IDK – “Coal”

From Apple Music:

For the 2021 edition of Carols Covered—Apple Music’s collection of Christmas standards updated by contemporary artists—Maryland MC IDK submitted “Coal,” a song he’d had waiting in the stash, but hadn’t been compelled to release until now. “This song was made about three years ago,” IDK tells Apple Music. “But I always wanted to release it as a holiday record. It’s my depiction of a Black household where things may not be as perfect as they may seem in other households. It’s my reality of comparing what was taught and shown to me—through TV and all these other things—about Christmas and what my reality of Christmas was.”

PHZ-Sicks – “Daniel Robitaille” (Video)

DMV artist PHZ-Sicks (pronounced ‘physics’) presents the Candyman/Halloween inspired “Daniel Robitaille.” “Daniel Robitaille” is produced by St. Louis producer, sovren (Westside Gunn’s Hell on Earth, Pt. 2).

Taking his love for film which started with the horror genre, PHZ-Sicks mixes in plenty of lyrical easter eggs for lovers of horror. “Hearing the unsettling chords in sovren’s track, just transported me being in a four cornered room, staring at candles. Shoutout to Scarface. But to be serious, hearing what she created, made me think of a Dario Argento film where a character is walking down a colorfully lit room, and this would be the music in the background. Going off the high I had from seeing the recent Candyman, I took those thoughts and place it with the beat.”