I had such a hard time finding new music a while ago. It seemed like I had been in a bit of a rut. I had been listening to my same playlist on Spotify over and over again for what seemed like months, and nothing else sounded good to me. It wasn’t like it was bad, I just liked that I knew the songs on my playlist but I also hated that aspect of it as well. So more recently I started to try to force myself to listen to my discover weekly; with no luck. After a couple of songs, I ran into the artist 070 Shake’s song “Guilty Conscience”.
Now, how it goes with every song someone likes, I did not like it at first. I just thought it was just okay. However, not even a day later, it was like the only song I could listen to on repeat. The music’s 80s R&B notes along with beautiful layers of voices kept me mesmerized for days. It was like if Blood Orange had a sister, and she made her own song. Then I noticed the artist: 070 Shake. I was so confused as to what that even meant. Did it mean it was a band, or a group, or something of the sorts?
When doing some digging I found that 070 Shake is actually Danielle Balbuena, a girl from North Bergen, New Jersey. Still confused I did some more digging and found that she was one of Kanye West’s prodigies and is still on the rise. 070 Shake was part of the group 070, but does a lot of her work on her own or with other people now. The stage name is to pay tribute to where she is from in New Jersey. She also was one of the voices on Kanye’s new album and helped produce some of the music on it as well, according to sources.
Her latest album, Modus Vivendi, released earlier this year and was pretty successful. Being an R&B fan myself, I can tell her album is definitely veering from the usual. I loved all of the layering and different types of sounds featured on different songs. Hearing her music and hearing that she was under the influence of Kanye West was not surprising, there are a lot of similar elements in her music as well as his. Her ability to mix hip-hop and electronic music in the most popular song on the album, ‘Guilty Conscience’, was very impressive; and fans thought so too. That song has been the most praised on the album for not only its music elements but lyrics and layering. Also, the music video is very impressive, it plays homage to the typical cult classic film and plays with the idea of masculinity.
I think 070 Shake is only on the rise from here, even though she isn’t very mainstream yet I think that time will eventually come. Go ahead and stream 070 Shake on most platforms now so that way you can enjoy her music as much as I do!