Rita Sahatçiu Ora: The Breakthrough

Rita Sahatçiu Ora is a 20 year old singer born Prishtina, Kosovo but raised in London, England. She is currently signed to Jay-Z's Roc Nation label. We mentioned the amount of talent on Roc Nation, well we retract the Sean Garrett claim (SHOTS FIRED? He should stick to song writing), and we're here to give you a glimpse of exactly what this label is working on.

At first this young singer only caught my attention because of her background. She's from Kosovo which has a lot of ties and history to my background, Albanian. On my previous posts I've included international music and have been contemplating on writing a post about my cultures music.

Who exactly is Rita? Press Play!



Craig David, Rita Ora & Tinchy Stryder - Where's Your Love

It's all about the music and she's working on her debut album. Rita is an individual. In today's pop music industry majority of artists have allowed the big marketing machine, the labels, to mold them into selfless artists. If it's not the record labels they're either emulating and pretending to be a previous icon like Madonna or Michael Jackson. Rita provides her own sound and it has a lot to do with the freedom that Roc Nation is providing it's artists with. Roc Nation’s newest signee, Rita Ora, has no fear with telling the world who she really is.

She's recorded songs with Craig David and has made cameo's in Drake's "Over" video as well Jay-Z's "Forever Young". I have great expectations from this young lady.

J.Cole: Untapping The Potential

J. Cole, is an American Hip Hop recording artists and producer, who was the first artist that was signed to Jay-Z's label Roc Nation, management, music publishing and entertainment company. Roc Nation has expanded it's roster and has become home to some incredible talents; Hugo, Willow Smith, Jay Electronica, Rita Ora, Bridget Kelly, Alexis Jordan, Blaze Bogatinov, Sean Garret, Nebo Uyanwah and K. Koke. The label also manages Rihanna, Wale, Melanie Fiona, No I.D, Solange Knowles and etc.

Back to the German born Fayetteville, North Carolina resider who has worked his way to becoming one of the best word-smiths in the Hip Hop community. J. Cole is often compared to Nas, despite being Jay-Z's Protege, and in fact the comparisons to the Queensbridge living legend are quite right. Cole presents a confident flow packed with witty figurative speech that leaves listeners nodding their heads, pausing and rewinding his music. He finds a way to analyze his feelings that is undeniably heartfelt and create an elemental bond with his listeners.

J. Cole is quite the prospect. He is symbolized as the one artist who will finally bring back intelligence and creativity to the Hip Hop mainstream world. He still has a long way to go. He needs to find his way into the radar of mainstream with out selling out and maintaining his unique identity. He had the perfect opportunity to and here's how he passed it up.

One of my favorite songs by J. Cole is titled "In The Morning" and recently he released a remix that features Drake. The theme of the song goes hand to hand with the vibe provided by the instrumental. This is one of those songs that when you listen to it, you imagine a video for it. You visualize yourself in this video.

The video released definitely wasn't what I expected. I was in fact greatly disappointed that two artists of their potential would release such a visually weak video. Drake has a resume of releasing uncreative videos except for "Find Your Love" (we're still waiting for the continuation). I didn't think that J. Cole was going to disappoint the same way.

Is music really as strong as it's visuals? Yes, there are times where the video completes the music. Look at Michael Jackson's "Remember The Time" and understand that visuals should be as important as the actual music. I know that mentioning Michael Jackson isn't a fair comparison but J. Cole truly has the potential to be someone with a great legacy. Let's hope that his other songs such as, "Light's Please" and "Higher" receive a better treatment.



J. Cole and Drake - In The Morning Remix

I still prefer the original version of the song over the remix.


J. Cole - In The Morning