Yoshi Flower – Josh Flores
We last saw Yoshi Flower at Lollapalooza this year, just before his extensive tour with Harlem rapper, Skizzy Mars. The two artists conquered twenty-eight dates across the US, and now that they’re back, Yoshi has a brand new compilation for us. Featuring five previously released tracks and eight shiny new ones, the multi-genre musician delivers his 13-track mixtape ‘I Will Not Let My Love Go To Waste.’
Yoshi Flower makes the kind of music that sends chills down your spine, edging you into a dance break in the middle of your office. Yoshi’s mixtape consists of both the past and the future, calling upon the singer songwriters of the early 2000s while simultaneously reinventing the wheel. You’ve probably never heard anything quite like it but still, you’ll hear yourself in every track.
There’s something for everyone on this tape, from delicately plucked ukuleles to rap and trap drums. It’s at once sophisticated and playful, hypnotizing us with stories or providing the soundtrack to a party. ‘Pull Up’ slips into the daydream that is ‘Rolling Thunder,’ and ‘Woke’ sounds like your ex banging down your door. You’re going to have ‘Movies’ on repeat for at least a few weeks, so warn your roommates and crank it up.
Serving star-studded choruses flanked by grunge electric guitar, there’s an intricate design to each song that keeps the listener entirely on their toes. The vocals are mixed differently throughout: some reflect the pop world, auto tuned and glitched, others are raw and unhinged. His use of genre may as well be an instrument, blending more genres than we can count and masterfully constructing his own Yoshi Flower world.
‘I Will Not Let My Love Go To Waste’ contains 13 hits. Check out Yoshi’s storybook below for the feels behind each one, then send it to all your friends. They will thank you.
I Will Not Let My Love Go To Waste tour dates:
March 5 – Los Angeles, CA – Troubadour
March 7 – San Francisco, CA – Cafe du Nord
March 12 – Chicago, IL – Cobra Lounge
March 13 – Detroit, MI – Shelter
March 14 – Toronto, ON – The Underground (Drake Hotel)
March 18 – Cambridge, MA – Middle East Upstairs
March 19 – New York, NY – The Dance
March 20 – Philadelphia, PA – World Cafe Live
March 21 – Washington, DC – DC
s t o r y b o o k :
Falling Apart sets the stage for what is to come. A prologue of sorts; what’s to come is love, lust, heartbreak and reflection, the manic highs and crater lows. Weather you dig deep or enjoy this collection at a surface level, the least you could do is dance.
Pull Up is an excerpt from my community’s iconoclastic and class-o-classic manifesto. Our little act of ongoing rebellion seems to lie in what we create; free of boundaries or labels of any kind.
Rolling Thunder was written in memory of a torrid affair, a night of MDMA and what true beauty and decrepit tendencies of our exploration to find our match.
Movies exists in surreality. An ode to some of my favorite things; my favorite film makes and a few of my favorite vices. It is a personification of that empowering feeling we get from loving someone or something so much its visceral.
More, more, more, more, touches on my unfortunate inability to control my own life most of the time. I constantly feel like I want to stop, but something inside keeps pushing me. It’s something I realized, during reflections like this, oozes out of me when I sit down to write.
These Daze we come down, all empires fall, nothing lasts forever. I wrote this in the midst of overwhelming bout of fear, it pushed me to the edge of apathy. I would be remiss to lie and say it never comes creeping on in to say hello to my psyche.
Just On Drugs exemplifies what is often followed by a bout of lowness, the attempt to climb back up to the heights we once dwelled. In chasing any high, we can’t forget the comedown, we can run from it but we know it’s not true love.
Woke, wide eyed, banging on her door, for better or for worse. We all want to feel heard, to feel understood, to be noticed. These universal feelings, when run rampant, can get us into all sorts of trouble.
Martyrdom is a form of suffering for your belief. I believe we should be free to live, to create, to exist in the exact form we see fit. I will die for this right if I have to. I will die for true love, for true expression.
7 Days is playful, I want to not take things so seriously, I wanted to put it in a tune. Simple as that.
Dirty Water…I don’t remember much about writing “Dirty Water,” I just remember it is something I really meant, something I felt from my core. Maya Angelou said it best, “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Nearing the end, the realization that I am truly Addicted, it both hurts so deeply and also comforts. Like the moment we realize the true vastness of the world as a child. The realization that we are at the same time insignificant and the center of our universe.
Idle Hand$ is from me to you, thank you for being with me for this half hour or so. I hope you felt something. Very truly yours, yoshi
CONNECT WITH YOSHI FLOWER:
INSTAGRAM // TWITTER // FACEBOOK // WEBSITE
photos / Josh Flores
story / Ariana Tibi