recently with the success of Bon Iver's latest album and the strength of other alt-rock or folk groups like Foster The People and Ed Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. In these cases, new music seems to be grappling with a compelling and accessible sound. For Hip Hop the ideas of compelling and accessible music seem to diverging rather than converging. Compelling rap these days is contained in the horror latent verses of Odd Future and the Wolf Gang and accessibility is the rehashing of weed and gangster rap through Wiz Khalifa, the Based God, Lil B (although his beats are not half bad) and others. Ain't No Love emerges out of this confusion with a simple goal: make rap accessible without submitting to gimmickery. For this foursome this goal becomes manifest through the bassy, rock inspired production of Love Thy Brother's Liam Clarke and their charismatic trio of MC/vocalists. For this listener, highlights on the EP are the glitch hop banger Renegade and the contrasting slow jam Crucified. Look for this group's sound to develop and acquire hip hop buzz through bold sonic textures and a characteristic charismatic energy. Grab the EP for free right here on bandcamp.

Ain’t No Love – Shine

Ain’t No Love – Crucified

Ain’t No Love – Renegade