Stankonia is the fourth studio album by American hip hop duo Outkast. It was released on October 31, 2000, by LaFace Records. The album was recorded in the duo's recently purchased Atlanta recording facility Stankonia Studios, which allowed for fewer time and recording constraints, and featured production work from Earthtone III (a production team consisting of Outkast and Mr. DJ) and Organized Noize. For the follow-up to their 1998 album Aquemini, the duo worked to create an expansive and experimental musical aesthetic, incorporating a diverse array of styles including funk, rave music, psychedelia, gospel, and rock within a Dirty South-oriented hip hop context. During the recording sessions, André 3000 began moving beyond traditional rapping in favor of a more melodic vocal style, an approach to which Big Boi and several other producers were initially unaccustomed. Lyrically, the duo touched upon a wide range of subject matter, including sexuality, politics, misogyny, African-American culture, parenthood, and introspection. Stankonia featured appearances from a variety of local musicians discovered by the group while they were visiting clubs in their native city of Atlanta, Georgia. Stankonia received universal acclaim from music critics upon its release, and has since been regarded by many to be one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time. The album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 chart, selling over 530,000 copies the first week. It was supported by three singles: "B.O.B", "Ms. Jackson", and "So Fresh, So Clean"; "Ms. Jackson" became the group's first single to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100. At the 2001 Grammy Awards, Outkast won Best Rap Album for Stankonia and Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for "Ms. Jackson". In 2003, the album was ranked number 359 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, 361 in a 2012 revision, and 64 in a 2020 reboot of the list. A re-issue of the album for its 20th anniversary with previously unreleased remixes was released on October 30, 2020. In 1998, OutKast released their third album Aquemini to critical acclaim while diversifying and expanding their sound. The album's success also attracted national attention to the Southern hip hop scene. Having collaborated on the Aquemini track "Skew It on the Bar-B", Wu-Tang Clan member Raekwon later recalled the duo's impact at the time: "Before that, the South just wasn't played in New York. But that song was hot, the flows was crazy. The cycle changed. It really opened up the door for Southern rappers." In March 1998, OutKast purchased a studio nearby Northside Drive in Atlanta. Formerly owned by R&B singer Bobby Brown, the studio was the first place the duo had ever recorded vocals together – on a remix of TLC's "What About Your Friends" (1992) – and held sentimental value for them. Outkast named the studio "Stankonia", a word created by André 3000 as a portmanteau of the words "stank" (a slang synonym for "funky") and "Plutonia" (the title of a poster in his bedroom depicting a futuristic city). As he explained, "Stankonia is this place I imagined where you can open yourself up and be free to express anything". The recording of Stankonia began in spring of 1999 and lasted for about a year. Owning a studio helped the band expand creatively, as the duo did not need to worry about time constraints that would occur with a rented studio. André 3000 observed, "You can sit there and fuck with just a kick and a snare all day long if you want to ... You're not working on the clock. Really, you're just working on your mind." Big Boi spent the majority of the recording time in the studio, while André 3000 worked at home, creating beats and experimenting with an acoustic guitar. One song that came from a jam session on the guitar was "Ms. Jackson", the album's second single. André 3000 also created song lyrics by writing words on the walls of his home: "I had planned to paint my house anyway; writing on the walls was just something I would do." One stray lyric on his wall eventually developed into "Gasoline Dreams". Much of the album was formulated during "vibe sessions" in which the group and producers would visit clubs in downtown Atlanta, select performers they saw, and invite them to the studio. They would then "sit around, smoke a few, drink a few", and create ideas for new songs. However, recording sessions became difficult as André 3000 grew tired of rapping on songs, which made Big Boi and the producers uneasy about how the music would sound. To maintain musical cohesion with Big Boi while continuing to expand his vocal palette, André decided to combine rapping with soul-inspired crooning, which had a major influence on Stankonia's sound. "Snappin & Trappin'" features a guest appearance from then-unknown rapper Killer Mike.

Boss Volenti - Boss Volenti (2006) Boss Volenti are an Irish rock quartet from Dublin, formed in 2003. Rob Daly, Martin Murphy and Dan O'Connor first met while playing in bands around Dublin. Then followed Laura Mackey, who O'Connor met while both were studying guitar at college. Following Murphy's departure, drummer Graham Hopkins met the band in 2005 when they were demoing recordings for their first album and asked if he could join. The band's influences include Thin Lizzy, Al Green, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Hall & Oates.

Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 1 is the fifth studio album by British rock band Foals. It was released on 8 March 2019 through Warner Bros. and Transgressive Records. The album is considered the first half of a two-piece project, being supplemented by their consecutive sixth studio album Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 2, later released on 18 October 2019. This is their first album not to feature founding member and bassist Walter Gervers since he amicably left the group in 2018. An alternative version of the album was digitally released 15 September 2019 featuring a compilation of remixes/edits from the band's musical peers and contemporaries (including Metronomy, George FitzGerald, Alex Metric, Purple Disco Machine, etc.) within the realms of EDM, drum & bass, and house music. The album received a nomination for the prestigious Mercury Prize in July 2019. In January 2019, the band released a series of three short teaser clips featuring cinematic vignettes of the yet-to-be-released music video through their social media to announce the release dates of both parts of the album on 8 March 2019 and in autumn 2019 respectively. The third teaser, featuring a group of politicians physically assaulting each other in parliament court and a quick strobed, stylised shot, the band announced the release of the first single "Exits", which debuted on DJ Annie Mac's BBC Radio 1 show on 21 January. In promotion of "Exits", on 16 January, the band's marketing team created a scavenger hunt through social media by posting GPS coordinates along with photos of branded envelopes taped to various doorway exits of public transit and train stations around the world, such as New York, London, Paris, Mexico and Tokyo for fans to collect. The envelopes contained lyrics to "Exits" before its release. On 14 February, the band premiered the album's second single, "On The Luna" via Annie Mac's BBC Radio 1 show once again. Along with the release, was the announcement of a string of small, warm-up shows in the UK before the start of their 2019 North American & European spring/summer tour. On 25 February, the album's third single "Sunday" premiered via Zane Lowe's Beats 1 radio program. Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 2 is the sixth studio album by British rock band Foals. It was released on 18 October 2019 through Warner and Transgressive Records. The album is considered the second half of a two-part project, being supplemented by their consecutive fifth studio album Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 1, released 8 March 2019. The album cover was shot by famed National Geographic photographer, Maggie Steber. The album was preceded by three singles; "Black Bull", "The Runner", and "Into the Surf". The album became the band's first to reach No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart. The album was the last to feature keyboardist Edwin Congreave before his departure from the band in 2021. The album's lead singles, "Black Bull" and "The Runner" were debuted 1 August and 5 September 2019 respectively via Annie Mac's BBC Radio 1 show alongside the former's music video premiere (via YouTube). The album's third single, "Into the Surf" was released 25 September 2019 via Zane Lowe's Beats 1 radio show, with the animated music video premiering a few weeks later on 7 October 2019. In further promotion of Part 2, the band announced an upcoming tour documentary of the past year, Rip Up the Road, released on 15 November 2019 exclusively via Amazon Prime, alongside news of a special live performance at The House of Vans skatepark in London on the day of the album's release.

Crosby, Stills & Nash is the debut studio album by Crosby, Stills & Nash (CSN), released in 1969 on the Atlantic Records label. It spawned two Top 40 hit singles, "Marrakesh Express" and "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes", which peaked respectively at No. 28 the week of August 23, 1969, and at No. 21 the week of December 6, 1969, on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. The album itself peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart. It has been certified four times platinum by the RIAA for sales of 4,000,000. The album was a very strong debut for the band, instantly lifting them to stardom. Along with the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo and the Band's Music from Big Pink of the previous year, it helped initiate a sea change in popular music away from the ruling late-1960s aesthetic of bands playing blues-based rock music on loud guitars. Crosby, Stills & Nash presented a new wrinkle in building upon rock's roots, using folk, blues, and even jazz without specifically sounding like mere duplication. Not only blending voices, the three meshed their differing strengths, David Crosby for social commentary and atmospheric mood pieces, Stephen Stills for his diverse musical skills and for folding folk and country elements subtly into complex rock structures, and Graham Nash for his radio-friendly pop melodies, to create an amalgam of broad appeal. The album features some of their best known songs, incluring "Helplessly Hoping", "Long Time Gone", "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes", and "Wooden Ships", a collaboration between Crosby and Stills as well as Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane. Stills dominated the recording of the album. Crosby and Nash played guitar on their own songs respectively, while drummer Dallas Taylor played on most tracks except for drummer Jim Gordon on one. Stills played all the bass, organ, and lead guitar parts, as well as acoustic guitar on his own songs. "The other guys won't be offended when I say that one was my baby, and I kind of had the tracks in my head", Stills said. Even with this dominance, Stills does not appear on the tracks "Guinnevere" and "Lady of the Island", both featuring Crosby and Nash only and an inadvertent precursor to their partnership on record and stage during the 1970s. David Crosby bristled over the plan for "Long Time Gone" as he thought he should at least play rhythm guitar on his own song. Stills convinced him to go home for a while and when he returned Crosby was won over by the music track that Stills and Taylor had recorded. In a more recent interview, Crosby contradicted his earlier statement, stating that he had played guitar on the track. He is so credited in the liner notes to the 1991 box set. The group performed songs from the album at the Woodstock festival in August 1969. In late 1969 the group appeared with Neil Young on the Tom Jones' TV show and performed "Long Time Gone" with Tom Jones sharing vocals. The album proved very influential on many levels to the dominant popular music scene in America for much of the 1970s. The success of the album generated respect for the group within the industry and galvanized interest in signing similar acts, many of whom came under management and representation by the CSN team of Elliot Roberts and David Geffen. Strong sales, combined with the group's emphasis on personal confession in its writing, paved the way for the success of the singer-songwriter movement of the early 1970s. Their use of personal events in their material without resorting to subterfuge, their talents in vocal harmony, their cultivation of painstaking studio craft, as well as the Laurel Canyon ethos that surrounded the group and their associates, established an aesthetic for a number of acts that came to define the "California sound" of the ensuing decade, including the Eagles, Jackson Browne, post-1974 Fleetwood Mac, and others. The album has been issued on compact disc three times: mastered by Barry Diament at Atlantic Studios in the mid-1980s; remastered by Joe Gastwirt at Ocean View Digital and reissued on August 16, 1994; reissued again by Rhino Records as an expanded edition using the HDCD process on January 24, 2006. On December 6, 2011, a Gold Compact Disc edition of the album was released on the Audio Fidelity label.